Andy Rubin was born on June 22, 1946
in New Bedford, United States. He is a developer of Android OS. Since
childhood, Rubin is accustomed to seeing many new gadgets. This is because his
father, a psychologist who swerved into direct marketing business, store
electronic products that will be sold in Rubin's room. He has a great interest
in everything that robots smell. At Carl Zeiss A.G., where he first worked
after college, Rubin was stationed in a robotics division, precisely on digital
communications between networks and measurement and manufacturing devices.
After from Carl Zeiss, he had worked in the field of robot in a company in
Switzerland. From the manufacturing department, Rubin moved to the research
department at Apple.
Then, in 1990, Apple spin off to form
a company called General Magic and Rubin participated in it. General Magic
focuses on the development of handheld devices and communications. The insane
engineers, including Rubin, of course, managed to develop a software called
Magic Cap. Unfortunately, the Magic Cap is not getting the greeting from the
handset and telecom companies. Some who apply Magic Cap just do it for a while.
General Magic was finally destroyed. Some developers at General Magic, along
with several Apple veterans, then founded Artemis Research. The company
developed something called webTV, an early attempt to combine the Internet with
television. Rubin joined Artemis to help develop the webTV. When Microsoft
bought Artemis, in 1997, Rubin joined the giant company.
Rubin's typical crazy episode
re-occurred at Microsoft. Rubin built a robot equipped with a camera to work on
his comrades. Crazy, the robot was connected to the Internet and in one
incident had been burglarized by parties outside Microsoft. In 1999, Rubin quit
webTV (and that means he is no longer a Microsoft employee). He then rented a
store in Palo Alto, California, and called the store a laboratory.
Rubin's career in the field of
robotics seems to be getting brighter, but his life changed because of vacation
in Cayman Island in 1989. While visiting the tropical islands of Jamaica, Rubin
accidentally met a man named Bill Caswell. The man is sleeping on the beach,
driven from a cottage after a fight with his girlfriend. Andy offers the man a
place to live and in return, Casswell offers him a job. The amazing coincidence
is that the man works at Apple. At Apple, Rubin is having a good time. At that
time, Apple was still in good shape thanks to a Macintosh computer. The culture
of Apple was rubbing against Rubin. There he had a chance to misbehave, like
reprogramming the phone system so he could pretend to be CEO, John Sculley.
Jokes like that would probably be liked by Steve Jobs, a man who likes to make
jokes by phone, but when it is Apple's period without Jobs.
In a place full of Rubin's collection
of robotic toys, an idea for a new product was born. Together with several
colleagues, Rubin later founded Danger Inc. Danger successfully achieved
through a device called Sidekick. Originally, this device was named Danger
Hiptop, but on the market it was known as T-Mobile Sidekick.
"We want to make a device, about
the size of a bar of chocolate, for a price below 10 dollars and can be used to
scan an object and get information about it from the Internet. Then, add radio and
transmitter devices, be Sidekick, "Rubin said about Sidekick. Currently,
Sidekick is already looking obsolete, but in its time, Sidekick is an odd thing
with the concept of technology that goes beyond the times. The device,
according to Rubin, is accessing data with phone capabilities. When it comes to
the market, Sidekick has to face the fact that the PDA is losing its market.
However, Rubin insists that Sidekick is not a PDA. "Supposedly, people are
not asking whether this is a PDA or a cell phone. They should ask, is this a
platform for third-party developers? This is nothing new. This is the first
time a mobile has been a platform for third-party developers, "Rubin said.
Now, what Rubin said was not a strange
thing anymore. Just look at Apple de¬ngan millions of third-party applications
that are present in the iPhone. Another thing that Danger did, which at the
time was unthinkable, was the bridge between handset makers and network
providers. Danger decided to share the benefits with T-Mobile in Sidekick
service. Thus, Danger does not rely on handset sales as its sole source of
income, but also from its services. This makes the device manufacturer (Danger)
has the same goal as the device seller (telecom operator T-Mobile). Rubin left
Danger in 2004. In 2008, the company was bought by Microsoft. The giant seems
to be interested in entering the mobile business with a more aggressive again.
