Hack allows installing apps on Nexus Q, should have been doing so out-of-the-box
The Nexus Q announcement was a major bummer. $300, for a round box that was described by Google itself as a “social music and video streaming device”. Or a cloud-based jukebox. <sarcastic>Hurrah!</sarcastic>
Let’s face it, what the Nexus Q should have been is a Google TV box, and I’m most certainly not the only person to have thought that, as you can see in the comments on this post. The Q could still have that social jukebox thingy as an app on it. Based on the feature set of the device, the price and the (lack of) success of Google TV boxes itself, I can’t help but wonder if they’d actually manage to sell a single piece.
Fortunately, it is a Nexus device. Which means the community’s hackery could actually make it worthwhile (and I believe that’s the reason they put out the device, so as to see what developers do with it). Case in point: over at XDA, the Q has already been unlocked, rooted and a developer even managed to put together a small guide to install a few apps on it. The process isn’t straightforward due to the lack of an interface on the Q, but hopefully in the future someone’s able to make the Nexus Q into a device that can actually do something.
If you were at I/O, and got a Nexus Q you want to mess with, you can find links to the various threads (for root and unlock, or installing apps) from this page on their Portal.