The banana plug ports are a completely mystifying design decision. I honestly think they were chosen because they made the design look interesting, rather than because they served any common or essential use case. I'd venture that, in descending order of adoption rate, these are the likeliest audio interfaces in people's homes:
- 3.5mm
- RCA
- TOSLINK (optical audio)
- HDMI
- Coaxial digital audio
- Tin can and string
- Banana plugs
Besides, if you've got speakers that are so good you're wiring them up with banana plugged-cables, you probably already have a pretty nice receiver. What purpose was served by adding an amp and making this thing into a mini receiver on its own?
As it is, the Nexus Q embraces two sorta common connectors and one extremely high-end, therefore niche interface. The most common and obvious audio interface, the 3.5mm jack, is left in the cold.
All the connections you list (3.5mm, HDMI, and in particular tin can and string) cannot be used for the output of an amplifier: the Q is meant to be directly connected to passive speakers. Then banana plugs are a reasonable choice.
The question IMHO should be: why did they include an (expensive) amplifier in the Q? Most people will want to use it with amplified speakers, and if someone has high-end speakers he probably already has a decent amplifier. It makes even less sense if connected via HDMI to an home-theatre setup.
Maybe they have in mind a screen + Q + passive speakers setup, without any other amplifier/gaming console/dvd player/...?
I had assumed that they were 5-way binding posts, but further inspection says no.
For popularity of interfaces, powered speaker outputs are obviously for completely different use-cases than anything else you listed. You aren't going to connect a 3.5mm or TOSLINK output to a passive speaker, and you generally aren't going to connect speaker-level outputs to an RCA input. The only other competing connecter worth considering is plain old bare wire.
It has TOSLINK and HDMI outputs in addition; it's not an either/or choice.
As for the benefit of amplifier integration, I can think of a few:
- Space. The nice receivers you talk about are generally at least 17" wide and 14" deep, so if this is a bedroom or den setup for wireless music streaming you might not have space for one. Smaller ones obviously exist, but I haven't found one smaller than about 11" by 13" with remote volume control.
- Power consumption. Full receivers often have ridiculous idle power consumption, and the only standardized way to turn them off (HDMI-CEC) can still have significant standby power consumption. Also it uses a more efficient class D amp while most full receivers use class AB.
- Volume control. It should be between the DAC and amplifier, but with a two piece streaming + outboard receiver your options are either a separate remote to control it or digital volume control at the streamer, which really is suboptimal. And if you want a tiny amp then there is no remote; you have to get up and physically turn a knob.
I agree with you that the banana plugs were an odd choice, but to be fair, none of the interfaces you listed would be found on a pair of speakers unless they were powered.
The 3.5mm jack would be common sense for a line out, but certainly not for the speaker-out from an amplifier.
The logical connector would be binding post, which allows banana connectors, bare wire, or lugs. As you mentioned, I'm sure these weren't used because of aesthetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_post
I don't think it's mystifying at all. Banana plugs are probably the most convenient way to hook speakers to an amplifier. And despite all of its other flaws, one of the most exciting things to me is being able to power speakers directly from the Q. Right now, I either have to buy an insanely over-priced Sonos system, or buy a bunch of airport express stations AND an amplifier if I want sound all over my house. It's very convenient to have an amplifier built in if you want to do something like add speakers in your bedroom or kitchen.
All that being said, $300 is a crazy, crazy price for this, but I really think banana plugs and an amplifier are one of the only good decisions made with the Q.
Besides, I don't see how comparing myriad interfaces that _can't connect an amplifier to speakers to make sound_ with banana plugs is helpful to the conversation.
Hmm I'm not so sure about that. 3.5mm is maybe the standard for computer-type speakers and earbuds... but banana plugs have been the standard for decades now in home theatre hi-fi systems. Pretty much any decent speakers will connect to a receiver using banana plugs. You also forgot XLR and 1/4" connectors which are the norm in production equipment (my cheapo M-Audio speakers are connected to my computer with those right now).
Whether the Nexus Q needs to contain a dedicated amplifier that can get around an A/V receiver (which a lot of people who invested in their home theatre system might already have) is another matter.
