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Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

engineering.columbia.edu

11–20 of 108 posts

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#11
“Users no longer need to be locked into one platform. Being able to write an app once and run it anywhere has been a long-sought-after goal and a very hard problem to solve.”

This is naive, stupid, or both. There never was a technical cause of lock in (as indeed the Apportable people are not alone in demonstrating), it's purely an artificial business construct with the surmountable technical hurdles being very convenient.

It's well within Apple's capabilities to launch the media consumption parts of iTunes on Android, like on Windows PCs, but it should be kind of telling that they don't.

One of the lessons of my career so far is never underestimate the ability of people to assume that problems are primarily technical in nature when actually the real problem is something else. Technical excuses can often be used for after the fact justification of management decisions.

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#12
post #9
post #8

> "a new system that can run iOS apps on an Android device for the first time" We at Apportable (YC W2011) have been doing that for 3 + years in a much for commercially viable way. We strive for source compatibility and are not building an emulator that requires taking libraries from an iOS device.

Oh, boy. I was seriously addicted to EyeLord for a little while. If I want to build an Obj-C app for Android, is https://github.com/apportable/NDKSignalTest a good place to start?

That's an awesome bug test case. I guess if you are the kind of dev that likes to start by copying StackOverflow question code (and not the SO answer code), then that is a perfectly acceptable project to start with to get started with to make successful apps on Android. :-)

Also I have an urge to pop some eye balls in EyeLord right now.

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#13
Awesome! We, at MyAppConverter are going beyond iOS to Android by also tackling the other mobile dev platforms. Besides, no runtime, no SDK to download. Our solution is based on Semantic Driven Code Transformation and Model Driven Engineering. We are currently doing private beta and will be coming out soon. Cheers.

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#14
post #8

> "a new system that can run iOS apps on an Android device for the first time" We at Apportable (YC W2011) have been doing that for 3 + years in a much for commercially viable way. We strive for source compatibility and are not building an emulator that requires taking libraries from an iOS device.

Your way requires the developer to use Apportable to port an iOS app to Android. If the developer has agreed with Apple to not port the app to Android, it will never be available.

Their way gives the power to the user. The user copies across iOS app binary and system libraries and it's done.

Basically, your way empowers the developer, their way empowers the user.

You need to be commercially viable because your investors demand it. The price you charge developers may prevent some developers from porting their app.

They don't need to be commercially viable because they're a research project. If they release their source code, the community of hackers will develop a free and easy to install system to allow users to run any iOS app on Android.

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#15
post #8

> "a new system that can run iOS apps on an Android device for the first time" We at Apportable (YC W2011) have been doing that for 3 + years in a much for commercially viable way. We strive for source compatibility and are not building an emulator that requires taking libraries from an iOS device.

You're saying that Apportable lets users run iOS apps on Android? Just from briefly looking at your site, it looks like you just enable developers to easily port iOS apps to Android. In my view those are two completely different things.

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#16
post #5

... we reused existing iOS frameworks and libraries in our approach, avoiding the difficult and complex reimplementation effort of Wine. Cool, but it's against Apple's EULA to run the iOS binaries on non-Apple hardware, so unfortunately this project suffers from the same problem as emulators that require you to acquire the original firmware somehow.

> but it's against Apple's EULA

This is Hacker News, right?

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#17
post #6

For a minute I thought this was announcing that Cider[1] now supports iOS -> Android (Cider is currently existing tech used for porting Windows games to OS X, based on Cedega/Wine). [1]: https://www.transgaming.com/cider

Transgaming did add iOS and Android support a few months ago!

https://www.transgaming.com/news/transgaming-announces-new-l...

Re: Cider Project: Run iOS apps on Android

#19
Can Apple can stop the research team releasing the source code?

The research project was partly funded by NSF grants, so does that mean the public have the right to see all work related to the project?

I ask because the lead researcher, Jeremy Andrus, is now employed by Apple and wrote this on the YouTube video:

"I have started a job with Apple, and will not be continuing work on this project. The team at Columbia will probably be doing some follow up work, but I won't be involved from here on out."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaple0Ec1Dg

http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/files/wpid-asplos2014-cider.p...

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