
The Google Nexus Q Is Baffling - ilamont
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/the-google-nexus-q-is-baffling/?nl=technology&emc=cta2_20120705
======
danilocampos
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.

(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
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/...?

~~~
danilocampos
Indeed! As I asked in my post:

> 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?

It's an odd decision the more you look at it. The sort of person who's happy
to plunk down $300 on a home theater component is already going to have a much
more capable device driving a surround sound system. It's not like this is
positioned to do that, so it can't _replace_ the home theater receiver.

Just odd.

~~~
ubercore
Replace is the wrong way to look at it. Supplement is better.

Sure, mostly people that care about audio are going to have a primary system
with a nice receiver and big speakers. But the same kind of person that cares
about music enough to want that _also_ wants to be able to listen to the same
music in any room in their house, with independent volume controls and freedom
to select speakers suitable for the listening environment and context.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
You can only stream through _Google properties_ though. Can't even stream from
a local PC. So even if you don't care, it's kinda funny. You have to stream
things over the internet all the time.

The hardcore might be using things like BitPerfect and using their own DAC/AMP
combos or whatever.

~~~
ubercore
Sure, not saying that part isn't stupid, it is. But a device that lets you
stream music to it _and_ offer decent amplification at less-than-Sonos prices
is a pretty good idea.

If the Q was $100 and let you stream in a fashion similar to AirPlay (ie, any
media on an android device), it would be unstoppable.

------
vibrunazo
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:

[https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/BRbJEQk4...](https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/BRbJEQk41vU)

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.

~~~
rwhitman
Hmm, maybe its actually a gaming console in disguise?

~~~
eupharis
... Wow that makes perfect sense. Especially when you considered how
ridiculously overpowered the hardware is for its ostensible use case!

~~~
spacemanaki
At $300, "secretly it's a game console" doesn't seem like a great business
plan. If that was the plan they should probably have lead with that.

~~~
eupharis
Actually, no. Marketing this as a game console at this moment makes no sense.
Because there are no games.

No game console maker has ever made real money on the hardware. If Google is
just breaking even on the Nexus Tablet, even when it's sold from their own
webstore, they can't be making much on this more powerful hardware.

The Google Play media sales, including games, is where the money is.

Without marketing as a game console, games will be available soon enough.
Here's the plan:

1) Existing Android game developers will adapt their games to work with the
Nexus Q. Because it is EASY.

2) Friends will have fun at parties queuing up music and videos and playing
games. Games that can (for the moment) only be played on the Nexus Q. Some of
said friends will buy the Nexus Q. Google hopes it spreads virally.

3) Google cleans up selling the media. If you have a Nexus Q and Android
phone, you are going go to Google Play first to buy all your media.

I'm not saying it's a genius business plan. But it's the only business case
I've seen that makes sense of this strange device.

It only takes a small percentage of people weaned away from the existing
Steam/Amazon/iTunes ecosystems and over to the nascent Google Play to make
this a very profitable venture.

I only realized just how powerful iTunes is when I tried to convince my
girlfriend over to switch to Linux many moons ago. I failed. Because she is
wedded to Apple for life. All her content works seamlessly with Apple
products. The price to move away from Apple has simply become too great, for
her and countless other Apple users. You simply cannot compete for those users
anymore. The big boys need to lockdown the remaining users to survive. And
fast.

~~~
jsight
Is this actually more powerful hardware than the Nexus 7? I don't get the
impression that the CPU is faster. And it while it does have an amp, it does
not have a 7" IPS display with a capacitive touchscreen. If anything, I would
expect the Nexus Q to be cheaper to build if they were built in the same
quantities.

------
jpxxx
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.

~~~
astral303
What's more baffling is the lack of design:

    
    
        "If you or the friend then taps the name of a song in
        your online Google account, it starts playing 
        immediately, rather than being added to the queue as
        you’d expect. A Google rep explained to me that you’re
        not supposed to tap a song to add it to the playlist;
        you have to use a tiny pop-up menu to add it."
    

Who thought that this possibly was a good idea or an acceptable way to release
the product?

No, it's not OK to explain that you must use a popup menu to add it. It's
plain fucked up. It means that someone, all too easily, can mess up the
current playlist by tapping at a song. One little movement with your finger
and you just ruined the mood by cutting the tune. You can't trust shit like
this. People will be afraid to open up the playlist. This strikes me as just
thrown together enough to work, but not designed to actually work well, in
every sense of the word.