Are they the banana jacks where the outside is a nut you can tighten down on bare wire or spade terminals? That's actually good—nearly all the speakers I have ever used have been bare wire.
The Nexus Q is easily hack-able. That's an important feature. Just a few days after the Q launched you already had people transforming it into a game console with mind control and a projector:
This is probably not a mass consumer device supposed to replace the Roku. It's a premium product for a very specific use case (as google demoed). While at the same time a developer toy to explore what android can do in different devices.
I know that this was not purpose of your post, but when I actually see the thing on photos - holy damn, that thing is big. It's really bigger than I imagined.
Yikes. This is a $300 product that is incapable of doing the single thing it says it does on the box. It directly competes with Google TV yet doesn't offer any integration with it. There's no official developer story, no promise of future features, no way of using it out of the box without already owning another Google product, and I don't even see an analog 3.5mm jack. Who is this for?
Meanwhile Apple Airplay is not getting remotely enough attention. It's social, it's rock solid, it's zero-configuration, it's invisible, it enables desirable real-world media sharing scenarios, and it's already on a billion devices. Google should get out their checkbook and license it before they're permanently shut out of the living room.
I think I'm in the target market (tech geek, enjoy casual music listening) and I just can't wrap my head around the multi-playlist scenario:
"The Q presumably gets its name from “queue,” or playlist, and Google is especially proud of its multi-participant playlist feature. If you’re having friends over, and they, too, have Android phones, and they, too, have bought songs from Google’s music store, then they can add their own songs to your Q’s queue.
Sounds interesting in theory. In practice, there’s a lot of spontaneity-killing setup. You have to go into Settings to turn on the feature. Then you have to invite your friend to participate by — get this — sending an e-mail message. Then your friend has to download the Nexus Q app."
When I'm hanging out, music is a background thing while we talk or play games. Not something people are fiddling with on a song-by-song basis (at most: "Hey, could you change the Pandora station?").
Apple has something similar (iTunes remote? can't remember the name, it's been that long) and I'd love to know how often that feature gets used. There's also the unspoken social rule that whoever is hosting the party generally picks the music.
They should fire the PM who came up with this work flow.
I own an Apple TV and hosted a party at home.
My Apple TV is not protected by password, so all my friends with iPhones (the last one to own an Android got tired of it and replaced it with iPhone) could see the special 'Air Play' icon (http://cms.whathifi.com/Images/189140462bli.jpg) on their iPhone as soon as they join my WiFi network. Now anyone can play media on my TV, be it music from their library/photos from their camera roll/any other App which supports AirPlay. No set up required.
When I bought Apple TV, I bought it only for Netflix but I have been using it a lot through AirPlay. It's a killer feature.
I have nearly the exact opposite experience of music at parties. Invariably someone says, "You have to hear this." Whether its a new song or a magical YouTube clip of Jonathan Coulton live or LMFAO or whatever.
Having a seamless user interface where everyone's phone can, with the click of a button, remotely play a song they own or start a Youtube clip sounds fun.
But like Pogue, it doesn't sound 300 bones fun to me. For that, I can unplug the speaker's 3.5mm cord from my phone and plug it into my friend's phone. And do a quick search on Youtube on some Wii, Xbox, PS3, Roku, etc. that I already own.
And for the tech geek, doesn't the fast-approaching sub-$100 full-on Linux or Android ARM HTPC make way more sense? Why would I choose a crippled device over one that lets me do whatever I want?
I know with my friends the remote app gets used fairly frequently. We play different music on each other's speakers and it's really useful and nice.
AirPlay too. At least two houses I've been in the past few weeks involved streaming music to a friend's speaker system after connecting to a friend's wifi point.
Lately I think AirPlay has become more common than remote.
I understand where you're coming from, but I am in the opposite camp. My friends and I have wanted something like this since the early days of winamp.
My hope is that the Q will be able to connect devices with just NFC though. I don't mind the settings or app requirements, but it would be nice if I can skip the e-mail invite.
The most interesting thing about the Nexus Q is that it enables sharing a device. That is, it has the ability to temporarily use accounts from Android devices.
