All About Android 630, Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next on All About Android. It's me, Jason Howell. We've got Ron Richards and Huyen Tue Dao No longer in the studio sitting with me, but they are, you know zooming in from their homes. We are also joined by Mike Wolfson, who joins us every year around IO to either give a preview or do a recap this year. It's a recap, so we're happy to have him. It is our big Google io recap episode. So we take a look at all the major announcements, and let me just kind of spoil the surprise a little bit. There's a ton of AI at this year's Google io. If you didn't already know hardware, I mean, so much stuff coming from io. So we have that. If you notice that this feed is really long list, because after the credits, we've included our interview from the Google campus with Dave Burke and Samir Samat of the Google Android team. We talk All About Android 14, the keynote that they had just finished literally two hours prior to the interview. So you don't wanna miss it. Supersized All About Android coming up next.
Speaker 2 (00:01:03):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.
Jason Howell (00:01:12):
This is All About Android episode 630, recorded Tuesday, May 16th, 2023, IO 23. This is the way this episode of All About Android is brought to you by Cachefly. Cachefly delivers rich media content up to 10 times faster than traditional delivery methods, and 30% faster than other Major CDNs. Meet customer expectations 100% of the time. Learn how you can get your first month free at Cachefly.com. Also, thank you for listening. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our audience. 99% of our audience listens to most of all of our episodes, so grow your brand with authentic ad reads that always resonate with our audience. Reach out to advertise at twit tv and launch your campaign now.
(00:02:07):
Hello, welcome to All About Android. This is your weekly source, the latest news, hardware and apps for the Android Faithful. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Ron Richards. And I'm Huyen Tue Dao. And we are all in our, we're not places, we're not together, not all together, not sitting physically at this desk the way we were just a week ago. What a wonderful week that was. Or episode and and week because IO was a lot of fun. We're gonna talk all about it, but before we get into that, just wanna make mention that we have our ase esteemed return guest, Mike Wolfson joining us, Mike wolfson.com, Android Google developer expert, and you know, all around awesome guys, especially pre or post io. It depends on the year, but Mike, it's good to have you back.
Speaker 2 (00:02:57):
Thank you. And thank
Mike Wolfson (00:02:58):
For thank you for calling me esteemed.
Jason Howell (00:03:00):
That's the nice
Mike Wolfson (00:03:01):
Thing anybody said about me too,
Jason Howell (00:03:02):
<Laugh>. I mean, I mean, just look at all those badges. Who, who could have all those badges and not be considered esteemed <laugh>. True. I mean, if you, if you're wearing those, you, I don't know how you walk around. It's probably very heavy
Ron Richards (00:03:18):
<Laugh> I will say, I will say that like it's Pavlovian Pavlovian in me now that whenever we start talking about Google io, I get excited to see Mike. Yeah. And so while we're, while Mike, you're on the post io show, I'm glad that the, the the multi-year tradition of, of Google io and Mike being on the show is is still in, in play. That's
Jason Howell (00:03:37):
Right. That's right. That's good to have you here, Mike. So we should note before we you know, right off the jump here, this episode is very long. You probably saw it in your podcast feed and you're like, holy moly, what's going on here? The reason for this is that, and we're gonna talk all about Google io coming up here after the credits of this episode, you get a bonus episode tacked onto the very end. So last Wednesday from Google io, when Ron and myself, we were on the Google campus, we had the opportunity to speak with Sumir Samat and Dave Burke from the Android, from Google's Android team all about everything that they talked about during the keynote. And this was like two hours after the keynote ended. So we felt very privileged to be able to sit down with them.
(00:04:27):
They had very busy schedules and they gave us like 45 minutes to chat with them. It was a lot of fun. And the interview went out on our twit newsfeed, twit TV slash news. But I mean, you all who subscribe to this show, you're the core audience for this information. And so we figured, you know, why not just put this interview at the end of this episode? If you've already checked it out on the TWIT news feed, you don't have to listen to it. You don't have to watch it. If you haven't, we're saving you the need to jump over there. You can just check it out here. And yeah, so you get a little bonus, you get two episodes in one. That's our gift to
Ron Richards (00:05:04):
You. How about that? And it was a great, fun conversation that like flew by. Yeah. Really good. I think, I think it ended up being like about 45 minutes recorded or so. Yeah. and you could hear both. We've had Dave on the show before. It was great to meet him in person, but to meet Samir as well and like hear from both of them from their perspective about everything, all the stuff we're gonna talk about here and tonight's show is we break down io. But but as you mentioned Jason just coming literally like almost less than two hours after the keynote. Like you could, you could still get the adrenaline radiating off of Dave from his, like, so many recaps of the keynote that I saw called out Dave's performance of like like, and he did a great job with those live demos and stuff like that. And he talked a little bit about that during the interview. So seriously, like I, I know personally for me it was the, it was the absolute, I mean, in, on top of being, being in person with you, with you both Jason Wynn and Burke <laugh> and Anthony and Victor in the whole crew it was the highlight of my Google io just being able to sit down with them and have like a great, you know, like exclusive conversation. So I hope everybody enjoys listening to it.
Jason Howell (00:06:04):
Yes, indeed. That is after the credits roll on this episode. And this episode could just by itself be a little bit longer because there was so much to talk the, so much news from Google io. So let's not dance around it anymore. It's time to turn off the music. It's time to get serious. Let's let's start talking about Google io. It's time for the News.
Victor (00:06:27):
So thanks for bringing that up about last week. And thanks for the kind words, Ron, cuz I was a little salty you guys didn't bring me last week.
Jason Howell (00:06:36):
Mm. Yeah, we tried, we tried, we tried. I can't tell you how many hours I spent on the phone with, with Google reps saying, look, Victor wants to come, he wants to be here, why can't Victor make it? And they were like, you know, next year. And so maybe there's hope. Thanks that,
Victor (00:06:52):
That makes me feel a little bit better.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:06:54):
<Laugh>,
Jason Howell (00:06:55):
That that whole last part there I fed into an AI system and it told me to tell you that <laugh>. So I don't know if it's true, but anyways, well, you, you know, it's not true because there is no way to call Google even if you Yeah, certainly hope to. That was the part that I knew it was. That's how you knew it was an AI system. Yeah.
Victor (00:07:15):
Well, I'll just say I appreciate the thought.
Jason Howell (00:07:17):
There we go. Okay. All right. Even from
Victor (00:07:20):
Ai, Jason
Jason Howell (00:07:21):
<Laugh>,
Ron Richards (00:07:23):
Before we did, before we dig into the shows, Finn took some great, had some great pictures from from Oh yeah, Google io. Oh,
Jason Howell (00:07:30):
It's
Huyen Tue Dao (00:07:30):
Not just Me Too. I mean Mishaal, right?
Jason Howell (00:07:34):
So, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the link Victor in the doc above the news section, there's a little photo album there. And you know, I mean, rarely I, if ever, actually never before last Tuesday and Wednesday were all of us in the same place at the same time. So, you know, had to, had to capture it. And win took a a number of photos. We got a bunch of really awesome, there's Victor in there, Mishaal. We got a a bunch of awesome group pictures and everything. Soft flow.
Ron Richards (00:08:08):
Yeah. For our audio listeners, these are all photos of us at Google io right now. But
Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:13):
Yeah, yeah, this is the first time I got to sneak. I've tried to sneak into the press boxes at Shoreline Amphitheater for years just because they're nice to sit in. They're a little more roomy but they're pretty good with the bouncers. But this year I managed to sneak into the press box with these lovely folks and sit from there. Hey, hello? And flow. I missed flow. I know.
Jason Howell (00:08:31):
How did that happen, Ethan? No, no.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:33):
I missed flow and I'm so sad. Yeah. And she was very proud of her cloud zit Patch, which is a conversation starter <laugh>.
Jason Howell (00:08:43):
But
Huyen Tue Dao (00:08:44):
Yeah, it's, it was just really, really great to see everybody in person and, and to be at Shoreline with everybody and, and kind of experiences together.
Jason Howell (00:08:51):
Yeah. So actually, actually, so let's, let's just real spend, spend like a minute talking about that aspect because Michael or Mike when both of you were at IO last year, Mike, you were not at IO this year, but when you were I mean changes, I mean, it did, it, it is different. They let in more people arguably we as a team had more going on, but was it an upgrade in your mind? When, what did you, what do you think?
Huyen Tue Dao (00:09:23):
Mm. So I, as as
Jason Howell (00:09:25):
Developer as is concerned, I suppose
Huyen Tue Dao (00:09:27):
As a developer, no, there was less developers and I, I I say not an upgrade and I don't mean that to be insulting. Yeah. It's just that it's kind of the same where there is, there's basically just the consumer keynote and the developer keynote and that was it. And then the rest of the content is online. So, you know, if you like that, then that was more the same this year. There was not, at least as far as I could see any additional, like, fun and festivals for us. I know it was different for press. But yeah, I mean kind of the same so you can, so it's
Jason Howell (00:09:59):
As more of a press event then really
Huyen Tue Dao (00:10:02):
It is.
Jason Howell (00:10:04):
It's, and that's kind of a shame when it's a developer conference or maybe what it is is Google io the event is the press event. Google io the developer conference is the 200 videos that are released online, which, you know, we had a conversation Ron, I believe you were there with this conversation. We were talking with a Googler who helps coordinate all this stuff. And he basically said like, look, you know, prior to the pandemic, we had no reason to share all of our videos because it was all about the event, bringing people here. And if you were here, you got something special. Now, since the pandemic, they've seen more engagement on the actual developer con content online than they feel like they ever saw with the event itself. And so I kind of got the impression that they were saying that he was saying you know, he didn't say it outright, but I really got the impression that this is kind of the way it's gonna be. It's gonna be a single day probably, and all this stuff online.
Ron Richards (00:11:03):
Yeah. And I, I think, and I think that it's kind of gives them the best of both worlds because they get the gathering event for people who want to go, but then people who either their, their, they can't afford to or employers don't wanna send them or whatever it is, can watch at home and get, and be in and get it all. I mean, I I I, to me, it seems like they found their footing and they found the what, what possibly works best for the community. I dunno. Mike, what, what do you think of, what do you think, what do you think?
Mike Wolfson (00:11:26):
Go ahead. So, I do have a lot of thoughts about this. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. First thing, I do think this is the way of the future for big conferences. WW d c this year is similar. It's the same sort of thing where they're just having one day. It's mostly online. I do think this is the way this is the first Google io I have not been to live. And it was actually the first one since last year attending. And it was kind of not that, you know, wonderful. An event that I kind of am just okay with it. And I'm okay with it in particular, well, I'm okay with it because a lot of the contents online. The other thing I wanted to mention is Google is trying for the first time this year, a follow on event called IO Connect. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And they do these things a lot. But this is kind of like the festival portion perhaps of Google io. It's in a few weeks in Miami, which is kind of not a great decision. But it's gonna be like the booths and stuff that you would have set up at Google io o where you can ask dev questions and the code labs and some things like that. So they're having that, but it's just at a different event.
Jason Howell (00:12:36):
Yeah, yeah. Definitely a different event all around. Interesting. Okay. Well, I missed seeing you at Google io, Mike. So
Mike Wolfson (00:12:47):
Likewise, I,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:12:48):
I will say, and I, I won't name names, but I did talk to some folks who works at, who work at Google, who lament the lack of kind of in-person, like interaction with developers. And that's always been a strong point of the Android communities Yeah. That we have.
Jason Howell (00:13:01):
It's part of the conversation,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:13:02):
The Googlers. Yeah. And it, it goes both ways, right? So we get access to the Google Engineers to ask some questions about like, either specific or broad things, but the, the people who work on the team also love hearing from us as well. And not to say that that can't happen now, like, for sure at the Connect events at Will, but Mike, is the connect event GDE only or is it like general? I'm sorry. It's open
Mike Wolfson (00:13:25):
To Okay, everybody.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:13:27):
So I think that's where they, they make it up, but especially with, I think Google, like being a little more like about local events, it's like, you're not gonna see all your favorite Googlers or like all your, all of your favorite Googlers rather are not gonna have as much interaction with you. So I think I, I think that is, I, we'll see how it goes with a connect and maybe like how both us as developers, third party developers and the Google folks feel about it. But it was kind of a big, big deal to, to kind of have this big event where all the Googlers all, and, and as many devs as could make it, could all have access to each other. Mm. And, and create that collaboration. So that's gonna be the part that they need to work hard to make up for, I think. And, and I mean, maybe Connect will be that, but we'll see. Yeah. keep, keep my hopes up.
Mike Wolfson (00:14:10):
It won't be that. And I think honestly, we won't have Google io like we had in the past, unfortunately. Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:14:16):
Because I mean, how many developers are gonna go out to, you know, fly out to the Bay Area and stay at hotel and everything for a single day that is taken up two thirds by keynotes, like <laugh>, you know what I mean? It's just, yeah. It's just fundamentally, it's a very different event than it was before.
Ron Richards (00:14:35):
And, and the, and the thing is, while we're on the top, like the keynote was very long. I mean, it was, I mean, that, that was more two hours. That was a, it was a more than two hour keynote. Right. And then, and Jason, I feel like over the years we've seen everything from the tight hour, hour and a half to like a crazy multi-hour skydiving, you know, kind of extravaganza, right? Yeah. But like, and, and I do think, like, it, it would be, it'd be remiss without, and we're gonna get into it in the details as we start breaking stuff down, but like the going joke that everyone made after the keynote for the rest of the day, myself included, was AI much, right? Because after two hours of having those two letters hammered into your brain, like it, like
Jason Howell (00:15:14):
It
Ron Richards (00:15:14):
Did, it did get taxing and exhausting at some point where just like, it was just, it was just very, it, it was very repetitive. And I'll give, I'll give my friend credit who was texting me during the event, and he, he was describing what they were doing as basically like, you know he said he said, it feels a lot like a restaurant, and they keeps serving me vegetable dishes instead of what I ordered <laugh>.
Jason Howell (00:15:39):
So then is Google, so then is Google not reading the room? Because I feel like everybody's talking about ai, but Google, yeah. I mean, and, and so just to kind of give you an, an idea of where this show is headed, the entire first block here is filled with AI news. I figured we'll just get the AI done. And then the rest of the episode, we have non-AI stuff,
Ron Richards (00:15:58):
<Laugh> and, and bef before we get into the AI stuff, I mean, I think that the official kind of stuff, the, the, you know, ai, the theme of the entire event was ai mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And my takeaway from it was Google's gotten beat up over the last six months, maybe eight months with chat G P T and Open AI kind of leading the pack of like what AI can do and Mid journey and all these other, you know, all the, all these other generative AI kind of startups that are in the place. And Google needed to reassert themselves and say, no, actually we're a leader in this space. They, you know, Sundar opened it up by saying, you know, over seven years of research into AI and development and stuff like that. Like, they kept on driving home the fact that they've been working on this, they've been working on this. And it was almost, you know, like Shakespearean and like the Lady Doth protest too much <laugh> <laugh>. But it was, it was, it was definitely they said it a lot.
Jason Howell (00:16:55):
They said it a lot While we were joking, while we were there, if we could take a transcript of the keynote and run it through Bard and tell Bard, tell me how many times the word the, the acronym AI was spoken during this keynote, we figured it would probably be at least a thousand if not more. So let's get into these things. And we already spent 10 minutes talking about the event itself, which I think is really important because it is, like we said, fundamentally different this year, and I think going forward. So let's focus a little bit of time on ai. We don't have to go into incredible detail on these things, but I think you'll start to see the picture that the theme wasn't just ai, it was how Google is bringing AI into the products and services that they already had. So you don't have to go to a destination to find ai.
(00:17:39):
AI is where you already are. We kind of saw that a little bit with assistant, we'll talk about that in a moment. But this is in other ways. And one of the major ways is that Google announced that it's bringing, its generative ai to search. And that in and of itself is a really big deal because search, I mean, search has changed a lot of Google search has changed a lot over the years, but it's still really fundamentally been the same thing. The 10 blue links ads, you know, inter ads throughout that experience has changed a little bit. But h how things are structured haven't changed a heck of a lot, I would say. Or either that, or we've gotten used to it over time. Well, this is a really big difference. The key here though, is that you have to opt into it.
