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Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

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Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#181

Post by whoisthemachine »

sonicanatidae wrote: post #144
shp0ngle wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad take. The old native Outlook is actually great. The web version is fine. The new Electron monster is horrible and looks like a toy.

I don't think it's a bad take at all. The very latest and greatest version of Outlook, has broken Search. Not in a subtle way, no, as in the "remove focus from the goddamn text box after you've typed a couple of characters" kind of broken. I've had to remove and re-add accounts to fix Outlook issues more than all other email client issues combined. This is especially prevalent with the mobile versions. Do you know ho…

Agreed. Outlook native gets extremely confused when the desktop resolution/scaling changes. It also uses as an old version of IE/Trident (?!) to render HTML e-mails, which is very painful to work with when trying to build rich e-mail notifications.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#182

Post by warner25 »

akira2501 wrote: post #113
PreInternet01 wrote: post #18

So, this is the second time a "run your Android apps on Windows" initiative fizzles out: before WSA (which was Amazon-centric), there was a late-2020 "Your Phone" feature that (briefly) allowed Samsung apps on Windows desktops. Not sure if this means anything other than "phone apps run best on, well, a phone", especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop, other than i…

> especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop The SMS and Calls. Seriously, at this point, my phone is the least useful device I own for managing both of these functions. The only utility in having them in some broken down hard to use form is for the slight convenience of being able to use them outside of my home if I wanted to. I rarely want to. I'd much prefer thes…

This is largely how I've operated for years with Google Voice: doing all of my SMS/MMS messaging and outbound calls (inbound, not so much) from the voice.google.com web app in my desktop browser.

If my life circumstances were a bit different, I could happily live without a phone and minutes+data plan. As it is, my wife would not approve...

My primary number has been a Google Voice number for a decade, and when I do use my actual phone for SMS/MMS and calls, I'm using the Voice app on there too.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#183

Post by NoPicklez »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #18

So, this is the second time a "run your Android apps on Windows" initiative fizzles out: before WSA (which was Amazon-centric), there was a late-2020 "Your Phone" feature that (briefly) allowed Samsung apps on Windows desktops. Not sure if this means anything other than "phone apps run best on, well, a phone", especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop, other than i…

The moment Androids apps on Windows was released I thought it was useless in my opinion.

I assumed there was a subset of users out there that needed something like this but I thought it was a complete waste of time.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#184

Post by jjpprrrr »

refulgentis wrote: post #14
theusus wrote: post #4

I feel like this was released just yesterday and now they are ending the support. Why?

Really good q I'm shocked too. Riffing: Without Play Store it's not viable/interesting. Also, it's so. much. work. keeping up with Android releases, even inside Google. Wear and ChromeOS are always a version or two behind, and vast majority of the time, it is two versions. If Google internally wasn't helpful enough to each other, I can't imagine they played nice with Microsoft on this. The broad business war means th…

I could be wrong, but I thought passing CTS is only one of the steps to be able to advertise a device as powered by android. To get Play Store which requires GMS, there are additioinal test suites like GTS.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#185

Post by rchaud »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #18

So, this is the second time a "run your Android apps on Windows" initiative fizzles out: before WSA (which was Amazon-centric), there was a late-2020 "Your Phone" feature that (briefly) allowed Samsung apps on Windows desktops. Not sure if this means anything other than "phone apps run best on, well, a phone", especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop, other than i…

there are millions of laptops with touchscreens capable of playing Android games, which would be the main use case for WSA.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#186

Post by tcfhgj »

jerlam wrote: post #143
akira2501 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop The SMS and Calls. Seriously, at this point, my phone is the least useful device I own for managing both of these functions. The only utility in having them in some broken down hard to use form is for the slight convenience of being able to use them outside of my home if I wanted to. I rarely want to. I'd much prefer thes…

If you're using Android (presumably with Google), there's Google Messages on Web that handles SMS: https://messages.google.com/web/ I used it for several years and found it quite reliable, unlike Apple's way of handling SMS/iMessage on each Apple device separately.

Beeper does this as well, including many more things like signal and whatsapp

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#187

Post by philistine »

wkat4242 wrote: post #175
TeMPOraL wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old Outlook, as 'w3ll_w3ll_w3ll said. Here's the thing though: Microsoft is rather heavy-handed about pushing "New Outlook" and "New Teams". New Outlook is mostly just a wrapped webapp - so slightly cleaner than the old one, but otherwise much slower and less functional. Now, guess which Outlook has had support for Copilot for the past couple months? :). Right now it's mostly an annoyance - I have to switch back and…

Yeah new teams is much less of an annoyance in terms of change as it was already a slow web app and users don't really expect much from it. And the UI didn't change at all. They bogged it down with too many features and now they're trying to scrape it up by having a slightly more optimised framework, which is basically still exactly the same, it's now just based on edge instead of chrome which we all know are really…

If Apple can have feature parity between a Mac-ass Mac app and a Web app, why can't Microsoft? Why does Microsoft need to reduce its feature set to the lowest common denominator?

I'm of course talking of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#188

Post by Dalewyn »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #118
bane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not super well supported, but there's a Samsung Dex app for Windows and MacOS (I think unsupported now) that let's you plug your phone into your computer, and get Dex in a window. Runs the phone apps on the phone, gets your android store etc. but you get an "ok" minimal desktop that lets you do your phone stuff with a mouse and keyboard. After I figured that out I basically dropped all the run Android on a desktop th…

There's also https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy which works for any Android, not just Samsung

Unfortunately a non-starter since it requires USB Debugging Mode, which these days most programs if they see it will refuse to run.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#189

Post by int_19h »

djmips wrote: post #138
sphars wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> P.S. Do we make "jokes" about Microsoft killing things off like we do with Google? Well someone went ahead and made https://killedbymicrosoft.info/

The difference for me is that the Killed by Microsoft has products I never used or cared about or I'm happy they killed them (looking at you Visual Sourcesafe) - cool site though - very interesting retrospective.

On the Microsoft campus, there is a building where the courtyard is tiled with commemorative "shipped in ..." plaques for various products. It has long since stopped being updated because there's simply no room for new ones. Walking there can be an interesting experience - very few people would recognize the majority of those product titles.

Re: Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)

#190

Post by claytongulick »

jerlam wrote: post #143
akira2501 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop The SMS and Calls. Seriously, at this point, my phone is the least useful device I own for managing both of these functions. The only utility in having them in some broken down hard to use form is for the slight convenience of being able to use them outside of my home if I wanted to. I rarely want to. I'd much prefer thes…

If you're using Android (presumably with Google), there's Google Messages on Web that handles SMS: https://messages.google.com/web/ I used it for several years and found it quite reliable, unlike Apple's way of handling SMS/iMessage on each Apple device separately.

I use this daily.

Works even better as a "install to home screen" app on my Mac.

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