It can run Android apps, so it is, in fact, an Android device. It isn't tied to an individual. If this is well-implemented and secure, it's an interesting aspect of the Android OS that hasn't been exposed in other Android devices yet. If it is possible to build a similar system from the AOSP code-base, that would be very useful for people with a less-dogmatic idea of a feature set.
Most other aspects are, as Pogue points out, full of WTF.
The Q's hardware is capable of much more than the software currently allows. Hacking it was explicitly encouraged at I/O. All of the negative points in the article can be fixed with software updates. Seeing as this is a brand new product, the software currently has minimum functionality to show off its two new features: control via tablet, social playlists.
I predict that in the next year the Q will get software support for:
- iOS devices as a controller
- other computers on your network as a controller (web interface or chrome app or something)
- netflix/hulu/other stuff streaming support
- music/video streaming from local network devices
- streaming all audio output from a device (like my desktop computer) to the Q, so it can be used as a stereo device instead of just an output device
However, assuming all of those features were added, I'm still not sure I'd pay $300 for it.
We have a "problem" at our hackerspace where lots of people want to control the stereo. Usually there are 5-10 people in there working, there is always music playing, and the person controlling the music (or the "wubs" as they are affectionately called now) changes pretty frequently.
We should be exactly the target market for the Q.
Except we already solved this problem. We bought a really long cable off of monoprice, and we bought a bluetooth audio receiver. They both plug into a mixing board, and they allow everybody to play music. Switching between who "has wubs" involves going "hey, you want wubs?".
It works really well, it almost never breaks down, it doesn't require anybody to install anything on their phones, computers, cassette players, arduino shields, theramins, contact microphones, or whatever else we decide we want to play over the PA.
Most importantly, it doesn't cost $300.
...and then one of us bought one and brought it into the lab.
Yes, the banana plug ports are a completely mystifying design decision. I honestly think they were chosen because they made the design look interesting, rather than because they served any common or essential use case.
Sometimes when you're wildly successful as Google is with Android and Search, you start doing things that don't make a lot of sense.
Microsoft has done this many, many times as has Apple. With Microsoft you can see the ill fated Kin/Kin 2, Windows Media Center, Windows Tablet, Windows UMPC's, etc. that for various reasons just weren't good ideas, weren't priced right, etc. Apple had the G4 cube, iPod Hi-Fi, and the Motorolla ROKR (with iTunes).
When you have billions of dollars in profit, you tend to throw money around at ideas that might not be ready yet, or just might not be very good ideas yet. Google has a history of doing this in software, but now that they're moving into hardware the problems seem more glaring.
The Moto ROKR was Apple's iPhone stalking-horse - the project was likely doomed to fail commercially, but Apple gets valuable industry experience in rolling working on a cell phone.
With most of those products you mentioned, I can see some sense with them. I would say the Windows Media Center is the most successful of those examples.
The Kin is only one I can say made no sense for the same reason the nexus Q doesn't make sense. It's really locked, not easy for the user put there own content on the device and relies too much on the cloud.
About the price. Many people been blaming it on the "made in USA" + amplifier. I'm not american, and I don't understand patriotism. And I wouldn't think a product being made in USA as the main selling point, would ever work. But before the IO I saw this project on kickstarter where they were trying to sell underwear made in the US [1]. That's their only selling point, their product is made in the US, that's all. And guess what, it was immensely successful on kickstarter. The comments are filled with praises with how awesome it is to wear underwear made in america.
Maybe someone here has better understanding of that market. Could the made in the US selling point of the Q actually be big enough to drive sales? Would americans actually pay more only because of that?
Just a generation ago, working in factories your whole life was still a viable and promising career. A man could make enough money working on an assembly line to support his wife and children, while owning a nice house. Manufacturing in the US died extremely quickly with no real life-line for those displaced. Especially in Michigan (Detroit in particular), all the car factories closed nearly at once, displacing hundreds of thousands of laborers, with almost no hope of getting another job.