(00:18:24):
Once it's available, you'll have to opt into it. There is a a wait list that you can get on to get access to this, but you opt into it via search labs, and basically it's a, you know, it's a chatbot integrated into search. It's basically Google's answer to Bing getting its own generative AI infusion a few months back. So this would be, and it's not barred. So they, it is, these are different things. They're different efforts. But the chatbot answers questions, you know, that you ask it in real language style and kind of integrates it above the fold, so above where the blue links are. So it really entirely shifts how Google's search product operates if you opt into it. And I can't help but think that, okay, right now it's opt in. But if this is the way this keeps being spoken on the show, it's obviously a title. If this is the way, then will there be a time somewhere down the line where this is just kind of part of a part of search is that it's no longer this test thing that you have to opt into. It's part of how, you know, the fabric of how we search is going forward. And I, I could totally see that. What do, what do you all think? Do you think this is do you think this is the way,
Mike Wolfson (00:19:43):
So we talked about this a little bit in the pre-show, and the only way that beco this becomes our normal pattern is if chat if, if these chatbots return good results. Yeah. Because right now what I mean, when we search Google, we expect the correct answer. And like what we, you know, when we were playing around with this before the show, we learned that none of these answers are correct <laugh>
Jason Howell (00:20:04):
Yes. Like, not,
Mike Wolfson (00:20:05):
Like not any of them. It's 90% incorrect. Yeah.
Ron Richards (00:20:09):
Well, a great, a great, a great example of this is that Jason, while you were just talking about it, I went to Google Bard and I said, how many times did they say AI during the Google io keynote? And the first response that I got was, the word AI was mentioned 125 times during the Google io keynote. It was most office used in reference of new AI featured in products like Pixel seven, a Lambda, and Bard, blah, blah, blah. And you know how in Bard you can say, view other drafts, right? So I, I click that and the second draft says, according to the YouTube transcript of the Google IO 2023 keynote, the word AI was said 43 times. <Laugh>.
Jason Howell (00:20:44):
That is so wrong. <Laugh>.
Ron Richards (00:20:46):
So what is right? Like, like, and here's the thing is like we're, and we're, we're assuming that these, you type some stuff a prompt in and you get a response back and there's a, there's a commitment to the answer you're given is truthful, right? Yeah. Like, and this is a whole nother layer of like science fiction here, where it's like, what if you're not getting correct answers back? You know, like, it, it, so it, it's,
Jason Howell (00:21:11):
You cant trust the thing that you're using to, to find facts, which largely I'd say people use search to find facts about things, things that are posted somewhere that are factual. Maybe I'm wrong. You know, I, I guess if you're searching for fiction, that would be wrong. But largely when I go to a search engine, it's because I have this thing that I want to know about. I want to know the details, and I want it to be factual. And if the thing that you're using can't give you factual information, or rather gives you fac, gives you information that appears to be factual, but you only find out that it's not factual by actually researching it and spending the time to look into it, then like, is anybody going use it? Right? That's a good question.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:21:53):
There's, there's also the element of like like, so just like we've had con it's like so many conversations about generative ai, especially when it comes to art and kind of like the aggregation and training on other people's art. And then you create something from other people's art. And whether that is, you know, like, you know theft of I, theft of like art, theft of ideas. It was really funny. We were watching the keynote, my husband was on chat with me, and I think there was one thing in the search results where it was like aggregating, I think it was like planning for like a vacation, right? And it had aggregated information from three different blog posts. And he made a comment like, oh, great. So now that means your content will just be sup like, like sucked up by Google and spit out.
(00:22:31):
And, and to be fair, they did have annotations there, but I do think there is kind of a feeling like, oh, it's, it's now, it's not just something kind of more like visual and necessarily like inherently individualistic like art, but imagine your content just kind of gets sucked up and then kind of rolled into like this gener generated content mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And it's not as easy to attribute you. I mean, it's there, but that's not the first thing a person sees, and that's like the not the largest per thing a person sees, and Right. That, that feels less good to me. You know what I mean? Like, I think it kind of goes with, okay, what is it pulling together? What is it synthesizing? Is it synthesizing fact? Is it synthesizing opinion? Is it syn synthesizing someone's creative work? Whether that is, you know, a guide to hiking in like the CRS or something, or you know, an image.
(00:23:14):
So I, I, that kind of stuff also kind of makes me wonder as well. Like I know that, and it was interesting because they seem to be kind of trying to address some of these, like attribution slash like how can we tell if a thing is real, like it was made by a person made by generation, and that that also seemed to pop up as a theme of privacy of attribution and of like disclosure and, and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and that as well. But I don't know, I, I feel like there's a lot of kinks to work out, but I, I can't imagine that conversational and kind of helping us try to do like the nitty gritty stuff and like the, like the kind of like low-hanging fruit type tasks a day, it's gonna go away. But I think there's a lot of work to be done
Jason Howell (00:23:53):
No question. A lot of work to be done. Yeah. 100%.
Ron Richards (00:23:59):
Indeed Ron, but a lot of the work has been done already, <laugh>
Jason Howell (00:24:05):
And
Ron Richards (00:24:05):
What at least during the keynote Sunar Pacha kind of, you know, he, he set it all up and he positioned, you know, the kind of AI conversation and it was all kind of framed around introducing Palm two, or Palam as I like to say, cuz it's capital P, lowercase a, capital L,
(00:24:25):
Poly poly, poly palm two. Basically this is Google's new language model and it's smaller. It's, so the second version of Palm, that was the first one smaller in size in the previous version, but more efficient and with multilingual understanding, which is powerful. And it's different model scale for different devices. You know, so whether you're using it on smartphone or a browser or whatnot and really like it's the underlying tech that all this stuff is kind of built on. And, you know, actually if you dig into the Google blog, there's actually a link to the to the, the scientific paper explaining Palm two the Palm two Tech report which is like a a hundred page document that goes through and explain, gives the background and all the, the methodology and all the stuff that came before it is really, really kind of fascinating a way out of my realm of understanding.
(00:25:19):
But but yeah, but so it was like, as they're telling the story of the keynote, it's like, Hey, look what the underlying tech underneath all this, under the hood, we're developing it, we're advancing it. We're we're adapting it for the needs that we have for our various devices on our different kind of interfaces. And this is what it's all built on. You know, they did push that multilingual support, you know, they did announce like when they're, I, I don't know, how do I steal someone thunder later on, but they're talking about Bard, how Bard is now gonna be available in Korean and Japanese, and then I think they're planning on rolling out like 80 languages soon. So it's gonna be multi, you know, multi-language, which is gotta be even more com you know, training and ai, that's a strength. English, that's a
Jason Howell (00:25:56):
Strength pick that Google leverage. I don't know, honestly off the top of my head chat, J p t and the other systems, how they are with multilingual support. But I mean, Google's been doing multilingual stuff for quite a while when it comes to its AI training. And
Ron Richards (00:26:09):
That was, and that was the second. And that, and, and that was the, and we're gonna chase and you're gonna talk about later on, this is a little bit of tease, but like for me, the theme of the keynote was ai, right? And what Google's doing in ai. But then what, what really kind of pushed it across the finish line for me is like, yeah, chat, G B T and open AI are doing great stuff and they're building you know, APIs underlying tech for other people to go build stuff. But Google's got a whole bunch of stuff that they can implement indirectly and get this stuff to, you know, in front of users much faster than anyone else. And that's their strategic advantage. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. You know, so the multilingual support. Yeah. And just like the applications that are ready to use us, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. But like that's really, I think, gonna be the game changer. Whether or not Palm Two is better than open AI's model or not. That's, that's open to debate, but you can't argue what the, the power that Google has in front of the AI now. Yeah,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:26:59):
Yeah. If they can get the multilingual working well, and this is kind of a traditional thing where certain languages that are not, you know I, I like, you know romance languages, Western languages like Korean and Japanese already are hard enough to translate without sounding a little bit like robotic and un and unnatural and not idiomatic. But I, I know they talked last year about improving the models for that, where they're not doing like a direct translation model. So they compare that, you know, like language model with, you know, Bard and with like the accessibility and locality of like, Hey, we're putting Bard in our stuff and we have like all these features in our stuff. Like maybe that, that could be the secret sauce that can help them kind of not feel like they're chasing chat G P T and banging all those other things. And which is like the strength that we've heard about all these different years at IO 23. Just gotta synthesize, bring it all together, mix it all up,
Jason Howell (00:27:47):
Synthesize,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:27:48):
Synthesize. I keep saying that word. That was been my, ugh. That's like the new drinking game when, when says Synthes
Jason Howell (00:27:53):
Class <laugh>
Huyen Tue Dao (00:27:55):
Jacob up a drinker. Something. I don't know. Yeah. But,
Jason Howell (00:27:58):
Well, speaking of Palm two actually when this leads really well into Yes. Yours, because this was something that you brought up that definitely wasn't on my radar. Cause I'm not a developer, but this is actually very cool. And, and I think based on, on the Palm two technology.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:28:14):
Yeah. Yeah. So there is a descendant of Palm to Cody code, E code Y code that is now powering <laugh> an AI conversation based helper inside of Android studio. So during the developer keynote, which happened an apps as the consumer keynote this actually took me by surprise, but yeah Jay Eason came out and announced that there's a studio bot, and I think there was about 30 seconds of a little bit of skepticism, like, oh no, why do I have a chat bot in my integrated development environment? But, and I think this goes into kind of what we were talking about earlier. It's actually really cool, y'all. So basically you talk to studio Bot, you ask it natural language questions, and it can return to you all kinds of things. It can return to you information from documentation, it can return to you information about material guidelines, and it can return to you templates, like code templates.
(00:29:09):
It can help you refactor things from say, Java to Kotlin. It can even tell you about when you have a crash or an air, it can tell you what that air is, what it means. And for kind of low hanging fruit things that are just like little, oh, you forgot to turn on the internet permissions. It can do some of those fixes for you. And I actually really love this. And, and the, the thing here, which makes me super excited about this, where I'm a little bit, you know, kind of like Debbie down around other things, is that all of these things like refactoring templates, even documentation and even like things like static static analysis where we, someone telling us, Hey, you shouldn't do that in your code exists already. It's just that now we have a conversational interface for it. So you can just ask rather than you Googling and figuring out what to Google and, and again, studio studios in beta, so it's not quite as like fluent as say bar to something, but imagine like not having to Google or open up like 10 or five, 10 or 15,000 different websites. You just ask the studio. And it is pulling on all of these, these information sources that we already have. It's factual or, I mean, not quite factual, but kind of, these are all kinda resources that we use data today. It's just in one place. So yeah, based on Palm Two and Cody, and, I mean, I thought that we were done with AI and chat Botts <laugh>,
Jason Howell (00:30:22):
But no consumer keynote was done just begun,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:30:24):
But No, no, no, no. Developers, you get a chatbot and you get a chatbot and you get a chat bott. So
Jason Howell (00:30:30):
I'm, I'm curious to know Mike, I wanna throw this over to you. I mean, you know, obviously Winn, I'm curious to know what you think too, but Mike, as, as one of the developers on this panel, is an AI informed chatbot. Like, is that an answer to something that you actually want? Or is that, are you getting clippy vibes? Like <laugh>? I'm curious to know where, where you stand on this.
Mike Wolfson (00:30:56):
So I kind of am, and you kind of, it's a good segue cause that's kind of what I was gonna mention. I will start this by mentioning that I currently use GitHub co-pilot, which is AI assisted development. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's different though, in that it basically provides like advanced intelligence, like co code completion. And it's really magic for a lot of things. Like we was just mentioning, like the template stuff that is just like boiler plate code comments. It kind of like writes all my comments for me. I don't know how it kind of knows, but those things are magic love. That
Jason Howell (00:31:30):
Sounds awesome. Yeah.
Mike Wolfson (00:31:33):
I don't like having a chat interface to that is of value, but it's kind of different. So I kind of have to get used to it. There are times when co-pilot doesn't tell me what I need and I still have to go search for it. And maybe this would be that solution, like Right. Co-Pilot's not giving it me what I want, I ask studio bot, Hey, bot, how do I make this text bold, you know? Mm-Hmm.
Jason Howell (00:31:56):
<Affirmative> mm-hmm.
Mike Wolfson (00:31:57):
<Affirmative>. So and, and I welcome all the assistance I can get. I welcome my AI robot overloads, lo ro robot overloads, and if they make my job easier, bring it. Well,
Ron Richards (00:32:10):
And, and, and, and that's what, and we talked about that in the interview with Dave and Samir and, and, and the context of this is that like, there's so much sturman drag over AI and how AI is taking over. And I, I, I've, I've dealt with it in my day job, you know, like we're, you know, where I'm talk, you know, like I'm, I'm trying to be innovative and trying to cultivate my team to be aware of technology and how can we use it as tools? And like a lot of the folks first reaction, and not, I wouldn't say Luddite, but is very like I don't wanna lose my job to a robot and robots can't do my job, you know, but like the, the example or the great kind of, you know the, the, the point that Mike makes in terms of saving time, and we talked about on the, on the, the revelation I had when, you know, like 150 years ago, it took a week to do the laundry, and then they invented the washing machine, and now it takes two hours, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so what do you do with that time back and, and from a developer standpoint, how much, you know, when Mike, how much time will you get back with these tools?
Huyen Tue Dao (00:33:02):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not too, I mean, it's, it's a bit of, it's not quite the same evolutionary step, but if you imagine like how many years ago we had punch cards, right? And so you spent most of your time punching out the, the dang punch cards. And part of, I mean, this is all for like modern tooling, even things like Kotlin and things like that, it takes away the drudgery so that you can focus on high level things. And that's time is kind of one of those resources that developers never have enough of Mm mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. and so anything that saves me time helps. And I think what is interesting about the chat is that, you know, like Google has touted some of these, the, the part, the part I think that's interesting about conversational is that the conversational bot keeps context.
(00:33:40):
So it's like that shopping thing that they always mention where you're, you're saying, Hey, show me some pants, right? And then out of the results you can say, okay, show me of the, like, show me this one. But in Orange, you know, it keeps the context of what you're talking about. So it saves you from, you know, having to figure out, okay, how do I filter these results and not lose them? You know what I'm saying? Like, like it's building on, you know, the previous thing that you asked, just like any other conversation that you had with a human being. And I think that's what's interesting about Studio Bot versus, you know as Mike mentioned Copa and stuff like that too, is that maybe by using a bot that can keep that context, you, you can say something like, Hey, what is this error and how do I fix it?
(00:34:17):
Rather than, you know, having to copy paste a stack trace, go out, search through Google, you get back some answers, and then you have to kind of individually copy paste, you know, the, the, the kind of things that it's, it's like there's a lot more of a manual process there, and it's just like, as you said, washing the clothes rather than, you know, me taking like, the clothes, like out, like the basket and like smacking 'em on the rock. I don't know what that might be like an analogous to encoding mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but someone like, you know, it, it, the, the spin cycle does that for me. And so similarly, like these things like copy, paste, put it in stack of, of flow, look over here, that gets taken care of for me so I can actually worry about architecture and UI and all that kind of jazz. So yeah, we'll stop talking now, but I, I do think that's the power of it.
Jason Howell (00:34:58):
Interesting. We have I'm, I'm looking at a rundown. I'm like, oh, we have so much more to talk about with ai. I think I'm gonna do an on the fly make an on the fly decision and kind of change things around. So that might be a little bit inside baseball. Ron, why don't you throw to the ad, and I'm gonna do some restructuring because we have a lot more AI to talk about and <laugh>, and we do have to go to an ad and we're gonna get to all the really important stuff. So Ron, take it away,
Ron Richards (00:35:29):
<Laugh>. And yes, we will take a break in all about ai to tell you about how this episode of All About Android is brought to you by Cachefly. And listen, we've all been making internet content for so many years, and we know for a fact that viewers don't hang around for videos that buffer shoppers abandon cars on e-commerce sites that are slow and gamers leave bad reviews when the latency is high. Be ready for those fluctuations with Cachefly. Customers expect a faultless experience when engaging with content on any device anytime anywhere in the world. Building trusted CDN relationships since 1999, Cachefly has held a track record for high performing, ultra reliable content delivery for two decades. Cachefly pioneered the use of TCP anycast in 2002, and innovation that CDNs continue to build upon and quality of, of experience is the single most critical metric when serving content simultaneously to a large and distributed audience on a global scale.
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Jason Howell (00:37:36):
Cachefly is awesome. Been with them for so very long. They're responsible for so much of what we do, so thank you. Cachefly. Okay. I, through the magic of On the Fly Producing have Reordered the Doc. So we're going in <laugh>, we're, we're, it's, the show's not gonna be any longer, it's just we have more stuff to talk about with ai. I thought we could do it all in one block, but it was, it was clearly it was too much. So let's keep this show rolling here and continue with the AI discussion because I think this is all these topics are actually really important. I didn't wanna do it short, you know, give it short service. So first of all, you alluded Ron to the ways in which Google is taking these many different AI efforts and integrating them into services.
