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Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11

424 points by ArchUser2255 5y ago

CountDrewku 5y ago
Gross. Privacy invasion trifecta. Just invite facebook along for the ride too.
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  /0
rgserious 5y ago
https://recallgavin2020.com/ https://recallgavin2020.com/
bilal4hmed 5y ago
Thats fantastic, but how does this work with purchases made on the Play store. If I bought an app on the Play Store does it carry across to Amazon ?
- drcode 5y ago
  I figure the reason Amazon and Microsoft a ganging up in this way is precisely to address this issue: They want vendors to support a more portable mechanism for purchases that isn't tied to the Google silo.
  - bilal4hmed 5y ago
    approve
  - igravious 5y ago
    Oh! What a neat idea, one which had never occurred to me. It sure would be awesome if EU or USA antitrust bodies legislated to force vendors to support a portable mechanism for purchases. It'd be nice if Google voluntarily enabled this, it'd give them a unique selling point over Apple and it would kick-start a (vibrant?) 3rd-party store ecosystem. edit: the more i think about it the more it makes sense – multiple hardware vendors of the handsets themselves, then multiple software vendors of the the apps themselves. Would surely spur competitiveness and innovation when it comes to app pricing/bundling/sales/…
- programbreeding 5y ago
  Unless something has changed recently that I'm unaware of, that definitely isn't currently possibly on Android itself. I assume it won't be possible using the Windows-version of the Amazon AppStore either. But maybe this will cause the devs to start pushing to make that a thing.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Amazon's App Store and Google Play Store are distinct stores. Purchases do not carry over between them because they are competitors (in the same sense, you can't return an item to Walmart that you purchased at Target, even if they both sell it). You can install the Play Store on your Amazon devices, which allows you to use your Play purchases on the device (without jumping through too many hoops, like getting the apk and sideloading it). This sounds like it's integrating with Amazon's app store directly so unless there's some way of sideloading Android apps using the underlying bridge to run them, Play Store purchases would not be available on Windows.
  - IAmMaulik 5y ago
    Great Analogy!
- dmitrybrant 5y ago
  Absolutely not -- the Amazon app store and the Google Play store are completely different entities. The fact that Microsoft partnered with Amazon instead of Google for app store integration is a strong indication of how serious they are about this whole thing.
ladyanita22 5y ago
Who will this actually benefit? We won't know until some years later...
NelsonMinar 5y ago
The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discrete-gpus/server-graphics-solution-brief.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively on Intel-based devices - to run on those devices." How many Android apps out there are not written in Java? I'm guessing Kotlin isn't supported either. For that matter how many apps are targeting Android devices with Intel CPUs anymore? I was expecting a full VM / emulator, but this doesn't sound like that.
- notriddle 5y ago
  I would expect Android apps that are written in Java would also run, but they wouldn't use "Intel Bridge" to do it.
- 015a 5y ago
  I think that statement from Intel has to be taken in context; that technology is for enabling Android applications which are not otherwise executable on Intel CPUs to successfully run on Intel devices. Its not an assertion that Java-based Android apps won't be available in the app store; its just saying "these apps which are generally really hard to get running on x86, we've got those covered too".
  - johnnyapol 5y ago
    This was my interpretation of the statement too. Specifically what comes to mind is apps that depend on native/shared libraries that only have an ARM build and not a x86 build shipped.
- tyleo 5y ago
  I'm hoping to get an AMD PC sometime in the future. I hope this works on more than just Intel processors.
leshokunin 5y ago
This is great. Finally a non hacky way to run mobile apps on a desktop. This is less about competing with Apple’s universal binaries, and more about increasing Windows’s versatility. You can already run Linux on Windows. Now you can run Android. No need to mess around with Archon, Nox, Genymotion anymore. Got a weather app you like? An audiobook player? Done. Hopefully this means more interoperability with Microsoft’s own Android apps, so buying a phone like the Surface Duo and using the Your Phone feature actually does something.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  I used BlueStacks for a while, while IME was never hacky. That said, there was/is little motivation for me to run mobile apps on desktop. This definitely lowers the barrier to entry, thought I have little faith in how Microsoft will present it. Been burned too many times by them on poor UX/DX (WSL, F#)
  - throwamon 5y ago
    What's wrong with WSL and F#?
    - adamdusty 5y ago
      Not sure what that guy is talking about, but some people are frustrated that WSL2 is basically a linux VM, and F# has been little more than an experimental playground for .net features. I don't care about either project, but these are the complaints I hear the most.
- projectsforlife 5y ago
  Absolutely. Way less janky than Mac's implementation of running iOS apps. While you can use mobile apps on your Windows laptop using native touch controls, on your Mac laptop you have to use that weird trackpad-driven interface. Which would you prefer? https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Mac-mini-M1-Touch-Alternatives.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Mac-m...
blibble 5y ago
crappy phone apps on the my desktop PC? just what I've always wanted well at least now I'll be able to play Diablo Immortal....
- Ashanmaril 5y ago
  Actually, in some cases mobile apps are higher quality than desktop versions. Mainly because the standard for mobile is to make native apps for the platform, while on desktop everything is Electron
  - williamtwild 5y ago
    EVERYTHING is electron? Thats a bit overly broad and inaccurate.
    - Ashanmaril 5y ago
      Stop being so intentionally obtuse, you know what I mean
- wtetzner 5y ago
  Maybe this is a step toward a new Windows Phone that is compatible with Android apps.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
If anything, Amazon knows this will really incentivize updating your Android app on the Amazon App Store, or bringing it there if you haven't. And that's good for us because, should the Amazon App Store become more viable for manufacturers, Google might find themselves increasingly losing control of Android, and increasingly forced to make the Play Store more competitive.
- handrous 5y ago
  Google's well on their way to replacing Android, no? I thought a lot of their announcements at events the last couple years had been about their from-scratch Android replacement. Maybe another big company will pick it up, but if not, I don't see much benefit to the hobbyist community over the current status quo if Android gets "opened up" more but also loses 99+% of total corporate backing toward its development. Even if Amazon or MS run with it (and maybe that's what this is the beginning of?) that seems more like an on-life-support scenario than one with a bright future for Android. Could go totally differently if major phone and tablet manufacturers ignore the New Shiny Thing and stick with Android so developing commercial software for it remains viable, I guess.
  - 015a 5y ago
