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Why don't you have access to your customer's source code? Is this done through decompiling Java Bytecode? What kind of modifications are we talking about (cosme

by kelvin0 11y ago

Why don't you have access to your customer's source code? Is this done through decompiling Java Bytecode? What kind of modifications are we talking about (cosmetic, functionality)? Really really curious about your feedback!

seibelj 11y ago
My current company, Apperian, is the industry leader in a technology called "App Wrapping", for which we have several patents pending (I'm only there for another week, I'm leaving after nearly 6 years for a new adventure). Read more here: https://www.apperian.com/mobile-application-management/mobile-app-wrapping/ https://www.apperian.com/mobile-application-management/mobil... iOS is different, but on Android we run the decompiled binaries through software making heavy use of finite state machines to alter the Dalvik VM code. These alterations allow us to automatically add features like SSO, analytics, security, self-updating apps, etc. to native apps without the customers making any code changes. Because the binaries are provided to us by customers, and distributed 100% outside of the official App Stores, the risk of app-breaking updates is much reduced. Over the years the technology has matured a great amount, and most apps "just work", but we still get apps that have some edge case we didn't think of, that requires manual intervention by engineering to update the wrapping software. Now, the use-case that MS has is different from Apperian's, but similar enough that I can imagine what they are going through, especially trying to re-map the UI elements to native MS widgets. This is a hard problem that is difficult to nail seamlessly, and it is infeasible for them to tweak their code for every app. Even worse, the apps people want most (FB / Messenger, Google Maps, etc.) are the most complex of all, so their tech needs to be super advanced to get value out of it.
- pavlov 11y ago
  I don't think Microsoft's Astoria even tried to map Android UI elements to native Windows widgets. In my experience, the look and feel is more like a Windows-styled theme for Android. (That sounds pretty bad, but actually Windows 10 Mobile has pretty much broken the tight Windows Phone 7/8 look&feel anyway, so it's not such a big deal for the bridged Android apps.) They do map some of the Google Play services to their MS equivalents, and that's certainly a big can of worms on its own.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    From the article, quoting Microsoft's director of OSG John Justice: “We are windowizing all the most important experiences…we recreated controls, interactions, and user experiences to match the Windows user experience (UX) to eliminate any clashes of interface concepts,”

by kelvin0 11y ago

seibelj 11y ago

My current company, Apperian, is the industry leader in a technology called "App Wrapping", for which we have several patents pending (I'm only there for another week, I'm leaving after nearly 6 years for a new adventure). Read more here: https://www.apperian.com/mobile-application-management/mobile-app-wrapping/ https://www.apperian.com/mobile-application-management/mobil... iOS is different, but on Android we run the decompiled binaries through software making heavy use of finite state machines to alter the Dalvik VM code. These alterations allow us to automatically add features like SSO, analytics, security, self-updating apps, etc. to native apps without the customers making any code changes. Because the binaries are provided to us by customers, and distributed 100% outside of the official App Stores, the risk of app-breaking updates is much reduced. Over the years the technology has matured a great amount, and most apps "just work", but we still get apps that have some edge case we didn't think of, that requires manual intervention by engineering to update the wrapping software. Now, the use-case that MS has is different from Apperian's, but similar enough that I can imagine what they are going through, especially trying to re-map the UI elements to native MS widgets. This is a hard problem that is difficult to nail seamlessly, and it is infeasible for them to tweak their code for every app. Even worse, the apps people want most (FB / Messenger, Google Maps, etc.) are the most complex of all, so their tech needs to be super advanced to get value out of it.

pavlov 11y ago
I don't think Microsoft's Astoria even tried to map Android UI elements to native Windows widgets. In my experience, the look and feel is more like a Windows-styled theme for Android. (That sounds pretty bad, but actually Windows 10 Mobile has pretty much broken the tight Windows Phone 7/8 look&feel anyway, so it's not such a big deal for the bridged Android apps.) They do map some of the Google Play services to their MS equivalents, and that's certainly a big can of worms on its own.
- hackuser 11y ago
  From the article, quoting Microsoft's director of OSG John Justice: “We are windowizing all the most important experiences…we recreated controls, interactions, and user experiences to match the Windows user experience (UX) to eliminate any clashes of interface concepts,”