(00:38:20):
And when I have a couple of yeah, examples of this, and there's some really interesting discussion that we can get into around this, but just real quick to set the scene, Gmail, getting generative AI features called Help Me Write will be a feature integrated into Gmail. I think you have to opt into it that you could say like, I need to write it an email to this person that says, I'm not gonna make it on time. You know, I got caught up in traffic, but I want to reschedule for next week. Check my calendar for three open time slots or whatever. And then you generate it generate it, help me write it, and boom, instead of me having to write this entire email, it sends that person all the information, you can expand it, contract it, that sort of stuff.
(00:39:05):
Really weird. Messages Magic Compose, which we alluded to last week on the episode, where you can rewrite text messages. So you put in a short text message and you tell it the style that you want it to rewrite in, and it ex and it creates a new text message from what you've already put there. Maps getting an immersive mode that flies through. This looked really cool. That flies through the route that you're navigating to give you kind of a virtual tour of what that route is going to look like. It, it's almost like you get to experience your route in, and, you know, they use ai and computer vision to kind of merge together this experience so you can see what that route is gonna look like. Photos, getting a new Magic editor, which is kind of similar to some of the ai editing features that we've seen in Google Photos and on Google Camera before.
(00:39:59):
But this is almost like that taken to the next level. It's like the example they have is this kid sitting on a bench and it's like, we want the bench to be more centered in the photo. We want the clouds to be bluer, we wanna remove, you know, this, that, and the other thing. I mean, it's just like all these edits being made to the image that normally, you know, again, it's an example of how AI is doing things that normally we would've needed to, needed to be skilled in the in the feature set of, of an app like Photoshop in order to do all this stuff. And it would take a while to make it all happen. And now it's like you click it and you tell it what you want it to do and it does the thing. So I think the question there that could, the interesting perspective that I've been talking a little bit with Micah Sergeant here at twit, he brought this up and ever since then I've been thinking about it is the the authenticity or lack thereof when we have AI systems writing all of our communications for us.
(00:40:56):
He mentioned to me that using an AI to write a text message, he's like, I hate it. It was like, you know, I wanna know when I'm talk that when I'm, when I'm having a com having contact with someone, communicating with someone that we're actually communicating and it isn't a robot or, or a computer that's kind of standing in for me and I don't know, there's some, there's some something there. Does that, does that impact you guys at all? Like, how, how do you feel about that?
Ron Richards (00:41:27):
I mean, per, personally, I, I think that texting is such a, like, I'm gonna spend more time telling the a what to say in response short. I just texted
Jason Howell (00:41:35):
Myself it's short burst. Right,
Ron Richards (00:41:36):
Exactly. That's my thought.
Jason Howell (00:41:38):
Yeah. What, what do you think when
Huyen Tue Dao (00:41:41):
I do think there is that, that there might be some room for this, but this is kind of like by case basis or your mileage might vary. It was really funny because not in text, so maybe this invalidates the argument, but I dunno, I think sometimes we do talk to sep different people, like maybe whether it's introducing ourselves to like a new person that we wanna engage in with business or something may, I don't know, sometimes like I, I know my husband and I often have arguments about, hey, I wanna like, I don't know, engage this landscaper and they act, and some people do actually still do a lot of like, work and, and kind of contracting through, you know, text through like word of mouth through recommendations. So I don't know, I, I feel like I'm just very focused on, well, sometimes people are just not sure how to approach people or not sure how to sound like, like not weird when you just you know, text someone out the blue.
(00:42:30):
So I could see that there, there's probably places where this might just help someone kind of like write that first intro text or Yeah, be able to kinda analyze things. I don't know, I, I I I think it, it, it almost feels like a pre-runner to something else, like an experiment to let people, Hey, here's some, here's magic and pose, play around with it and see if, if it can be of use to you or even get like, you know, human use feedback on whether you ask it to z up your text and it accidentally insults the person <laugh> that you're talking to. I don't know, like, I I just feel like that it's, it's like a starter, you know, it's like a little test bed that they're sticking their toe into the water off Yeah. To kind of more broadly do that.
Jason Howell (00:43:08):
And this isn't the starter because that, that was one thing that I, that I mentioned to, I mean, isn't necessarily the starter I mentioned to Micah, like, I already on my text messages that come in you know, it gi it gives me those little one word answers. Yes. Not really, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I do use those. So is that me using an inauthentic communication because the computer presented that? Or is that just me going quicker to the thing? I was already gonna say, Mike, how do these features land for you,
Mike Wolfson (00:43:41):
<Laugh>? Okay, so this is a great All About Android moment because I want to call out Ron for the example he gave us before the meeting about he wrote a love letter to his wife using chat G B T. So I just did it actually myself. I
Ron Richards (00:43:58):
Did it in Bard, just to note, I did it in Bard.
Mike Wolfson (00:44:00):
I did it in Bard as well, actually, just to be perfectly clear and on the record. So I actually just did it while I'm kind of sitting here and it is remarkably good and feels very authentic talking about, you know, how she makes me a better man. You know, it's very generic, but you know, I think I'm gonna get, you know, some good, you know Yeah. Kisses tonight after, after she reads this <laugh>, I did
Ron Richards (00:44:23):
It. Yeah, I did, I did it. I, so as part of the announcement, they said they were gonna embed the, the, the little, like the little magic w or the sparkly or whatever in Gmail. I signed up for it, it got enabled to my Gmail account. And so the first, I opened up the prompt and I said, you know, help me write an email to my wife about how much I love her or something like that, whatever I said, and it wrote ave like to Mike Mike's point, a very believable kind of thing. And you know, and I, I sent it to her and she came in and she was like, oh my God, that was so nice. And I was grinning. And she's like, you didn't write it, did you? I was like, no, Bard did it. But and like the examples they gave in the demo, like Dave, Dave Burke of Google, who, who we talked to in the interview that you can listen to at the end of the show did the live, you know, did the live demo of it. And it was like, you know, I wanna send an email to someone congratulating him doing a good job. And like, it's this idea of like short attention span approach. Like, I wanna, I want to email Jason and, and thank him for doing All About Android and being so awesome, and it will write this whole thing and insert it. And it's almost like greeting codification of our email. That's
Jason Howell (00:45:22):
Exactly where my mind was at. Exactly. You, you pulled the words outta my brain, Ron, because as I was hearing this, I could, I, I started to kind of really clued into the fact that like, we already kind of do this. We already put our control over what we say about how we feel about someone just using this as an example in the hands of someone else. We go into a store, we pull a card off the shelf, and we read it and we go, oh, those words match what I want to say. So I'm gonna buy this and I'm going to take these words and offer them as if they are mine. And I mean, obviously they're not, and that's a greeting card, you
Ron Richards (00:46:02):
Know, are we, are we losing, are we losing the skill or the training to write those words yourself sincerely. Like, because there was a time, there was a, there was a time in our civilization in 1835 when someone growing up said, I want to be a poet. I want, I wanna be a writer. I wanna learn how to do all this sort of stuff. And like, when was the last time you met somebody? Oh, actually I know somebody who's a poet, but still but <laugh>, but I'm just saying like, like the, the, the going back, you know, and I know this is counter to what we were just saying about programming, about the chat bot in dev studio and how that making easier, does it make my life any more efficient to have a, a, a ai bot write a love email to my wife?
(00:46:45):
Yeah. I don't, I don't know. Like I'm looking for ways, I'm looking for ways, ways to introduce this into my life and make it realistic. I will say another example of how I used Bard recently was I was at it wasn't in email, but it was just like, and the idea of them integrating it into email, into workspace, into docs, into, you know, into spreadsheets and stuff like that. I think it was really compelling because like, I was on a work call the other day and we were brainstorming, you know, to come up with a new product kind of naming type thing. And I was barred, I was just like, give me suggestions for a product that, and with these attributes or whatever, and it gave me a list and none of them were viable, but of like the 10 things that suggested, at least three triggered sparks amongst the people I was talking to that led to possibly viable options. There
Jason Howell (00:47:29):
You go. Yeah.
Ron Richards (00:47:30):
So,
Jason Howell (00:47:32):
I don't know, launchpad for something else.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:47:34):
I don't know. We're I, so we're all people that talk on podcasts, so there's a level of comfort with discourse with words. And I, I know maybe this is just me kind of trying to optimistically apply this, but I can't imagine like so many times in my life where I was less confident, <laugh> enough, and I had some social anxiety where, you know, like maybe if I wanted to like let someone know something, whether that was something serious or important or something where I just couldn't find the words or was worried that. Yeah, I, it sounded aggressive or not whether it sounded like sensitive or not to, like, whatever the situation was. And I, I mean, I'm a person who very often, when I send someone something, even if it's kind of innocuous, I'd be like, go to my husband, go to my, my sister.
(00:48:16):
Hey, does this sound like Yeah. You know, mean or whatever. So I, and I, and, and to kind of some of the point that y'all said, like, at some point you kind of realize that it's not, it, it that there is a, there's a level of facsimile facsimile and artificiality, right? Like you, so I, I, I, I can't help but think that if someone, you know, really cares about crafting their own words that they hopefully would still do. But I don't know, maybe that's just me being optimistic, but I Do you think there is probably a place for this? It's just not maybe maybe what we expect or maybe what especially us as people that are people creating content who show up and put our faces and our voices on the innerwebs and that who write for a living might, might maybe that maybe like, we're not the audience for this per se. I don't know.
Jason Howell (00:49:04):
Yeah. I mean, when I think about it, like that feature, I'm super torn because as they were showing it off, the Gmail is the one that I'm primarily thinking about that write for me Gmail feature. I was like, yeah, you know, there are emails that I write that are very you know, very much the same between every person that I send it to. I don't copy top to bottom, but I write basically the same things with slightly different words. You know, invites for shows and everything. Like, there's only so many ways you can invite, you know, 20 people a week onto, onto our shows <laugh> and have it be differentiated, and why differentiate when the facts need to be there and all these kinds of things. So, but at the same time, like, I don't, I don't feel right handing the keys over to an AI to write all of my communication for me. But I bet you there's somebody out there that's willing to go that far and willing to say, you know what? I'm not writing another email ever. I'm just gonna tell, help me write what email I want to write and do some light editing every single time. I guarantee you that they're gonna use that.
Ron Richards (00:50:10):
Honestly, it's not that, like, like it reminds me of when I would ask a professor to write a, a recommendation letter for me or a teacher, and they say, write it for me and give it to me, and I'll, I'll edit it and then send it. Like, I, I do it at work all the time. I tell people, I'm gonna write this up, send it to me, I'll make the edits, and then send it and put it, you know, kind of like, I don't know. It's like I'm, I'm vacillating between it, because I can see that, like, Jason, you're right. Like, there's a lot of redundant emails that I write often that have to do with the same thing, and I can, and it's easier to do the heavy lifting of the work and then just edit it to make it sound in my voice than do it all from scratch, you know? So, I don't know. I think, I think there is value to it, but I don't think it's replacing the thought I put into what I do.
Jason Howell (00:50:47):
Yeah. That was something that, the big reaction that I saw online during the keynote, you know, it, they were doing live coverage here, Leo and Jeff Jarvis. And so I was logged into the Discord and kind of live, live blogging my own thoughts and everything. And there were a lot of people really commenting on kind of the blandness and the sameness of the AI responses and how it's, oh, really? It couldn't get more creative. And also, and when I was thinking about it, I was like, yeah, but how much of our communication that we do on a regular daily basis is very bland and is very, you know what I mean? Like, there's so, there's so much of our communication. We like to think that we're really creative and everything like that, but so much of business is derived around these very set in, you know, in stone processes and things. It's just a reflection of how we write <laugh>. So if it's saying Thank you for
Huyen Tue Dao (00:51:33):
Your time, look forward to hearing from you. It's just meeting us best wishes. Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:51:37):
<Laugh>. So anyways, so it's interesting. I think this is, you know, when we're talking about AI and ethics and, and best practices, you know, these are things that I think businesses are gonna have to start making decisions around. Do we allow our employees to allow, you know, to use these AI tools to write emails? Or do we say, Hey, no, that's not okay because of secrets, or because it doesn't impart a human and human quality to the conversation. And we're a business, we want people to feel like we're connecting with them and these systems remove the hu you know, these things are gonna have to be discussed and figured out on a company-wide basis. I think I think that's in our future anyways. We can talk about this forever. We have a few more things before we get to the next break. So when I guess this kind of falls into a similar territory, <laugh>,
Huyen Tue Dao (00:52:29):
Oh, sorry. Are we talking about 14 now? Are we talking about the
Jason Howell (00:52:31):
Other thing? No, we're talking about the, the wallpaper we're in. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I know I should my bad
Huyen Tue Dao (00:52:37):
Around, so my, my apologies. Yeah. So, you know, not that we don't have enough generative content and things to discuss already, but Google is kind of aiming, its generative AI at chi wallpaper. And so there's a couple like, interesting elements to this, right? So there is the ability to create like a wallpaper from, you know, whatever emojis that you would like. But in more googly flavor, there's also the ability to kind of leverage AI to create cinematic wallpapers that kind of like, you know, like, ooh, ah and so yeah, it's, it's kind of, and as well as, let's see, what else? What else do we have? Oh, yeah. And as well as kind of more you, if you think about more like mid journey stable diffusion, you can prompt Google to create you, you know, this whatever, whatever your mind can, can, whatever your mind can prompt. It will also simulate you with generative art wallpaper. So emoji wallpaper, cinematic wallpaper from your photos where it kind of analyzes it and gives, it gives a static image motion and generative AI wallpaper for if you want to have a wallpaper of yourself as a d and d character. There you go.
Jason Howell (00:53:43):
That's that'ss kind of neat, I guess. I mean, but again, it's like, it's wallpaper.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:53:49):
It's wallpaper. So I, I think that was the one thing that <laugh>, I, I feel like, so like a bunch of usro des we're in a chat, and I think we got a little bit snarky about this point. And I, to be fair, like all of these are really cool in isolation, but isolation is kind of thing. It's a wallpaper. Yeah. so I, I think it's like a small example of like a big technology. But yeah.
Mike Wolfson (00:54:10):
Yeah. Are they pushing this because they want to push the dynamic theming part of material three that's driven by your wallpapers? Yeah, it, it
Huyen Tue Dao (00:54:20):
Should be. That's a really great point. Like giving, giving, giving people more dynamics.
Mike Wolfson (00:54:25):
Switch your wallpaper.
Huyen Tue Dao (00:54:26):
Yeah, totally. <Laugh>. Yeah.
Jason Howell (00:54:28):
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it's, it's mat material use Core Promise. If, if I, you know, based on what I feel like I know about material, you is making your device as customized to you as possible within the framework of what they've set out. And the generative AI system really allows you to get as unique as you want, because literally that image doesn't exist before you put in your prompt, and it comes back with something that's about as unique of a wallpaper as you'd come up with. Mike unique, you, unique <laugh> Mike, you've been spending a lot of time with gen, with generative AI and prompts and everything like that. Like, are, are people, like, how do you think this is gonna go? Because, I mean, this is largely, this is gonna be much more consumer facing. There's gonna be a lot of people that have never used something like a chat G P T or a mid journey to use this system. I have to imagine Google's gonna make it friendly, right?
Mike Wolfson (00:55:30):
Well, I don't know. So I dunno if this is Google integrations with Firefly, but what I will say is using these generative a texts to image tools is so much fun. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it kind of gives you weird stuff, but it's, it reminds me of the early days of Google search where you just were kind of searching first stuff just to see what it would give you. It's really delightful and really fun to play with. Mm-Hmm.
Jason Howell (00:55:57):
<Affirmative>. Yeah, I mean, it looked like a lot of fun and having it kind of baked into January 14, which we're gonna talk about after the next break in a little bit more detail, but, but at the same time can help, but just kind of chuckle a little bit because, eh, I think the wallpaper as feature ship has kind of sailed <laugh>, you know what I mean? It kind of felt like, oh no, we're back wallpaper. There's, there's really not a whole lot going on here. Is there if, if, like the wallpaper is, is it a
Huyen Tue Dao (00:56:28):
Gateway drug to, to more generative ai? Because it's easy, it's simple. It doesn't, don't, we won't disrupt their light disrupted life.
Ron Richards (00:56:35):
I, here No, I think this came, this came up in our interview with Dave and Samir as well also. So go back and listen, listen to Dan. And, and you know, and, and you can hear Dave in his own words saying it, but they wanted to give it a practical, like, this is something that actually people can do on their phone, immediately see the power of it. So when I think you're right, in terms of like a gateway drug, it's like, it's like, it, it, it hurts no one, it gives you a chance to express yourself. And here's the thing in, in terms of this, you could do this and not ha thank the AI for it, right? Like, you don't need to position this as ai. You could position this as material, you, and, and all that sort of stuff. And then, and then let the, under the hood people be like, oh my God, is there AI thing doing it? Like, you could just be like, type this in. You can make your own wallpaper type, you know, like, but they chose to position, you know, like, yeah. So yeah, that's interesting.