~~~
ditojim
over-reacting a little? it takes 1x to realize you just cut into someone
else's song and about 10 seconds after that to figure out how to add them to
the Q instead.

~~~
modfodder
Multiply that by the number of party participants with Android that are also
trying to add their song. And this action is a bit unintuitive, so I wouldn't
be surprised to see people make the same mistake multiple times (not so much
if the party is filled with HN readers, but the average Android reader
definitely).

------
kalid
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.

~~~
solutionyogi
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.

~~~
zbowling
I think it was more problem of iterative design and having to pull out
features before release. I think the Q does a lot more but Google wanted to
ship by Google IO and would improve it with later software updates.

~~~
taligent
Why do they have to ship it by Google IO ?

Apple routinely announces something at a conference and says it will ship in X
months allowing them the time to polish. I see no reason why Google couldn't
do the same.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Probably because the hardware was already finalized (they wanted developers to
have them as freebies to begin hacking on, after all) and they didn't want to
miss out on potential media device buyers for the next X months.

~~~
snowwrestler
I'd guess they are going to miss out on a lot of potential media device buyers
anyway, by offering a crappy expensive product.

------
Zigurd
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.

~~~
fidotron
Exactly. The more familiar you get with the Android API the more you think
things like why does the activity I'm starting have to be on the same device?
Can't I fire Intents to devices on my local network? Wouldn't it be cool if
the YouTube activity I'm using on my phone could be migrated to the TV with
all state preserved?

You get problems in terms of where the data to drive it comes from, especially
if it's the class of data you'd normally store on an SD card, which may be one
slightly more reasonable explanation of the ludicrous cloud dependence of the
Q.

------
zbowling
So it does have a lot.

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...](https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/BRbJEQk41vU)

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...](https://plus.google.com/117676109445965905583/posts/iAsNqGrXKmU)

My thoughts are that google wanted to ship it by Google IO but have more plans
for it upcoming.

~~~
will_work4tears
Hmm, could be interesting in a multiplayer game that uses your android smart
phone as the controller.

------
mjibson
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.

~~~
brown9-2
Have there been products in the past that were underwhelming at launch but
later software upgrades to it to add features made it a big hit?

I think these devices, especially at $300, need to be attractive at launch to
become hits. Adding features 6-12 months down the line doesn't seem to ever
turn a lagging product around - launch is the time when potential consumers
are paying the most attention.

~~~
TillE
The iPhone. It wasn't terrible to begin with (a fancy phone with a decent web
browser), but it became a whole different product after the SDK was released.

~~~
czr80
You're kidding, right? You're offering the iPhone as your example of a product
where the public was underwhelmed at its launch?

~~~
CamperBob2
People don't seem to remember that the iPhone really was a pretty crappy phone
on launch day, in a lot of ways. It crashed constantly, didn't do a lot of
things that other phones already did, and had audio-quality problems. In the
parlance of the times, it wasn't a smartphone, it was an expensive feature
phone.

What turned the iPhone into a serious product, from my own point of view, was
the regular stream of updates and bug fixes that Apple provided. I didn't like
my iPhone very much at first, _but it just kept getting better_ , through no
effort or expense on my part. I wasn't accustomed to buying electronic devices
that magically got better over time. They won at least one loyal customer with
that approach, and influenced the way I do business today.

~~~
w33ble
While that's all true, people still lined up a few days in advance to get one.
Kind of difficult to make the point that the public was underwhelmed by it at
release.

------
blhack
This [the Q] is a solution hunting for a problem.

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
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.

~~~
bathat
I agree, but banana plugs can be added to regular speaker wire pretty easily.
Most just have a simple flat-head screw which holds the wire in place, so you
don't even need to warm up the soldering iron.

------
programminggeek
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.

