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Here's something a little out of left field, but worth considering: By adding support for Android apps, Google Chrome has the potential to completely dominate d
by MarkMc 12y ago
Here's something a little out of left field, but worth considering: By adding support for Android apps, Google Chrome has the potential to completely dominate desktop and mobile development.
Using a simple hack [1] it is already possible to write a single Android app that runs on (a) Android tablets; (b) Mac computers; (c) Windows computers; (d) Chrome OS computers; (e) Nexus Player set-top boxes. If Google were to put its full weight behind this strategy then I think it would quickly become the default platform for desktop development and thereby destroy the Windows empire. It might even mean Android apps being developed for what would normally be the domain of web apps.
[1] http://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-android-apps-inside-chrome-on-any-desktop-op-1637564101 http://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-android-apps-inside-chrome-...
- rimantas 12y agoI don't remember which book it was (maybe "Inmates are running the asylum"), but there was an example of dancing bear. It is amusing to see that bear is able to dance at all, but that is by no means are good dance. Also, how many users are constantly switching between different platforms? If all I see is the lousy app on my platform of choice I could not care less about its capability to run on others platforms.
- MarkMc 12y agoA similar quote I read was "A horse that can count is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician". You are right that users don't care about having one app running on multiple platforms. Instead, it is the software developers who would benefit by not having to write the same app three times. You seem to be assuming that an Android app running on a non-Android platform would be 'lousy'. Is that because an app designed for a touch-based tablet would provide a bad user experience when run on a desktop computer?