Jason Howell (00:57:28):
But of course they're gonna make it an AI thing because Sure. AI is very now and Google's Yeah. Mission was to prove to you, Hey, we've been doing this a long time. We deserve to be in the conversation when it comes to. Exactly. Which is a perfect segue to you, Ron, because exactly. You wrote an article about the assistant and how it was missing
Ron Richards (00:57:51):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you, Jason. We, we talked a couple of months ago about how Google was shifting a lot of key staff members from the Google assistant team to the Bard and AI team. And then as we went through the keynote, I forget who said it, but at some point we're, I was talking to somebody and someone's like, I don't think they said assistant once in the presentation at all. And we're like Jason, it might have been you actually. Like, I was like, yeah, you're right. They didn't say it at all. And sure enough, you know, I'm referring to those, an article and wire that I saw that hit today that was, you know, the curious case of the missing Google Assistant. And it's just basically saying how, you know, the focus is on AI and assistant has been the, the thing that they've built their AI interface around.
(00:58:34):
And it was gone, it was just absent from the keynote. And I would love to know why or how or whatever, and and why, why that choice was, and what it means to the future of assistant. So we'll see. I mean, maybe, maybe they're gonna get rid of it, right? And then it just becomes how you interact with Google stuff, and it's just a native part of it. And it could be, I've heard some people speculate that, you know, people don't like it anymore. They're down on Siri, like they're down on assistance. So like, don't focus on it, but yeah. Who knows what the, what the reasoning was.
Jason Howell (00:59:08):
Yeah. I mean, it is interesting. I mean, especially when you consider, you know, as we have talked about on this show Goo in, in recent months with this whole AI thing that's happening right now, Google was there. They were there. Yep. You know, many years ago, they fired off the, the voice assistant trend, I would say largely, but they were very accessible when it came to, to that. And they proved, I think, you know, in that first, that first go Google assistant was the winner. You know, certainly it wasn't Siri assistant for the longest time gave you what you were looking for. And I would say it's broken down in recent years. But Google was there. It had the pedigree to really dominate with ai. So it is telling that there was no real assistant news. I went to just now the Google blog, the keyword blog where, and the, the articles, a hundred things we announced at io, 2023 a hundred things.
(01:00:10):
And I did a search on the page for assistant, it appears twice. Number 14 is thanks to machine learning technology, assistant voice typing on pixel tablet is almost three times faster than regular typing. Okay? And then the last one is number 99 out of a hundred. With the new app actions test library and the Google Assistant plugin for Android Studio it's now easier to code, easier to em, emulate the user experience to forecast user expectations and blah, blah, blah. So not a whole lot going on with assistant at Google IO this year. Even according to Google, in a hundred things that were announced only to very, you know, very small things.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:00:53):
It really is like a Sherlock murder mystery with the curious case of the missing Google Assistant. And then we had like, I mean, I don't know if we talked about it specifically, but there was that story months ago about losing 10 billion for Amazon. So it's just all nefarious, right? Like, one assistant loses 10 billion, another one is like missing from the scene. What's happening to all the assistants? Where are they going? What's happening? But yeah, I mean, like, they're being promoted.
Jason Howell (01:01:15):
Assistance are no longer assistance to others. They're commanding their own ship. I don't know.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:01:19):
Yeah. This pivot, pivot,
Jason Howell (01:01:24):
Yeah. The assistances are pivoting. That's what they're doing. Pivoting,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:01:26):
Pivot
Jason Howell (01:01:27):
<Laugh>.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:01:27):
They're entering the Witness Protection program and becoming chatbots.
Jason Howell (01:01:31):
That's, that's it. Okay, let's take a break and we will come back and talk about even more IO news that doesn't really have a whole lot to do with ai, at least not directly watch it. Prove us wrong when we get there. But I did wanna take a moment and tell you a little bit about us. We here at twit do these shows because we love technology. We also know that you, well, at least we hope you love technology as much as we do. We are dedicated to bringing you awesome content about technology. It's what we've been doing. I mean, Leo's been doing it since 2005 with the, this week in Tech podcast. That was when it started, 2005, like almost 20 years ago. Isn't that crazy? We've in the business for a very, very long time, and we create partnerships with brands that we trust.
(01:02:27):
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(01:04:21):
Tim Broom is the founder of IT Pro tv. And, you know, if you've been listening or watching our shows for the last 10 years, you know, they've been with our network for 10 years. He said we would not be where we are today without the TWIT network. Mark McCreary, the C e O of Authentic has partnered with TWIT for 16 years, said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. That's all to say, we know what we're doing and we wanna work with you. So if you're ready to elevate your business, reach out to us. You just have to email us, advertise@twit.tv, and you can work with us, work with twit.tvs world class audience. You can reach them. That's what it's all about. That's advertise@twit.tv. All right. We've got more news, but Ron, you have something I was gonna say before we moved
Ron Richards (01:05:16):
On. I did ask Bard, why didn't Google talk about assistant at io? And I just wanted to share what it said. It said there are a few possible reasons why Google didn't talk about assistant at io. It said the assistant is already mature. It's been around for several years now. It's already a very powerful and capable product, as a result may not be seen as a priority. Second option was Google's focusing on other things. They're always working on new products and features. It's possible they're prioritizing other things. In io, for example, they talked about new progress products like the Pixel seven A and new a and AI powered features like Bard. And the last one is Google's facing competition. Another other, another number of other companies are developing voice assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, and Apple Siri. As a result, Google may be feeling pressure to focus on developing new features, and they said ultimately only Google knows for sure why they didn't talk about assistant at IO this year. However, it's likely a combination of factors played a role in that decision, so,
Jason Howell (01:06:10):
Hmm. Okay.
Ron Richards (01:06:12):
Bard is like a part of my life now. I love it.
Jason Howell (01:06:15):
So, <laugh>. Oh, Bard <laugh>. Okay, so let's see here. I'm trying to make sense of all the, just the reor reorganizing that I did. I think we are at Android 14, and when, yes, this falls in your lap. This was kind of an interesting thing. And again, we will tease forward to the interview that you'll catch after the credits with Dave Birken, Samir Samat, because they even said it. I mean, a must much of that interview is about Android 14, but they even said like, n fourteen's kind of an under the hood update. What are, what are your thoughts? Like, what are we got coming forward to? Yeah,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:06:55):
Yeah. So I'd like to call, like, I feel like a lot of late lately Android has been what we would call a dot release. So when we version things and developer world, very often we save like whole numbers, like 1.0 for like big flashy things that you would get marketing about. And then kind of like the nice, like we're horsey fixing bugs minor, like updates, things that aren't really like flashy and awesome that you wanna hold, like keynote four, but they're still very important, like tend to be like, that release is so 1.1, 1.2. So it, it kind of feels a little bit like, kind of like that, right? That maybe the reason that Android 14 was not so mentioned is that it's just doing the hard work under the hood. But I mean, like, each individual thing in isolation might not seem so crazy and awesome, but it, in aggregate, it's a lot of much better experiences in small ways, cuz the small things add up, right?
(01:07:44):
Yeah. So just to kind of go down this list, and again, I, I, I thought it was great and to give Dave Burke a lot of credit when we asked him about Android 14 or Android 14, and not to spoil anything the band was on, he was on message and he had a lot of great things to say about Android 14. But yeah, just to give like the folks here, like an understanding of what you would see in Android 14 once it comes out would be things like clock customization for the lock screen. Again, like a small, like quality of life, fun little enhancement. Maybe not necessarily worth the keynote though. I don't know, it'll kind of be kind of fun <laugh>. But little things like data privacy. So they actually, one thing that was really important is that when a dev changes the way they share data, like if they share data with like a third party, you get to know about it.
(01:08:32):
Very important stuff. Again, not the most flashes thing that you'd wanna make a Super Bowl commercial about, but super important. Camera flash notification. So if you're the kind of person who goes heads down a lot, and you really, really, really need some extra, you know, like, like a nudge, when some, when you get a notification, you are gonna ask Android 14 to flash the camera flash. Health connect is actually getting integrated into the OS and you're gonna get easier access for hearing and controls as well as warnings when you listen to high volume for an extended period of time. So kind of wellness and, and wellbeing, wellness wellness and health of users. There's something really cool it called small smart file transfer that allows, you know, developers like us to basically create a, like if you're downloading your favorite podcast or whatever, like a YouTube video, if you start that transfer, the os will do the work of making sure to reschedule our deposit if you lose connectivity. So again, that's like a really awesome feature. Just kind of hard to, you know, hard to make a keynote around. But it will be there for developers as well as third party support for pasky. Not that we've ever, ever talked about Pasky on this show, or PAs
Jason Howell (01:09:42):
In general. Yeah, no, definitely
Huyen Tue Dao (01:09:43):
Not. But <laugh>, if we did, we would have to definitely mention that Entered 14 is going to give Pasky support to third party developers. And then there's, oh, this is very developer, but art is going to be upgraded to R 14, which gives support for Java 17, which is really awesome. Kotlin jargon, jargon, jargon. But this is really cool stuff for us to have. It kind of allows us to write things a little bit better and with more modern technology under hood, more paraphrasing. And something that we talked about last week with Mishaal is again, that forced letter boxing, vertical boxing on larger screens partial screen share for portion screen and ultra H D R support. So, I mean, there is so much at Android 14 that unfortunately we're by design is getting overshadowed by ai, but I mean, there's a very, I'm getting letter boxed, I'm getting vertical box, I'm getting vertical box
Jason Howell (01:10:37):
Pillar boxing is what it's called. Pillar box.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:10:39):
Pillar
Jason Howell (01:10:39):
Box, pillar box. Yeah. We got pillar box to that effect. Oh, we did. Thank you
Huyen Tue Dao (01:10:44):
Matt. I think it was Matt. But yeah thank you Matt, for letting us know that I am being pillar boxed right now. But yeah, all of these things are just honestly really great. Oh, I forgot to mention share sheets as, cuz again, we've never ever talked about share sheets on this show or complained about them at length, but I mean, yeah, just a lot of great stuff. Anything that I just ran down really quickly, that sounds super exciting to anyone that they wish was in a keynote.
Jason Howell (01:11:09):
Well, yeah, Mike, I'm, I'm curious to kinda hear your thoughts because think io you know, at its core, I don't have to remind you of this, it's a developer conference and so many people are there because of the Android, the, the Android developments. But again, this was kind of a light. I mean, I mean, the keynote hardly talked about Android. I mean, it was hardly even a topic in two hours. You, you barely heard anything about Android. How do you feel about how Android 14 is shaping up from a, from your perspective and how Google is choosing to or not to emphasize it? What do you think?
Mike Wolfson (01:11:52):
So I think that Android is fairly mature, so we're not ever going to be looking at these drastic changes. It's all going to be small, small things, but the small things that I think are trending really positive for Android and the really empowering for us as Android users are all the permissions and the control over data. That there were some examples of that in that list. But us being in control of how our information is shared and understanding that is really powerful and I feel like there's a lot of moves for the OS to kind of control that.
Jason Howell (01:12:25):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,
Mike Wolfson (01:12:27):
That's, that's really useful.
Jason Howell (01:12:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, we're gonna blink and Android fourteen's gonna be releasing to our pixel devices, those of us who have a pixel. So you're not gonna have to wait too long. I still have yet to actually get on the beta train and this, this could be the longest that I've gone Wow. In many years of not being on the beta train, but life has been busy. But I do feel, I do feel the the tug in that direction. I feel like I need to kind of hop on the train and train
Mike Wolfson (01:12:56):
Tonight. Jason. Tonight's tonight. Go ahead
Jason Howell (01:12:58):
Tonight. Do it
Ron Richards (01:12:59):
Tonight. I like it. I like it. <Laugh>
Jason Howell (01:13:02):
The
Mike Wolfson (01:13:03):
Community wants you to, Jason, just to be clear,
Jason Howell (01:13:05):
I will do it and then
Mike Wolfson (01:13:06):
I'll be like behalf of everyone.
Jason Howell (01:13:07):
It looks the same, you know, <laugh>, it's so under the hood. But anyways, so yeah, I will, I will probably do that soon. But that's, and and then what is it? Is it, is it up upside down cake? That's where we're at now,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:13:22):
Yes.
Jason Howell (01:13:22):
Yeah. Yes. Upside down cake. Okay, good to know. I don't know if there's even an Easter egg that we can look forward to. Oh, there's the upside down
Huyen Tue Dao (01:13:30):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Say
Jason Howell (01:13:30):
Down cake does not look delicious to me.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:13:34):
By the way, that is Alex and Chris on the, on the Android team, and they actually made this upside down cake as part of like an Android developer's video. So if you, on the, on the audio stream, you're gonna see two lovely gentlemen that work at Android holding up an upside down cake. And if you actually are interested in watching a couple of people on the Android team make an upside down cake, you should go to Android developer's YouTube channel. But yeah, they actually made that so good for them.
Jason Howell (01:13:55):
Oh, I don't know that I've ever had an upside down cake. It does not look delicious to me. I don't, it kind of looks like a fruit of a fruit. Well,
Ron Richards (01:14:04):
Much like the, much like the Android 14 beta. Don't judge it until you try it, Jason. So
Jason Howell (01:14:08):
Tonight, fair enough. Tonight. Oh, there you go.
Ron Richards (01:14:09):
So this is what you're gonna do tonight after the show. You're gonna start up, you're gonna up, you're gonna install the beta on your phone, okay. And then you're gonna go have an upside down cake, and then it'll be
Jason Howell (01:14:17):
Great. So where do I get an upside down cake? Victor, give me an upside down cake. <Laugh>. Oh God, wait, go to one every week. I was thinking like when it was Oreo, Jenn. Yes. So good. No, no, no, no. I never again, never again. Anyways so I saw something really cool while we were at Google io and I don't know, I don't know if you remember this couple of years ago when Google, part of Google's announcement at IO was something called Project starline and starline, and this was, you know, peak of the pandemic, right? So we're all at home. The Google IO presentation was all, you know, it was virtual and I think much of it was, most of it was pre-recorded, that sort of thing. Maybe this, this must have been the year where they had the like outdoor kind of small stage with like little groupings of people sitting in random places in the, in the yard and stuff.
(01:15:14):
It was very strange. But anyways, they announced Project starline then, which was not necessarily a product that you could get, but a product that they were working with and testing. And it was essentially take a, take a video conference, like a meet or a Zoom video conference, but put it in a room with a screen that is very, very large and three-dimensional. So it's a three-dimensional view. You had to be in a fixed position looking at the screen, talking to someone else who has that technology on the other side of the internet, wherever they're calling from. And these cameras that would essentially turn you and your presence into a three-dimensional object. And I say object because it's not just straight video. There is, you know, of course a computer that's processing those images and making it so that when you're looking in the screen, you're actually making eye contact with the other person.
(01:16:09):
It's three-dimensional, it's human size. And so the idea was then, you know, to make something that's not just you looking on your laptop and chatting with someone, like you're actually kind of in the same room, even though you're not. I was very intrigued by this. I know a lot of people were like, it, it seemed like one of those like big promises, can it deliver sort of things. And they had the current version, the current iteration of this technology at Google io. And somehow I was able to talk myself into sitting down in it, even though they were totally booked up for most of the day. But I kept being persistent. I was like, I have to check this out. And I ended up speaking with a couple of the founders of the technology and was able to sit in the room on one end.
(01:16:58):
And then in the other room was, you know, I wish I'd remembered his name, but the guy who I was talking with and, but, but I should clarify, all of that video was being sent out into the vast internet. It wasn't like they were connected directly. So I was getting the actual experience. It was all happening in real time online and, you know, it was updated technology, so the cameras there were less of them. I have to say, it was really impressive. Like, not that I think that everybody's gonna have these, you know, this specialized video conferencing system in their homes. Yeah, that's exactly what it looked like. But it was really, really cool. Like, it, like the, the the kind of, the impact of it was very convincing. I'm looking at a screen, but it's three dimensional. The person that's in front of me is exactly, you know, the right scale.
