Nov 22, 2024 | Updated: 11:35 AM EDT
May 20, 2013 12:11 PM EDT
Well the I/O conference is over and it seems to have been somewhat disappointing to the hardware aficionados who didn’t really get any new toys to play with because of the heavy app developer focus. There were no additions to the Nexus line of tablets and phones, nor the Samsung Galaxy aside from the heftily priced stock Android edition, something appealing to only hardcore Android fans.
The Chromebook Pixel was distributed to attendees for free, but again its not exactly new and its something of a niche product, occupying a neither here nor there place between tablets and laptops.
Even the big roll-out ended up being the Google Glass which was actually announced first in the 2012 conference. Google Glass featured big despite lack of keynote mention, occupying numerous schedule slots and packing rooms to the brim. People were and continue to be very excited about the Glass. “Everywhere I looked at the conference, people were wearing Google Glass. Hundreds of them. Maybe more than a thousand! They were on the escalator. At the coffee stations. Press lounges. Lingering in the hallways like gangs of super nerds. They looked like real people as they nibbled on M&M’s and nuts at the snack bars. Except they weren’t; these “humans” were able to take pictures with their eyes and then post them to the Internet. The developers present who didn’t own the company’s augmented reality glasses stared at those who did with awe.”
Other major things that featured were improvements to the Google Play Store with the creation of the Android Game Center which offers multiplayer, cloud save games and other social gaming abilities like invites and leaderboards. This provided a boost to gamers and game developers who got some interesting coding, marketing and production software that will help them identify markets, product, translate and beta test games more easily. Oh and they received some awards too.
So no big roll-outs in this conference. There’s always next year.
Interested in I/O 2013?
Google I/O 2013 Conference: What Was Ignored? Android 4.3, Google TV and Nexus
