Submitted by This was an inevitability, right? Android applications were already running on the PlayBook operating system as well as on Maemo (and even some rumblings on iOS), and now BlueStacks is bringing Android applications to Windows. Today they released the alpha version of the BlueStacks App Player, which will allow you to run Android applications on Windows.
BlueStacks are positioning their App Player as a way to further increase the reach of the Android applications you write. They are launching a service which allows your Android applications to be synced from your smartphone to your Windows desktop. Furthermore, they claim OEMs are planning on preloading all this – however, few details are provided about this.
“The openness of Android is enabling innovation around the world. We are grateful to Google and others for their contributions. This is also a social equalizer in the US and countries like Brazil, India and China, where a large percentage of the population who can only afford smartphones can now enjoy and benefit from the ubiquity of apps on the Android platform,” said Rosen Sharma, CEO of BlueStacks, “We look forward to getting feedback from our users on the alpha release.”
The creators of the App Player claim Android applications require zero modifications in order to run on Windows, and the alpha release – which is free – comes with a bunch of preloaded applications to try all this out. They’ve also put up a fancy promotional video, but sadly, it doesn’t really show a whole lot of usage.
While I think it’s an interesting project, I highly doubt how viable this really is in the long run. Windows on tablets will surely get their own versions of most of these applications, and on desktops, smartphone applications look weird and will have better, more suitable counterparts anyway.
Would be cool having it running on top of Wine.
It might be cool to do that so you can say “wow, look what I did!”, but to me it seems to be too much abstraction. Wouldn’t it be better to target Linux directly?
I thought ubuntu was doing something along these lines, but haven’t heard much lately.
Though not exactly what you are looking for, there is a request for Linux support here that anyone can vote on to show support:
http://community.bluestacks.com/bluestacks/topics/linux_support-uzu…
If the product is closed source… nop…
I was talking to use it in my mac.
An interesting comment considering OS X is largely closed source. Though I agree.
As already mentioned by others, there is already a Linux system to run Android apps.
But that’s not what I wanted to say. I wanted to point out that Wine isn’t really much abstraction. Win32 isn’t native on Windows either. Windows speaks NT, Win32 is just a collection of DLLs that wrap NT. Wine is similar but wrapping POSIX. Politically I’m I think the Wine runtime is very questionable (chasing tail lights), but technically, it’s very clever and well written (better than that Windows 2000 code you can get hold of). In short, Wine Is Not a Emulator.
Wine itself isn’t much abstraction, true. I understand completely that it’s a compatibility layer and not an emulator; I’ve spent a good bit of time over the years tracking down issues with Wine and fixing things so that my Windows games work with it. So believe me when I say I know how it works.
My point is that Wine, while a great tool, is not the solution to this problem. I mean come on, we’re taking programs written in Java and executed in a Java-like process VM designed for a Linux-based OS (first layer), via the Wine compatibility environment (second layer) which is running on top of Linux (third layer) which brings us almost full circle. I’d rather see Dalvik itself ported to Linux and stay at that first layer, mostly to avoid extra bug sources and unnecessary redundancy.
It actually reminds me of those people who will plug a DC to AC inverter in their vehicle to then plug an AC to 12VDC power supply into the inverter for whatever gadget they are using. When you tell them there are simple, straight DC plugs designed for their device to avoid all that abstraction and wasted energy, it blows their minds.
Edited 2011-10-12 12:19 UTC
Oh yer, not saying running Windows software on Windows is a good solution. I see it as a last resort.
Props to your work on Wine. I know some of the Wine code base because I use it when MSDN lets me down. Some doc holes have been worked through there you may not found elsewhere. It’s better code then that leaked Win2000 source, certianly from what I saw. That’s partly C vs C/C++ (i.e not entirely either), but I think it is also Wine source is change for asthetic reasons because it’s open.
Like what?
– Android Emulator (from Google)?
Oh come on, compared to that Java/Qemu crap even my smartphone is a high-performance cluster.
– Android-x86 (in VBox/VMware)?