(01:17:56):
At one point he held up an apple, and I feel like I could have just reached out and grabbed the apple and the scale to the apple on the screen to my hand right in front of me was perfect. He ended up putting his fist out and I gave him a fist bump, even though I couldn't feel his fist, like my brain was really messed up. I was like, I, I wanna feel like I expect to feel the fist. It looked that real and the eye contact of the experience was really, it was really something I like, I was really impressed by it. So,
Ron Richards (01:18:26):
Yeah. So I don't remember the name of the guy you did the demo with, but, but we, you and I both had the opportunity to talk with Andrew, who was one of the pro one of the, oh, his name was Jason. He's the G Yeah, Jason. Okay. You talked to Jason, but Andrew's the GM of Project starline. We talked to him both at the starline demo also just kind of chatting later on. Totally awesome. Really engaging, really believer of the product. Really excited. Like when you get that, like that, that's what I did like about the IO experience is like talking to the people who were building this stuff and getting that sense of that excitement. It just so it was like, it was, it is somewhat infectious and like starline looked really, really impressive.
Jason Howell (01:19:04):
So Andrew Naer is the general manager of Project starline and then Jason Lawrence is the director and they both have been working on it for like six years. So I'm happy we finally got their name on, on these things cuz I talked about it on T N W and I could not remember the name and I didn't have the time to search it. Anyways, it was a really interesting and and powerful experience. Like, I really enjoyed it and I'm just like, Hey man, if video conferencing was that, it's, it's almost <laugh>. It's not quite the same as like stepping on a teleporter and taking me to wherever that person is, but it's a close. I mean, but it's as close, close as I'm probably gonna get, you know what I mean? It was very, very real. Like, and the eye contact thing, I'll tell you, the eye contact thing was a little disconcerting because I'm looking at this screen the way we're used to looking in screens, right?
(01:19:53):
But I'm making eye contact with this person that I'm talking to and he's making eye contact with me. And like, it felt kind of uncomfortable <laugh>, it was like at some point I wanted to like look away cuz I'm like, I don't know. It was, it was, we, it was real, but it, but at the same time it was a TV and anyways, it was a pretty remarkable experience. So Yep. If you ever get the opportunity, if you happen to walk into a room and there's a project starline has to use it, just, just
Ron Richards (01:20:23):
Try it. Just give it a shot.
Jason Howell (01:20:24):
Yeah.
Ron Richards (01:20:25):
Have your upside down cake and show the person you're talking to. We go.
Jason Howell (01:20:28):
So there you go. Yeah. Afraid
Huyen Tue Dao (01:20:29):
This bump.
Ron Richards (01:20:30):
But they, they, they, they didn't just talk about AI and, and apps and stuff at io,
Jason Howell (01:20:36):
Right? Oh, we're singing here. We are singing Best for Last coming up. It's some hardware from Google io. All right. So yes, we knew all about the hardware in advance, but we might as well tell you, give it 10 minutes or so to kind of talk about a little bit of what was announced and when we'll start with you.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:21:08):
Yeah. And so the very equally awaited Pixel seven A was announced and our very own Florence ion has written up a little review of it. So check that out on gizmoto.com. But I mean I, I think unabashedly Flo really liked it. I mean, the title of her article is Google's Pixel seven A is just as good as the regular Pixel seven. And yeah, I <laugh> yes for a hundred dollars less. And, and Flo makes a lot of really good kind of, she did a lot of really awesome testing and comparisons, but basically there's not, there's not a huge difference in a lot of ways between the two phones mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and there's a lot that the seven A seems to do as well or even better than the seven. So for example, Flo, the camera, the camera actually the seven A seems just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit better.
(01:21:58):
And if you wanna go like blow for blow spec for spec the Pixel seven A for example, has a 64 megapixel main camera compared to the 50 megapixel camera of the pixel seven A 13 megapixel ultra wide versus 12 megapixel ultra wide. And even the front camera is 13 compared to the 10.8. I think Flo even said in her article that while she found the Google Pixel seven s front camera to be a little muddy does not feel the same way about the Pixel seven A. And not only are the camera units themselves good, but the seven A is also rocking the tensor, sorry, the tensor the tensor two chip tensor, denser G2 chip, which I mean is, you know, bringing you that, you know, super awesome, you know, computational photography and taking your pictures to the last next level as Google does. And just in general flow found this phone to be ass snappy and performant generally as the pixel seven. It there and there's like a, a lot of things that are just a little bit different. Yeah. Like it's a little bit smaller, the storage is a problem. The storage max that you get for seven A is 128 gigabytes. So I mean, if you do like using that slightly better camera, you'll have less space to, to take pictures and video with. But apps
Jason Howell (01:23:14):
Can offload to the cloud, right.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:23:16):
And stuff like that. But it, I mean the, the seven does go up to 256, but I mean just generally like it's that, that is kind of one of the, the big things. And I think the battery life is slightly yeah. Trade off. Thank you. It's slightly less. And there is a, an an MMA version that costs $50 more, but I mean, just generally, like for $500 for a mid-range phone, you're getting, you know, the same chip as like the flagships. You're getting roughly the same size screen, you're getting the same amount of ram, which is not great at eight, but like not bad at all. Comparable capacity, fast charging, wireless charging like the, a better camera like I p six seven versus IP six eight. And interestingly enough, while the seven has in-screen fingerprint in terms of biometrics, the seven A has fingerprint and face unlock. Oh. So, oh, it, that's interesting. <Laugh>. Yeah, it's really kind of confusing, right? Because obviously you have, you know, it, it seems like it's starting to intrude on the space that the Pixel seven is holding in terms of like, you know, the, the pixel system. So I dunno, Ron, you're, you're my mid-range man. Thoughts like <laugh>,
Ron Richards (01:24:31):
I loved it. I I, I got to, I got to hold it, I got to, I get to use it, I got to play with it. It, it does not feel like a mid-range phone. Like the, the, the, the A series phones have felt plasticy in comparison to their non-A counterparts, which felt very meowy and glassy. If you handed me this Pixel seven A and told me it was the seven, I would believe you if like, if I, you erase everything I knew about everything we knew, we'd be like, here's the pixel seven. I'd be, oh wow, cool. Like, it felt great. Like this is a, like I would confidently recommend this to anybody who's looking for, you know, for an Android phone in the mid-range. And be satisfied what you get for 500 bucks. I mean, I think it's, I think it's a home run personally. Yeah. And very, very surface, like just playing with it in the demo pit area. I'm hoping, knock on wood, we get a, you know, I get a review unit and can, you know, kind of take it through pace a little more. But at first glance I was super impressed. Jason, what did you think?
Jason Howell (01:25:21):
Yeah yes, I mean, and, and unsurprisingly, so at this point I, I feel like Google has kind of a good formula for the A series devices that they're releasing. It is interesting that, you know, it's, it's a hundred dollars difference from the Pixel seven. It's making me wonder like why have the A series be away from the regular device because the family is, you know what I mean? Like Samsung, well I guess they kind of do that with their do they even do the fan edition anymore? I don't think that they do. I can't remember the Effy. But anyways, my point being Samsung, you know, releases like three galaxies at the same time. Small, medium and large, you know, <laugh>, the Ultra and whatever they call the, the rest of 'em the seven A is really the small, you know, at 6.1 inches, pixel sevens 6.3, the Pixel seven pros 6.7, and they kind of, it's, it's just like, you know, a hundred dollars difference from the sevens.
(01:26:20):
So I don't, I don't know, it's kinda like, why do we even really need to wait for this? It's almost like they should all release at the same time. And you just have three options depending on the size, depending on the materials. I, and those are really the only two things that are kind of different. I mean, a aside, you know, the battery, like you said is a little bit larger. Actually, the other thing that you don't get is battery share. So the ability to share the battery of the device with another device, you don't get that on the, on the seven A, but that's not really a feature that I use. So, and you get the lower storage. So there is that, that is pretty significant for a lot of people. So,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:26:55):
But is that enough for the seven A not to cannibalize like the audience and the, and the buyers for the seven. And is that,
Jason Howell (01:27:01):
And you know what, that's probably the reason why they stagger because if that did come out, no then, you know what I mean? Maybe that's a part of the reason why they stagger
Huyen Tue Dao (01:27:09):
<Laugh>. But then are people just pissed that they, sorry, are they just mad my bad that they spent a hundred bucks extra extra or for a slightly to somewhat better phone? Like is that, I don't know, like I just think it's just a little muddled, but I'm happy that the A is awesome. Let's the positive note. I'm happy the A is
Jason Howell (01:27:28):
Awesome. You know, once again, the A, the A stands for awesome. Apparently
Huyen Tue Dao (01:27:32):
It does. It really does. Yeah,
Ron Richards (01:27:33):
Sure does. Awesome. In the hardware parade was the a year in the making the Pixel tablet finally was unveiled. I feel like we've seen it. We knew it existed. We've been waiting for it. The question was what was it gonna cost? And and would it come with the dock or would they charge for the dock or whatever it would be. And happy to report that. It was, it's, it's it's priced at a dang good price. For some reason the go, the Google store is giving me UK prices, which I don't really understand why. Oh, I can't tell you the exact price it was. Yeah, there we go. I gotta fix it. Fixed it for some
Jason Howell (01:28:13):
Reason.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:28:14):
It's 4 99 I think.
Ron Richards (01:28:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's 4 99. Yeah, sorry. I
Jason Howell (01:28:17):
Wanted, I pay prices too. Did I link to it? Yeah, I think
Ron Richards (01:28:19):
The link in the doc goes to the goes the UK
Jason Howell (01:28:21):
Gb. I see. <Laugh>. Yeah, yeah,
Ron Richards (01:28:24):
Yeah, exactly. I dunno. But I was super excited to see the tablet get announced at $499 starting that's with 128 gig of memory. You can get 256 gig of memory and get, and that knocks the price up to 599 comes in three colors, porcelain, Hazel and Rose. And it comes with the dock. And here, if you're watching the video version, you can see my dumb face holding the tablet itself. But the big question for me is that tablet two dock snap in moment and it, it has a satisfying, it has a satisfying click. The magnets click in and it grabs it and holds it to that dock. I saw some articles and some coverage that were touting it saying, you know, not only is this an upgrade to the smart speaker, kind of, you know, kind of segment, but it's gonna destroy it because it now has created a new product, which is the smart speaker with the tablet that detaches.
(01:29:21):
And it's like Google has innovated in by innovating in the space, they're gonna destroy a product line, which is kind of what Google does <laugh>. But I will say that I ordered this and when can you can, you can attest this cuz you're right next to me. I ordered it as they announced it. I was sold immediately upon seeing it. So the one, my one little bit of criticism is they did show off a very cool case that had a little metal ring that also worked as a stand. And you can see if you're watching the video, you can see me playing with that, playing with that. And the, the metal ring snaps into the dock really nicely and it all fits very organically. That case is like 80 bucks, which is like, eh, that's a little, I I did not buy that. But that was a little expensive for my advice. I, for,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:30:06):
For people on the who, who are only on the audio stream, the look of joy. I know kind of like enjoyment on, on Ron's face as he plays with the Pixel tablet is very, I
Jason Howell (01:30:15):
Dunno, this moment's been a long time coming for us. Yeah,
Huyen Tue Dao (01:30:17):
It's, it's awesome.
Ron Richards (01:30:19):
I love a good tablet. Mike, I wanna know what you think about the tablet revolution that's coming. Do you think that this is, is this it or, or we still have a, a long uphill battle to go. Will this, will this device change the fate of tablet apps?
Mike Wolfson (01:30:31):
I don't know about that. And I am a tablet user. I actually already have two perfectly good Android tablets in my house. I have a S eight plus, which is a Samsung S eight Plus, which is I think a 12 inch tablet. And then a a six, which is a nine inch, I'm still gonna buy this. But I actually think I'm gonna buy it more as a home, a replacement for my original home. Seven inch home with screen. Yeah. Which I love. It's like the best photo album in the world. You know, great location for just like Central Hub. So I don't know if I'm gonna purchase it as a tablet as much as a home device, which is what you just said a moment ago. It's kind of like a killer feature for a different pro product segment.
Jason Howell (01:31:15):
If you're buying it as a home device, though you're spending a lot more on this than you were spending on other home devices, like two to three times as much. You're buying it as a tablet that also has that functionality. It makes a lot more sense. And the fact that that dock is included at the $500 price point, I think that for me that was, once I heard that I was like, okay, this, this has a, this is better than I had hoped. Like I really thought that dock was gonna be like another a hundred, $150 and then it would,
Mike Wolfson (01:31:46):
I don't have any self control. I buy pretty much every device that comes out. So <laugh>, I mean, I mean not certainly not every device, but yeah, if it has any interest, even a little bit, I'm like, oh yeah, take my credit
Jason Howell (01:31:59):
Card. Okay, take my money. Well that's, that's interesting cuz I wanna know, did you pull out your wallet for the pixel fold?
Mike Wolfson (01:32:08):
Oh, well that, my wallet's not sick enough. Ironically, <laugh> maybe my company won't get me one of those. Yeah, it'd
Jason Howell (01:32:15):
Be nice. I mean $1,799 for the pixel fold Yes. Announced at Google io. They showed it off Dave Burke, as we, we said earlier in the show, did a bunch of demos from the stage and they went really well. And you know, they, they had this device in the press area as well. So I spent a bunch of time pawn at the, the pixel fold. And yes, it is, it has a nice kind of thin quality to it. When it's unfolded, it feels thinner than any of the other fold devices that I've used. So it feels really nice. I didn't notice this, but a bunch of other people noticed that it doesn't fold 100% flat. Like you kind of have to bend it a little further than it feels like it's supposed to go in order to get it, it to be completely flat.
(01:33:06):
And the only, I'd say the only way you'd probably notice that is if you had it laying on a table. Either that, or if you're very O C d, you would notice it in the palm of your hand. I didn't notice it, but I mean, materials were excellent. It felt really nice in the hand as far as foldable is concerned, this style of foldable though, for me, I I just, I don't trust myself with a device that folds like that. Because I, I feel like I'm gonna wanna hold it like I hold a phone, which is with one hand, and you know, once it's unfolded, it's really a two-hand device. And if you drop that thing, that is a pricey mistake to make at, at $1,800. I mean, if you drop a tablet, you're spending $500 to replace it. If you drop this thing that's $1,800, that's, that's a lot.
(01:33:52):
But they did announce that if you order it now, I don't think it's forever, but if you order it now, you get a Pixel watch thrown in and a couple of other freebies. So they're trying to, you know, goose the pixel watch numbers a little bit <laugh>. But yeah, it's a pretty, pretty sharp looking device as far as foldables are concerned. I really, I really thought it was nice. The bezels on the inside didn't bug me. That didn't really bug me at all. So, yeah. What did you think, Ron? Because you got to play around with it a little bit, right? Yeah,
Ron Richards (01:34:22):
I got to, I I, I definitely wanted to feel it and, and feel the fold, feel the fold and get a sense for it. I really like what they did from a software standpoint, you know, like the, the, the camera modes, you know, like being able to, you know, being able to, you know, the, the, this, the Uber selfie, you know, and the example and yeah. And, and some of the viewing modes and stuff like that when, like, watching YouTube and all that sort of stuff. Like those, those are the things that like Google's gonna bring to the, to the platform that Samsung did that, that differentiation that, you know, like, like the Google approach to phones versus Samsung or, or oppo or anybody else like that. I like the way looks, I like the little Star Trek, you know camera bar to match the, the pixel line. The folding felt good. It felt sturdy, it felt snap, you know, went in place. I didn't, I didn't care about the folding flat type thing. I think that was fine. Bezel, I got it dinging on the bezel. Bezel was noticeable and, and distracting to me. Hmm. personally. But it's the first phone, you know, they'll, they'll get there. So yeah, it, it definitely was a good first start, I thought. For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Howell (01:35:24):
Interesting stuff. So that's hardware. There, there were no like, you know, Google io gimmies or freebies or anything like that. But there were a lot of hardware announcements, obviously. We all, we all saw that coming, right? So that's Google io in a nutshell. We're gonna give you a little a moose bouch here before we <laugh>. Actually, that's at the beginning of the meal, isn't it? Yeah. Nevermind. We're gonna give you a little Android dessert. It's not an upside down cake. It is j r a feel. He's gonna round out the show before we say goodbye with an Android intelligence tip Jr. What you got?
JR Raphael (01:35:58):
Good day one and all. So, IO is officially behind us, and while we're waiting for all the newly announced googly goodies to actually reach us, we've got a fun little improvement you can bring onto any Android device this minute. It's a really cool new feature that just showed up in my favorite Android launcher Niagara. And if you haven't used Niagara before, it's a teeny bit different from your standard Android home screen setup. Niagara replaces your phone's default home screen with a simple list of your most commonly accessed apps. And everything else lives within a scrolling alphabetical menu that you pull up by swiping along either side to the screen. Now, Niagara's all about simplicity and eliminating all of the efficiency harming clutter. Most of our home screens are weighed down by. So to that end, the setup supports just a single onscreen widget at its uppermost edge.
