Last year, we outlined Google's commitment to comply with Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), across all of the services we provide in the European Union. We've been working on our compliance efforts for over eighteen months, and ahead of the new law coming into effect, here's an update on some of the key steps we've taken.
A few insights into how Google will handle the data of EU citizens.
Duarte, along with seven other designers at Google, was speaking to about a dozen reporters about what's next for Material Design, Google's system for creating software design. Maybe it's the (lapsed) Lutheran in me, but calling the original Material Design a "gospel" struck a chord. It was religiously adhered to by the Android faithful ever since it launched. Apps that followed Material Design were holy; apps that didn't were anathema. I can't count the number of times I saw an app get dismissed by the Android community because it wasn't updated for Material Design.
And to extend the metaphor (yes, please grant me an indulgence on this), it was also a very restrictive doctrine. The tools it offered helped make many Android apps feel consistent, but it also stripped away too much differentiation between them. They all ended up feeling the same. More importantly, many app makers didn't want to give up their brand to Material Design. It made too many apps look and feel identical.
Simply put, people were being too dogmatic about how Material Design apps should look.
I have a long posting history at OSNews talking about how I value consistency in GUI design, because the more consistent my UI, the less I have to think about using said UI. To me, the strictness of Material Design is a feature, not a bug - and seeing its designers consider it the other way around has me shaking my head. I don't give a rat's butt about "brands" and "differentiation" - I just want to use my damn software with as little effort as possible.
Less auteur app design, more standard controls and views.
I've been using an iPhone X since it came out, and the utter lack of consistency between iOS applications remains a stumbling block to me to this day. It'd be a shame if Material Design went down the same dark path.
After decades of mangling text files coming from other operating systems. Microsoft's venerable Notepad.exe, which has been included in every version of Windows since the first, is finally getting support for Unix and macOS line endings.
Notepad, being a Windows application, has always demanded the CRLF pair. When faced with Unix files - quite common for source code and similar things - it sees the bare-naked LFs and prints them as black squares. Because it doesn't start a new line when faced with a naked LF, it shows the entire contents of the file as a single lengthy line, which makes it hard to read, much less edit.
But in the next update to Windows (likely to arrive in October or thereabouts), Notepad will handle Unix and classic MacOS line endings in addition to the Windows kind. This will make the editor much more useful than it currently is.
Support is somewhat limited - while it will correctly open files with alternate line endings, and will save the files correctly in their original format, you cannot create new text files and save them with Unix or MacOS line endings - Notepad will always save new files with the CRLF style used in Windows.
And, in true Microsoft function, Notepad provides a registry switch if you want to disable the new functionality for compatibility reasons, which only confirms the idea that there is an XKCD comic for everything.
Over the last few days, Apple has seemingly started cracking down on applications that share location data with third-parties. In such cases, Apple has been removing the application in question and informing developers that their app violates two parts of the App Store Review Guidelines.
Good.
At its Build developer conference yesterday, Microsoft showcased what's coming for its Fluent Design overhaul of Windows and its applications, and there's definitely a lot of good news for people who like Fluent Design, developers, and yes, even power users.
Microsoft will be adding Z-depth, dynamic shadows, and more to Fluent Design to further reduce the flatness of the user interface, using these to create a visual hierarchy inside applications. Developers will also get access to a new and improved way of managing colours inside their applications; instead of having to manually colour each control, developers now have access to more global colour control. Microsoft is also adding blurry transparency, shadows, and Z-depth to context menus.
A new contextual command bar flyout - similar to how Office applications will show various formatting options after selecting text - can be populated by developers with various contextual controls that make sense for the content in questions. Microsoft claims that it has designed this contextual bar so that it will work with either a few options, or lots and lots, making it useful even for very complex applications.
The biggest new feature, however, is one that will be welcomed by many. As it currently stands, Fluent Design is clearly a very touch-oriented interface, with large controls and lots of whitespace, making it challenging to build and design very complex applications with lots of options, buttons, and controls. Therefore, Microsoft is adding two denser layouts to Fluent Design - medium and compact. With the compact layout you can design applications that are just as dense as classic Win32 applications. You can already try the new, denser layouts in Windows Mail, which was updated today to add these new options.
The whole Fluent Design talk at Build is an interesting watch, as it also hints at the further Fluent Design-ification of Windows, including showing off file manager context menus.
Ubuntu 18.04 is a huge update, but I say that mostly in the best sense of big updates. It brings a ton of new stuff, both under the hood and on the desktop, without creating too much disruption to your workflows. The one exception to that is HUD users, who may want to stick with the version of Unity still in the Ubuntu repos.
The amount of time and effort wasted by switching to Unity and now switching back to GNOME shows - even this latest release looks and feels so dated to me.