~~~
r00fus
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.

~~~
AjithAntony
I did QA on the E398 ROKR. It was indeed designed to fail. Apple had a bunch
of very limiting requirements. Most notable was the 100 song limit.

------
vibrunazo
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?

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jakehimself/flint-and-
ti...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jakehimself/flint-and-tinder-
premium-mens-underwear?ref=live)

~~~
postfuturist
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.)

~~~
SCdF
This isn't on point with the main conversation, but anyway: other 'western'
countries that are similar to the US (I'm talking about UK, Aussie and NZ
here, I don't have much knowledge of the others) look at patriotism
differently to the US, so it's a fair point. We still support our sports teams
(those of us who care for sport) etc but it's not as extreme as the 'America
fuck yeah!' style patriotism that seems to constitute US patriotism (it may
not actually be like that, this however is what media teaches us).

------
guelo
Friends at my house are able to seamlessly play music from their phone on my
stereo by using the $2 mini stereo cable that is attached to it.

~~~
mahmud
$2 gets you audio from phone. $298 gets you black matte sphere.

------
tdicola
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.

------
generalk
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.

------
brown9-2
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.

~~~
SCdF
Genuine question: can I control Apple TV / AirPlay / iTunes etc from an
Android phone? Or a Windows phone?

~~~
andybak
<https://play.google.com/store/search?q=itunes+remote>

~~~
SCdF
Right. sorry, my question should have made it clear that I meant built by
Apple.

The point I guess I was making was that it's not unusual for a company to not
provide a client for their competitors platforms. It's crap, but it's not
unusual.

------
powerslave12r
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.

------
ZeroGravitas
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.

------
myko
I think the Q is pretty sweet looking myself. I just wish it had Google TV
functionality as well.

~~~
barca_fan
yeah adding some other google functionnality in it would make it succeed a
lot!

------
jiggy2011
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.

------
spudlyo
Wake me up when XBMC runs on it. A device that only plays cloud media is a
total non-starter for me.

------
prayag
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.

~~~
Someone
It may well be, but there is a different view: "We do not know how to make a
$500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not allow us to
ship that." (Steve Jobs, October 2008;
[http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/10/apple-q4-earnings-
ana...](http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/10/apple-q4-earnings-analysis)).
About a year later, they did know and they shipped. I think that, for
companies that have money (and, hence, time) in hand such as Apple, Google,
IBM, Microsoft,..., that is the better approach.

Also, "looking unique" can mean that you are the first in a new market, or
that you are the first in a non-market.

------
nicc_ap
Q looks nice, but how could they price it so high with devices like Roku,
Apple TV available from $50-$100 range. Also, the main feature of friends
adding to the Q is bogus, as we can anyways do it on Apple TV using airplay.
As long as I am on same wifi, I can play music from my iPhone at my friend's
place as long as he has airplay enabled on his Apple TV and connected to his
home theater system

------
DanielHimmelein
Maybe you can do the same thing as the Nexus Q and even more using your
Android handset and a 35$ Raspberry Pi: Check out the Android Transporter:
<http://esrlabs.com/android-transporter-on-the-raspberry-pi/>

------
dkhenry
I'm calling BS on this. You can play music that you have on your phone, you
just need to upload it to Google Music. Also you don't need to plug it into
your TV. I understand why people say this doesn't stack up against the Apple
TV. In my mind its not supposed to its supposed to stack up against this

[http://www.amazon.com/Denon-DM38S-Micro-CD-
System/dp/B003R6T...](http://www.amazon.com/Denon-DM38S-Micro-CD-
System/dp/B003R6T0V4/ref=pd_sim_e_5)

Which is does very well. It is still a little pricey, but you get a lot of
features, and the promise of more to come.

------
carryon
I have an Airplay enabled receiver. I don't need an ugly black ball sitting on
my shelf. Airplay is awesome and I dont need iTunes if I use Airfoil.

------
pigboy
Anouncing: the Chromebook of media players!

------
aviraldg
The Q is Google's attempt to pull an Apple.

~~~
pizza
Meaning?

------
aneth4
Perhaps it is a doomed attempt to duplicate the iPhone's path, but in home
entertainment.

1) Release revolutionary device, locked down with software that limits its use
2) Sell lots 3) Finally succumb to demands that your device be the center of
an app ecosystem.