(01:36:58):
It's part of its mission to encourage thoughtful configuration, keep only the stuff you actually interact with regularly, front and center. And now Niagara's offering up a new way to put even more pertinent info at your fingertips without abandoning its minimalist focus centric philosophy. It's an option to stack multiple widgets on top of each other in that one single space that gives you on-demand access to more useful info while still maintaining the launchers trademark clutter-free environment. So in my setup right now, I've got a color-changing material u enabled clock in the default widget position. Then with a single swiped to the left on that area, I can see a list of my latest tasks from Todoist. And with a swipe to the right, I can see the native Android 13 battery status widget. The new widget stacking feature is included in the latest stable version of Niagara Launcher.
(01:38:00):
So just go download it from the Play store if you don't already have it. Then once you've got it up and running, press and hold your finger onto whatever widget you've got present at the top of the screen, and then select the add custom widget option. Repeat that same process for each additional widget you wanna add into the mix. And then all you've gotta do is swipe your finger horizontally on that widget area of the screen to explore everything you've added. Niagara Launcher is free to use, though it does require a $10 a year or $30 lifetime upgrade to its pro version. If you wanna maintain access to the sackable widgets and some other advanced options, if all that stuff enhances your efficiency as much as it does mine, well, it's pretty easy to justify as money well spent. And hey, if you want even more advanced efficiency in your life, come check out my Android shortcut super course. It's a completely free week-long e-course that'll show you all sorts of awesome tricks for flying around your phone, typing out texts faster than ever, managing your inbox more efficiently. And oh, so much more to head over to android intel net slash twit and scroll to the bottom of the screen to get started. That site again is android intel net slash twit. That's all for now. We'll pick up with even more Android enhancing Enchantment next week. Back to you Gang
Jason Howell (01:39:30):
Enchantment, enchanting Niagara Launcher. That's a classic JR. Rayfield, also a classic@androidintel.net slash twi. Thank you Jr for rounding out this episode. It all came together in the end. We had to kind of shuffle things around, but we made room for it. And yes, the supersized episode is not over because you have an interview after the credits, so definitely stick around for that. But this was a heck of a lot of fun. And Mike, I'm really happy that we could continue the tradition of having you on around io. Thank you for carving out some time. I've watched as your room has gone from light to dark <laugh> and you're muted. You're muted,
Mike Wolfson (01:40:17):
<Laugh>. It is all good. It's my pleasure. Of course. Thank you so much. Front me. Yeah,
Jason Howell (01:40:23):
Of course. Mike wolfson.com. Anything you wanna leave people with,
Mike Wolfson (01:40:28):
Nothing important I wanna promote. But I will say that if you are in the San Francisco area and are a developer, droid Khan SF is coming up January 9th, and I would love to see you there.
Jason Howell (01:40:40):
Ah, right on. So sf dot droid con.com is the place to go to check, check out information for that. Mike, always a pleasure. We'll have you back soon. Appreciate you. Thank you again. Thank you again and win. Appreciate you and appreciate the fact that I got to hang out with you last week. It was just so great. What do you wanna leave people with?
Huyen Tue Dao (01:41:04):
Yeah, also an Android developer. You can find my talks and accompanying code and videos at my website, randomly typing.com. And you know, find me on the interwebs at Queen Coke Monkey. If you, there's actually someone named Kate Co. Codemonkey, probably. Hopefully that's me. What's the
Jason Howell (01:41:19):
Me What's the story with the with the purple eyes?
Huyen Tue Dao (01:41:22):
Everybody always asks that one. Okay, so my local gym is awesome. They're called endorphin and they have what are called stink and drinks Where're. You, advisably or Inadvisable drink a little bit and you work out a lot of it. And that was the stink. I forgot what Stink and drink. Yeah. they actually provided us a Coors Light on the, like exercise bikes on the cycle. In the cycling section. There was actually like a, a Coors Light or something. I'm like, yeah, I'll say that. A light beer. And that was the workout equipment. We literally were like doing balanced things with it. Anyway they had, they had face paint. I put it on, I liked it. <Laugh>,
Jason Howell (01:41:58):
I've never heard of a gym saying, Hey, come work out and drink. It'll be great. <Laugh>.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:42:04):
I mean, I guess that's why they had a light beer. Yeah. Alright. Like I, I, I definitely did not drink the whole
Jason Howell (01:42:12):
Thing. Yeah. There was no tequila rower station, right?
Huyen Tue Dao (01:42:16):
I mean, there should have been, there's
Jason Howell (01:42:17):
<Laugh> that would be actually kind, but
Huyen Tue Dao (01:42:19):
Not for me. Yeah. Yeah, it would be.
Jason Howell (01:42:21):
Now
Huyen Tue Dao (01:42:21):
They actually, they made us do handstand hold then too. So, anyways, also
Jason Howell (01:42:24):
Kit Stand. Yes, that's is, yeah.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:42:27):
Yeah. Ca Oh
Jason Howell (01:42:28):
Gosh. See, see if we can st we can go many directions with this. I'm gonna have to tell my gym that they need to have a drink and stink for
Huyen Tue Dao (01:42:34):
While. I'll, I'll tell Endorphin and we'll have to credit you if they use that. Oh,
Jason Howell (01:42:37):
Goodness. <Laugh>. There we go. Thank you. Win. Oh, it was a pleasure. Ron, finally, what what do you want? Yeah,
Ron Richards (01:42:44):
Finally just go follow me on, on Twitter and on Instagram at Ron xo. I'm on Blue Sky. Thanks, Jason. On, at Ron xo, Doble, B Sky, whatever, my master on all the, all that nonsense. But yeah, no, I posted all my photos from Google IO on my Instagram account and got more likes than I've gotten in ages. Everybody likes to see her smiling faces, so that was great. So thanks to everybody.
Jason Howell (01:43:09):
Cool. Thank you, Ron. Thank you win. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Victor here in studio, in person every once in a while pulling over that microphone and speaking. Thank you ma'am. Thanks. No problem. And thank you Burke, who was in here a little while ago, helping out thanks to JR Rayfield Android intel.net/twi. You can find me just here on Twitter. I'll just leave you with that. You know, tech News Weekly every Thursday, TWI TV slash tnw. Also, don't forget, we have Club Twit. It's really important to us because it brings you closer to the creation of our shows. It integrates you into keeping us <laugh>, keeping us going, and we appreciate that. Add free subscription tier, so all of our shows with no ads. Exclusive TWI plus podcast feed with tons of extra content shows you can't find outside of the club members.
(01:43:58):
Only Discord, $7 a month. And you can find all the information you need to know there at twit tv slash club twit. And I'll just leave you with that. This show can be found at TV slash a a a we record every Tuesday evening. So just go there and subscribe. Seriously, subscribe to the podcast and you know, we'll be delivered to you. We're probably gonna get that hero image replaced here pretty soon with some of the images that we shot last week as we're all together. Yeah, yeah. We were all together. Yeah. We need to replace that Twitter tv slash a a a and you can see what the new hero image is once it hits the web. Thank you everybody once again for hanging out with us this evening. And again, there's an interview coming up after the credits, so check that out too. And yeah, that's it. We've reached the end of the supersize episode of All About Android. We'll see y'all next week. Bye everybody. Hello everyone and welcome to Google IO 2023. We are, well, we're outside of the Shoreline Amphitheater where Google IO has happened this morning. I'm Jason Howell, Huyen Tue Dao, Ron Richards. Great
Ron Richards (01:45:20):
To be here, here for many years. This is my first io since like 2015 to be in person, so I'm very
Jason Howell (01:45:25):
Excited. Yeah, that's awesome. It's a great reason for everybody to meet up at the same place. We had a lot of fun and All About Android last night and we're having a lot of fun today cause we're sitting down with Dave Burke, VP of Engineering, hey, for Android and Samir Samat, VP of Product Management. And we just always look forward to this opportunity. So first and foremost, thank you for giving us some, some of your time. And I have to say, like, you finished the keynote like an hour, hour and a half ago maybe. And here you are sitting down at a table with us. So I feel incredibly fortunate for that. Is the
Ron Richards (01:45:56):
Adrenaline still pumping or is we come down a little?
Jason Howell (01:45:59):
Yeah,
Ron Richards (01:46:00):
Yeah.
Dave Burke (01:46:00):
Am I like full?
Ron Richards (01:46:01):
So how, how did you feel about, how did you the show from the audio standpoint? It was great, but
Jason Howell (01:46:05):
Yeah, it's nice to
Dave Burke (01:46:06):
Be back. It's nice to be back. I mean, that's, that's the summary. I, I like, you know, I feel, I feel like if there's one thing we've learned the last couple of years is that, you know, these in-person event in-person events where we can all be together again or it's just so unique and special. And so for me this year I was like, well, if I'm gonna do io I wanna go all in on live demos, because that's what people come for, right? And they, you know, they, they kind of like get excited with you when it works. And they maybe commiserate when it doesn't and they feel attention. And so, so I, I dunno, I had a lot of fun today. We just demoed a launch. Did you
Sameer Samat (01:46:33):
Do live demo? Did I missed? I I prerecorded? Yeah, Dave, Dave had quite a few live demos. I think he, he has the dubious distinction of coming back in two i io segments to do demos. I don't think we've ever had else do that, so, but it all went well. So demo
Jason Howell (01:46:51):
Gods I was gonna say, it all worked out. All right. I mean, I'm sure you have a, you both have enough experience that you, you go into those no matter how prepared you feel with trepidation, because anything could possibly happen. I
Dave Burke (01:47:04):
Have Plan A, plan C, plan no Plan A, B, C, and then Plan D was my personal device, my back pocket. I was gonna <laugh>. No, that works. <Laugh>
Jason Howell (01:47:11):
And Plan E is to run screaming out of the room, <laugh> your hands over your head. Yeah, it
Dave Burke (01:47:15):
All, all went really well.
Sameer Samat (01:47:16):
It all, it all, it all worked out
Jason Howell (01:47:18):
<Laugh>. Yeah. Well I think if it wasn't abundantly clear, the overarching theme, and you know, we talked about this last night on the shows, like if we had to guess what we're gonna see tomorrow, I mean, there was no guessing <laugh>. There was, there was no question it was gonna be artificial intelligence. And I think there's so many announcements around AI that maybe just from a, a broad kind of view of the, of, of what you guys are bringing to the table here, it really felt like the story, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that generative AI is here and here's how it plays into our products. Cause when I think of something like chat G P T I think of this destination I have to go to in order to use it. Yeah. But Google is basically bringing that AI into the products that we're al already using. Would you say that's a fair assessment? That that's, that's kind of like the, the story of AI with Google, right?
Dave Burke (01:48:10):
I think that's right. I think that's right. I think like, you know, you just stepped back for a minute. You know, AI is something that Google's invested a lot in over the years. And you know, a friend of a friend of mine asked me recently, he was like, why, why is it all suddenly, like, why did it suddenly take off in the last six months and what happened? And you know, I think of it as like a trifecta. So three things. So it's, it's, you know, more data and we all have an intuition for that. Oh yeah. More data, more compute. We all have an intuition for that cuz like we see our phones are faster and our laptops are faster. But the real difference is, is the models got better. That's what caused that sort of non-linear to shift. And the model, the key, the were really two models that have really made the difference.
(01:48:45):
One is transformer models and the other one is our diffusion models. And actually, these are things that we worked on at Google, you know, quite early on. And actually, you know, Google researchers published the original transformer paper, and we can learn to add all on if you want, but I won't go too deep on it. But I, but it's really kind of ushered in this whole like generative AI sort of era, if you like. And and we've been using it a lot. Like, so if you, if you use search and you, you type in a very esoteric query, you'll actually, it will sort of bypass all the caches and you'll hit what we call Bert, which is it's actually an encoder, a trans, it's like a transformer encoder. And so we've been deploying these technologies for quite a long time. But I think it, you know, deploying them in a generative form is something that we haven't done as much of. Right. And so I think that's what you see at, at at today's keynote. And I mean, there's a range of stuff from workspace to the search generative experiences to the things we showed on Android. But yeah, it was a pretty, pretty exciting, you know. Yeah.
Sameer Samat (01:49:42):
And, and I think, I think it's exactly what you said though, the opportunity I think that we've always seen with this kind of technology is the technology's super cool. We wanna make it available for developers to use, they'll build amazing things with it. But, you know, there's so many developers inside Google who build products that we all depend on every day. How can those products get better with this technology? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? And so I think what we wanted to do today was to showcase not just the technology, but also how the technology comes into each and every one of those products that we all use. And what can it do for me, you know, because that is, I think a thing that, you know, people are curious about is, you know, like, okay, I've heard a lot about it. I've played with these chatbot things and they're cool.
(01:50:20):
Like, I can definitely see things I can do, but like, how, what, what's the big deal? Like, how's it really gonna change? Well, I love the, the Gmail example that that, that Aparna and Dave showed where, you know, you can ask, you can write a very short terse prompt and it'll generate the email for you. I mean, who doesn't, right? Yeah. Who doesn't think that they're gonna use that like every day? You know? And, and so there's so many just possibilities. So I was really excited about how we showcased some of that. And then I think with Android we wanted to kind of keep it a little lighter. And, you know, we were working on a whole roadmap of stuff. You know, some we can probably hint at today. But I think the things that we showed you know, we wanted to keep it a little bit lighter and just also show the AI can be fun and, and and help you just express yourself in creative and interesting ways. So, you know, obviously Dave showed what you can do with messages by Google and just like rewriting what you're about to say to somebody. And then also the generative wallpapers, which are just neat, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think really relatable. So that was, that was the goal of today. So
Ron Richards (01:51:17):
In my experience, so much of the conversation with AI has been like, oh, the robots are coming. They're gonna take my job, and all this sort of stuff. And, and it's interesting to see, and like we were talking about is the application of how you take this technology and like the, the wallpaper is a great example. It's like, I love San Francisco, let me press a button and get a illustrative way of it. And I feel like that kind of helps bridge the gap between this kind of like, fear of AI versus where it's no different than the code. You know, it's just another way to do the stuff we do on our phones. So, yeah.
Dave Burke (01:51:45):
Yeah. I like, yeah, I like how you, you you said that because you know, for us, you know, so I was nerding out a little bit, bit earlier about like diffusion models and transform models and all that stuff. But actually the hard part in my view is like, how do you make this approachable, right? And relatable and fit for purpose? And, and honestly safe. You gotta be careful because like, so like, think about the generative AI wallpaper, the way it works, there's structure prompts. You pick the different options you generate. We could have had an open text box, but an open text box is not approachable cuz it's like, here's a blind canvas, draw something. You're like, ah,
Sameer Samat (01:52:14):
Get creative.
Dave Burke (01:52:14):
They're creative.
Ron Richards (01:52:15):
Something create
Dave Burke (01:52:17):
And then also like, there's a safety aspect to it. Well, okay, what, what the hell can I create? Is that even gonna be safe work kind of thing. So we're safe for my kids. And so you know, I think the, the solution we came up with, it seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but like when you, we were thinking of all the different types of ways we internally, we call it mod libs by the way, where you have these like, dropdowns. Nice. but but I think the idea is like very simple and it, it's what Samira was getting at. It's like, it's applying this stuff and figuring out how to apply it. And actually, you know, honestly this is like such an exciting time. Like to, this is the perfect, like being on Android and this time in, in computing history is just like perfect. Cuz we have all this amazing set of like, algorithms, technologies, infrastructure, and then we have all of these surfaces and user problems. And so honestly, it's just a lot of fun. <Laugh>.
Huyen Tue Dao (01:53:00):
Yeah. I, I know like the operative word a lot in like, the zeitgeist is generative, but watching the keynotes, both the kinda main keynote and the developer keynote, I couldn't help. But, and then this is corporate speak maybe am my bad, but synthesis mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like a lot of it is just bringing together different tools. And I think, I know you talked about maybe like letting people like myself, developers kind of see the possibilities of it. And for, I guess most of our viewers aren't necessarily watching the developer keynote, but something I was surprised about was that even AI and like there, there's gonna be an Android studio chat bot, and that feels like the, like epitome of a synthesis where hey, like, here are these different resources. Here's things that usually look up. Yeah. Let the let the bot kind of like do things for you. And I thought that was really cool. Yeah.