The offered value was not half-hearted. According to news circulating Microsoft
bought Danger with a price of 500 million dollars. However, the purchase of
Danger by Microsoft did not bring flower results. The remaining executives from
Danger are combined by Microsoft into Mobile Communication Business, from the
Entertainment and Devices division.
Later, they were asked to inflate a
phone known as Project Pink. The target, this phone should be a competitor
iPhone and BlackBerry. According to ComputerWorld, Project Pink suffered
classic disease in a large company. Because the project is quite prestigious,
it is contested by several parties. And worse yet, its development is more
deviated than desired. For example, the phone was originally developed on a
Java base but was then asked to use the Microsoft operating system.
Unfortunately, Windows Phone 7 that should be used for Project Pink, not ready.
As a result, when launched, the phone that eventually named Microsoft Kin uses
the Windows operating system for mobile phones "old". The cold market
sentence made Kin finally had to close, just a few months since its launch. The
fate of Sidekick's service, which Microsoft inherited from Danger, is also not
very good. In one incident, which is still not known for sure what caused it,
Sidekick customers suddenly lost all their data. One thing to note, all data on
Sidekick is stored 'in the cloud' (in this case on Microsoft-managed servers
and accessible via the Internet). Well, when the server was disturbed, all data
of Sidekick users disappeared.
In early 2002, Rubin gave a lecture at
Stanford on Sidekick development. Because, although sales Sidekick on the
market did not explode, the device was considered quite good in terms of
engineering. It is a coincidence that Larry Page and Sergei Brin, the founders
of Google, were present in the lecture. After college, Page met Rubin to see
Sidekick up close. Apparently, Page noticed, the device uses Google's search
engine. "Cool," says Page. This is a point of departure for Page for
an idea that in the next few years will come true, a Google phone.
Approximately two years after that, Rubin had left Danger and tried to do new
things. Including trying to enter the business of digital cameras before
finally he founded Android.
Rubin incubated Android when he became
an entrepreneur-in-residence with venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures in 2004.
"Android started with one simple idea, providing a robust and open mobile
platform that can drive innovation faster for customer profit," Rubin
said. In July 2005, 22 months after Android was founded, the company was
swallowed by the giant Google. Rubin also opted to join Google. When buying
Android Inc., Google does not specify how much it will cost and what it will do
with it. In fact, Google called the purchase as an acquisition of human and
technological resources alone. In addition to Andy Rubin, Google is making a
lot of brilliant people from Android. These include Andy McFadden (WebTV
developer with Rubin, and also Moxi Digital developer); Richard Miner (former
Vice President at Orange telecommunications company); and Chris White (founder
of Android and WebTV display designer and interface). With Google, Android is
given extra power. The company from Mountain View, California then formed the
Open Handset Alliance to develop a device for Android.
"Google can not do everything.
and we do not need it. That's why we established the Open Handset Alliance with
more than 34 partners, "Rubin said. Android device that comes the market
is not made by Google. Android heavyweight fighters including Motorola,
Samsung, and HTC each throw their flagship Android phone into the market.
"Just throwing the software is not enough," Rubin explains, "you
need a handset developed for this software and network providers who want to
market it." In the US, Motorola Droid is one of Verizon Wireless's weapons
against AT & T with its iPhone. While Nexus One, Google's Android phone
made by HTC, comes without "service ties" on one particular operator.
The presence of Android seems beru¬saha shake the dominance of the mobile phone
market in the US. In Indonesia, Android also seems ready to be excellent after
appearing with excitement in Indonesia Celullar Show 2010. "I know there
will be FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). However, we have seen some competitors
follow what we do. So it seems, we are on the right path, "said Rubin.
