You understand what’s cool? Handing out 5,000 Android tablets in your most loyal developers at Google I/O . You understand what’s not cool? Handing out 5,000 Android tablets that cannot have files loaded onto them. Believe or not, that’s exactly what happened at this week’s I/O conference, where hordes of developers were handed a Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition that can’t currently interface with OS X, and has a whale of a time doing so with Windows 7. During our initial preview of Music Beta , we noticed that our MacBook Pro (OS X 10.6) wouldn’t actually recognize the tablet, even after installing Android File Transfer. Due to the fact that we didn’t really need that functionality for the aim of said article, we threw it at the backburner.
For those unaware, Android File Transfer is a small app that’s required to transfer content between OS X and Android 3.0. Avid users of Froyo and Gingerbread can be appalled that any Honeycomb device they buy would require a section of software to interface with it, but hey — there this is. At any rate, it sort of feels to us that the most recent build of Android File Transfer doesn’t include the device ID for Samsung’s heretofore unreleased Tab 10.1; if you’ll recall, the standard edition of this thing isn’t slated to hit consumer hands until June 8th. Despite what tricks we tried (installing a Mac version of Kies Mini, for instance), we couldn’t get a single Apple in our stable to acknowledge the item. In a single instance, a Mac viewed the device as a “Samsung Modem” throughout the Networking pane — that’s as close as lets come to getting the 2 to mingle. AllThingsD‘s Ina Fried said her Tab 10.1 LE was merely recognized as a camera-like device within Aperture.
Over at the Windows side, things are just marginally less awful. We’ve had a few Wintel boxes outright refuse to play nice with this “mysterious USB device,” while others required multiple reboots and driver searchers to finally mount it as an external storage device — and only with USB Debugging disabled. The upside is that people with patience (and a Windows 7 rig) can watch for a single approach to transfer, but it’s certainly not up to ideal.
We’re surmising that Google’s cooking up a brand new version of Android File Transfer at present that’ll care for the compatibility issues, hopefully long before consumers start seeing these in early June. But for developers within the here and now? Stop wasting precious afternoon attempting to decide why your Mac just won’t cooperate, and provides that Win7 system a little bit love.
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