If so, I suspect they will fail in all three.

------
swah
Marco.org referred to this product as the Nexus Ball - much better.

------
zitterbewegung
Someone is confusing specs on a platform that the average user doesn't care
about. This is REALLY exciting. If Google makes something easy to use that is
a media platform then they finally have a compelling counter to Apple.

------
rms
So... anyone want to buy a Nexus Q, new in box?

------
drivebyacct2
My Raspberry Pi will already stream all of my media for me remotely. With this
guy [1], the Cubox, I can have even more power (1080p) video, in a small,
nicely contained box. With a uPNP A/V or DLNA client, I would be in paradise
(as I already am with my Raspberry Pi).

Will play all of my movies and TV shows on my server, it works as a DLNA
receiver so I can play content from my server or phone and use my phone as a
remote and it will act as an Airplay client.

Why, oh why, would I pay $300 for a Google Play-only device?

~~~
jroll
You forgot the link for [1], mind posting it?

~~~
j_s
Pre-order for $135 on the company website: <http://www.solid-run.com/>

Details: <http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/SolidRun-CuBox/>

"This is probably the only Android TV box that is shipped in such a small form
factor and the only development platform in the market that is packaged in an
elegant plastic box and not provided as a barebones system or in a bulky
enclosure."

Edit: No official news or publicity posted by SolidRun in 6-month?
[http://www.solid-run.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=640](http://www.solid-
run.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=640)

~~~
drivebyacct2
Crushing information if they really don't have the graphics drivers fully work
and haven't shipped anything in 6 months :/

------
adventureful
Google is attempting to build new brand value around design, so they can
better compete with Apple directly in hardware. That's the entire point of the
magic eight ball. It's intentionally unusual. They want props for design, not
for function.

~~~
mkaltenecker
Apple doesn’t do stuff like that.

Well, sometimes they do and fail spectacularly. Does anyone remember the iPod
HiFi? Similarly expensive, point- and useless.

If this is how they want to compete with Apple they haven’t understood Apple
very well. (I do not think that’s their intention. Google is, in fact, pretty
good at competing with Apple. Android does very well. They know what they are
doing for the most part.) Apple is about making mass market products that
differentiate themselves from the rest by their design – but they are not just
design props. They are actual products people love to use, not put behind
glass and stare at.

The Nexus Q is Google’s iPod HiFi. Utterly stupid, doomed for failure but of
no consequence for Google in the long run. I wouldn’t read anything into it.
Even the best companies do stupid stuff from time to time.

(Yes, this is a prediction. I recognize that I might be wrong and you can hold
me to it.)

~~~
czr80
Good comparison, I think.

Tangent: Without any proof at all, I always thought the iPod hifi was some pet
project of Steve's because he was into music. Anyone know the backstory there?

~~~
jfb
I don't know the backstory, but I was working at iTunes when the Hi-Fi was
announced and _nobody_ could figure out what the hell it was for. If it had
_been_ a high-capacity iPod (rather than have merely been an admittedly nice
speaker setup) many of us would have bought one. But it wasn't, and we didn't,
and it died a quiet and deserved death.

------
gcb
The Q is the very same useless concept of the original nexus one desktop dock.
The original dock at least came with 3mm plug and a cable to convert to 2
rcas.

------
shasta

        Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Google Nexus Q.
        Caution: Google Nexus Q may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
        Google Nexus Q contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
        Do not use Google Nexus Q on concrete.
        Discontinue use of Google Nexus Q if any of the following occurs:
            itching
            vertigo
            dizziness
            tingling in extremities
            loss of balance or coordination
            slurred speech
            temporary blindness
            profuse sweating
            heart palpitations
        If Google Nexus Q begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.
        Google Nexus Q may stick to certain types of skin.
        When not in use, Google Nexus Q should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Failure to do so relieves the makers of Google Nexus Q, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.
        Ingredients of Google Nexus Q include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
        Google Nexus Q has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
        Do not taunt Google Nexus Q.
        Google Nexus Q comes with a lifetime guarantee.

~~~
iso-8859-1
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Fun_Ball>