    I don't think Google is in a position to "replace" Android. They simply don't control the hardware; they can ship Fuchsia to their Home assistants and thermostats, but when it comes to phones and personal computing devices, they don't have many cards to play (beyond Pixel, like 0.5% of the Android market). The power lies with hardware manufacturers and developers. Their new wearables partnership with Samsung may help here. Maybe Samsung would play along with a new Fuchsia phone OS. But there's still the developer issue; any new OS like this would need Android-backward compatibility support exactly similar to what Microsoft is doing here. "Android" in this sense doesn't mean "the OS"; its the application system. What's happening in the Android world right now is so healthy and excellent, I almost can't believe its the product of Big Tech. Google is already pushing Android apps on ChromeOS, now Microsoft has them on Windows, through the Amazon app store, and nowhere in any of this is the actual Android Operating System. The comparison here isn't Android vs iOS vs Windows; its Android vs Flutter vs Web. Its a new way of writing "native"-adjacent multiplatform applications; the OS doesn't matter anymore. Sure the touch-friendly UI will suck in some applications, on some deployments of Windows. That's not Android's fault; its on the developer to recognize the input method and canvas size, and adjust accordingly. I hope more do!
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tootie 5y ago
This is neat but I'm struggling to think of a case where this would be useful.
- neogodless 5y ago
  Personally, depending on how it translates... Instagram where I can upload photos on the desktop and tweak them. Could use my banking app with Windows Hello for authentication. In other words, the cases where the Android App has more features than the web site version.
- enlyth 5y ago
  BlueStacks claims to have more than 500 million users, I know a few friends who use it to play mobile only games on their PC for example. If android emulation was so useless on Windows, it wouldn't be so popular
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    > BlueStacks claims to have more than 500 million users That would be twice the playerbase of Candy Crush for a fairly niche software.
- wvenable 5y ago
  You're struggling to think of a case where an OS can run applications written for another OS would be useful?
  - tootie 5y ago
    I think the majority of mobile apps are very coupled to the mobile ecosystem. Or they exist to coverup the poor mobile web experience. I can use social media and messaging from any desktop web browser already. Anything geared around mobility or photography won't be very useful on a desktop. And at least a few apps just have "mobile only" as their edgy marketing strategy. I get why this is potentially useful but I can't think a single app I'd actually use this way.
up6w6 5y ago
I don't think they added a complete emulation of arm64, so it probably only runs apps with support for x86 (I have no idea of how many apps dont have support, but they exist) like BlueStack and most of emulators - So apple still has the advantage of using the same architecture for everything and running the apps natively.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  the goal isnt to make life fun for developers its to get consumers using significantly powered down devices from now on
- sedatk 5y ago
  > I don't think they added a complete emulation of arm64, so it probably only runs apps with support for x86 It uses Intel Bridge, which is a JIT compiler like Rosetta. So, they seem to have done it for ARM64.
smusamashah 5y ago
Some years later everyone will realize that desktops are not phones and are meant to utilize more available screen space. Then everyone will come up with "revolutionary" desktop interface ideas and we here at HN will call it out that we already had these back in 90s. I am waiting for that time. Windows 10 is "phony" already and becoming more like it's built for people with low vision. I hate it's UI. I hope bringing android in windows don't turn into another Electron.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  I know you're being a bit sarcastic but: > Some years later everyone will realize that desktops are not phones and are meant to utilize more available screen space. Keep in mind there's plenty of android apps designed to function on tablets with much larger screens. Obviously there's not nearly as many as on the iOS side of the world where the iPad is far more successful, and there's a wide variability in how good they are at taking advantage of the extra real estate. But they're out there. The real issue, IMO, is that those apps are designed with a touch-based UX, and that doesn't translate well to mouse-based interaction. And one of the few areas where Apple and I are in agreement is in poor ergonomics of a touchscreen on a laptop or PC.
  - smusamashah 5y ago
    > those apps are designed with a touch-based UX And now days every desktop app is made as if "mouse" doesn't exist. Or as if `market research has shown that bigger buttons engage more users`. I like to see more on my screen in one go. That's why we get multiple monitors or bigger monitors. To see more content. And everyone is hellbent on wasting it. More CPU/RAM got us more web-as-desktop apps. Higher resolution, bigger screens are giving us bigger, emptier GUIs.
- bitL 5y ago
  Now you'll have UI elements from Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11 and Android all in a single operating system! Can't wait for the Android Settings integration to Control Panel next...
- 5y ago
anoxor 5y ago
I have a few older friends that struggle with tech, but have learned their phone apps well. For them, this could be a benefit to not have to learn the differences between the app and website.
ksec 5y ago
This got me thinking. At what point will there be a Windows Mobile that could run Andriod Apps?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dementik 5y ago
  There was. Project Astoria by Microsoft which was abandoded few years ago. That was rather promising, but IIRC it got to some legal problems. I was in beta (or alpha, do not remember) test group.
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haolez 5y ago
This has been possible on ChromeOS (i.e. Chromebooks) for a while now and the experience is subpar. Most apps are not designed for desktop and the UX just feels unrefined. This could be fixed, of course, but on the app creators' side. However, weirdly enough, VPN Android apps work just fine at a system level on Chromebooks. Go figure...
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Most apps are not designed for desktop and the UX just feels unrefined. This is still better than having to use an emulator or not being able to use the app at all.
  - haolez 5y ago
    There are some exceptions, like Outlook - it works in Desktop mode just fine.
- anotherman554 5y ago
  This will be a good feature for windows tablets like the Surface, which lack a decent amount of touch friendly apps.
database_lost 5y ago
"Android apps will run natively on Windows 11 and will be downloadable from Amazon’s Appstore, via the new Windows Store that’s included in the operating system." - confusion intensifies
- andix 5y ago
  I understand it in this way: you will find all Android apps published in the Amazon store also inside the Windows Store. So there is no need for republishing all Android apps to the windows store. They partnered with Amazon. Google probably wasn’t helpful in integrating the play store.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  They are merging the meta-data from both stores and presenting a unified interface, branded as windows store.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  Making one massive spyware conglomerate that collects every bit of personal data from individuals that's possible.
- Havoc 5y ago
  You need to be logged in on both stores basically
marcodiego 5y ago
Hope this makes more people contribute to anbox.
