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

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

learn.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 256 posts

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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

basch wrote: post #32
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…

I haven't tried it, but allegedly Outlook for Android runs better on Windows than the new Outlook for Windows. Which makes some sense, as one is a native app and one is a web app. https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/i-ac...

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by hiisukun »

warner25 wrote: post #182
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…

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 u…

Just in case others are curious:

  NOTE: Google Voice only works for personal Google Accounts in the US and Google Workspace accounts in select markets. Text messaging is not supported in all markets.

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

#224

Post by iggldiggl »

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…

> 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 still broke some things. Instead of custom contact lists in Chat, you're supposed supposed to use the People app, and until just right now, that one didn't (!) show the presence status of each contact. It seems that very very recently they've finally fixed that, although it's still less compact and at-a-glance than the old contact list.

And "Notify when available" is annoyingly missing in New Teams, too.

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

#225

Post by cykros »

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…

I could see Twitch streamers preferring to run android games on a PC for streaming purposes, especially making use of a wired connection.

But yes, it doesn't seem like a huge use case.

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

#226

Post by VVertigo »

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…

We are starting to offer a new product for this for small business/startups. It is still pretty early and we're just starting to expand into the US, but it is something (https://nucleus.com/).

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

#227

Post by cykros »

FactolSarin wrote: post #164
jerlam wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. I type half my texts in Firefox these days using the Google messages web frontend. Supports RCS too!

The one downside is, after i've typed 15 texts, the other person is still punching in their first on a touchscreen.

This is probably just a matter of other people not drinking enough coffee, however.

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

#228

Post by iggldiggl »

mdaniel wrote: post #86
chasil wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can this be run in Hyper-V? https://www.android-x86.org/

The trick to that is similar to the Intel/Apple split: just having the OS doesn't help if the apps are for a different architecture. (I'm aware of qemu/Rosetta/etc but that's not something that Android has ever tried to solve (AFAIK) - rather, they declare any native library packages at the .apk level and one is expected to pick the right installer for the right architecture)

> I'm aware of qemu/Rosetta/etc but that's not something that Android has ever tried to solve (AFAIK)

Not Google itself (they're seemingly going for a hard transition with their current Pixel phones), but some OEMs (I'm aware of Xiaomi at least) have included such things now that recent ARM CPUs have started dropping 32-bit support.

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

#229

Post by iggldiggl »

bitwize wrote: post #110
chasil wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Android-x86 has an ARM emulator. Doesn't Dalvik/ART compile Java Bytecode down to a native layer anyway, so this wouldn't matter?

It does matter because lots of Android apps (esp. games) have native-code bits in them that are linked in with JNI.

It's not just games – anything multimedia (video, audio, pictures, even my e-book reader) is another likely candidate for including native libraries, and some other apps, too.

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

#230

Post by andix »

andix wrote: post #12
stephc_int13 wrote: post #5

I think that WSL is useful and used by many. WSA, not so sure. Who is using it? They very likely have telemetry and thus usage.

I'm using it from time to time. A lot of consumer equipment nowadays can only be operated with Android and iOS apps. For all those things I need WSA the Apps are off course not available in the official Amazon App Store, so i had to manually download them from f-droid and side load them with ADB. I can see why WSA is not such an often used subsystem.

Edit: It was not f-droid, they don't provide APKs for copyright protected apps. It was shady mirroring websites that re-upload APKs from the Google Play Store. (downloading and installing from those sites is legal where I live).
Post reply on HN