Listen to American Country music from the late 80's and early 90's, like Alabama, Brooks and Dunn, and Billy Ray Cyrus. It's all about a blue-collar factory worker who drives a Corvette and a pickup truck and owns a house with plenty of land. Now fast forward to the last 5-10 years in Country music, where you have Hank Williams Jr singing "Red. White. and Pink Slip Blues". (in the US, a "pink slip" refers to your termination notice when you lose your job)
Manufacturing in America is seen as something we've had stolen from us by the Japanese and Chinese. Anything made in America must be better than the Asians can make, because it was made in America. Many Americans insist on buying GM/Ford/Chrysler cars, for example, because they or their families probably worked in the American car factories. Even though these are not "American" cars anymore, the thought of buying a Japanese or Korean auto (even though they actually are made in the US) is distasteful. It's a legacy that some people are unwilling to forget, even at the expense of hurting American jobs more by not supporting foreign auto makers who do employ Americans.
> Could the made in the US selling point of the Q actually be big enough to drive sales? Would americans actually pay more only because of that?
Well, generally no. Which is why you don't see many products actually being made in the US and it's more the domain of obscure kickstarter projects. (And why the Nexus Q is such a confusing and odd exception that this makes the news.)
There is generally a notion that the US should be doing it's own manufacturing and an idea that we should be doing our own sweating for our own goods. It's seen as a fairly noble goal, but I think the market has generally shown people aren't usually willing to pay that much more for it. It's a marketing point in your favor if you can get it, but if it's going to effect the cost by a bunch... most people just don't care enough.
Also I think the motivations are mixed. It's not just about patriotism but about a political desire to see products made in a country where it's easier to ensure that the people who poured sweat into them were compensated fairly. The impression is US labor laws generally will ensure that and most of the countries US products get imported from, do not have those types of frameworks.
(Obviously there are other countries which do, but we don't tend to import cheap consumer goods from countries with labor costs as high as ours, for obvious reasons. :))
Made in USA is about much more than just patriotism. In the USA, many people buy locally produced goods since it supports the local economy better, reduces carbon emissions from shipping goods half-way around the world, and isn't produced in slave-labor conditions of 3rd world countries.
(Also, you don't understand patriotism? It's tribalism, something deeply encoded in our behavior from many thousands of years of tribal evolution.)
The "made in the USA" explanation of the price difference between this and the $100 AppleTV or $90 Roku doesn't really hold water.
Even if Chinese workers are making $0.80 an hour vs $16 for a US worker, the Q would have to soak up a ridiculous number of man hours in assembly to explain such a drastic price difference.
Either that amp is really expensive or Google is just plain overcharging for this thing.
I don't buy that this thing was built for hackers & makers. If you really wanted to build something for them, why not release something like the beagle board or rasberry pi but running Android? These ARM SoC based development boards are really getting cheap and are a lot more practical for building stuff since they have general purpose IO pins, are powered by a few volts DC, and include handy stuff like serial UARTs, single wire bus interfaces, etc.
The Q is expensive, lives in a funky impractical case, and doesn't have a lot of useful IO. For $300 you could buy a few Arduinos, a beagle board/ARM SoC dev board, and even an FPGA dev board.
I can't help but wonder why Google didn't ship this thing with Google Now.
A cool looking sci-fi sphere that hooks up to my TV and lets me and my Android-enabled guests stream stuff from Google's cloud? I have almost no need for this.
A few cool looking sci-fi spheres around my home that wirelessly link all my speakers to the same content from Google's cloud? Eh. Interesting, but not worth $300.
A cool looking sci-fi sphere in my bedroom that knows I usually go to work around 9am and can wake me up and give me spoken alerts that traffic is rough and I should leave at 8:15am, and is still a hackable Android device? Take my money, take it all.
Why is the app to control the Q Android-only? Does Google genuinely think that iPhone users will switch platforms to Android just to have the chance to control this player?
Seems like you are throwing out half the potential audience for this type of product by only supporting the Android OS.
The thing I have felt about Google is they don't market their features well.
They will show off a lot of potential but leave it to the imagination of the developers/users to figure out what they can do with it.
I think they have improved upon that to some degree with the Jelly Bean presentation, but I really think their products would be more appreciated if they highlighted good use cases for all their new features.
