[HN Gopher] Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsyste...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android
(WSA)
Author : lemoine0461
Score : 197 points
Date : 2024-03-05 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (learn.microsoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (learn.microsoft.com)
| mattl wrote:
| Looks like support ended today, when did they announce this?
| refulgentis wrote:
| Announced today, support ends same day in 2025.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| This is kind of weird since much of the tech is shared with WSL.
| It also makes me question the future of WSL, though that would be
| insane to deprecate given it has worked miracles for
| rehabilitating Microsoft's image and Windows' usability.
| throwaway2990 wrote:
| WSL is used heavily inside MS. It's not going anywhere.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| WSL is an important developer tool, with a lot of (paying
| corporate) users. WSA was a limited toy.
| alkonaut wrote:
| WSA is apparently also a godsend for android app developers
| on windows.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Eh, you can still use the SDK emulator, which is an x86_64
| VM, and it has OK performance on reasonable hardware.
| codeflo wrote:
| At this point, Linux is so integral to Microsoft's strategy
| that if anything, it's more likely that Microsoft would abandon
| the Windows kernel and rebuild the Windows UI on top of Linux.
|
| (To be clear, that's not going to happen, but it's also no
| longer at the "hell would freeze over" level of absurdity for
| Nadella's Microsoft.)
| Twirrim wrote:
| They're even already producing their own Linux distribution,
| CBL-Mariner, https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux
| baq wrote:
| WSL is what makes Windows viable in ML/AI at all. They've made
| a correct (in hindsight it was genius, actually) decision to
| expose GPUs in WSL using Windows drivers and a shim in a vm. It
| works surprisingly well.
| theusus wrote:
| I feel like this was released just yesterday and now they are
| ending the support. Why?
| refulgentis wrote:
| Really good q I'm shocked too. Riffing:
|
| Without Play Store it's not viable/interesting. Also, it's so.
| much. work. keeping up with Android releases, even inside
| Google. Wear and ChromeOS are always a version or two behind,
| and vast majority of the time, it is two versions.
|
| If Google internally wasn't helpful enough to each other, I
| can't imagine they played nice with Microsoft on this.
|
| The broad business war means there's no incentive for VPs to
| drive it.
|
| Technical challenges via CTS* mean there's no incentive for 1-3
| steps up the org chart to enable it.
|
| The narrow-er business challenge of not having the Play Store
| is the final nail for any cooperation. I don't think Google is
| interested in proactively collaborating unless you do CTS.
|
| * Android's CTS, compatibility test suite, has to be passed to
| get the Play Store, and broadly, it is organized around
| individual device launches, rather than a subsystem than can
| run on any hardware.
|
| (n.b. I worked on Wear then Android at Google, 6 years total)
| asmor wrote:
| Weirdly enough I had to do the compatibility hoops for
| Waydroid, but not the commonly used WSA+MindTheGapps distro.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| I imagine not only is this a technical challenge in general,
| but the "best" apps require google integration and google is
| giving devs and big companies incentives to require the google
| play libraries, which this can't use. This has been google's
| main dirty trick since the beginning, which is why you don't
| see much competition in the android space. Its a few big
| licensed players. Niche, homebrew, emulated, etc players aren't
| going to get google certified. Android has just become MS from
| the 90s. Google is a crony capitalist tough guy as much as MS
| or Oracle or Apple, it just has better PR as being "friendly"
| and "open."
|
| MS also is clearly bribing/paying for big apps to come to its
| Windows platform via the Windows store, so why bother with this
| Android middle-man that is all trouble? Eventually the big apps
| got to Windows Store and that's really all that matters to 90%
| of customers.
|
| Everything about this project was doomed from the start. I
| think MS just has given up on apps and mobile and leaves that
| to Apple or Samsung, who are now just caretakers for ios and
| android at this point and mobile becoming a low/no profit
| commodity in the long run, outside of payment processing.
| bonton89 wrote:
| Is the Windows store popular now? Aside from Microsoft dog
| fooding I didn't get the impression it was very much used
| even after all these years.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Last time I checked the MS store it was mainly bikini
| wallpapers. Not kidding ...
| bikson wrote:
| Good enough.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Bikini wallpapers?! Oh my god, that's disgusting! Where?
