Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 289 posts

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#111

Post by jedberg »

The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem.

But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support the same APIs. But even then, it seems like it would be trivial to block that API.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#112

Post by 015a »

anfilt wrote: post #65
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, its 20s tech (WASM), 10s tech (Web/PWA), 00s tech (Java), 90s tech (Java), 80s tech (Erlang/BEAM), jeeze even 50s tech (Lisp)...

There are people who complain about how the industry is moving in cycles and how what's old is new again and how functional languages did that back in 1922. These people don't change the world; they just complain about how other people are changing it.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#114

Post by vyrotek »

jedberg wrote: post #111

The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem. But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support…

Indeed. Automating and botting various apps seems like it'd be easier as well.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#115

Post by erwinkle »

jedberg wrote: post #111

The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem. But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support…

You have always been able to run Snapchat and android apps on Windows via emulators like MEmu.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#116

Post by rbanffy »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #103
moogly wrote: post #96

But why? I can think of exactly 0 Android apps I would like to run on my Windows desktop (and I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy S). Is this really something people crave to do?

To kill Chromebooks

OTOH, now that I can sell my Android apps on the Microsoft store, why would I even bother to make a Windows-specific port?

Blackberry tried it with Blackberry 10 and failed. IBM failed the same way with OS/2. If you make your OS compatible with a foreign platform, there is less incentive to write original software for it and, therefore, there is less reason to get your platform instead of the one you are compatible with.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#117

Post by jedberg »

erwinkle wrote: post #115
jedberg wrote: post #111

The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem. But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support…

You have always been able to run Snapchat and android apps on Windows via emulators like MEmu.

Sure, and on Mac too, but it's not easy and rarely done.

This will make anyone able to do it.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#118

Post by idle_zealot »

jedberg wrote: post #111

The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem. But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support…

This seems backwards to me. Sure, apps should be at the mercy of they system when they want to use system-level features (interacting with other apps, accessing mic/camera, etc). But why should an application get to dictate which system features a user can invoke (taking a screenshot)?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#119

Post by rbanffy »

moogly wrote: post #96

But why? I can think of exactly 0 Android apps I would like to run on my Windows desktop (and I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy S). Is this really something people crave to do?

Maybe Google licensed them some of the stack in return for telemetry on desktop users as well. Non-Chrome usage of desktops is a space Google can't get much data from and one they'd really want to access.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#120

Post by robotresearcher »

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…

Also LISP in 1958. It's a great idea that will always be around.
Post reply on HN