This post reminds of me of why I couldn't believe Google would launch Honeycomb with almost no apps optimized for it, when Microsoft managed to have 2000 apps at the launch of WP7.
Also, why they didn't try to bring the content owners on board for Google TV, and why I think they will be missing a huge opportunity to turn Google TV into a "console platform" . But I feared they won't "get" this, and this post is setting my expectations even lower for that.
I knew Google didn't have much experience with an OS, compared to Microsoft or Apple, and I think they are learning, but they need to learn much faster, and they really need to put some "design thinking" into everything they do, from the ground up. They are starting to learn about good design/polish on the surface, but it really needs to happen at the core of the product from day one.
So this is somewhat related, somewhat off topic from the subject at hand, but...
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As for bringing content owners on board - as far as I can tell, they did. Their developer support was also very responsive. A+ on forming a dialogue with developers.
Their problem IMO is that they don't appear to feel it in their bones how important product differentiation is. Maybe they get it, but I don't think it's sunk in.
Allow me to elaborate. What's the difference between an embedded device, a phone, a mini-tablet, a tablet, and GoogleTV? Well...
* Embedded devices might have a pre-2.x Android that never got updated. But that's okay, nobody develops apps for them anyways.
* Phones probably have 2.1, maybe 2.2.
* A mini-tablet could be 2.1 or 2.2, and has the mobile device UI.
* A tablet might have 3.0 or 3.1 on it.
* GoogleTV has 3.0 on it, but its market app might filter like it's 3.1. How do you differentiate this in code? Version specifiers, specifying notouch (which will break if googletv ever supports any kind of touchscreen, on a large screen size (which is smaller than a tablet, which has a extra large screen), etc.
Want to develop for iOS? Great. Would you like iPhone or iPad? Or both? Need to make sure it works on 99.9% of the devices that can download it? No problem. And hopefully, sometime in the future, maybe Apple will see fit to enable the AppleTV for developers.
Circling back to address your statements, if Google's aim, or one of them, is to make GoogleTV into a gaming platform, I don't have much confidence in Google's ability to deliver on that goal, because GoogleTV is little more than a revision of Android plus some optional APIs, and Android is architected as a multi-device platform. It's not a single device with multiple revisions, as is the case with the iPhone 3G/3GS/4/4S sequence, or even the Nintendo DS and its subsequent revisions. There are reasons that Android isn't as compelling a game platform as iOS is, and that is a big one.
With respect to building a multimedia application platform, GoogleTV has potential if for no other reason than it's one of the few set-top boxes with an app store, period, and a programming interface that isn't thoroughly obtuse, but the GTV's design and usability are very weak, almost pre-alpha, even, as if it were scarcely more than a straight-up port of Android's touch-optimized interface with an inadequate amount of polish. It's nothing your average TV-watching user is going to grok, if the keyboard+mouse remote didn't clue you in.
Really, what it comes down to is that, even for hardware, Google just doesn't seem to want to release something "perfect". They just want "shippable" -- or I daresay "just barely shippable" - if you can call it that. Even if they have critical bugs, so long as developers can work around them, even if they haven't nailed down the UI, and make a sweeping change right before public release, that's still "good enough". And "good enough" is the enemy of "great".
Until Google puts design thinking into their products from the ground up, as you put it, they aren't going to be able to lead the marketplace.
Also, why they didn't try to bring the content owners on board for Google TV, and why I think they will be missing a huge opportunity to turn Google TV into a "console platform" . But I feared they won't "get" this, and this post is setting my expectations even lower for that.
I knew Google didn't have much experience with an OS, compared to Microsoft or Apple, and I think they are learning, but they need to learn much faster, and they really need to put some "design thinking" into everything they do, from the ground up. They are starting to learn about good design/polish on the surface, but it really needs to happen at the core of the product from day one.