| kyriakos wrote:
| Not popular but usable now they allow any kind of
| application and not just "modern apps". Main benefit that
| applications update automatically but even though I do
| install apps via the store I don't ever remember finding
| apps through it. Maybe discoverability is just bad.
| causi wrote:
| It was useful as a way to pry people away from Windows 10.
| stillold wrote:
| They created a huge buzz around it, took over a year to release
| and when they did so, released it to the wrong Insider ring, so
| everyone who was on the fast ring specifically for and waiting
| for it had to re-install.
|
| I believe, without any proof, that this is why they had to redo
| their rings and what they meant shortly after.
|
| Then there is everything else people have mentioned, with them
| being completely reliant on Amazon's store but requiring
| "something" where most of the apps that are on Amazon's mobile
| store weren't available.
| creshal wrote:
| I get a feeling whatever deal they had with Amazon over their
| app store fell through. Nothing else I can think of really
| makes sense to end support so suddenly.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I think that WSL is useful and used by many.
|
| WSA, not so sure. Who is using it? They very likely have
| telemetry and thus usage.
| moolcool wrote:
| > enables your Windows 11 device to run Android applications
| that are available in the Amazon Appstore
|
| This might be the crux of it. Google probably will never port
| the Play store to Windows, MS doesn't want to maintain their
| own Android app store, and Amazon is a competitor with a pretty
| uncompelling app store to boot.
| izacus wrote:
| Google actually has ported Play Store to Windows, just for
| games though: https://play.google.com/googleplaygames
| andix wrote:
| I'm using it from time to time. A lot of consumer equipment
| nowadays can only be operated with Android and iOS apps. For
| all those things I need WSA the Apps are off course not
| available in the official Amazon App Store, so i had to
| manually download them from f-droid and side load them with
| ADB.
|
| I can see why WSA is not such an often used subsystem.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Who is using it?
|
| Android app developers on Windows is a disappointed group on
| Twitter at least
| Spunkie wrote:
| My laptop has a 4g module so I use WSA to run my mobile
| providers app. So I can monitor usage and buy more packages
| when I run out of data.
| hiatus wrote:
| > Windows Subsystem for Android(tm) enables your Windows 11
| device to run Android applications that are available in the
| Amazon Appstore.
|
| This seems so niche it is not a huge surprise they are ending
| support. Though at the same time, the initial article is from
| August of last year so it had a very short life.
| naikrovek wrote:
| WSA was around a lot longer than that, at least in beta. But I
| never saw any excitement about it at all.
| oldnetguy wrote:
| Agree without Google Play store it's rather useless
| babypuncher wrote:
| They killed any possible interest in this by going with the
| Amazon app store instead of Google Play.
|
| They also did a horrible job of advertising it. This is the first
| I've heard about it from Microsoft since the feature first rolled
| out in Windows 11 2.5 years ago.
| bonton89 wrote:
| IIRC it didn't even ship with the original Windows 11 release
| and was a year behind or so. Did it ever even get out of beta?
|
| This was the only feature of Windows 11 that was remotely
| interesting to me. I guess I don't have to worry about missing
| out on anything avoiding 11 now.
| delfinom wrote:
| The problem here is Google would have to agree to it and
| license the play store for it, which they might have wanted to.
| Spunkie wrote:
| The heavy handed tying of WSA to the Amazon appstore is so
| stupid it almost feels malicious. I've used WSA on multiple
| computers and every time it's a pain to get it to the point of
| usability.
|
| Gotta mess with MS store > find WSA > install WSA > get adb
| working > install f-droid > install aurora appstore.
|
| WSA should have just gone with f-droid or better yet been tied
| to no appstore by default and just ask for you to provide your
| own appstore apk on first startup.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Didn't take long.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| The fact they're ending this makes me wonder if the rumors of
| Amazon fully abandoning AOSP as the basis for FireOS are true. If
| so, it would be ending it because there won't be an appstore with
| updated apps before long.
| Postosuchus wrote:
| Doesn't make much sense. Building an ecosystem is far, far more
| difficult than throwing together a small embedded OS. Just ask
| Samsung and LG (and Google for that matter). Maybe Amazon has
| enough clout to force all streaming app developers (and game
| developers, which is the new frontier, and ad platforms) to
| suck it down and build support for the new platform but I doubt
| it - plus the ROI is just not there. Why destroy an active well
| working ecosystem - to accomplish what exactly?!
