O'Reilly NOOK, Manual

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AS YOU’VE FOUND OUT
throughout this book, your NOOK Tablet and NOOK
Color are much more than just eReaders—they’ve full-blown tablets that let you
browse the Web, read email, keep track of your contacts, watch TV and movies,
and download apps that let you do even more.
Both tablets are on Google’s Android operating system, which Google gives
away for free, letting companies do whatever they want with it. Barnes & Noble
used Android 2.3 (also called Gingerbread) as the basic operating system for
the NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color, and then performed some magic and turned
them into combination eReaders and Android tablets.
Along the way, Barnes & Noble made so many changes that the NOOK Tablet
and NOOK Color in many ways don’t work like other Android devices. If you
compare the NOOKs to all-purpose Android tablets such as the Motorola XOOM
or Samsung Galaxy Tab, you’ll notice that the NOOKs simply don’t look like other
Android tablets. Even though companies like Samsung have made changes to
Android, the interface is still recognizable as Android on their tablets. That’s not
really the case with the NOOKs.
Those changes are more than just skin deep; they’re baked into the operating
system. Most notably, the only apps you can download onto them are those
available through the NOOK Store. Unlike with other Android tablets, you can’t
download apps from Google’s Android Market or directly from websites. That
means there are countless thousands of apps that you can’t download.
ChaPTer
17
Rooting Your NOOK