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The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

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Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#31

Post by djsumdog »

lnanek2 wrote: post #21
grizzles wrote: post #5

Google mgmt fake releases and then subsequently cancels unlaunched products all the time. They do it to assess market viability and also to stymie competitors. Ara is notable because of the breadth of the project, but it was really just about protecting the android cash cow's flank. The strategy has worked pretty well. Android was released as open source almost 10 years ago, and you still can't run it on any semi ope…

I worked at a startup producing an Android device funded by Intel and Intel wouldn't even give us source code to all the parts of the OS. We had to deal with binary blobs copied into the Android source tree for things like the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and fastboot. They were things we really needed to customize too because their fastboot referenced buttons our device didn't have and things like that. It was p…

So the Intel system they gave you didn't have things like standard UEFI or a VESA/VGA subsystem? Could you install a standard x86/64 Linux distro or Windows?

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#32

Post by femto »

onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, and if you replace the motherboard to allow a newer component to be plugged in then all of the other old stuff needs to be replaced due to the new motherboard. The most success with longevity seems to be USB peripherals, with old/new stuff working together, and it's worth noting that USB is external to the PC. (I'd contend that that USB's success is largely due to the mechanical simplicity of USB, which is beginning to disappear.)

With increased integration, there's also an aspect of the cost of a module being almost independent of its contents, meaning that the cost of making a device is roughly proportional to the number modules it contains. Under those circumstances, it makes sense to minimise the number of modules, the lowest overall device cost being a single integrated unit.

In my mind, the key to long life is freedom to modify the software. It's amazing how far a well designed hardware platform can be pushed with software optimisation over time. I do embedded systems in my day job and our current product does things that weren't even thought of when it's hardware was designed, by virtue of the original design keeping the hardware simple whilst doing as much as possible in software, and current creative use the existing hardware resources.

I think a fixed hardware platform can work well, provided an original design goal is to do as much as possible in software and there is complete freedom to rework the software going forward.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#33

Post by sjg007 »

toast0 wrote: post #17
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

The problem is connectors, there's no room in a phone to have connectors between the motherboard and smallish parts. Modular display and camera can make sense, but more as build time options. How has google not already beaten the iPhone? They have vastly more users, and have very small margins (the end state for PCs)

The iPhone has a better ux and battery life. The software is also likely higher quality.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#34

Post by akozak »

femto wrote: post #32
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, an…

That the vast majority of people have a different relationship to technology than you is a critical insight for engineers transitioning into (consumer facing) product development.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#35

Post by swsieber »

femto wrote: post #32
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

Did the upgradeable PC ever really work, or did the vast majority of PCs sold go to the dump with exactly the same configuration as sold? After a few years, it becomes a cascade of dependencies: Can't upgrade memory because the old motherboard won't support state of the art DIMMs, the bus used by current cards (ISA, PCI, AGP, PCIx) doesn't match the motherboard, power supply connector has different number of pins, an…

The boon wasn't that consumers could customize their computers - it was that competitors could easy compete on individual parts because of the standardization.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#36

Post by bluedino »

smallnamespace wrote: post #13
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

> Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I don't quite understand this point. PCs are inherently upgradeable, but it seems like consumers would rather treat them as disposable electronic devices, judging by the success of barely-upgradeable Macs and other laptops. And I'm not sure I blame them either, it's not like it's easy for a consumer with no techy…

Exactly - and a bunch of companies built phones that can run Android, so Google has won, in a way

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#37

Post by guest »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

Ara was one of the most exciting things about Motorola, and I really wish Google had at least done us the favor of letting Lenovo have ATAP along with the rest of the company, where it might've had a chance. > _“To us, it just felt like we had just kinda hit molasses. And I think, to Google, it felt like they were being uncomfortably sped up,” the source said. Google constantly gets a lot of credit for "innovation",…

"Google is not what it seems." The NSA and the plutocratic informal interest group best known is probably the best bet.

Ruling the narrative and how people behave and what questions they ask is in focus. The end game isn't simply to predict opinion as weather but to stear it (as it has always been for dictators and those who do not believe in democracy).

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#38

Post by bluedino »

losteric wrote: post #24
onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

I would argue that standardization in the PC markets is driven by overlap between enterprise server hardware, enterprise PC hardware, and (incidentally!) consumer PCs... Think about laptops, they've been around for a lot longer and are much closer to desktop PCs. Why hasn't modularization transformed that market? What about tables? Answer: Most consumers don't care. They won't upgrade their PC, their laptop, their ph…

Modular design of PC's made the manufacturers all race to the bottom in price and nobody but Apple has made money from personal computer sales in 15 years.

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#39

Post by lobster_johnson »

onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

PCs weren't successful because they were upgradeable or because you could build custom ones out of commodity parts -- all that happened because the PC was successful.

The PC was successful because everyone wanted a computer that was like a PC, and two things happened: With the clone market, enough manufacturers could make the same thing, thus making computers affordable. Secondly, MS-DOS (and later, Windows) became a de facto standard preventing manufacturers from fragmenting the market with vendor-specific platforms. You bought a PC and it could run any DOS application.

Now, the clone market happened because the PC had standard components, which allowed any vendor to compete. Why can't standard components drive a new revolution in phones? Because everyone already has cheap, disposable phones. As far as the consumer is concerned, the mobile phone's "PC moment" already happened, except without the modularity.

If there's anything to disrupt today, it's the network.

(Would a modular phone be nice? Sure, probably. Would it work, physically? Not if you want to keep the form factor of today's slim smartphones.)

Re: The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of Google’s most revolutionary phone

#40

Post by serge2k »

onli wrote: post #6

I don't get it. This is a IBM PC moment right here. Imagine you could standardize the smartphone. Really divide it into block, standardize the communication bus. Make it a PC. It would be huge, eat up the smartphone world, just like the PC ate up the homecomputers. I even think this is how Google would have beaten the iPhone. Android as the OS for an ever-evolving phone, where if a user needs more ram he would just a…

> just like the PC ate up the homecomputers

Ever increasingly cheap and plentiful clones made computers finally cheap enough for anyone to own?

Phones are already way beyond that point.

> where if a user needs more ram he would just add more, if he needs a new processor he would just replace the current, if he needs a higher resolution display the old just would get replaced.

Why would I ever want to deal with that?

No one wants to deal with that. Just works is way better than endless tweaking.

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