Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#11

Post by mik3y » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

Setting aside the Launcher replacement, the most technically surprising aspect of this demo was the messaging app: it showed avatars and a messaging window hovering above the currently-focused app.

As far as I know, this isn't possible on stock Android. You can make a non-fullscreen window, but you can't continue to interact with the layer behind it.

This may be the motivation for the "set of OEM guidelines" Mark very casually mentioned. I wonder what other enhancements they call for..

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#12

Post by vowelless » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

flyt wrote: post #6

minimaxir wrote: post #4

Facebook is touting Facebook Home as a "visually rich stream of media," but all it's going to turn out to be is a feed of filtered food and memes.

If you don't like what your friends post to Facebook then you should reconsider if you want to be friends with them, or if you should begin using the tools FB already provides to control the content in your feed.

> If you don't like what your friends post to Facebook then you should reconsider if you want to be friends with them

That seems like an over-reaction. My friends posting stupid memes on facebook has little bearing to my friendship to them.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#13

Post by ameen » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

51Cards wrote: post #5

My initial thoughts (without having a ton of time to really absorb this yet) is that Apple's closed operating system may have just become a liability. The open 'intent' model of Android is really at the core of making something like this possible. In turn though does this also allow Facebook to take over "too many" aspects of Android and cut into Google's revenue streams as well? All things I'm still pondering. As an…

Apple is working on something similar to Android intents (afaik) for cross app data sharing, etc.

Although Facebook essentially monitoring most if not all of your mobile communications would really set off Apple's Privacy warning system.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#14

Post by cmbaus » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

nthitz wrote: post #8

Homescreens definitely can improve on phones. A huge multipage listing of Apps I have seems very inefficient. And while I'm nervous with this being from FB, I hope we see more unique home screens popping up.

I think Facebook is moving in the right direction on this, but I do agree that it is concerning that Facebook could become the jump off point for users.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#15

Post by ryanhandby » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

Before we all "lose our minds" keep in mind, FB is a slow player. There will be something, an extension of this that im sure will be simply awesome.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#16

Post by dude_abides » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

Some serious lack of imagination on Facebook's part.

They didn't go the hardware route since it is a lot of work.

They didn't go the route of forking Android, since then they would have to partner with hardware manufacturers and that is a lot of work

So what do they build instead? A deeply intrusive fork of their App that is not even going to be available on all Androids!

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#17

Post by suyash » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

It will track all your data now, this app come installed from OEM's like HTC which would be hard to uninstall and would track all over information all the time. #privacyconcern

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#18

Post by epo » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:58 PM UTC

Facebook's Segway moment?

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#19

Post by isopod » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

The giant gap between the beautiful photos of beautiful people doing enviable things in beautiful places used in demos such as these (and in Apple ones as well) and the mundane, poorly-focused, washed-out, ill-composed photos and meme reposts that are most likely to appear on your FB feed at any given moment always takes the shine off of products such as these for me, despite how much more useful or technologically advanced they may be from their predecessors. Being reminded my life is not going to be as exciting as the floor model is never a good user experience.

Re: Facebook Announces “Home”, A Homescreen Replacement For Standard Android

#20

Post by TannerLD » Thu, Apr 04, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

dude_abides wrote: post #16

Some serious lack of imagination on Facebook's part. They didn't go the hardware route since it is a lot of work. They didn't go the route of forking Android, since then they would have to partner with hardware manufacturers and that is a lot of work So what do they build instead? A deeply intrusive fork of their App that is not even going to be available on all Androids!

I don't have a great understanding of Android, but what would make them choose to limit the app's current phone options to a handful?