Recently it’s been reported that hackers had gained both ADB and root access on Google Glass. In response to this, Google employees Dan Morrill and Stephen Lau have both had “their say” about this on Google+.
Morrill, quite correctly states in this G+ post:
This is not rooting. Nothing is rooted. There is no root here! This is ‘fastboot oem unlock’. It’s not rooting if they let you do it on purpose!
“Rooting” means the act of obtaining control of a process running with privileges of the root user. You root a device when you use a security exploit to take control of it; one of the things you can do with a rooted device is (in some cases) bootstrap to a different system image. So it’s only rooting if you do it in spite of them.
We agree with this view — obtaining root on a Linux computer is no real achievement; in fact, it’s designed with this in mind. Obtaining root is only remarkable if you’re achieving this on a device where you’re not meant to have it.
Stephen Lau, another Googler followed up by backing Morrill’s post and adding
Not to bring anybody down… but seriously… we intentionally left the device unlocked so you guys could hack it and do crazy fun s–t with it. I mean, FFS, you paid $1500 for it… go to town on it. Show me something cool.
There’s certainly some cool concepts out there, there’s already some third party apps starting to emerge for Glass. Let’s hope that the imagination and creativity of the developers can push the limits of glass and keep us entertained and connected.
Does the continual stream of stories, information and the odd controversy around Google Glass excite you for the public release in a year-ish? Let us know in the comments below.
Ingress would rock with Google Glass..
Oh yeah, we discussed that on a podcast recently.
Love how Google responds to stuff like this. Champion Company!
I would wear them, i have been wearing Glasses or contacts for 40 yrs, then again i no people who refuse to wear glasses, even though they need to. So its still a tough sell.
But Saurik used an exploit to do it, not a fastboot oem unlock. https://twitter.com/saurik/status/327857009754001408
The fact that most of the sites reporting this are saying Glass has been *jailbroken* is evidence enough of the mindset of the people writing this crap.