jmkni 5y ago
Will this help with Android development? Would be nice to be able to debug from Android Studio without needing the emulator.
kart23 5y ago
Can I actually run APKs? Or will it be some closed-off platform?
- Havoc 5y ago
  Closed. Amazon App Store
brainless 5y ago
Is it just me or does anyone else think this is Microsoft's first step to create it's own Android fork eventually? I have been thinking what's really keeping the "new" Microsoft outside the smartphone game? Google creating a desktop OS market share is not really on the horizon. But if Microsoft takes the right steps it might venture out to smartphones again, and gain market share this time. The HN crowd may not be the best audience for unified experience that Apple seems to be heading toward but there is sure demand for it in the mainstream.
- poisonborz 5y ago
  They wouldn't have Play Services, which gives all the power of the ecosystem. Just having a good desktop back country doesn't help anything in the mobile space, as Windows Phone showed. It also won't go without experienced hardware partners, and Samsung is already in Google's pocket, the other top dogs being Chinese, who don't look for fitting in the western markets anymore.
  - jacob019 5y ago
    Not exactly. Play services/GCM is the push notification system on Android. Even on my completely degoogled phone I have to use microG to support push notifications from google's servers because every app developer has hardcoded their app to use GCM. It doesn't have to be that way. An alternate push notification service with a client alternative could be made available. Developers and users could start using it. Ideally there would be a standardized protocol, and a system setting so that the user can set their preferred push notification provider. Apps would use the system provided endpoint for push notifications and we would get a little control back. I sure wish I could self host push notifications.
    - commoner 5y ago
      Amazon Appstore (used for Microsoft's Android integration in Windows 11) uses Amazon Device Messgaing (ADM) instead of Google's Firebase Cloud Messgaing (FCM) for push notifications. A FCM receiver is built into Google Play Services to enable push notifications for Play Protect certified Android devices, but ADM is a viable alternative for Amazon and Microsoft as long as developers tailor and submit apps to the Amazon Appstore. https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html Gotify and OpenPush are open source push notification solutions, both in the beginning stages of development: - Gotify: https://gotify.net/ https://gotify.net/ - OpenPush: https://bubu1.eu/openpush/ https://bubu1.eu/openpush/
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
how can windows run android apps but linux which is base of android itself cannot do that ? what happened to arm and x86 differences? if rosetta stone thing is being done, why can't linux do that even natively on arm? edit: base=kernel
- ThatPlayer 5y ago
  Android still uses bytecode for a lot of apps. Unless you're using Android NDK, which does have native code and requires different releases for different processors, ARM and x86 isn't really relevant. Intel even made an attempt into the smartphone CPU market with the Asus ZenFone 4 back in 2014 with an Intel Atom x86 processor running Android. Modern Pixelbooks (and other x86 Chromebooks) run Android apps fine too, and those are technically Linux, so therefore it's already been done. Anbox also seems to do it fine in a container. Never tried that though.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    anbox is fine but the friction is just too great. last i tried was like year or two ago. it just ran stock apps. thats it. my question was, why cant we use manjaro or ubuntu, double click on an apk and run it like an appimage? i am asking from the POV of an end user. I dont understand bytecode or ndk. if windows 11 can freely run an android app like it was a .exe, why cant my linux machine do that? anbox aside.
    - ThatPlayer 5y ago
      Because no developers have made that feature.
  - preroll 5y ago
    But this running inside Windows. Putting native code aside, it this just another emulator? If it can out-perform all the other emulators is it likely to make them redundant ?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hughrr 5y ago
Oh great another 5gb on the install image that no one is going to use.
dhdhhd 5y ago
Wow this is great. Goes back to work
catern 5y ago
I wonder if this will share anything with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)?
moogly 5y ago
But why? I can think of exactly 0 Android apps I would like to run on my Windows desktop (and I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy S). Is this really something people crave to do?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  maybe ... they want to stop the javascript-based desktop app craze. E.g. their android skype mobile does not look much different from their skype desktop now. Maybe they want to steal google's OS
  - ptx 5y ago
    Great, so now we can run React Native apps on Android on Windows. Apparently Microsoft heard we liked runtimes, so they put a runtime in our runtime so we can virtualize while we virtualize.
  - twobitshifter 5y ago
    microsoft is more invested in the javascipt desktop app craze than almost anyone. they have github, visual studio code, and teams all running on javascript, plus the office 365 apps, which are eventually looking like they'll replace the old versions.
- KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
  Yeah? Tiktok's app is way better than the website. Snapchat etc doesn't even have a usable website.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I believe the question is why having the app on a Windows machine if the phone is usually nearby.
    - KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
      If you're already on the PC the PC is usually more convenient.
dmitrybrant 5y ago
Microsoft really wants to convince you that your phone and your PC are the same thing. But they've failed in the execution of this idea several times now. The fact that this partnership is with the Amazon app store, not the Google Play store, is a strong hint of how serious they are about this, and how this latest iteration will work out.
- okareaman 5y ago
  The old saw was that Microsoft takes 3 tries to get it right. Don't know if it applies anymore.
- adamdusty 5y ago
  They had to partner with Amazon or no one. Amazon already has an android marketplace, and there's no way Google, who has a "competing" OS, is going to facilitate users using apps on windows. Google especially isn't going to combine the play store with the microsoft store and let MS call it the microsoft store.
ww520 5y ago
Flutter and Dart would have more reach with this adoption on Windows 11.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
This is great. It heads off ChromeOS and makes the Surface hybrids even more attractive than they already are, which is no mean feat. Once this is out the Surface Books will cover basically all use cases at least decently. It'll be great to have cross op with their new foldable Android phones, too. Those machines are an absolute joy Microsoft really killing it since Nadella took over
jedberg 5y ago
The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem. But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support the same APIs. But even then, it seems like it would be trivial to block that API.
- vyrotek 5y ago
  Indeed. Automating and botting various apps seems like it'd be easier as well.
- erwinkle 5y ago
  You have always been able to run Snapchat and android apps on Windows via emulators like MEmu.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Sure, and on Mac too, but it's not easy and rarely done. This will make anyone able to do it.
- idle_zealot 5y ago
