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

121–130 of 289 posts

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#121

Post by jedberg »

idle_zealot wrote: post #118
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)?

Snapchat doesn't block you from screenshooting, but it notifies the other person if you do.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#122

Post by throwamon »

turtlebits wrote: post #63
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#)

What's wrong with WSL and F#?

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#123

Post by 7952 »

an_opabinia wrote: post #72
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 are few categories of apps this targets. “Clubhouse for Android” category: avant- grade apps that launch first on Android or define android platform. Nonexistent. “Median phone user ecosystem:” The TikTok Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Snapchat, China app ecosystem and India app ecosystem. The experience of all these is bad on Windows browsers or unavailable. ”Games”: hard to say, because Windows is a…

There are some high quality creative apps on Android for things like photo editing, drawing, video editing etc. This could disrupt the space in which Adobe currently operates. Android could add a lot of diversity to windows in terms of productivity and creative apps.

I think a possible advantage is also integration with Teams and OneDrive. Aandroid apps don't tend to use file stored in directory structures. You use the share menu instead and maybe some pickers for photos and downloads. This could integrate well into their cloud ecosystem. Save app data to OneDrive and have sharing menus work between the two. You could even have tabs in teams that show an Android app and store the data in the team. Corporate IT departments might prefer that to voluminous directory structures and vendor management.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#124

Post by anfilt »

015a wrote: post #112
anfilt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? I don't see how what I was saying was complaining? Sure things sometimes happen in cycles, I did not even mention that, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. VMs, and byte codes are a tool, and have their place. However, they do have their limitations compared to natively compiled code.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#126

Post by [deleted] »

robotresearcher wrote: post #120
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…

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

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#128

Post by throwamon »

idle_zealot wrote: post #118
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)?

> why should [applications] get to dictate which system features a user can invoke?

They shouldn't, but they do it anyway because virtually no users know how to "cheat", and most don't even know that they can cheat. The justification is that taking a screenshot violates your or someone else's privacy or security. In the case of security, they assume you're too dumb to know better.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#129

Post by dementik »

ksec wrote: post #21

This got me thinking. At what point will there be a Windows Mobile that could run Andriod Apps?

There was. Project Astoria by Microsoft which was abandoded few years ago.

That was rather promising, but IIRC it got to some legal problems.

I was in beta (or alpha, do not remember) test group.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

#130

Post by polar »

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…

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...
Post reply on HN