I think the Q makes more sense if you pretend it doesn't have an HDMI out.
If you're plugging it into a TV, then the TV already has built in speakers (for normal folks, nerds probably have a 5.1 surround system) and its amp is useless, and its ability to be controlled via smartphone is lessened since you could have a TV-based UI. You also probably start thinking about streaming video, which it isn't particularly good at and which they already have a competing product for.
If you stick it in another room, one without a TV, then suddenly it makes sense. It's competing with a high-end iPod speaker dock. And like those, you're essentially paying for a bit of furniture, unlike an Apple TV or generic streaming box which hides in your media unit. For the iPod dock you have to put all your music into iTunes and copy to an iPod which then sits in the dock, for Google you put the music in the cloud.
I wonder what this conversation would look like if this was an Apple device?
From the looks of the marketing, google are trying to tap the "shiny and expensive" niche. It's almost like this is supposed to be more of an ornament that happens to also perform a function, after all it's going to be an awkward shape to stack under the TV with all the other set top boxes.
There are no issues presented here that can't be fixed by pushing a software update. It is definitely not a finished product but the design looks pretty unique and once the software is finished this can become a good product at least in terms of design and functionality.
As far as the price point is concerned, $300 is a lot of money for a set-top box. However, if this can double up as a game console, it becomes competitive.
Google is still an early player in the hardware field and they are still trying to get things right. This is probably a test device for them before they push for a much more competitive product.
[+] [-] danilocampos|13 years ago|reply
- 3.5mm
- RCA
- TOSLINK (optical audio)
- HDMI
- Coaxial digital audio
- Tin can and string
- Banana plugs
Besides, if you've got speakers that are so good you're wiring them up with banana plugged-cables, you probably already have a pretty nice receiver. What purpose was served by adding an amp and making this thing into a mini receiver on its own?
As it is, the Nexus Q embraces two sorta common connectors and one extremely high-end, therefore niche interface. The most common and obvious audio interface, the 3.5mm jack, is left in the cold.
(An expansion on my reply to:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4205281
Which includes an almost comical photo in support of this argument:
http://yfrog.com/z/oe42wqagj )
[+] [-] ot|13 years ago|reply
The question IMHO should be: why did they include an (expensive) amplifier in the Q? Most people will want to use it with amplified speakers, and if someone has high-end speakers he probably already has a decent amplifier. It makes even less sense if connected via HDMI to an home-theatre setup.
Maybe they have in mind a screen + Q + passive speakers setup, without any other amplifier/gaming console/dvd player/...?
[+] [-] brigade|13 years ago|reply
For popularity of interfaces, powered speaker outputs are obviously for completely different use-cases than anything else you listed. You aren't going to connect a 3.5mm or TOSLINK output to a passive speaker, and you generally aren't going to connect speaker-level outputs to an RCA input. The only other competing connecter worth considering is plain old bare wire.
It has TOSLINK and HDMI outputs in addition; it's not an either/or choice.
As for the benefit of amplifier integration, I can think of a few:
- Space. The nice receivers you talk about are generally at least 17" wide and 14" deep, so if this is a bedroom or den setup for wireless music streaming you might not have space for one. Smaller ones obviously exist, but I haven't found one smaller than about 11" by 13" with remote volume control.
- Power consumption. Full receivers often have ridiculous idle power consumption, and the only standardized way to turn them off (HDMI-CEC) can still have significant standby power consumption. Also it uses a more efficient class D amp while most full receivers use class AB.
- Volume control. It should be between the DAC and amplifier, but with a two piece streaming + outboard receiver your options are either a separate remote to control it or digital volume control at the streamer, which really is suboptimal. And if you want a tiny amp then there is no remote; you have to get up and physically turn a knob.
[+] [-] huntero|13 years ago|reply
The 3.5mm jack would be common sense for a line out, but certainly not for the speaker-out from an amplifier.
The logical connector would be binding post, which allows banana connectors, bare wire, or lugs. As you mentioned, I'm sure these weren't used because of aesthetics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_post
[+] [-] ubercore|13 years ago|reply
All that being said, $300 is a crazy, crazy price for this, but I really think banana plugs and an amplifier are one of the only good decisions made with the Q.