  This seems backwards to me. Sure, apps should be at the mercy of they system when they want to use system-level features (interacting with other apps, accessing mic/camera, etc). But why should an application get to dictate which system features a user can invoke (taking a screenshot)?
  - jedberg 5y ago
    Snapchat doesn't block you from screenshooting, but it notifies the other person if you do.
  - throwamon 5y ago
    > why should [applications] get to dictate which system features a user can invoke? They shouldn't, but they do it anyway because virtually no users know how to "cheat", and most don't even know that they can cheat. The justification is that taking a screenshot violates your or someone else's privacy or security. In the case of security, they assume you're too dumb to know better.
vyrotek 5y ago
I wonder how well games will work such as the upcoming Diablo Immortal.
listic 5y ago
So, now macOS will run iOS apps; Windows will run Android apps. What's the Linux's answer?
- badkitty99 5y ago
  When eta Win11 Universal Control?
- jhgb 5y ago
  Linux already runs Android apps. It's called "Android".
hakcermani 5y ago
Is there something similar on Linux? Would make me ditch the Apple ecosystem once and for all for Linux and Android ..
- AkshitGarg 5y ago
  Anbox (https://anbox.io/ https://anbox.io/) does seem to do this. I couldn't try this because I couldn't get it to run on my machine a few years back
  - gwmnxnp_516a 5y ago
    The whole problem is that Anbox is distributed as Snaps which is disliked by folks from many non Ubuntu-like Linux distributions. It would be interesting if there was a docker image with Anbox pre-installed that allowed playing with Android apps with zero configuration and setup.
swiley 5y ago
The MS Windows platform is more dead than the idea of personal computing.
encryptluks2 5y ago
The Amazon Appstore is awful, and due to issues between them and Google it is likely that you won't be able to install any Google Play Apps, like YouTube or Gmail. There are so many apps that pretend to actually be the official apps too and Amazon seems to not really flag anything from what I can tell. I really hope there will still be a way to sideload the Google Play Store. It is one of the first things I do on Amazon devices.
blablablerg 5y ago
what about bringing office to linux?
- unnouinceput 5y ago
  wine? no? then how about Libre office? or even the olddy but goldy VM running Win(whatever version) for your Windows only needs? Plenty of choices
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  Why?
la_fayette 5y ago
To be honest I have no idea why someone would use Android apps on Windows? Popular apps can be used via the web-browser or even have a separat desktop app (e.g., whatsapp, facebook, youtube, ...). That is similar with games. Edit: apps which require sensors, such as gps, gyro, etc. wouldn't work anyway...
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  Personally I have seen streams of people playing mobile games with gatcha-style monetization using their computers, and feed the game window into OBS. I don't think many of those games have PC counterparts. It sounds more convenient than having to set up an external capture card.
- pests 5y ago
  What? My windows laptop has all the sensors, gps, gyro, etc that you would need.
  - la_fayette 5y ago
    Ok, I thought more like using runtastic with a laptop...
- spideymans 5y ago
  Because mobile apps ported on the web often suck (ahem... Instagram, TikTok), and the mobile version might suck less.
  - cruano 5y ago
    Also Apple is doing this too with the M1
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  I don't use Snapchat so I could be mistaken but I don't think it works in a web browser or in a desktop app. There could be some others as well.
- 5y ago
xyst 5y ago
So Microsoft has its own App Store, then within that App Store there exists the Amazon App Store. Apps on this third layer will then be executable or sideloadable in Windows 11? Sounds like a disaster to me.
- Grazester 5y ago
  When I read that in the article, I had to re-read that line 3 times to understand what was going on.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  More like, "There is one Microsoft App Store, but apps on Amazon's Android App Store will also appear in Microsoft's App Store so you won't as a developer have to publish your Android app two places for them to show up in two places." I would bet, for better or for worse, these Amazon Android apps will share metadata as well, so you'll see the same "Star" rating in both the Microsoft App Store and the Amazon Android App Store, but that's speculation on my part.
thrower123 5y ago
Why though? What's the point? I absolutely don't want to run the crapware on my phone on a real computer.
- unnouinceput 5y ago
  None is forcing you to do that. It's a feature that if you want to use it, you'll can from W11 onward.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    I actively do not want this to become normalized. Things are bad enough as they currently stand, without further enabling appification and the degeneration of standards.
    - EvilEy3 5y ago
      What degeneration of standards lmao. Desktop is the most degenerate of all platforms with their Electron cancer. At least on mobile it's mostly native.
geehum 5y ago
Microsoft seems to be very focussed on the Developer experience in recent years. Take WSL for example. Is this not part of that drive?
cronix 5y ago
I just went through my phone and there isn't a single Android app I'd actually want to use on my PC. Most of my apps are just hobbled versions of websites anyway, so I just use the fully functional browser with a full sized keyboard and nice big monitor and use the websites when I'm on the PC, and for that all I need is a single browser and the OS doesn't really matter.
- collaborative 5y ago
  Think more of apps that require a file system
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  > Most of my apps are just hobbled versions of websites anyway Most of the time it's the other way around.
hashingroll 5y ago
I hope this will mean we can finally stream 4k content on Prime Video, Disney+, et al. in Windows PC.
tehnub 5y ago
I'm super excited to try the Android Apple Music app on Windows! We've been stuck with the bloated, slow iTunes desktop app for so long now. I was hoping they'd announce an update for it along with lossless and spatial audio, but there's been nothing so far.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  Have you tried the web player? Also the beta version for Android has lossless and spatial
  - cruano 5y ago
    Or the iPod.js[1] from yesterday, I've been using it unironically and is great https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606099
  - tehnub 5y ago
    I’ve tried the web player, but it only plays at 64 kbps, and also randomly stops playing for me pretty often.
tonetheman 5y ago
Android apps already run on Chromebooks...
Causality1 5y ago
Interesting. If it works well it might be enough to make me buy a Surface.
catchmeifyoucan 5y ago
There’s more about it at 21:30 in the developer talk; https://youtu.be/egZ82QGshX8 https://youtu.be/egZ82QGshX8
cable2600 5y ago
I guess Apple will counter by brining iOS apps to the Macintosh M1 systems?
- haswell 5y ago
  Apple is first here.
- EvilEy3 5y ago
  Already did long ago.
npteljes 5y ago
I wonder how they'll manage the Play Services dependency, or whether apps that need SafetyNet checks would work. My guess is they won't, and they don't.
herbst 5y ago
I mean, we can easily do this today and nobody does. Maybe there is a reason for that? Like apps that simply are not made for such large screens? Or the far majority of apps I would have interest on my computer expect a integrated SIM card or other mobile specific hardware. On the other hand metro does not feel right on a big screen anyway, maybe it fits well?