Microsoft's had a variety of weird and wonderful consumer devices over the years that haven't gone so well. Jon Friedman, now chief designer of Office 365, has been at the center of Microsoft's notorious product failures, including the SPOT watches from 2004, ultra mobile PCs, the KIN phone, and the unreleased Courier device. At Microsoft's Build developer conference this week, Friedman reflected on his personal career at the software giant and why some of these products weren't successful.
The Courier always seemed like a fascinating device to me, even though I wouldn't really know what to do with it.
Today, we are pleased to announce that Visual Studio 15.8 Preview 1 contains an early preview of the SDK and tools to allow you to create your own 64-bit ARM (ARM64) apps. These tools answer the requests of many eager developers, and the development made possible with these tools represents the next step in the evolution of the Always Connected PC running Windows 10 on ARM.
Support for Linux will enable you to create, test and run Android and web app for phones, tablets and laptops all on one Chromebook. Run popular editors, code in your favorite language and launch projects to Google Cloud with the command-line. Everything works directly on a Chromebook.
Linux runs inside a virtual machine that was designed from scratch for Chromebooks. That means it starts in seconds and integrates completely with Chromebook features. Linux apps can start with a click of an icon, windows can be moved around, and files can be opened directly from apps.
It's official now.
After the previous post honing in specifically on the Google Duplex feature, it's time to take a look at all the other features coming to the Google Assistant.
We announced our vision for the Google Assistant just two years ago at I/O, and since then, we've been making fast progress in bringing the Assistant to more people around the world to help them get things done. As of today, the Google Assistant is available on more than 500 million devices, it works with over 5,000 connected home devices, it's available in cars from more than 40 brands, and it's built right into the latest devices, from the Active Edge in the Pixel 2 to a dedicated Assistant key in the LG G7 ThinQ. Plus, it'll be available in more than 30 languages and 80 countries by the end of the year.
Today at I/O, we're sharing our vision for the next phase of the Google Assistant, as we make it more naturally conversational, visually assistive, and helpful in getting things done.
The new features will roll out over the coming months.
This is both the scariest and the most amazing technology Google demoed on stage during I/O today.
Today we announce Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world†tasks over the phone. The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.
You must listen to the recorded conversations where a computer is making appointments with a hair salon and restaurant. The computer-generated half of the conversation sounds incredibly natural, with interruptions, "uhs", and so on. It even managed to fully understand the heavy accent of the restaurant worker, which even I had a hard time understanding at times. I am absolutely stunned this is even possible.
This is downright amazing, and will be built into the Google Assistant - so it can make appointments for you. While I doubt I'd ever even want to use something like this, there's no denying the technology is incredibly advanced. I am wondering, though, about the possible negative consequences of this technology, especially combined with advanced video editing tools.
Ten years ago, when we launched the first Android phone - the T-Mobile G1 - it was with a simple but bold idea: to build a mobile platform that's free and open to everyone. Today, that idea is thriving - billions of people around the world rely on their Android phone every day.
To make Android smarter and easier to use than ever, today we're unveiling a beta version of Android P, the next release of Android.
There's tons of new features, mostly about Android trying to anticipate what you want to do next. Android P takes Android's already pretty good inter-application communication a step further, by exposing actions and even parts of applications outside of the applications themselves, with App Actions and Slices.
App Actions, for instance, help you get to your next task more quickly by predicting what you want to do next. Say you connect your headphones to your device, Android will surface an action to resume your favorite Spotify playlist. Actions show up throughout Android in places like the Launcher, Smart Text Selection, the Play Store, the Google Search app and the Assistant.
Actions are a simple but powerful way for helping you get what you need quickly; but what if we could surface part of the app itself, right when you need it most? Slices do just that, giving you an even deeper look into your favorite apps. If you search for "Lyft" in Google Search, you can see an interactive Slice that gives you the price and time for a trip to work, and it’s interactive so you can quickly order the ride.
Other than that, Android P also brings gesture navigation to Android, to deal with phones with smaller bezels. Furthermore, Google put a lot of emphasis on what it calls "digital wellbeing", which aims to make you more aware of how and how often you use your phone. For instance, a feature called Wind Down will make the screen go black and white at a chosen time, encouraging you to put the phone down and go to sleep, and Dashboard gives you detailed information about how you use your phone.
The beta version of Android P is available starting today, for Pixel phones and a variety of other phones.
Now that iOS and Android are approaching technical maturity, new updates to these operating systems no longer feel revolutionary. The new stuff we get every year is boiling down to smarter notification handling, under-the-hood upgrades, screen notch adaptations, and “borrowing†good ideas from one another. As Google prepares to take the wraps off its next big iteration, Android P, at Google I/O 2018, I have an idea for an alliterative theme: make it Android P for Privacy.
Fully agreed with Vlad Savov. Sadly, the lack of encryption in Google's new chat feature doesn't bode well.
