Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
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Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#2The Astoria project at Microsoft failed because a breakthrough was needed to overcome the complexity of the software development challenge. Microsoft tried to automate mapping the Android UI into the Windows 10 UI and to map Google services within the app such as maps, payments and notifications into Microsoft equivalents. Automated conversion of a UI from one platform to another has never been successfully demonstrated.
When I first saw Microsoft's Android bridge at Build 15, I thought it was achievable. But project Astoria as it is called is much too complex. Drawing on my architectural knowledge of the underlying Microsoft/Lumia hardware that is very similar to Android phones.I concluded that in the context of partitioning the device or running a VM Microsoft would succeed. But Microsoft tried something much more ambitious.
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#3No mention of Islandwood (the iOS bridge), which is probably more important, if less ambitious. The missing apps preventing Windows Phone adoption are not Android-only.
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#4The Astoria project at Microsoft failed because a breakthrough was needed to overcome the complexity of the software development challenge. Microsoft tried to automate mapping the Android UI into the Windows 10 UI and to map Google services within the app such as maps, payments and notifications into Microsoft equivalents. Automated conversion of a UI from one platform to another has never been successfully demonstra…
Google Play Services are also updated every few month, Microsoft would always behind the eightball when trying to remap services.
but what is truly impressive from Microsoft is there Xbox 360 Emulation on the Xbox One go check it out you will be surprised
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#5No mention of Islandwood (the iOS bridge), which is probably more important, if less ambitious. The missing apps preventing Windows Phone adoption are not Android-only.
Islandwood was het project name, i had to search ( according to my standards ) a long time. Here is more infromation : https://dev.windows.com/en-us/bridges/ios
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#6Would be great to be able to run Android apps on other platforms, even if they don't replicate the native host UX or have access to all the platform APIs.
The only solutions I've seen are
-Myriad Alien Dalvik (which isn't free)
-Google's ARC Welder (which is very fast but only works inside Chrome/Chromium, doesn't work with all apps, only runs one app at a time and quite clunky to use)
And emulators like Bluestacks or Genymotion, which are generally quite slow.
Any other alternatives - especially for Linux?
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#7Would be great to be able to run Android apps on other platforms, even if they don't replicate the native host UX or have access to all the platform APIs. The only solutions I've seen are -Myriad Alien Dalvik (which isn't free) -Google's ARC Welder (which is very fast but only works inside Chrome/Chromium, doesn't work with all apps, only runs one app at a time and quite clunky to use) And emulators like Bluestacks o…
Not Linux, but fitting the context of the article: the Visual Studio Emulator for Android works very well, and is free. On Windows, it uses Hyper-V.
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emu...
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#8This is very disappointing to me, as a Windows Phone fan in exile (I'm on Android, for the Apps).
I'll now hope they will do something less ambitious, such as creating an Android VM on WP that would run unmodified APK's (and install the Play Store). I'm not sure if they'll strategically want to do this, but they have to do something.
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#9Would be great to be able to run Android apps on other platforms, even if they don't replicate the native host UX or have access to all the platform APIs. The only solutions I've seen are -Myriad Alien Dalvik (which isn't free) -Google's ARC Welder (which is very fast but only works inside Chrome/Chromium, doesn't work with all apps, only runs one app at a time and quite clunky to use) And emulators like Bluestacks o…
Not Linux, but fitting the context of the article: the Visual Studio Emulator for Android works very well, and is free. On Windows, it uses Hyper-V. https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emu...
But requires that you have Windows Pro as MS has "helpfully" set Windows Home and Windows basic to not allow Hyper-V to run on a core i7 unless you have the Pro version. Which I sadly discovered when I bought a new high-end desktop and didn't realize (because very few specify) which version of Windows came with it. Of course I can load Ubuntu on the same machine and use Hypervisors all day long, but then we're back to Linux aren't we :-)
Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex
#10No mention of Islandwood (the iOS bridge), which is probably more important, if less ambitious. The missing apps preventing Windows Phone adoption are not Android-only.
Islandwood was het project name, i had to search ( according to my standards ) a long time. Here is more infromation : https://dev.windows.com/en-us/bridges/ios
I did a deep evaluation at work of project Islandwood & my conclusion was that there's just enough framework support to make Candy Crush run, but that's about it.