424 points by ArchUser2255 5y ago

CountDrewku 5y ago

Gross. Privacy invasion trifecta. Just invite facebook along for the ride too.

EvilEy3 5y ago
/0

rgserious 5y ago

https://recallgavin2020.com/ https://recallgavin2020.com/

bilal4hmed 5y ago

Thats fantastic, but how does this work with purchases made on the Play store. If I bought an app on the Play Store does it carry across to Amazon ?

drcode 5y ago
I figure the reason Amazon and Microsoft a ganging up in this way is precisely to address this issue: They want vendors to support a more portable mechanism for purchases that isn't tied to the Google silo.
- bilal4hmed 5y ago
  approve
- igravious 5y ago
  Oh! What a neat idea, one which had never occurred to me. It sure would be awesome if EU or USA antitrust bodies legislated to force vendors to support a portable mechanism for purchases. It'd be nice if Google voluntarily enabled this, it'd give them a unique selling point over Apple and it would kick-start a (vibrant?) 3rd-party store ecosystem. edit: the more i think about it the more it makes sense – multiple hardware vendors of the handsets themselves, then multiple software vendors of the the apps themselves. Would surely spur competitiveness and innovation when it comes to app pricing/bundling/sales/…
programbreeding 5y ago
Unless something has changed recently that I'm unaware of, that definitely isn't currently possibly on Android itself. I assume it won't be possible using the Windows-version of the Amazon AppStore either. But maybe this will cause the devs to start pushing to make that a thing.
Jtsummers 5y ago
Amazon's App Store and Google Play Store are distinct stores. Purchases do not carry over between them because they are competitors (in the same sense, you can't return an item to Walmart that you purchased at Target, even if they both sell it). You can install the Play Store on your Amazon devices, which allows you to use your Play purchases on the device (without jumping through too many hoops, like getting the apk and sideloading it). This sounds like it's integrating with Amazon's app store directly so unless there's some way of sideloading Android apps using the underlying bridge to run them, Play Store purchases would not be available on Windows.
- IAmMaulik 5y ago
  Great Analogy!
dmitrybrant 5y ago
Absolutely not -- the Amazon app store and the Google Play store are completely different entities. The fact that Microsoft partnered with Amazon instead of Google for app store integration is a strong indication of how serious they are about this whole thing.

ladyanita22 5y ago

Who will this actually benefit? We won't know until some years later...

NelsonMinar 5y ago

The article says this relies on "Intel Bridge Technology". Anyone know more about it? All I could find easily was https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discrete-gpus/server-graphics-solution-brief.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discre... Want to highlight one paragraph from that description: "Intel Bridge Technology is run-time post compiler that can be integrated into Android-in-Container to enable certain Android apps – those not written in Java or compiled to run natively on Intel-based devices - to run on those devices." How many Android apps out there are not written in Java? I'm guessing Kotlin isn't supported either. For that matter how many apps are targeting Android devices with Intel CPUs anymore? I was expecting a full VM / emulator, but this doesn't sound like that.

notriddle 5y ago
I would expect Android apps that are written in Java would also run, but they wouldn't use "Intel Bridge" to do it.
015a 5y ago
I think that statement from Intel has to be taken in context; that technology is for enabling Android applications which are not otherwise executable on Intel CPUs to successfully run on Intel devices. Its not an assertion that Java-based Android apps won't be available in the app store; its just saying "these apps which are generally really hard to get running on x86, we've got those covered too".
- johnnyapol 5y ago
  This was my interpretation of the statement too. Specifically what comes to mind is apps that depend on native/shared libraries that only have an ARM build and not a x86 build shipped.
tyleo 5y ago
I'm hoping to get an AMD PC sometime in the future. I hope this works on more than just Intel processors.

leshokunin 5y ago

This is great. Finally a non hacky way to run mobile apps on a desktop. This is less about competing with Apple’s universal binaries, and more about increasing Windows’s versatility. You can already run Linux on Windows. Now you can run Android. No need to mess around with Archon, Nox, Genymotion anymore. Got a weather app you like? An audiobook player? Done. Hopefully this means more interoperability with Microsoft’s own Android apps, so buying a phone like the Surface Duo and using the Your Phone feature actually does something.

turtlebits 5y ago
I used BlueStacks for a while, while IME was never hacky. That said, there was/is little motivation for me to run mobile apps on desktop. This definitely lowers the barrier to entry, thought I have little faith in how Microsoft will present it. Been burned too many times by them on poor UX/DX (WSL, F#)
- throwamon 5y ago
  What's wrong with WSL and F#?
  - adamdusty 5y ago
    Not sure what that guy is talking about, but some people are frustrated that WSL2 is basically a linux VM, and F# has been little more than an experimental playground for .net features. I don't care about either project, but these are the complaints I hear the most.
projectsforlife 5y ago
Absolutely. Way less janky than Mac's implementation of running iOS apps. While you can use mobile apps on your Windows laptop using native touch controls, on your Mac laptop you have to use that weird trackpad-driven interface. Which would you prefer? https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Mac-mini-M1-Touch-Alternatives.png https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Mac-m...

blibble 5y ago

crappy phone apps on the my desktop PC? just what I've always wanted well at least now I'll be able to play Diablo Immortal....

Ashanmaril 5y ago
Actually, in some cases mobile apps are higher quality than desktop versions. Mainly because the standard for mobile is to make native apps for the platform, while on desktop everything is Electron
- williamtwild 5y ago
  EVERYTHING is electron? Thats a bit overly broad and inaccurate.
  - Ashanmaril 5y ago
    Stop being so intentionally obtuse, you know what I mean
wtetzner 5y ago
Maybe this is a step toward a new Windows Phone that is compatible with Android apps.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

If anything, Amazon knows this will really incentivize updating your Android app on the Amazon App Store, or bringing it there if you haven't. And that's good for us because, should the Amazon App Store become more viable for manufacturers, Google might find themselves increasingly losing control of Android, and increasingly forced to make the Play Store more competitive.

handrous 5y ago
Google's well on their way to replacing Android, no? I thought a lot of their announcements at events the last couple years had been about their from-scratch Android replacement. Maybe another big company will pick it up, but if not, I don't see much benefit to the hobbyist community over the current status quo if Android gets "opened up" more but also loses 99+% of total corporate backing toward its development. Even if Amazon or MS run with it (and maybe that's what this is the beginning of?) that seems more like an on-life-support scenario than one with a bright future for Android. Could go totally differently if major phone and tablet manufacturers ignore the New Shiny Thing and stick with Android so developing commercial software for it remains viable, I guess.
- 015a 5y ago
  I don't think Google is in a position to "replace" Android. They simply don't control the hardware; they can ship Fuchsia to their Home assistants and thermostats, but when it comes to phones and personal computing devices, they don't have many cards to play (beyond Pixel, like 0.5% of the Android market). The power lies with hardware manufacturers and developers. Their new wearables partnership with Samsung may help here. Maybe Samsung would play along with a new Fuchsia phone OS. But there's still the developer issue; any new OS like this would need Android-backward compatibility support exactly similar to what Microsoft is doing here. "Android" in this sense doesn't mean "the OS"; its the application system. What's happening in the Android world right now is so healthy and excellent, I almost can't believe its the product of Big Tech. Google is already pushing Android apps on ChromeOS, now Microsoft has them on Windows, through the Amazon app store, and nowhere in any of this is the actual Android Operating System. The comparison here isn't Android vs iOS vs Windows; its Android vs Flutter vs Web. Its a new way of writing "native"-adjacent multiplatform applications; the OS doesn't matter anymore. Sure the touch-friendly UI will suck in some applications, on some deployments of Windows. That's not Android's fault; its on the developer to recognize the input method and canvas size, and adjust accordingly. I hope more do!

