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Windows 11 Won't Include Android App Support at Launch (theverge.com) 35

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Microsoft won't ship support for Android apps on Windows 11 in time for the operating system's launch on October 5th. While Android apps running on Windows 11 is one of the big new features of the OS, Microsoft will only start previewing this feature in the coming months. From a report: "We look forward to continuing our journey to bring Android apps to Windows 11 and the Microsoft Store through our collaboration with Amazon and Intel; this will start with a preview for Windows Insiders over the coming months," says Aaron Woodman, general manager of Windows marketing at Microsoft.
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Windows 11 Won't Include Android App Support at Launch More

Windows 11 Won't Include Android App Support at Launch

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  • It is just like Microsoft to over promise and under deliver.

  • From the summary: "...We look forward to continuing our journey to bring Android apps to Windows 11 and the Microsoft Store through our collaboration with Amazon and Intel..."

    But since these are android apps, should Google be involved? Seems they'd be the ones to best know how to integrate their platform into Win11.

    • Amazon didn't learn from their last encounter with Android.

    • Why would Google help Microsoft? They are bitter rivals.

      • M$ is firmly in the business market.

        Google is firmly in the phone and thin client (Chromebook) market.

          Yes, there is the overlap in the laptop market by those who know better use Windows because it's more geared to general computer use and that's what they need. And people use Chromebooks because they only need a thin client.

        The rivalry is minimal.

        • "by those"

          BUT those....

          edit button pls

        • Yeah, but Google wants to move into the Enterprise area. Else it wouldn't need to make a productivity suite.
          And Microsoft want to be in the web. Else they wouldn't need to shove all this web stuff into things that don't need it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Amazon is providing the app store, and Intel is providing binary translation support.

      Not sure what Android apps you would want to run on desktop... There are some decent calculators I guess. Maybe Android versions of some comms apps like WhatsApp and Skype, but it depends how well Microsoft handles the permissions and sandboxing aspects.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        If you want to use a Windows device in tablet mode, then they pretty much need android apps. The Windows ecosystem has produced very little that even tries to be touch usable, and even then they are generally not as good as some application that has been written for Android.

        They provided all the tools the developers needed, but it's too much trouble to bother to target Windows when there are just so many more Android devices with touch interfaces.

        • Windows has a touch interface. Has had it since at least XP, if not earlier.
          I have no problem with touching the screen to do things beyond the facts that it is highly uncomfortable, very imprecise, and fills the screen with smudges.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Junta ( 36770 )

            I didn't deny that they had or even had the capabilities associated with a modern 'tablet/phone' set of sensibilities (XP was 'touch as mouse', by now they have the full suite of competitive fundamental capabilities, multi-touch, orientation sensing, screen rotation, etc). Simple use case of reading, if I fold my windows device into a tablet form factor, there still aren't very comfortable applications for reading, compared to having a load of appropriate applications on an Android phone or tablet.

            • The Calibre reader, Notepad, Notepad++, Word, your web browser, Write, the Kindle and Kobo apps if you go that way. Plenty of good apps for reading text on the computer

      • There is enough of an Android on Windows gaming community, that there is a pretty decent app for it already.

        https://www.bluestacks.com/ [bluestacks.com]

        Doing it in a VM should be pretty trivial, in the previous version of Bluestacks they even had a Hyper-V based client instead of the default Virtualbox instance.

      • There are a bunch of Android apps that would be nice to run on the desktop. Having apps on the desktop also brings about some better security, since the app is likely not going to be able to mess with the main Windows filesystem, or get a user context and then go crazy with ransomware on document directories. This is especially good, where one can run a social media app, as opposed to having it in a web browser, to ensure it can't access much on the machine, and if it does get compromised, there isn't muc

    • Re:Curious (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2021 @10:44AM (#61748453)

      They have the partners that are willing, not the ones that are best.

      Google doesn't want to risk being an 'also-ran' in any context. Their strategy is that people need to put away their Windows systems and replace them with Android and ChromeOS devices. They don't want to share the platform and enabling easy Windows access to Android apps may cause people to be more wary of ChromeBooks, which would be rendered strict subset of Windows capabilities in that case.

      Amazon is already used to that as their app store is only in Fire devices, which are a small sliver of the market. Being *the* channel to get your android app into Microsoft ecosystem is appealing to them and they have nothing to lose.

      Intel is, obviously, eager for any scenario that keeps PCs as relevant as possible, since that's the one area they have dominance in.

  • Would be much easier to provide Android support.

    • There were ARM versions of desktop Windows for many years now, but there is a reason why it wasn't very popular.

      Windows = x86 (and people don't want slow x86 emulation)

      • Windows = x86 (and people don't want slow x86 emulation)

        Despite MS having almost a decade head start on Apple with desktops on ARM, Apple leapfrogged MS in terms of performance and stability. Linus installed Windows 10 in a VM [youtube.com] on a Macbook Air M1 and it still trounced a MS Surface despite running in emulation. Running natively in MacOS, the M1 destroyed the Surface in the same tests.

        • M1 is an exception. Most ARM devices do x86 emulation slowly, and desktop Windows is an OS that people expect to run x86 based programs on.

          There were native ARM desktop Windows programs, but they are far and few between. Anything else whould've been using x86 emulation, and that's where the performance hit would come in.

          Maybe if/when M1 type chips become much more common, we will see widespread adoption of ARM based Windows, but in the meantime, it was an experiment and a niche market at best.

          • My point is that MS had a head start on the Windows on ARM and saw the problems of emulation. They however really did nothing about it. Apple saw the same problem and modified their chip to account for it. While MS does not have the chip expertise that Apple has, they could have worked with Qualcomm or Samsung to do what Apple did.

    • Slowly? They have had a few different builds for ARM over the years. Currently, the Surface Pro X at least is ARM based, but they have had numerous ARM based surfaces through the years.

  • That was the one feature that actually made me find some appeal with Windows 11.

    At least now any and all temptation to use Windows 11 is gone.

    • What apps are you using on your phone that don't have a better version on the PC?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ale3ns ( 453301 )
        Easy. Maps.
        • The Google Map website is better than the app. Less bullshit in it.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by ale3ns ( 453301 )
            Not if you are using it in a car. Mobile app beats it hands down. I know because I had to check it out for a friend who wanted to build a car pc, but wanted the speed of an intel processor. He's fairly technical and so had no problem using windows and the non-touch optimized interface compared to android. But there was no good map replacement for what you could get on android. There were a lot of other minor annoyances with using windows for that kind of a setup, like light sensitivity. Details like that. N

    • Don't worry, its "coming soon" just like the all new settings menu was soon going to replace the Control Panel in windows 10.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Possibilities (Score:3)

    by gregarican ( 694358 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2021 @11:09AM (#61748549) Homepage

    With the prevalence of Android malware that creeps into its apps ecosystem, combining that with the recent gaping security holes in the Windows OS that have come back to prominence....I'm not sure this is the best move from a security standpoint.

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