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Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#61

Post by maliker »

kumarvvr wrote: post #48
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #11

If anything, Amazon knows this will really incentivize updating your Android app on the Amazon App Store, or bringing it there if you haven't. And that's good for us because, should the Amazon App Store become more viable for manufacturers, Google might find themselves increasingly losing control of Android, and increasingly forced to make the Play Store more competitive.

This is an absolute win-win for Microsoft and Amazon. Microsoft gets Android Apps, Amazon expands its app store and Google is shunted out of the Microsoft eco-system. I see this as an absolute brilliant thing to happen to the app ecosystem. I really hope innovation accelerates on the Amazon App store.

Plus it counters Apple, which recently made iOS apps available on macOS.

Seems like all the major OS are betting that mobile is going to be the focus of future native app development and don't want desktop users to miss out.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#62

Post by anfilt »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively…

There is the android NDK (Native Development Kit) it's mainly games or CPU intensive apps trying to get as much performance or software that was ported and whose code base was primarily a compiled language like C.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#63

Post by turtlebits »

tetrisgm wrote: post #9

This is great. Finally a non hacky way to run mobile apps on a desktop. This is less about competing with Apple’s universal binaries, and more about increasing Windows’s versatility. You can already run Linux on Windows. Now you can run Android. No need to mess around with Archon, Nox, Genymotion anymore. Got a weather app you like? An audiobook player? Done. Hopefully this means more interoperability with Microsoft’…

I used BlueStacks for a while, while IME was never hacky. That said, there was/is little motivation for me to run mobile apps on desktop.

This definitely lowers the barrier to entry, thought I have little faith in how Microsoft will present it. Been burned too many times by them on poor UX/DX (WSL, F#)

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#64

Post by anfilt »

tyleo wrote: post #18
NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively…

I'm hoping to get an AMD PC sometime in the future. I hope this works on more than just Intel processors.

If microsoft is working on it I bet they would want it to work on AMD CPUs as well.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#65

Post by anfilt »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #59
015a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Google is in a position to "replace" Android. They simply don't control the hardware; they can ship Fuchsia to their Home assistants and thermostats, but when it comes to phones and personal computing devices, they don't have many cards to play (beyond Pixel, like 0.5% of the Android market). The power lies with hardware manufacturers and developers. Their new wearables partnership with Samsung may help…

> Its a new way of writing "native"-adjacent multiplatform applications; the OS doesn't matter anymore. If only someone had thought about that before: a language targeting a bytecode interpreter and an ecosystem of library sitting on top of the operating system in order to be able to run programs on any operating system. In a way we could call it a virtual machine as it makes the OS insignificant. Written like this i…

Byte Code and VMs are are older than just 90's tech but okay. I still honestly prefer native code, but it does not work well for non-open source software unless the developer also compiles for other systems. Also windows is really the only major non-*nix OS these days. Although apples GUI software stack is still a pain port for when porting.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#67

Post by anotherman554 »

haolez wrote: post #30

This has been possible on ChromeOS (i.e. Chromebooks) for a while now and the experience is subpar. Most apps are not designed for desktop and the UX just feels unrefined. This could be fixed, of course, but on the app creators' side. However, weirdly enough, VPN Android apps work just fine at a system level on Chromebooks. Go figure...

This will be a good feature for windows tablets like the Surface, which lack a decent amount of touch friendly apps.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#68

Post by tomComb »

kumarvvr wrote: post #48
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #11

If anything, Amazon knows this will really incentivize updating your Android app on the Amazon App Store, or bringing it there if you haven't. And that's good for us because, should the Amazon App Store become more viable for manufacturers, Google might find themselves increasingly losing control of Android, and increasingly forced to make the Play Store more competitive.

This is an absolute win-win for Microsoft and Amazon. Microsoft gets Android Apps, Amazon expands its app store and Google is shunted out of the Microsoft eco-system. I see this as an absolute brilliant thing to happen to the app ecosystem. I really hope innovation accelerates on the Amazon App store.

This could be good for competition, but it's hard to see it as being about innovation.

Same as Microsoft copying Chrome and calling it Edge, users have another browser, now with MS telemetry etc. instead of Google. Good for user choice but hardly innovation.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#69

Post by tootie »

wvenable wrote: post #49
tootie wrote: post #14

This is neat but I'm struggling to think of a case where this would be useful.

You're struggling to think of a case where an OS can run applications written for another OS would be useful?

I think the majority of mobile apps are very coupled to the mobile ecosystem. Or they exist to coverup the poor mobile web experience. I can use social media and messaging from any desktop web browser already. Anything geared around mobility or photography won't be very useful on a desktop. And at least a few apps just have "mobile only" as their edgy marketing strategy.

I get why this is potentially useful but I can't think a single app I'd actually use this way.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#70

Post by tomComb »

handrous wrote: post #22
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #11

If anything, Amazon knows this will really incentivize updating your Android app on the Amazon App Store, or bringing it there if you haven't. And that's good for us because, should the Amazon App Store become more viable for manufacturers, Google might find themselves increasingly losing control of Android, and increasingly forced to make the Play Store more competitive.

Google's well on their way to replacing Android, no? I thought a lot of their announcements at events the last couple years had been about their from-scratch Android replacement. Maybe another big company will pick it up, but if not, I don't see much benefit to the hobbyist community over the current status quo if Android gets "opened up" more but also loses 99+% of total corporate backing toward its development. Eve…

They might use Fuschia to replace the Linux kernel in Android, but Android would remain the same from an end user or app developer perspective.

They aren't just going to turf Android.

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