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tootie 5y ago

This is neat but I'm struggling to think of a case where this would be useful.

neogodless 5y ago
Personally, depending on how it translates... Instagram where I can upload photos on the desktop and tweak them. Could use my banking app with Windows Hello for authentication. In other words, the cases where the Android App has more features than the web site version.
enlyth 5y ago
BlueStacks claims to have more than 500 million users, I know a few friends who use it to play mobile only games on their PC for example. If android emulation was so useless on Windows, it wouldn't be so popular
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  > BlueStacks claims to have more than 500 million users That would be twice the playerbase of Candy Crush for a fairly niche software.
wvenable 5y ago
You're struggling to think of a case where an OS can run applications written for another OS would be useful?
- tootie 5y ago
  I think the majority of mobile apps are very coupled to the mobile ecosystem. Or they exist to coverup the poor mobile web experience. I can use social media and messaging from any desktop web browser already. Anything geared around mobility or photography won't be very useful on a desktop. And at least a few apps just have "mobile only" as their edgy marketing strategy. I get why this is potentially useful but I can't think a single app I'd actually use this way.

up6w6 5y ago

I don't think they added a complete emulation of arm64, so it probably only runs apps with support for x86 (I have no idea of how many apps dont have support, but they exist) like BlueStack and most of emulators - So apple still has the advantage of using the same architecture for everything and running the apps natively.

dr-detroit 5y ago
the goal isnt to make life fun for developers its to get consumers using significantly powered down devices from now on
sedatk 5y ago
> I don't think they added a complete emulation of arm64, so it probably only runs apps with support for x86 It uses Intel Bridge, which is a JIT compiler like Rosetta. So, they seem to have done it for ARM64.

smusamashah 5y ago

Some years later everyone will realize that desktops are not phones and are meant to utilize more available screen space. Then everyone will come up with "revolutionary" desktop interface ideas and we here at HN will call it out that we already had these back in 90s. I am waiting for that time. Windows 10 is "phony" already and becoming more like it's built for people with low vision. I hate it's UI. I hope bringing android in windows don't turn into another Electron.

CarelessExpert 5y ago
I know you're being a bit sarcastic but: > Some years later everyone will realize that desktops are not phones and are meant to utilize more available screen space. Keep in mind there's plenty of android apps designed to function on tablets with much larger screens. Obviously there's not nearly as many as on the iOS side of the world where the iPad is far more successful, and there's a wide variability in how good they are at taking advantage of the extra real estate. But they're out there. The real issue, IMO, is that those apps are designed with a touch-based UX, and that doesn't translate well to mouse-based interaction. And one of the few areas where Apple and I are in agreement is in poor ergonomics of a touchscreen on a laptop or PC.
- smusamashah 5y ago
  > those apps are designed with a touch-based UX And now days every desktop app is made as if "mouse" doesn't exist. Or as if `market research has shown that bigger buttons engage more users`. I like to see more on my screen in one go. That's why we get multiple monitors or bigger monitors. To see more content. And everyone is hellbent on wasting it. More CPU/RAM got us more web-as-desktop apps. Higher resolution, bigger screens are giving us bigger, emptier GUIs.
bitL 5y ago
Now you'll have UI elements from Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 11 and Android all in a single operating system! Can't wait for the Android Settings integration to Control Panel next...
5y ago

anoxor 5y ago

I have a few older friends that struggle with tech, but have learned their phone apps well. For them, this could be a benefit to not have to learn the differences between the app and website.

ksec 5y ago

This got me thinking. At what point will there be a Windows Mobile that could run Andriod Apps?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dementik 5y ago
There was. Project Astoria by Microsoft which was abandoded few years ago. That was rather promising, but IIRC it got to some legal problems. I was in beta (or alpha, do not remember) test group.

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[deleted]

haolez 5y ago

This has been possible on ChromeOS (i.e. Chromebooks) for a while now and the experience is subpar. Most apps are not designed for desktop and the UX just feels unrefined. This could be fixed, of course, but on the app creators' side. However, weirdly enough, VPN Android apps work just fine at a system level on Chromebooks. Go figure...

Zababa 5y ago
> Most apps are not designed for desktop and the UX just feels unrefined. This is still better than having to use an emulator or not being able to use the app at all.
- haolez 5y ago
  There are some exceptions, like Outlook - it works in Desktop mode just fine.
anotherman554 5y ago
This will be a good feature for windows tablets like the Surface, which lack a decent amount of touch friendly apps.

database_lost 5y ago

"Android apps will run natively on Windows 11 and will be downloadable from Amazon’s Appstore, via the new Windows Store that’s included in the operating system." - confusion intensifies

andix 5y ago
I understand it in this way: you will find all Android apps published in the Amazon store also inside the Windows Store. So there is no need for republishing all Android apps to the windows store. They partnered with Amazon. Google probably wasn’t helpful in integrating the play store.
kumarvvr 5y ago
They are merging the meta-data from both stores and presenting a unified interface, branded as windows store.
CountDrewku 5y ago
Making one massive spyware conglomerate that collects every bit of personal data from individuals that's possible.
Havoc 5y ago
You need to be logged in on both stores basically

marcodiego 5y ago

Hope this makes more people contribute to anbox.

jmkni 5y ago

Will this help with Android development? Would be nice to be able to debug from Android Studio without needing the emulator.

kart23 5y ago

Can I actually run APKs? Or will it be some closed-off platform?