Interesting little tidbit from Microsoft's Build developer conference:
Updates helping you support the Fluent Design System, so you can create immersive, deeply engaging experiences with Microsoft's updated design language. Now every organization can make beautiful solutions that empower your customers to do more. With UWP XAML Islands, you can access the more capable, flexible, powerful XAML controls regardless which UI stack you use - whether it's Windows Forms, WPF, or native Win32.
It seems like Microsoft is giving developers of Win32 applications the option to add Fluent Design to their applications.
We're taking this leak with a grain of salt: it's either a perfectly executed set of Photoshopped images (along with very accurate timestamps) or the real deal. Supposing that it's real, Gabriel Bryne, whom I can't find anything tangible about, has somehow managed to get his hands on the Android P DP2 beta and installed it on his Pixel. He then did what any sensible man with a super secret Android release would do and took a bunch of screenshots and images of the interface.
Some interesting possibilities for Android P, which will probably be demoed later today during the Google I/O keynote.
But I do believe that the old Mac makes for a timely reminder that the digital age hasn't always felt so frantic, or urgent, or overwhelming. And maybe, even if an old Mac interface isn't the solution, we can view it as a subtle north star for its sensibilities, and how much it was able to accomplish with so little.
This story is far too light on details and quite fluffy, and the final sentence quoted above is far too simplistic - "how much it was able to accomplish" was, in fact, quite little compared to today's machines - but it's interesting to see people discovering the classic Macintosh operating system for the first time, and recognizing its many fun little affordances that made using it so pleasant.
Personally, I consider Mac OS 9 to have one of the most pleasant and usable graphical user interfaces ever designed. Sure, the underlying operating system was a grossly outdated technical mess by that point, but the many subtle animations, the spatial Finder, the consistent and elegantly understated Platinum looks made the UI a pleasure to use, to this very day. And considering I never used the classic Mac OS back when it was current, this isn't a case of rose-tinted nostalgia; I didn't get to try out OS 9 until 2005 or so.
I wish Apple's current software designers were forced to use the classic Platinum UI for a month or two, just to experience what it was like. Maybe they'd step up their game, because as it stands today, macOS' UI is mere shadow of OS 9.
I was at Microsoft's campus in Redmond a week before the Build developer conference, and I wanted to know what was going on with Windows after a reorg split the team into different divisions. Was Microsoft really preparing itself for a world without Windows? Nadella was ready to tell me that Windows isn't going away - of course Windows isn't going away - but he also wanted to explain his latest buzzwordy vision for the future of the Microsoft: AI, Intelligent Cloud, and Intelligent Edge.
Windows might still be here, but after talking to Nadella, I did get the sense that Windows is no longer as central to the company's future plans as it once was. Instead of trying to make everything run on Windows (as his predecessor Steve Ballmer was trying to do), Nadella wants to ensure that everything can work with Windows.
The decline of Windows is definitely overblown in the media, but Microsoft did miss the next big thing by a thousand miles, and mindshare-wise, this has had enormous consequences. It hasn't hurt Microsoft much financially though, and you can be sure Windows isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Tomorrow at Google I/O’s developers keynote, we will see the official launch of Flutter Beta 3. This beta is an important step towards the 1.0 build for Flutter, with a heavy focus on solidifying the improvements that Google has been working since they launched the initial Flutter Beta.
First and foremost among those improvements is the implementation of the Dart 2 programming language. The second version of Dart was designed specifically with the challenges that early Flutter builds ran into in mind, and brings some substantial changes, including strong typing, cleaner syntax, and an updated developer tool chain.
Flutter and Dart are also important parts of Fuchsia. And on that note, might I point out that Fuchsia is getting support for ART, the Android Runtime?
Android Things is Google's managed OS that enables you to build and maintain Internet of Things devices at scale. We provide a robust platform that does the heavy lifting with certified hardware, rich developer APIs, and secure managed software updates using Google's back-end infrastructure, so you can focus on building your product.
After a developer preview with over 100,000 SDK downloads, we're releasing Android Things 1.0 to developers today with long-term support for production devices. Developer feedback and engagement has been critical in our journey towards 1.0, and we are grateful to the over 10,000 developers who have provided us feedback through the issue tracker, at workshop events, and through our Google+ community.
Google is promising three years of security updates, straight from Google itself.
This has been bugging me for a while - definitely since iOS 11 was unveiled last June and probably before then. I have no clue what Apple's strategy is with their iOS app icon sets, other than to resign myself to the truth that there isn't one. For simplicity, I'm focusing on just the share icon in this post (what Apple formally calls the 'action' button) but these criticisms apply much more widely.
iOS is, indeed, an inconsistent mess when it comes to user interface design. Every application looks and feels different, which trips me up all the time. Android is a little bit better in this regard thanks to Material Design, but that's really not saying much.
And you know what? I'd rather have misaligned ports I never see at the bottom of my phone than inconsistent UI design I look at multiple times a day.
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