Second best joke right behind the Android Emulator. While it runs it’s lacking the feature to rotate an app that’s starting in portrait mode at will. May not really be a problem, on a Desktop/Laptop it’s impossible to use an app in portrait mode. Apart from that, I yet have to come across a Android-x86 build where the keyboard layout selection works.
That pretty much sums up all the Android Emulators / PC Ports I happen to know.
On topic:
For an Alpha release BlueStacks actually works exceptionally great. While it’s not perfect yet (hence the “Alpha” tag) it’s a whole lot more useable than i.e. Android-x86 is. Apart from that it’s pretty fast (can’t confirm the “it’s slow” from the commenter below).
Once they got rid of that annoying Facebook login requirement, managed to have networking and keyboard layout selection working, and dismissed that laughable Desktop gadget for a windowed mode where I have a tablet-ish Homescreen I would actually buy the Pro version.
Edited 2011-10-12 13:32 UTC
But it is the wrong platform(s) for me.
I’ve thought for a while Apple could have a winner if they released an iOS for desktops linked with something like iCloud. You could run iPad versions of apps in a window which would think itself native, and have the same info on your iPhone or iPad apps.
I’ve no compelling apps to try out on Android, yet, and like the poster above mentions, another layer of abstraction by running an Android VM in a Windows VM is just a step too far…
That’s quite impossible. At the very least – because Steve Jobs convinced everybody it’s not a Good Idea(tm).
This reminds me of what I thought about OSX back when it was new and Apple’s fortunes were not quite so bright. Back then, Linux on the desktop had more hype (or at least as much) than Apple’s products. But, the very nature of OS-X’s UNIX underpinnings and the open source nature of Linux meant that, should Linux really catch on, those programs could be run on OS-X.
And, they would run a lot more closely to native looking if Apple wanted them to, such as they might if Apple had lost the #2 spot on the desktop and sales momentum. X11 compatibility was like an insurance plan against a Linux “win” on the desktop. However, it was also only a one way street. If you wanted to use a Mac program you needed a Mac, such as the iLife suite.
As we know, Linux on the desktop didn’t take of for a variety of reasons, but the cream of the crop of Linux applications can still be run on the Mac, as there are enough users to port them over to Mac specific packages / .dmg
Now the same is happening on Android versus iOS / Windows. You could run Android apps on other platforms than Android, iOS included if Apple lost the momentum and wanted you too, but you’ll never be able to take something iOS or Windows specific and make it run on Android.
Naturally this only applies to apps that cannot be cross compiled for all the mobile platforms or is otherwise exclusive, but the truth remains that the more open source an app is (or the environment running the app), the more it can be co-opted and added to a closed source OS.
Windows has a lot more to gain in this way now, as it’s far behind the curve for mobile devices, but that only makes for a closer comparison to the early power pc OS-X
Not exactly. Read about GNUStep and how it relates to OSX/Cocoa, also google: Sony iOS GNUStep. And/or check out http://snap.sonydeveloper.com/pages/about/ in archive.org (from almost a year ago)
Sure, it’s not (it wasn’t? Actually, looked like some project in early stages, unveiled accidentally and/or without authorisation and promptly axed because of it) a ready solution by any stretch, but it can be made to work.
Can’t you already do this with the SDK just not as clean/full screen?
What does this do that the emulator in the SDK can’t do?
You mean the emulator who takes 10 minutes to boot Android and 5 minutes to start the mail app?
Well, for starters, it works more poorly than the SDK (so far)
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Apparently there’s no networking support, it only supports windows, a lot of apps don’t work, and it requires annoying facebook integration.
You can install .apk files into bluestacks tho, if you want to avoid the facebook integrated market thingy.
I’ve tried both, and Bluestacks is way faster than the emulator in the SDK. Good stuff.
If you want the ultimate performance tho, I think installing android_x86 natively (ie not in virtualbox) would be the fastest way to run android apps on a PC.
if this is anything like the supposed meego version it wil never be released to the hoi poloi, apparently you can only license alien dalvik if you make phones…
This doesn’t make sense. Should possibly say “can not” instead of “can only”.
Also, where is the Linux version? They think that those who can’t afford smart phones can afford a commercial operating system?
Wake me up, when MS itself would publish something like that for WP7.