Havoc 5y ago
Closed. Amazon App Store

brainless 5y ago

Is it just me or does anyone else think this is Microsoft's first step to create it's own Android fork eventually? I have been thinking what's really keeping the "new" Microsoft outside the smartphone game? Google creating a desktop OS market share is not really on the horizon. But if Microsoft takes the right steps it might venture out to smartphones again, and gain market share this time. The HN crowd may not be the best audience for unified experience that Apple seems to be heading toward but there is sure demand for it in the mainstream.

poisonborz 5y ago
They wouldn't have Play Services, which gives all the power of the ecosystem. Just having a good desktop back country doesn't help anything in the mobile space, as Windows Phone showed. It also won't go without experienced hardware partners, and Samsung is already in Google's pocket, the other top dogs being Chinese, who don't look for fitting in the western markets anymore.
- jacob019 5y ago
  Not exactly. Play services/GCM is the push notification system on Android. Even on my completely degoogled phone I have to use microG to support push notifications from google's servers because every app developer has hardcoded their app to use GCM. It doesn't have to be that way. An alternate push notification service with a client alternative could be made available. Developers and users could start using it. Ideally there would be a standardized protocol, and a system setting so that the user can set their preferred push notification provider. Apps would use the system provided endpoint for push notifications and we would get a little control back. I sure wish I could self host push notifications.
  - commoner 5y ago
    Amazon Appstore (used for Microsoft's Android integration in Windows 11) uses Amazon Device Messgaing (ADM) instead of Google's Firebase Cloud Messgaing (FCM) for push notifications. A FCM receiver is built into Google Play Services to enable push notifications for Play Protect certified Android devices, but ADM is a viable alternative for Amazon and Microsoft as long as developers tailor and submit apps to the Amazon Appstore. https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html Gotify and OpenPush are open source push notification solutions, both in the beginning stages of development: - Gotify: https://gotify.net/ https://gotify.net/ - OpenPush: https://bubu1.eu/openpush/ https://bubu1.eu/openpush/

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

how can windows run android apps but linux which is base of android itself cannot do that ? what happened to arm and x86 differences? if rosetta stone thing is being done, why can't linux do that even natively on arm? edit: base=kernel

ThatPlayer 5y ago
Android still uses bytecode for a lot of apps. Unless you're using Android NDK, which does have native code and requires different releases for different processors, ARM and x86 isn't really relevant. Intel even made an attempt into the smartphone CPU market with the Asus ZenFone 4 back in 2014 with an Intel Atom x86 processor running Android. Modern Pixelbooks (and other x86 Chromebooks) run Android apps fine too, and those are technically Linux, so therefore it's already been done. Anbox also seems to do it fine in a container. Never tried that though.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  anbox is fine but the friction is just too great. last i tried was like year or two ago. it just ran stock apps. thats it. my question was, why cant we use manjaro or ubuntu, double click on an apk and run it like an appimage? i am asking from the POV of an end user. I dont understand bytecode or ndk. if windows 11 can freely run an android app like it was a .exe, why cant my linux machine do that? anbox aside.
  - ThatPlayer 5y ago
    Because no developers have made that feature.
- preroll 5y ago
  But this running inside Windows. Putting native code aside, it this just another emulator? If it can out-perform all the other emulators is it likely to make them redundant ?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

hughrr 5y ago

Oh great another 5gb on the install image that no one is going to use.

dhdhhd 5y ago

Wow this is great. Goes back to work

catern 5y ago

I wonder if this will share anything with WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)?

moogly 5y ago

But why? I can think of exactly 0 Android apps I would like to run on my Windows desktop (and I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy S). Is this really something people crave to do?

cblconfederate 5y ago
maybe ... they want to stop the javascript-based desktop app craze. E.g. their android skype mobile does not look much different from their skype desktop now. Maybe they want to steal google's OS
- ptx 5y ago
  Great, so now we can run React Native apps on Android on Windows. Apparently Microsoft heard we liked runtimes, so they put a runtime in our runtime so we can virtualize while we virtualize.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  microsoft is more invested in the javascipt desktop app craze than almost anyone. they have github, visual studio code, and teams all running on javascript, plus the office 365 apps, which are eventually looking like they'll replace the old versions.
KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
Yeah? Tiktok's app is way better than the website. Snapchat etc doesn't even have a usable website.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I believe the question is why having the app on a Windows machine if the phone is usually nearby.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
    If you're already on the PC the PC is usually more convenient.

dmitrybrant 5y ago

Microsoft really wants to convince you that your phone and your PC are the same thing. But they've failed in the execution of this idea several times now. The fact that this partnership is with the Amazon app store, not the Google Play store, is a strong hint of how serious they are about this, and how this latest iteration will work out.

okareaman 5y ago
The old saw was that Microsoft takes 3 tries to get it right. Don't know if it applies anymore.
adamdusty 5y ago
They had to partner with Amazon or no one. Amazon already has an android marketplace, and there's no way Google, who has a "competing" OS, is going to facilitate users using apps on windows. Google especially isn't going to combine the play store with the microsoft store and let MS call it the microsoft store.

ww520 5y ago

Flutter and Dart would have more reach with this adoption on Windows 11.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

This is great. It heads off ChromeOS and makes the Surface hybrids even more attractive than they already are, which is no mean feat. Once this is out the Surface Books will cover basically all use cases at least decently. It'll be great to have cross op with their new foldable Android phones, too. Those machines are an absolute joy Microsoft really killing it since Nadella took over

jedberg 5y ago

The security implications of this are interesting. There are some apps, namely Snapchat and Instagram, that guarantee privacy by taking advantage of the phone APIs that inform the app about screenshots. You can in theory work around those today with rooted/jailbroken phones, but those are a tiny part of the ecosystem. But if everyone can run Snapchat on Windows, that kinda changes the whole game, unless they support the same APIs. But even then, it seems like it would be trivial to block that API.

vyrotek 5y ago
Indeed. Automating and botting various apps seems like it'd be easier as well.
erwinkle 5y ago
You have always been able to run Snapchat and android apps on Windows via emulators like MEmu.
- jedberg 5y ago
  Sure, and on Mac too, but it's not easy and rarely done. This will make anyone able to do it.
idle_zealot 5y ago
This seems backwards to me. Sure, apps should be at the mercy of they system when they want to use system-level features (interacting with other apps, accessing mic/camera, etc). But why should an application get to dictate which system features a user can invoke (taking a screenshot)?
- jedberg 5y ago
  Snapchat doesn't block you from screenshooting, but it notifies the other person if you do.
- throwamon 5y ago
  > why should [applications] get to dictate which system features a user can invoke? They shouldn't, but they do it anyway because virtually no users know how to "cheat", and most don't even know that they can cheat. The justification is that taking a screenshot violates your or someone else's privacy or security. In the case of security, they assume you're too dumb to know better.

vyrotek 5y ago

I wonder how well games will work such as the upcoming Diablo Immortal.

listic 5y ago

So, now macOS will run iOS apps; Windows will run Android apps. What's the Linux's answer?

badkitty99 5y ago
When eta Win11 Universal Control?
jhgb 5y ago
Linux already runs Android apps. It's called "Android".

hakcermani 5y ago

Is there something similar on Linux? Would make me ditch the Apple ecosystem once and for all for Linux and Android ..

