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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)

#41

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…

Your phone is still available and really cool. But it mirrors your phone instead of running the apps on your PC

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

#42
post #16

I found WSA kind of handy to run Pocket Casts on old Microsoft Surface Tablet. Had to jump through some hoops to install Google Play first. What's the best alternative? Bluestacks seems very shady. Chrome OS Flex in a VM? (Scratch that. It looks like Chrome OS Flex doesn't allow Android apps) P.S. Do we make "jokes" about Microsoft killing things off like we do with Google?

> What's the best alternative?

Waydroid runs Android apps on Linux and some people claim to have gotten it to work on WSL.

- Waydroid: https://waydro.id

Reddit threads:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/eofn...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/waydroid/comments/10y813d/is_it_pos...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/waydroid/comments/14e6t3g/does_maki...

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

#43

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 remember sometime in the last decade Google had an extension to run Android apps in Chrome. I tested it with a comics app, which I wanted for the bigger screen, and it worked fine. When I tried to search for the extension years later I couldn't find it.

It was called ARC Welder.

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

#44
post #32

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...

Yeah I don't know how they plan to shaft business users with that. It's so slow.

I noticed recently that Microsoft relented and soon starts introducing CoPilot features into old outlook (or 'real' or 'full' outlook as people are calling it at work). Previously it was coupled to 'new' outlook only to promote adoption. But it really sees a lot of pushback from users. I hope this will continue into not canning the real outlook at all.

Microsoft are always pushing 'more change management' as a 'solution' but some changes are simply not good and it's normal for users to resist. If anything they push too much (like turning on features by default, and sending reminders that you have not used feature xyz enough last week through Viva Insights)

And the skullduggery they're doing with the consumer windows mail migration (pulling the user's email into their cloud without making this very clear) is totally out of line IMO.

Personally I don't even hate the web version so much. I use it daily because Microsoft never made a native outlook for my platform anyway. But I'm not a heavy user of mail and I do see its limitations.

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

#45

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…

My user case could basically be summed as running apps that I never wanted on my phone in the first place.

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

#46
Interesting to note that there's an alternative specifically for running Android games on Windows - Google Play Games [1] which is Google's official offering, and it does not rely on WSA tech so that it works on Windows 10 as well.

[1] - https://play.google.com/googleplaygames

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

#47

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.

> enables your Windows 11 device to run Android applications that are available in the Amazon Appstore This might be the crux of it. Google probably will never port the Play store to Windows, MS doesn't want to maintain their own Android app store, and Amazon is a competitor with a pretty uncompelling app store to boot.

Google actually has ported Play Store to Windows, just for games though: https://play.google.com/googleplaygames

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

#48

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.

> enables your Windows 11 device to run Android applications that are available in the Amazon Appstore This might be the crux of it. Google probably will never port the Play store to Windows, MS doesn't want to maintain their own Android app store, and Amazon is a competitor with a pretty uncompelling app store to boot.

[deleted]

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

#49

Interesting to note that there's an alternative specifically for running Android games on Windows - Google Play Games [1] which is Google's official offering, and it does not rely on WSA tech so that it works on Windows 10 as well. [1] - https://play.google.com/googleplaygames

Looks similar to BlueStacks or MSI App Player, especially since it also requires hardware virtualization, so I assume it's like the Android SDK (that I think used QEMU?). Definitely worth looking at if there are Android apps that you want to run on a Desktop. (I used it for the Ace Attorney games before we got proper ports to modern systems.)

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

#50

The fact they're ending this makes me wonder if the rumors of Amazon fully abandoning AOSP as the basis for FireOS are true. If so, it would be ending it because there won't be an appstore with updated apps before long.

Doesn't make much sense. Building an ecosystem is far, far more difficult than throwing together a small embedded OS. Just ask Samsung and LG (and Google for that matter). Maybe Amazon has enough clout to force all streaming app developers (and game developers, which is the new frontier, and ad platforms) to suck it down and build support for the new platform but I doubt it - plus the ROI is just not there. Why destroy an active well working ecosystem - to accomplish what exactly?!
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