Dave Burke (01:53:39):
I am super excited about Android Studio bot. We, we had it in the developer keynote and I mean, it really could have like, held its own in the con in the consumer even because it's, it's sort of, it taps into your imagination and it, and makes programming, I think more accessible. But if you think about what you're, what what is actually doing, so, you know, today or yesterday, <laugh>, everything's changing so fast. But yesterday, <laugh>, you would be an Android studio and you'd be like, you know, coding along and you're like, ah, it's gonna curse in my long curse do like how do I do this thing? And so you would go to like developer.android.com or frankly, you'd go to Stack Overflow and you would sort of go to these resources and you'd search and you'd sort of look at the results.
(01:54:16):
Is that what I want? And maybe it is co copy paste, take some pieces, like clean it up or whatever. Now you just go to the, to your point, like you go to the studio bot and you're like, Hey, I got this error. Like, there's an error in the compiler, in the Kotlin compiler. Click what is this? And it will tell you what it is and how to fix it. Or you could be, you could say, Hey, I'm, I'm stuck in this point. Tell me how to do this. And it'll just give you the code and you press a button, it's syntax beautifully, syntex highlighted, and then you press a button and inserts the code for you. And so it's just, it's sort of, it, it basically just makes that whole process so much easier cuz the information's encoded in the foundational model. And so we've done a ton of work in like pre in fine tuning that and like figuring out how to make it seamless.
(01:54:53):
And then, you know, coming back to this, you know, this technology, like I was talking about safety earlier, the, I mean, you also have to think about like, okay, so I work in an enterprise, I don't want that code, leave it, you know, that's my, my company's code. I don't know what my, what the rights are for that to leave to the ide. And so we had to think through all that about not sharing the code. And so I think what's interesting, like for of Im a product management point of view today is like, how do you have to think through all these different angles that are new? But yeah. But yeah, studio bot, and I think studio bot's kind of like that sy as you said, Synthes says it's in that genre of like you know, sort of a co-pilot or whatever you wanna call it, an assistant or, you know, that's helping you and it works really well. Yeah,
Jason Howell (01:55:34):
I mean there were a few examples given today, and we've certainly heard this about generative ai you know, earlier than today about the ability of these generative AI systems to write code. And I guess where, where my mind ends up, and we, we joked about this a little bit. It's like, oh, I'm a developer too. I can go, you know, bar and and plug in what I want and I get code, I'm a developer. Yay. But what do you, what do you think about how tools like this actually transform the role of a developer? Because I mean, it does kind of cha it does kind of move the goalposts as far as what it, what it takes to be a developer. Sure. You need to have developer chops. And I'm not saying the system like this is gonna completely replace developers, but it does alter the needs, the requirement of that developer and and their knowledge on a, to a certain degree. Maybe it propels them to another level. But what are your thoughts on that? Like, how does it impact that? Well,
Sameer Samat (01:56:25):
I mean, one of the things I I've always found is that, you know, as an engineer, if, if you have time to actually dig into the whole business problem that you're solving, you know, you're just so much more motivated by what you're doing. You know, as opposed to like, here's a, here's a speck. Like, let me go. You know, like nobody really wants to do just that, you know? And so I think, but sometimes it's pretty hard cuz it's like you have a lot of minutiae to get through, right? So I think the first step is just like, can we use this technology to get as little focus on the minutiae as possible? Not to the detrimental products, but like maybe we can increase the quality while we do that too. You know? And and I think it'll just let, let everybody pick their head up just a little bit and just say like, okay, like how can I actu like what are we doing here?
(01:57:08):
Like what are we solving? Is this the best way to solve it? You know? And I think the line at Google, honestly, between, for historically between like software engineer and product manager, I don't think product manager's, right? It's done a go to Google. But I think software engineers play a lot of the product manager role as well. And I think that's really good. And I think over time, as we've just seen in our company, there's just like a lot of code and a lot of maintenance and a lot of things to do. And they've started doing like more and more and more software engineering and little bit less of the product. And so I'm ho I'm excited about kind of rebalancing that because I think just people are so much more motivated when they get that time back.
Dave Burke (01:57:40):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. The other reality is like if you're, you know, a full-time coder, and especially if you're a rusty coder, that's me. Like there's just a lot of tdm like there's a lot of like, how do I do this boiler plate thing again? And like, I just wanna focus on the innovative idea of this product that I'm building. And so this, you know, that's what this does. You know, I think in the limit, you know, if you think about coders or magicians, they can make things appear and, you know, do things. We may, we we are, we're bringing in more magicians in the limit, but, but really we're just automating the kind of T DM in a lot of ways is, is, is, and maybe that's not ambitious enough to say, but that's, that's why I think when you see the developers in Shoreline today, when they saw a studio about, they're like, oh yes, hell yeah. Yes. They're not worried about their job, they're worried, they're like, this is gonna make me so much more productive. So it
Sameer Samat (01:58:21):
Becomes how do you use
Jason Howell (01:58:22):
The tool right? To be
Sameer Samat (01:58:23):
Creative. Exactly.
Dave Burke (01:58:23):
Innovative. I can be more, right? I can be more creative, more innovative, more productive. Right.
Jason Howell (01:58:27):
And it's interesting that you say that the tedium of this, because what, it's easy to hear that and be like, and because I, I will take a step back. I do know, you know, I was participating in the club twit discord mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for, for some of our members during the live, the live event and some of the demonstrations, right? Like writing, composing an email, you know, that you write in a couple of words and then it, you can expand it and everything like that. Some of the people were joking, you know, well this is all like, you know, baseline like TDM stuff, like why this is so not creative. Why are we kind of, you know, writing to this level, why doesn't it elevate, why doesn't it this or that? And when I really thought about, I was like, but wait a minute. Like a lot of what we actually do in our lives are, is very tedious. Right. You know, the, the forms that we create, the, the the standardized emails that we send out to people to ask, Hey, can you blah, blah blah, blah. A lot of that is incredibly tedious. Yeah. Certainly these systems are just mirroring what we're already doing. That's right. So if we don't actually have to do, it's right. The computer.
Ron Richards (01:59:25):
And it's actually, it's interesting cause if you think about like the Evol now we're getting kind of more technology look at the evolution of technology. Like people spent days doing the laundry and then we got a washing machine. Exactly. And that, that I was literally
Dave Burke (01:59:35):
Gonna make that knowledge
Ron Richards (01:59:37):
Was
Sameer Samat (01:59:37):
Well if you think, I mean, if you think about you know, for any of the product managers that are, that are listening I mean, how many times have you, you know, late at night created some presentation deck and then you're like, oh, I gotta add notes. You know, like, cuz it's someone else is gonna give it, or you're gonna give anyone. And like, I just love the feature that a partner showed today where it's like automatically generate the notes from the slides and my goodness. And it's like, okay, now, now, now you're really starting to talk to me about what can help me. You know? And so I think this is where like AI can really be made a little bit more understandable. And and, and frankly I think I've heard so many people today talk about like, just when can I use it? Mm-Hmm.
Ron Richards (02:00:16):
<Affirmative>. Oh yeah, I was there signing up for every wait list. Yeah.
Sameer Samat (02:00:18):
<Laugh>,
Ron Richards (02:00:20):
Let's go here. I'm like, sign up, sign up. Right. Well,
Jason Howell (02:00:22):
And that's kinda the beauty of it. When can I use this? How can I use this and how can I use this? Is well just keep using the apps you're already using mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. Eventually this button's gonna appear. That's right. Or however that is presented. That's
Dave Burke (02:00:32):
Right. I think it's that pervasive and I think it has that broad an impact on our product. So that's exactly what is gonna happen. It's just gonna, it's gonna permeate and appear everywhere. Yeah.
Sameer Samat (02:00:41):
Yeah.
Ron Richards (02:00:41):
So switching gears, I mean, like staying on the AI topic, but like here, you know, goo the, you know, Google io keynote, like you mentioned is a consumer keynote. Right? Very focused on what it does. Historically, a lot of the conversation at I has been around the next version of Android. I I don't think you guys said Android 14 once in the keynote. Was that by that design this year? Or how does that, you know,
Sameer Samat (02:01:00):
Ye yes and no. Yeah. I mean Dave can elaborate a lot on sort of how we've been evolving our thinking around that. But I just like taking a quick step back. One of the realizations that we had is, you know, as the consumer keynote at Broadens its audience, you know you know, it used to be long ago that io like most of everybody that watches it was a developer actually. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And over time what's happened is it's become more than just Android. It's become more than just developers. It's kind of like the whole Google narrative. And and what's interesting, actually, just as a quick sidebar is that a lot of the folks who are Android developers would tell us, could y'all just take a quick step back, but before we get into the the APIs, could you just tell us like, what are you trying to do?
(02:01:42):
You know? Yeah. So, so, you know, because developers are, developers are users too, you know, and so they're, they're kind, they're consumers as well. So they're interested. So I think what we wanted to do in when we talk about Android or really anything, is just talk about it from a consumer experience standpoint. What will you get this year that's cool and leave the vehicles to the details. Because I, and people, a lot of folks, I mean, I think you're the audience that listens to this and I think all of us here who are like pretty interested in those vehicles, you know, like, what's in Android 14? What's in this, what's in that? And so that is important. We should, we can go through that. But I think for the general audience, what we realized is that they just wanna know what's gonna be new and that they're gonna get it all, you know? And so we took, we just sort of take it from that perspective instead chopping it up.
Dave Burke (02:02:27):
We have more vehicles. I mean, we've been, you, you probably noticed we have these like quarterly spotlights and that we lean into, we have vehicle, you know, we can update apps independently of the os. We've been able to do that for a long time. That, that apparently that was innovation for some people recently. And
Jason Howell (02:02:41):
Still feels pretty innovative today. <Laugh>, I know what it was like before all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, it is now. It's miles different. I love it.
Dave Burke (02:02:47):
And then we have, and then we have like play system updates where we can actually, we could like, we can literally update the virtual machine on an android ver Android s you know, version and increase performance by just changing the VM with an updateable module. Like we have like very sophisticated update mechanisms in Android. We probably don't talk about it enough. I mean, we like enroll these AB updates. We can test them, roll them back. I mean it's pretty amazing. And then we ha and then we have like Google Play services and we have like jet back libraries. And so we have all of these vehicles. And so exactly what Samir said, and actually like, maybe a little bit of inside baseball, we used to, like, when we did our product planning, we used to sort of have like, we'd write an at a glance or of summary docs, we'd like Android 11 at a glance. Now it's like Android 24 or at a glance, right? Like we just think about the year, right. And, and then we talk about the different, you know, we talk about what we wanna do to Samir's point and what we wanna deliver. And then we have the vehicles that's sort of a SubT tax. So, so there's multiple vehicles as well as the core
Jason Howell (02:03:36):
Os. When you said 24, I immediately thought, wow, you guys are planning like 10 versions ahead or something. <Laugh>. I was blown away. <Laugh>. That's, but it's funny you mentioned that cuz I, I, the one the, during your demo, I think when you, you giggled when you mentioned jet pack with the, with with, oh,
Huyen Tue Dao (02:03:50):
The drag and the jet pack composed the drag and drop library. I'm sorry. I was like really excited because I was getting ready to like write my own system. But I, that was great.
Jason Howell (02:03:57):
It was, it was like almost wins personal, like <laugh>, like just in time before
Huyen Tue Dao (02:04:03):
You No, no. We play the compose drinking game on the show where every time I get to talk about compose we win takes a drink, <laugh>. But then, then it gets a little more confusing now with Magic Compose, but that's okay. Yeah,
Dave Burke (02:04:13):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We we may or may not have changed the name of that 24 hours ago. <Laugh> <laugh>, it's, yes. It's, this is how we do product design. Yeah. Compose is ma, we should talk about compose another time. Compose is amazing. I love Kotlin and compose. It's like so elegant. It's so nice. I just, I keep telling folks internally who don't code at Google, like, this is so good. You realize like, what's really nice anyway,
Jason Howell (02:04:35):
<Laugh>
Huyen Tue Dao (02:04:36):
I bet. But I mean it to other things that we've talked about. And as you've mentioned, we're trying to take the minutiae, the boiler plate out of daily life, whether it's to developer or a consumer. And so I feel like the, it feels like the, the, the roadmap, the game plan the last few years, at least from a developer's perspective has been, Hey, do you actually wanna have time to think about the product level or the higher level engineering? So it all kind of fits. Yep.
Dave Burke (02:04:55):
Yep. What do you
Huyen Tue Dao (02:04:56):
Synthes
Dave Burke (02:04:56):
This is. Yep. Yeah. And to be clear, when I said TDM is like, there's, it's sort of like the, the what's not tedds is when you're innovating and using the code to create this, here's my idea and I'm bringing my idea to life. What's TDS is like, how do I close the camera handler again? Or like the camera object. Like where's the camera? I know the Camera one api. That's the thing where you're like, that's the TDM part where you want just the bot to be like, oh, here's how you do it. Oh yeah. Place to go. Boom, done. Let's go.
Huyen Tue Dao (02:05:18):
Oh, there are about like dozens of developers sharing when I think one of the examples that Jamal gave for the sort of for the Android studio bot was remembering to put internet position internet print permissions mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So just, oh yeah. That's for the, for the, for the, for the audience. Every single
Dave Burke (02:05:34):
Everyone has that
Huyen Tue Dao (02:05:35):
Everyone has forgotten to, to give the app internet permission. So that's definitely, that's kind of one of those things that this will
Dave Burke (02:05:41):
Help us. I think I do it every time. I would every single time create something. I forget like why is it Oh yeah.
Huyen Tue Dao (02:05:45):
Internet
Dave Burke (02:05:45):
Permissions. Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe I said camera handle that dates me is you can guess what I started with Handler. I mean, we guess which operating system somebody started with anyway. Enough for that
Jason Howell (02:05:54):
<Laugh>. Well so just to go back just real quick on, as far as Android 14 is concerned Yeah. Considering everything that we've just talked about the past five, 10 minutes, what would you say is the story of Android 14? It,
Dave Burke (02:06:07):
I would say it's more this release is a little, sometimes we do very like user facing sort of visual changes. Like when we brought in material to you, that was a really big one, right? Yeah. I think this one is more, what's the right word? I mean, plumbing just sounds too negative, but it's, it's under the hood sort of architecture, <laugh> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> making this up on the fly which is maybe
Jason Howell (02:06:30):
Not a, like a sexy like right? It's not someone, someone sees that and, and they're like, oh, I've gotta have Android fortune because this got under the hood. Architecture changes.
Dave Burke (02:06:39):
But, but it, but like, it's important. It's faster, it's got higher performance. Right? And so we did a lot of work on, we have two projects. The codenames internally at don't mind sharing them is, is snowbird and Falcon and I, the way I think of how I remember Snow is the s sounds is close to Z, which is freeze. Okay, I'm losing myself here. But and what we're doing is we're trying to reduce the number of the impact of broadcast. And so what we often find is, you know, Andrew Android has this idea of a broadcast and an app can listen to it and the app can wake up or come out of a cash state and you can get like thundering herd issues and you can get a lot of churning on the io. On io. And so what we're doing now is we're not actually taking we're actually allowing apps to basically stay cashed for a longer time.
(02:07:19):
So we sort of queue up all the broadcast for an app and then wake the app up and go, here's your broadcast, rather than one at a time doing it. And it's coming in and out. And then another one we're doing is like if there's a broadcast like battery change that happens all the time, we sort of batch them up. Cuz it doesn't, you just, you don't care that which one just need to get caught up and you, so you say you collapse it to once. That's an example of, and that makes a huge difference cuz it's sort of fundamental operating system. So that's, that's snowbird. And then Falcon is about really refining our foreground services. They tend to get, these are the notifications that pop up for an app and you can't swipe the ones that won't swipe away. Oh, yes.
(02:07:55):
But, but they're, they're an important in a way cuz it's tell, it's kind of conferring to the user that this app is running. Right? Right. But it's pesky. And so what we realized was like, okay, well first of all, like there's some legitimate cases where you want that. And then there's some cases that are like probably not ideal. And so, you know, so one case that was, they were kind of, I would say, I misuse the wrong word, but they were used for that because there was no other choice, was like when an app needs to download some data, like maybe it's a weather app that needs to grab a snapshot of the data or it's a use app or something. And so what we've done is we've basically created a new set of foreground services. There's not one for data. Instead there's now a new API job basically for taking da for data that doesn't require foreground service. And then we've categorized the rest of them into like, is it a camera? Is it a health app? Is it, you know, a location or something like that. And so what you should hopefully see over time is less nuisance foreground services. And so, and that will also help our performance. So that's an example of like one of the things we're doing internally. Health Connects another one, I dunno if you wanted to mention, that's a big change. Health
Sameer Samat (02:08:51):
Connect's another one. So, you know, health Connect I think for a long time we have been focused on helping people connect different health services to each other. Right. And that's important because, you know, if you have a Peloton device and you know, you have Peloton at home and you have a, you know, wear watch and you have an a ring and, and a Withing scale, you're like, oh, I gotta, like how do, where do I go to like Doc all this information? It's actually your, it's actually in important to realize that you're building your own personal health record. You know, you're, you know, there's what happens at the doctor's office and then there's what happens with all this information. And so, and in the ideal future world, you'd be able to dock all that together, right? And then share it with only the who you want.