Besides, I don't see how comparing myriad interfaces that _can't connect an amplifier to speakers to make sound_ with banana plugs is helpful to the conversation.
[+] [-] mladenkovacevic|13 years ago|reply
Whether the Nexus Q needs to contain a dedicated amplifier that can get around an A/V receiver (which a lot of people who invested in their home theatre system might already have) is another matter.
[+] [-] binaryorganic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daniel_Newby|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vibrunazo|13 years ago|reply
https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/BRbJEQk4...
This is probably not a mass consumer device supposed to replace the Roku. It's a premium product for a very specific use case (as google demoed). While at the same time a developer toy to explore what android can do in different devices.
[+] [-] JonoW|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredoliveira|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwhitman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zbowling|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runn1ng|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] i386|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bonch|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jpxxx|13 years ago|reply
Meanwhile Apple Airplay is not getting remotely enough attention. It's social, it's rock solid, it's zero-configuration, it's invisible, it enables desirable real-world media sharing scenarios, and it's already on a billion devices. Google should get out their checkbook and license it before they're permanently shut out of the living room.
[+] [-] kalid|13 years ago|reply
"The Q presumably gets its name from “queue,” or playlist, and Google is especially proud of its multi-participant playlist feature. If you’re having friends over, and they, too, have Android phones, and they, too, have bought songs from Google’s music store, then they can add their own songs to your Q’s queue.
Sounds interesting in theory. In practice, there’s a lot of spontaneity-killing setup. You have to go into Settings to turn on the feature. Then you have to invite your friend to participate by — get this — sending an e-mail message. Then your friend has to download the Nexus Q app."
When I'm hanging out, music is a background thing while we talk or play games. Not something people are fiddling with on a song-by-song basis (at most: "Hey, could you change the Pandora station?").
Apple has something similar (iTunes remote? can't remember the name, it's been that long) and I'd love to know how often that feature gets used. There's also the unspoken social rule that whoever is hosting the party generally picks the music.
[+] [-] solutionyogi|13 years ago|reply
I own an Apple TV and hosted a party at home.
My Apple TV is not protected by password, so all my friends with iPhones (the last one to own an Android got tired of it and replaced it with iPhone) could see the special 'Air Play' icon (http://cms.whathifi.com/Images/189140462bli.jpg) on their iPhone as soon as they join my WiFi network. Now anyone can play media on my TV, be it music from their library/photos from their camera roll/any other App which supports AirPlay. No set up required.
When I bought Apple TV, I bought it only for Netflix but I have been using it a lot through AirPlay. It's a killer feature.
[+] [-] eupharis|13 years ago|reply
Having a seamless user interface where everyone's phone can, with the click of a button, remotely play a song they own or start a Youtube clip sounds fun.
But like Pogue, it doesn't sound 300 bones fun to me. For that, I can unplug the speaker's 3.5mm cord from my phone and plug it into my friend's phone. And do a quick search on Youtube on some Wii, Xbox, PS3, Roku, etc. that I already own.
And for the tech geek, doesn't the fast-approaching sub-$100 full-on Linux or Android ARM HTPC make way more sense? Why would I choose a crippled device over one that lets me do whatever I want?
[+] [-] tjohns|13 years ago|reply
(There is a mode where you can restrict sharing to invited users only. Again, this is not the default.)
Yes, you need to install the app. But assuming you have a NFC-enabled device, all this takes is tapping your phone on the top of the Q.
That's not really what I'd call "a lot" of setup.
[+] [-] djcapelis|13 years ago|reply
AirPlay too. At least two houses I've been in the past few weeks involved streaming music to a friend's speaker system after connecting to a friend's wifi point.
Lately I think AirPlay has become more common than remote.
[+] [-] rch|13 years ago|reply
My hope is that the Q will be able to connect devices with just NFC though. I don't mind the settings or app requirements, but it would be nice if I can skip the e-mail invite.