AkshitGarg 5y ago
Anbox (https://anbox.io/ https://anbox.io/) does seem to do this. I couldn't try this because I couldn't get it to run on my machine a few years back
- gwmnxnp_516a 5y ago
  The whole problem is that Anbox is distributed as Snaps which is disliked by folks from many non Ubuntu-like Linux distributions. It would be interesting if there was a docker image with Anbox pre-installed that allowed playing with Android apps with zero configuration and setup.

swiley 5y ago

The MS Windows platform is more dead than the idea of personal computing.

encryptluks2 5y ago

The Amazon Appstore is awful, and due to issues between them and Google it is likely that you won't be able to install any Google Play Apps, like YouTube or Gmail. There are so many apps that pretend to actually be the official apps too and Amazon seems to not really flag anything from what I can tell. I really hope there will still be a way to sideload the Google Play Store. It is one of the first things I do on Amazon devices.

blablablerg 5y ago

what about bringing office to linux?

unnouinceput 5y ago
wine? no? then how about Libre office? or even the olddy but goldy VM running Win(whatever version) for your Windows only needs? Plenty of choices
EvilEy3 5y ago
Why?

la_fayette 5y ago

To be honest I have no idea why someone would use Android apps on Windows? Popular apps can be used via the web-browser or even have a separat desktop app (e.g., whatsapp, facebook, youtube, ...). That is similar with games. Edit: apps which require sensors, such as gps, gyro, etc. wouldn't work anyway...

nonbirithm 5y ago
Personally I have seen streams of people playing mobile games with gatcha-style monetization using their computers, and feed the game window into OBS. I don't think many of those games have PC counterparts. It sounds more convenient than having to set up an external capture card.
pests 5y ago
What? My windows laptop has all the sensors, gps, gyro, etc that you would need.
- la_fayette 5y ago
  Ok, I thought more like using runtastic with a laptop...
spideymans 5y ago
Because mobile apps ported on the web often suck (ahem... Instagram, TikTok), and the mobile version might suck less.
- cruano 5y ago
  Also Apple is doing this too with the M1
_-david-_ 5y ago
I don't use Snapchat so I could be mistaken but I don't think it works in a web browser or in a desktop app. There could be some others as well.
5y ago

xyst 5y ago

So Microsoft has its own App Store, then within that App Store there exists the Amazon App Store. Apps on this third layer will then be executable or sideloadable in Windows 11? Sounds like a disaster to me.

Grazester 5y ago
When I read that in the article, I had to re-read that line 3 times to understand what was going on.
TameAntelope 5y ago
More like, "There is one Microsoft App Store, but apps on Amazon's Android App Store will also appear in Microsoft's App Store so you won't as a developer have to publish your Android app two places for them to show up in two places." I would bet, for better or for worse, these Amazon Android apps will share metadata as well, so you'll see the same "Star" rating in both the Microsoft App Store and the Amazon Android App Store, but that's speculation on my part.

thrower123 5y ago

Why though? What's the point? I absolutely don't want to run the crapware on my phone on a real computer.

unnouinceput 5y ago
None is forcing you to do that. It's a feature that if you want to use it, you'll can from W11 onward.
- thrower123 5y ago
  I actively do not want this to become normalized. Things are bad enough as they currently stand, without further enabling appification and the degeneration of standards.
  - EvilEy3 5y ago
    What degeneration of standards lmao. Desktop is the most degenerate of all platforms with their Electron cancer. At least on mobile it's mostly native.

geehum 5y ago

Microsoft seems to be very focussed on the Developer experience in recent years. Take WSL for example. Is this not part of that drive?

cronix 5y ago

I just went through my phone and there isn't a single Android app I'd actually want to use on my PC. Most of my apps are just hobbled versions of websites anyway, so I just use the fully functional browser with a full sized keyboard and nice big monitor and use the websites when I'm on the PC, and for that all I need is a single browser and the OS doesn't really matter.

collaborative 5y ago
Think more of apps that require a file system
EvilEy3 5y ago
> Most of my apps are just hobbled versions of websites anyway Most of the time it's the other way around.

hashingroll 5y ago

I hope this will mean we can finally stream 4k content on Prime Video, Disney+, et al. in Windows PC.

tehnub 5y ago

I'm super excited to try the Android Apple Music app on Windows! We've been stuck with the bloated, slow iTunes desktop app for so long now. I was hoping they'd announce an update for it along with lossless and spatial audio, but there's been nothing so far.

Synaesthesia 5y ago
Have you tried the web player? Also the beta version for Android has lossless and spatial
- cruano 5y ago
  Or the iPod.js[1] from yesterday, I've been using it unironically and is great https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27606099
- tehnub 5y ago
  I’ve tried the web player, but it only plays at 64 kbps, and also randomly stops playing for me pretty often.

tonetheman 5y ago

Android apps already run on Chromebooks...

Causality1 5y ago

Interesting. If it works well it might be enough to make me buy a Surface.

catchmeifyoucan 5y ago

There’s more about it at 21:30 in the developer talk; https://youtu.be/egZ82QGshX8 https://youtu.be/egZ82QGshX8

cable2600 5y ago

I guess Apple will counter by brining iOS apps to the Macintosh M1 systems?

haswell 5y ago
Apple is first here.
EvilEy3 5y ago
Already did long ago.

npteljes 5y ago

I wonder how they'll manage the Play Services dependency, or whether apps that need SafetyNet checks would work. My guess is they won't, and they don't.

herbst 5y ago

I mean, we can easily do this today and nobody does. Maybe there is a reason for that? Like apps that simply are not made for such large screens? Or the far majority of apps I would have interest on my computer expect a integrated SIM card or other mobile specific hardware. On the other hand metro does not feel right on a big screen anyway, maybe it fits well?