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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

#21

Post by kelvin0 »

seibelj wrote: post #18

As someone who has spent years building software on top of compiled android binaries, as in, adding features to apps with nothing more than the APK (no source code), I can say that what they are building is not only difficult but quite fragile. I have the benefit of customers who agree to certain OS versions and specific app versions. MS wants it to work universally with every app. It's possible to get it close enoug…

Why don't you have access to your customer's source code? Is this done through decompiling Java Bytecode? What kind of modifications are we talking about (cosmetic, functionality)? Really really curious about your feedback!

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#22

Post by on_and_off »

jbob2000 wrote: post #11

Would it have been cheaper to pay the top 100 Android apps to make a Windows version? Perhaps they do it on a continual basis to keep their marketplace up to date? On that note, I'd like to try making a windows phone app. Is there anything sorely missing from the platform?

AFAIK, they already do that.

>Is there anything sorely missing from the platform?

without trolling : the users. It is possible to have some success on the windows mobile platform, but there just isn't a critical mass of users. Other than that, even though it has its problems (like Android or iOS), it has most of the things you would expect.

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#24

Post by johnsea »

andridk wrote: post #19

Jolla achieved this. My Jolla phone can run most Android apps without problems. Maybe Microsoft's scope was too big?

But not (officially) Google Play apps. And the Android environment is old. (Nevertheless I wouldn't switch my Jolla to anything else...)

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#25

Post by seibelj »

kelvin0 wrote: post #21
seibelj wrote: post #18

As someone who has spent years building software on top of compiled android binaries, as in, adding features to apps with nothing more than the APK (no source code), I can say that what they are building is not only difficult but quite fragile. I have the benefit of customers who agree to certain OS versions and specific app versions. MS wants it to work universally with every app. It's possible to get it close enoug…

Why don't you have access to your customer's source code? Is this done through decompiling Java Bytecode? What kind of modifications are we talking about (cosmetic, functionality)? Really really curious about your feedback!

My current company, Apperian, is the industry leader in a technology called "App Wrapping", for which we have several patents pending (I'm only there for another week, I'm leaving after nearly 6 years for a new adventure). Read more here: https://www.apperian.com/mobile-application-management/mobil...

iOS is different, but on Android we run the decompiled binaries through software making heavy use of finite state machines to alter the Dalvik VM code. These alterations allow us to automatically add features like SSO, analytics, security, self-updating apps, etc. to native apps without the customers making any code changes.

Because the binaries are provided to us by customers, and distributed 100% outside of the official App Stores, the risk of app-breaking updates is much reduced.

Over the years the technology has matured a great amount, and most apps "just work", but we still get apps that have some edge case we didn't think of, that requires manual intervention by engineering to update the wrapping software.

Now, the use-case that MS has is different from Apperian's, but similar enough that I can imagine what they are going through, especially trying to re-map the UI elements to native MS widgets. This is a hard problem that is difficult to nail seamlessly, and it is infeasible for them to tweak their code for every app. Even worse, the apps people want most (FB / Messenger, Google Maps, etc.) are the most complex of all, so their tech needs to be super advanced to get value out of it.

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#26

Post by pavlov »

c1sc0 wrote: post #10
NicoJuicy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's exactly it. It's fine for a game that makes minimal use of UIKit and doesn't have high performance requirements.

Any complex non-game app will require a UI rewrite using the Windows UI framework bridge. That means many months of work, compared to the 1-day effort of bringing an Android app over using "Project Astoria".

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#27

Post by pavlov »

seibelj wrote: post #25
kelvin0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you have access to your customer's source code? Is this done through decompiling Java Bytecode? What kind of modifications are we talking about (cosmetic, functionality)? Really really curious about your feedback!

My current company, Apperian, is the industry leader in a technology called "App Wrapping", for which we have several patents pending (I'm only there for another week, I'm leaving after nearly 6 years for a new adventure). Read more here: https://www.apperian.com/mobile-application-management/mobil... iOS is different, but on Android we run the decompiled binaries through software making heavy use of finite state mac…

I don't think Microsoft's Astoria even tried to map Android UI elements to native Windows widgets. In my experience, the look and feel is more like a Windows-styled theme for Android. (That sounds pretty bad, but actually Windows 10 Mobile has pretty much broken the tight Windows Phone 7/8 look&feel anyway, so it's not such a big deal for the bridged Android apps.)

They do map some of the Google Play services to their MS equivalents, and that's certainly a big can of worms on its own.

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#28

Post by drzaiusapelord »

A good reason why google play services exists is to stop things like this. Its a complex moving target that gets updated monthly. Sure, you can do this with apps that don't use play services, but a lot do, especially popular ones. MS would have a hard time keeping up with changes. Blackberry tried this and it didn't save the Blackberry product. They pretty much gave up recently and now have an excellent android phone on the market.

The real question is how many competitive app stores can we have at once? We're probably looking at some level of natural duopoly here. It took years for Android to get the attention it did and that's with it being a worldwide leader in sales. The market settled on a product that's perceived as premium (iOS) and the workhorse do-anything, install-anywhere, sell cheap, etc Android. A third app store and the developer time/cost commitments needed might not be feasible. MS should know a thing or two about how hard it is for outsiders to break natural monopolies.

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#29

Post by xlm1717 »

Maarten88 wrote: post #8

This 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.

I'm sure they can do it if they wanted to. This will just take users completely out of WP and into Android, though. At that point, they're better off developing their launcher, apps, and other services on Android and simply releasing another Android phone.

Re: Microsoft's plan to port Android apps to Windows proves too complex

#30

Post by johansch »

bingobob wrote: post #4
stevep2007 wrote: post #2

The 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

Emulating a stationary target for which you own the source code is a completely different thing.
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