[+] [-] Zigurd|13 years ago|reply
It can run Android apps, so it is, in fact, an Android device. It isn't tied to an individual. If this is well-implemented and secure, it's an interesting aspect of the Android OS that hasn't been exposed in other Android devices yet. If it is possible to build a similar system from the AOSP code-base, that would be very useful for people with a less-dogmatic idea of a feature set.
Most other aspects are, as Pogue points out, full of WTF.
[+] [-] zbowling|13 years ago|reply
At Apportable (YC11) we have been poking around with it and found it has the potential for being an amazing game platform.
You can read about our exploits where I demoed the results our hacks at AnDevCamp this last weekend after Google IO: https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/BRbJEQk4...
We figured out it's also possible to transfer APKs to the device with NFC but it fails at random points.
We also got a mouse working with one of the games we ported for Android: https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/iAsNqGrX...
My thoughts are that google wanted to ship it by Google IO but have more plans for it upcoming.
[+] [-] will_work4tears|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjibson|13 years ago|reply
I predict that in the next year the Q will get software support for:
- iOS devices as a controller
- other computers on your network as a controller (web interface or chrome app or something)
- netflix/hulu/other stuff streaming support
- music/video streaming from local network devices
- streaming all audio output from a device (like my desktop computer) to the Q, so it can be used as a stereo device instead of just an output device
However, assuming all of those features were added, I'm still not sure I'd pay $300 for it.
[+] [-] blhack|13 years ago|reply
We have a "problem" at our hackerspace where lots of people want to control the stereo. Usually there are 5-10 people in there working, there is always music playing, and the person controlling the music (or the "wubs" as they are affectionately called now) changes pretty frequently.
We should be exactly the target market for the Q.
Except we already solved this problem. We bought a really long cable off of monoprice, and we bought a bluetooth audio receiver. They both plug into a mixing board, and they allow everybody to play music. Switching between who "has wubs" involves going "hey, you want wubs?".
It works really well, it almost never breaks down, it doesn't require anybody to install anything on their phones, computers, cassette players, arduino shields, theramins, contact microphones, or whatever else we decide we want to play over the PA.
Most importantly, it doesn't cost $300.
...and then one of us bought one and brought it into the lab.
Here is what happened: http://yfrog.com/z/oe42wqagj
[+] [-] danilocampos|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] programminggeek|13 years ago|reply
Microsoft has done this many, many times as has Apple. With Microsoft you can see the ill fated Kin/Kin 2, Windows Media Center, Windows Tablet, Windows UMPC's, etc. that for various reasons just weren't good ideas, weren't priced right, etc. Apple had the G4 cube, iPod Hi-Fi, and the Motorolla ROKR (with iTunes).
When you have billions of dollars in profit, you tend to throw money around at ideas that might not be ready yet, or just might not be very good ideas yet. Google has a history of doing this in software, but now that they're moving into hardware the problems seem more glaring.
[+] [-] r00fus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erifneerg|13 years ago|reply
The Kin is only one I can say made no sense for the same reason the nexus Q doesn't make sense. It's really locked, not easy for the user put there own content on the device and relies too much on the cloud.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jaems33|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vibrunazo|13 years ago|reply
Maybe someone here has better understanding of that market. Could the made in the US selling point of the Q actually be big enough to drive sales? Would americans actually pay more only because of that?
[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jakehimself/flint-and-ti...
[+] [-] freehunter|13 years ago|reply
Listen to American Country music from the late 80's and early 90's, like Alabama, Brooks and Dunn, and Billy Ray Cyrus. It's all about a blue-collar factory worker who drives a Corvette and a pickup truck and owns a house with plenty of land. Now fast forward to the last 5-10 years in Country music, where you have Hank Williams Jr singing "Red. White. and Pink Slip Blues". (in the US, a "pink slip" refers to your termination notice when you lose your job)
Manufacturing in America is seen as something we've had stolen from us by the Japanese and Chinese. Anything made in America must be better than the Asians can make, because it was made in America. Many Americans insist on buying GM/Ford/Chrysler cars, for example, because they or their families probably worked in the American car factories. Even though these are not "American" cars anymore, the thought of buying a Japanese or Korean auto (even though they actually are made in the US) is distasteful. It's a legacy that some people are unwilling to forget, even at the expense of hurting American jobs more by not supporting foreign auto makers who do employ Americans.