(02:09:35):
And I think there's gonna be a lot of new insights that come from that con, you know, connectivity. Cuz your doctor today doesn't really have full access to that information. You know, they don't track that. And, and, and you don't necessarily have all your records either, you know, in your hands. So being able to bring all that together. So Health Connect is a is a system that sits on your Android phone to essentially manage the data flows between those things and do it in a safe and private way where you can, where you provide access for data mo to move from one app to another. And it's all in your control. It's all on the device, it's encrypted. And so we made that part of the platform. We've been working on it independent of the platform, and we decided it re reached APIs and so forth and reached a maturity level where it's not part of the platform.
(02:10:19):
So that's, that's really exciting. But a mainline module as well. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And the, the other thing I wanted to quick mention is, you know, we've been working on, on security and privacy every Android release. So it would be, you know, like amis, I didn't mention a couple of the things. One of the things that I'm pretty excited about that we're doing, and, and it seems small, but I just wanted to mention it because I think the impact will be outsized for folks who really care about this, which is, you know, when you're giving an app permission, for example, to location, right? We of course added a while back while in use permissions, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, but now from the safety labels, the data that you, you up when you upload your app to play, you fill out a thing called the safety label, which is, you know, what, what do you, what do you do with this data that your col that your app collects?
(02:11:06):
Well, that information from the safety label is now piped through to the notification to the, to the prompt, the permission prompt. So when it asks you are you know, do you wanna give this app location permission? There's actually a little snippet there from their safety label, which we'll say this app does share data with third parties content for location. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like, yeah, that's informa. Because when, when we, we realized that we're like the safety label, and then we looked at the permission, and a lot of times you answer the permission and then you're like, wait, but the safety label's over there, it's like information I could have used, right? So we pull that in now, which I think is a really, like, it's a small insight, but I actually think it's kind of a big deal. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Dave Burke (02:11:46):
Yeah. couple other things that, so on privacy that reminded me we've improved foreground services, we intent. So one of the issues we've seen, not so much in the US but I mean Android's such a huge platform globally. You know, we've seen some abuse where apps sort of will launch a full screen intent takeover of the phone. And so now we've changed the policy so that really, it could only be like a clock, like an alarm clock or a dialer which are kind of what you would expect to do it and nothing else. And so that's it. It might seem like a small thing, but it's important. A couple other things to mention this one is not, this is not so obvious, that's why I wanna mention it is share sheet. So one of the challenges we have a share sheet is we went deeper. Everybody got
Sameer Samat (02:12:26):
<Laugh>.
Dave Burke (02:12:26):
It's not our, it's not our proudest moment. I, I'll be honest. It's ok. It's ok. Even, even on, even some of the Google apps have their own custom share sheets. Yeah. And so what we've been doing over time is improving the system one. And so for example, we've improved some of the custom targets on Share Sheet in hundred 14, but what's not really easy to understand from blogs and stuff is that we now have a plan for all the Google apps to adopt the system share sheet <laugh>. So you'll see, because now the share sheet's brought up to a level where they, because they had a valid reason, each team at Google had a valid reason to have a custom thing, just like anyone building an app. And so now I think we've got, we've, I think we've finally got the, the system share sheet to a level that is where the apps need them.
(02:13:05):
And Google apps are, you know, a pretty sophisticated set of apps. So, so you'll see over time you'll see sort of, you'll get, you'll see more coherence coming <laugh> so that's one thing that's not clear. And then to something that's hard to pick up from blogs. The other one is ultra H hdr, that's our fancy name for so, so HDR is like high dynamic range, right? So you've got like brighter range of colors effectively. And one of the challenges is like you can't just introduce a new format cuz then if I share a H G R photo to an app that doesn't understand it, it gets desat desaturated. So we have a, a new approach where you have a JPEG and it has the standard dynamic range in the sort of main body of the jpeg. And then we have a game map that goes alongside it in the, in the, it's in the file format container.
(02:13:50):
But it means that if an app is savvy and understands H E r, we'll take the game map and then expand the S D R to the high dynamic range. Doesn't change the color of space, culture space, it's the same. And so that's a way of us introducing H G R in the platform. And why is that important? Well, you know, I think one of the things is we have these amazing cameras on many devices like a Samsung or a Pixel, but they, the photos tend to be the best taken from the camera. And when you then use the social networking app to take the photo, it's not so good. This will help mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm. <Affirmative> those cases. So it's no new
Sameer Samat (02:14:17):
File format,
Dave Burke (02:14:18):
Which is important. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just jpac. Yeah. Jp. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So actually a lot of what we do is like, how do you introduce these things with a sort of a back compatible approach that doesn't make things worse as you're, as everybody's catching up. And so that was one of those things that took a little while to get right. Yeah. But that's, that's something I was just looking at my little notes here to trying to remember. There's so many, there's so many other things. I mean, system ui, we talked about the lock screen clock, which was just something that a lot of people asked us for to customize. And it's like, I mean, it
Jason Howell (02:14:46):
Feels like that's been a long time. It's been a long
Dave Burke (02:14:47):
Time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure. We were, I
Jason Howell (02:14:49):
Mean, I mean, you know, within the realm of material, you material, you know this idea of a device that you can make fully customizable and then the clock is kinda like, what about that thing? Other thing?
Dave Burke (02:15:00):
Yeah. So we got, we got run into that and no AI was harmed in the process. <Laugh> and then custom, custom shortcuts, which is what was, was what we were requesting a lot of people requested as well. The other thing that we're doing, it's still not GA or whatever you call it, generally available. It's is predictive back, but I'm really excited about it. It's this thing, you know, back is such a core concept in Android. Yeah. And, and so the challenge is like, it has history, it has storage history, and the challenge is like, you know, your, you're deep in end activities and you come back to the final one, and now it's gonna, you're gonna fall back to home, but you don't know. And so predictive, a app shows you a peak in Animation Peak. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we were planning to launch it in 14, but it just wasn't quite, the quality bar wasn't quite right. So we decided we still, we still did a bunch of work, you still turn it on and developer options, but it wasn't quite to the, the bar we wanted. So hopefully we'll landed for next cycle, but but yeah, but there's, but I, that's just some, it's a cool feature that I like that's
Sameer Samat (02:15:51):
You, you mentioned clocks. I wanted to add one more clock thing. But it's not for phones, it's for for watches. So we have this watch face format that we introduced which is, which is pretty cool. It's this you know, it's, it's declarative XML file, basically XML format that works with this watch studio. So you can, with this, you know, sort of ide interface define a watch face. And the reason that's cool is a, it's just like fun to design these watch faces. I expect a lot of developers to do it, and there'll be a lot more watch faces, which I think for all of us who have wear watches is exciting. But the other thing is what we found that people were kind of building watch faces in in a lot of different ways.
(02:16:34):
And you can get yourself in trouble battery wise pretty quickly when you're designing a watch face. And there are some safeties in the OS that obviously help with that. But you know, you can, you can go ahead and get yourself you know, kind of run up against the rocks. And, and, and so what's nice about the Watch Face Studio is that all that code is generated for you and as you as the platform gets adds new capabilities for improving the efficiency of the watch fa of watch faces, including more offload to like the little processor that's on the device, et cetera, the watch face studio will just like recompile and you'll get all the benefits of that stuff so you don't have to sort of like recode your watch face over and over again, which is pretty neat.
Jason Howell (02:17:15):
Yeah. I imagine developers love when those kinds of things are made <laugh>, you know? Yes. Please. We love things about <laugh> less, less reliant upon your, your absolute attention to it, but of course it's always there. I know that we're running a little bit short on time and we haven't even talked about devices. So why don't we spend just a couple of minutes just kind of focused on how Android is kind of relating how the, some of the changes to Android over the last couple of years. Right. We're talking about every 12 L Yeah.
Ron Richards (02:17:44):
12. I feel like, I feel like today was the culmination of what a couple 12 l being like, we want to, we wanna embrace larger screen devices. And we're like, Hmm. Wonder why? And then we find out the tablet's coming Yeah. And now we're hold this
Sameer Samat (02:17:54):
Is kinda, yeah. I mean actually that when, when you were asking like, what's Android 14 about? And that's kind of where I was gonna go. Yeah. Which is, you know, there is a ton of, as Dave said, you know, behind the scenes, you know, work that's been done. But to be honest, it's it's a culmination of multiple releases, you know, 12 L which is kind of a bit of an off cycle release that we did. But because we really wanted to start getting this in the hands of device makers and developers, because we, when we saw Foldables initially, you know, start to, to hit the market and take off, we were just incredibly fascinated by this form factor. And, you know, Android usually leads in, in these form factors, but I think one thing that we could do a better job on is, you know, making sure that we hit that polish level more quickly.
(02:18:38):
And so with Foldables, we just saw an opportunity to say, Hey, wait a minute. Large screens are a thing for, you know, because of this new innovation, it's an opportunity to reinvigorate that whole category of devices all the way from tablets to foldables and, and kind of like the different size factors in between. And and so what you see now with, with this release is, and you saw Dave demo a whole bunch of this, like it's very powerful. And, and the developer capabilities are there. So it's, it's EAs it's not complicated to build apps that make take advantage of drag and drop and so forth and so on. You know, we have set ways of doing it. So it's not a choose your own adventure, maybe you can always do that, but at the same time, it's nice to have defined clear paths for golden paths for people to walk through to, to make this happen.
(02:19:29):
And and I think that what you're, we're now on, you know nth generation of Foldables, right? And what I really want to give a lot of credit to the Samsung team here you know, because I think they pioneered a lot of this. Yeah. They paved, they paved the way they super pave the way. And we, not only do they do that with their hardware, but we've worked with them really cl closely. Like this is the first time that pixel is launching a fold, but mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, Samsung's had a number of foldables up until now, and we've worked with them on every single one of them. And a lot of the features that you saw today, actually a lot of the innovation was done in tandem with them. And a lot of those components are actually shipping on their current devices. And so what's really nice is we've been able to kind of build this category together mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and now people are, you know, jumping in and, and and, and making it even more interesting category of, you know, you have oppo and Shami and, and, and Google and a whole bunch of other companies jumping in. So we're super excited about it and I think that does come all together in 14.
Ron Richards (02:20:28):
Yeah, for sure. And then with the Pixel tablet, of course, like we, we, we've talked a lot about tablets cuz it feel as if, you know, the tablet space and Android is very murky because, you know, iPad dominates in terms of, you know, people think of tablets, you know, I have a, a proud owner of a Lenovo tablet. I use it all the time, but they tend to fall under a media device or I use it as a instead of a Kindle. But now with the Pixel tablet, seems like you guys kind of, you know, returning back to that tablet spec, but you know, over 50 Google apps being developed to optimize their tab, take advantage of it. Yeah. You know, other apps like com and Disney plus optimizing it, it's a kind of a chicken in the egg kind of thing. Yeah. Because in order to get developers to put the resources into adapting their apps, there need to be users. But in order to be you know. So how do you guys approach that from a developer relations
Dave Burke (02:21:10):
Standpoint? It, I mean, it's always been that way for even when we started Android at the beginning for mobile and I, you know, it was really close to the start, you know, helping start Android tv. It's always, it's chicken and egg. It's precisely what it is. And you just sort of gotta och and scooch and make a little bit of progress, and then the apps come and then to make the platform the problem and you just have to iterate. I think you know, I think is, it's important for Google to lead by example here, and that means that you mentioned that, you know, over 50 apps. So we need to sh you know, show that we're committed. I think it's important for Google to have hardware that in the tablet space and show we're serious about it. And that, you know, that will help push forward.
(02:21:42):
And then, you know, more developers come, they see us do it, so you get more developers on and, and then the products get better and then more developers come on. And that's how you do it. One of the things you'll see, we had a blog post today about some of the third party apps you know, some of the big names, and you mentioned Peloton, I think that was in the article, <laugh>. And you'll probably, you know, we are planning every, yeah, I dunno what the exact cadence is gonna be, but we'll have a series of blog posts because we're working with so many third party developers and we'll show the progress. So this isn't a sort of a one and done for Google io. This is a, this is a path. And the momentum's really good, you know and then the, you know, the Pixel tablet I think is, is a really nice product. I think you saw the, the foldable work that I demoed today, and it all, that translates to tablet too, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So which is really nice. And then I think one of the things I really liked about the Pixel tablet, just to talk about that product for a second, is, you know, it's very simple. It has a dock, so it's always charged, right? So I've had this, I've had this thing for a year and in my home, and it's like, awesome. It's like, oh, if my tablet's ready, great. Well, and
Ron Richards (02:22:37):
It's a satisfying
Jason Howell (02:22:38):
Click. Yeah, it's very satisfying, right? <Laugh>, it just pops right on there. But I, I did find that actually a, like a, a pretty unexpected compelling moment from the keynote where, you know, the, the presenter, I'm, I'm blanking on her name, but she had the tablet in the drawer. Rose. Rose, that's right. And the drawer opens and the tablet's in the drawer and it's dead. And I've been there a million times. It's like, just give the tablet a home. Give it a home where it can get the juice that it needs so that it could be, you know, your companion. It's <laugh>. Yeah. It's,
Dave Burke (02:23:06):
It's, it's often, it's the simplest ideas are most powerful and then, you know, it has this nice speakers when need a docket, the audio since it translates, and then you sort of, you sort of extrapolate this and you're like, okay, so it's on the dock and it's on a nice angle. Okay, so let's make it proactive. Let's have information that's useful for me. Or Right. I turn off the light and it will dim it screen and it'll turn into a clock mode. And now it can be a photo frame, and now it can be, it can be a, basically a Google assistant. So it's basically a home hub now, and now it can be a controller. And so, you know, it's sort of just all full and,
Jason Howell (02:23:33):
Hey, we're Google, we've done a lot of like, like exactly art displays. Yeah. So we can do that over here too. Exactly.
Dave Burke (02:23:37):
Yeah.
Jason Howell (02:23:38):
You know, that, that was kind of what the question that popped up in my head, like, is this a tablet first or is it a smart display first with tablet? You know what I mean? Which direction? I mean, all
Dave Burke (02:23:47):
Of the above, but I'm not, I mean, as an Android person, like I'm, I'm most excited about, it's a tablet first, you know, and I think, I think if you talk to the team in Google, they'll tell you it's a tablet first too. Cuz it, it has to be, it has to be like, well actually, you know, actually it's one of the premises at the beginning is like, it has to be a, a great tablet first. Yes. You know, and so that was a focus.
Jason Howell (02:24:05):
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I know we got a, we actually am looking at the time. We gotta round things out. Do you, like, have we missed anything that we need to throw out there before suddenly we don't have our opportunity
Ron Richards (02:24:15):
Say satisfying Click. So I'm
Jason Howell (02:24:16):
<Laugh>. You can check that. Mark. Check mark. I did get
Ron Richards (02:24:19):
A chuckle from the, we were in the, in the, the, the product demo pit for the press and, and the, the woman from Google was over my shoulder and I did it. And she's like, it's nice, isn't it, <laugh>?
Jason Howell (02:24:28):
Yes, it really is. She
Ron Richards (02:24:29):
Knew exactly what I was doing. <Laugh>
Jason Howell (02:24:31):
<Laugh>. Well, we are delighted every time we get a chance to come to Google io even more delighted when we get the chance to speak with you both. Just really wanna thank you for taking time out of what is always a crazy day, Google io keynote day to give us like 45 minutes of your time is we are just over the moon. So thank you very much for carving out that. Thank
Sameer Samat (02:24:51):
You. And we, we we love what you, you're doing and, and the fans of, of of, of this podcast are, are really important to us. So thank you
Dave Burke (02:24:59):
So much and we're fans too, so
Jason Howell (02:25:01):
Thank you. Right on. Excellent. Well, Dave Burke, Samir Samat we will talk to you next time hopefully. And yeah, everybody we have our live coverage. If you missed it, of the keynote, if you wanna hear what Leo and the crew were saying while everything was happening, you can just check it out at tweet tv slash news where you find this podcast as well. So thank you so much hear from the Google campus. We'll see you next time. Bye everybody.
Dave Burke (02:25:28):
Thank you.
