Android Honeycomb, Mac And Linux: Google USB Step Back

The first Honeycomb tablets have arrived in editorial and in spite of all the benefits that this OS brings, one development disappoints us: Android 3.0 is no longer directly compatible with Mac and Linux via USB.

With the Motorola Xoom and LG Optimus Pad in the office, we noted a strange (not to say almost nonsensical) change, with the new Google OS, Honeycomb.

In effect, the USB connection on any Honeycomb tablet is now only 'optional' on Mac (as of OS X 10.5) and not possible at all on Linux: you now need to download extra software to make it compatible on Mac, something that isn't stipulated by any manufacturer.

As I myself use a Mac and test tablets, I'm finding the development rather irritating, especially as everything seems to work fine on earlier operating systems and on a PC in Windows, a driver is installed automatically and your Android 3.0 device appears as a storage device with all the related folders and subfolders.


Linux: impossible

To access your Android Honeycomb tablet on a Mac, then, you have to go onto Android.com and download File Transfer. Once File Transfer is installed in Applications, you connect the tablet via the USB and relaunch the software which will then recognise the tablet and its contents.
For Linux users, including Mr Photo, Franck Mée, who's walking around with his mouth open in shock (he already had problems moving over to a smartphone, so we can forget tablets), it is purely and simply impossible to connect an Android 3.0 tablet by USB.


Note also that even when the USB connection is working, there's nothing to tell you this on the tablet itself, whereas up to Android 2.3, the little robot announced the connection and asked if you wanted to display the tablet on the computer desktop. In other words, up until now, all systems were directly compatible (and it's not as if they all ran on the same Unix base).
After the introduction of a stricter policy with its partners, Android has become a little less practical to use. We hope nevetheless that Google will implement a more transparent File Transfer in a future Honeycomb update.

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