[+] [-] djcapelis|13 years ago|reply
Well, generally no. Which is why you don't see many products actually being made in the US and it's more the domain of obscure kickstarter projects. (And why the Nexus Q is such a confusing and odd exception that this makes the news.)
There is generally a notion that the US should be doing it's own manufacturing and an idea that we should be doing our own sweating for our own goods. It's seen as a fairly noble goal, but I think the market has generally shown people aren't usually willing to pay that much more for it. It's a marketing point in your favor if you can get it, but if it's going to effect the cost by a bunch... most people just don't care enough.
Also I think the motivations are mixed. It's not just about patriotism but about a political desire to see products made in a country where it's easier to ensure that the people who poured sweat into them were compensated fairly. The impression is US labor laws generally will ensure that and most of the countries US products get imported from, do not have those types of frameworks.
(Obviously there are other countries which do, but we don't tend to import cheap consumer goods from countries with labor costs as high as ours, for obvious reasons. :))
[+] [-] postfuturist|13 years ago|reply
(Also, you don't understand patriotism? It's tribalism, something deeply encoded in our behavior from many thousands of years of tribal evolution.)
[+] [-] msbarnett|13 years ago|reply
Even if Chinese workers are making $0.80 an hour vs $16 for a US worker, the Q would have to soak up a ridiculous number of man hours in assembly to explain such a drastic price difference.
Either that amp is really expensive or Google is just plain overcharging for this thing.
[+] [-] guelo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdicola|13 years ago|reply
The Q is expensive, lives in a funky impractical case, and doesn't have a lot of useful IO. For $300 you could buy a few Arduinos, a beagle board/ARM SoC dev board, and even an FPGA dev board.
[+] [-] generalk|13 years ago|reply
A cool looking sci-fi sphere that hooks up to my TV and lets me and my Android-enabled guests stream stuff from Google's cloud? I have almost no need for this.
A few cool looking sci-fi spheres around my home that wirelessly link all my speakers to the same content from Google's cloud? Eh. Interesting, but not worth $300.
A cool looking sci-fi sphere in my bedroom that knows I usually go to work around 9am and can wake me up and give me spoken alerts that traffic is rough and I should leave at 8:15am, and is still a hackable Android device? Take my money, take it all.
[+] [-] brown9-2|13 years ago|reply
Seems like you are throwing out half the potential audience for this type of product by only supporting the Android OS.
[+] [-] powerslave12r|13 years ago|reply
They will show off a lot of potential but leave it to the imagination of the developers/users to figure out what they can do with it.
I think they have improved upon that to some degree with the Jelly Bean presentation, but I really think their products would be more appreciated if they highlighted good use cases for all their new features.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|13 years ago|reply
If you're plugging it into a TV, then the TV already has built in speakers (for normal folks, nerds probably have a 5.1 surround system) and its amp is useless, and its ability to be controlled via smartphone is lessened since you could have a TV-based UI. You also probably start thinking about streaming video, which it isn't particularly good at and which they already have a competing product for.
If you stick it in another room, one without a TV, then suddenly it makes sense. It's competing with a high-end iPod speaker dock. And like those, you're essentially paying for a bit of furniture, unlike an Apple TV or generic streaming box which hides in your media unit. For the iPod dock you have to put all your music into iTunes and copy to an iPod which then sits in the dock, for Google you put the music in the cloud.
[+] [-] myko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
From the looks of the marketing, google are trying to tap the "shiny and expensive" niche. It's almost like this is supposed to be more of an ornament that happens to also perform a function, after all it's going to be an awkward shape to stack under the TV with all the other set top boxes.
[+] [-] spudlyo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prayag|13 years ago|reply
As far as the price point is concerned, $300 is a lot of money for a set-top box. However, if this can double up as a game console, it becomes competitive.
Google is still an early player in the hardware field and they are still trying to get things right. This is probably a test device for them before they push for a much more competitive product.