I played with Chromecast for about a couple weeks and just yesterday remembered I had totally forgotten about it. It's a typical Google product, released just after leaving Alpha state, marginally decent, of limited and disjointed utility, and generally poorly executed. Judging based on Google's history with, literally every single thing they have done, we are approaching peak internal support and attention with declining marginal focus and development. I expect Chromecast to languish and atrophy within this year.
...
"Hey, anyone want to watch a movie together? ... Ok, you guys just sit there in silent and awkward anticipation while you look at me flipping through various apps on my personal device." Google —— Please, someone explain what this "social" thing means
I mean social, as in pre-Facebook social, you know, >1 person interacting and engaging with each other, their environment, and sharing an experience in the real world, e.g., looking at the same screen, seeing the same thing, implicitly sharing their mutual interests through queues like "click on the details for {movie title}, I would like to see what it's about". I know it's confusing that I didn't mention pushing each movement and thought to Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr, but there used to be a time when social meant a singular level interaction between humans within physical proximity to each other.
Your rebuttal does nothing to improve my original point. You and all those around you are digging in their phones doing things unseen by everyone else, and also maybe even excluding those who do not have a device, or even just haven't downloaded that specific app.
I have a perfect solution to bridge that gap. But that's for another time.
Funny scenario, but I can imagine. This is also my concern along with the rest of the things. Can we anticipate that we have so many apps installed on our phone and keep looking for the one we need to control every time? Especially, we'll buy every "thing" with an Android or ChromeOS or iOS on it for a price more than $100?
> Can we anticipate that we have so many apps installed on our phone and keep looking for the one we need to control every time?
Total tangent, but I've come to depend on the Android app Conjure[1], which acts kind of like Mac's Spotlight search for apps. You can type in a full app name, or show all apps that contain the letters you type in in that order, even if you skip letters (e.g. searching for "cre" would bring up ChRomE").
...
"Hey, anyone want to watch a movie together? ... Ok, you guys just sit there in silent and awkward anticipation while you look at me flipping through various apps on my personal device." Google —— Please, someone explain what this "social" thing means