| pjmlp wrote:
| The rumors are there, because apparently Amazon wants it to
| be a kind of media center only, and prime products, nothing
| else.
|
| I can understand them, my LG with WebOS is good enough for
| similar purposes.
| Postosuchus wrote:
| > wants it to be a kind of media center only
|
| Again, to accomplish this goal, one has to:
|
| - Build a credible software stack - from UI kits to audio
| and video codecs
|
| - Convince the streaming companies to build one more flavor
| of their apps (in addition to Android/FTV, AppleTV, Roku,
| and a bunch of SmartTV platforms)
|
| - Build ad stack and also convince major ad platforms to
| build their respective ad SDKs for the new platform
| (believe me, even for established platforms this takes
| years)
|
| And all of this - to accomplish precisely what??? To wean
| away from Android? Why? There are no licensing issues,
| Amazon has grown a tremendous expertise in Android, which
| underlies most of its devices. Why throw all of this
| away???
|
| Unlike Amazon, Samsung is much more tethered to Google,
| because they cannot afford to diverge in Android experience
| for the phones. They tried to cut this Gordian Knot by
| building Tizen and they learned their lesson the hard way.
| But at least for them there was a strategic benefit of
| moving away from Android. There is no such benefit for
| Amazon.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Who says they are throwing away their existing media
| stack?
|
| Who says they care about apps from third parties?
|
| Amazon Prime already has its UI.
| pquki4 wrote:
| It's not possible before Amazon can build their own browser
| that runs on their own OS. (Or, if they can somehow get the
| Android/Linux version of Chrome run on the OS.) As simple as
| that.
| hughesjj wrote:
| So, silk?
|
| https://docs.aws.amazon.com/silk/latest/developerguide/what-.
| ..
| xnx wrote:
| I found WSA kind of handy to run Pocket Casts on old Microsoft
| Surface Tablet. Had to jump through some hoops to install Google
| Play first.
|
| What's the best alternative? Bluestacks seems very shady. Chrome
| OS Flex in a VM? (Scratch that. It looks like Chrome OS Flex
| doesn't allow Android apps)
|
| P.S. Do we make "jokes" about Microsoft killing things off like
| we do with Google?
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| What's wrong with the pocket casts webapp?
| xnx wrote:
| Only available to paid subscribers.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I use the android version through WSA because it supports
| chapters which the web version doesn't and it also does a
| better job of remembering my location when I switch from it
| to my actual phone than the web app does.
| djfdat wrote:
| Loses some of the audio features, such as Trim Silence and
| per-podcast speed and skip settings.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| We are more cynical with Microsoft, and joke about embrace
| extend extinguish.
| SlackingOff123 wrote:
| I found the best alternative to be the Pocket Casts web player.
| It's not as good as the mobile app, but I find it serviceable.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Haven't messed with either personally, but maybe Waydroid can
| be coaxed into running through WSL?
| commoner wrote:
| > What's the best alternative?
|
| Waydroid runs Android apps on Linux and some people claim to
| have gotten it to work on WSL.
|
| - Waydroid: https://waydro.id
|
| Reddit threads:
|
| -
| https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/eofn...
|
| -
| https://www.reddit.com/r/waydroid/comments/10y813d/is_it_pos...
|
| -
| https://www.reddit.com/r/waydroid/comments/14e6t3g/does_maki...
| olabyne wrote:
| Waydroid was a bliss to install on fedora. It does run very
| well now, a big improvement from the first releases
| sphars wrote:
| > P.S. Do we make "jokes" about Microsoft killing things off
| like we do with Google?
|
| Well someone went ahead and made
| https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
| ziddoap wrote:
| Fun site! A few products were pretty nostalgic, others
| were... interesting!
|
| > _ILoo_
|
| > _Killed almost 21 years ago, iLoo was a smart portable
| toilet integrating the complete equipment to surf the
| Internet from inside and outside the cabinet. It was 13 days
| old._
| djmips wrote:
| The difference for me is that the Killed by Microsoft has
| products I never used or cared about or I'm happy they killed
| them (looking at you Visual Sourcesafe) - cool site though -
| very interesting retrospective.
| chasil wrote:
| Can this be run in Hyper-V?
|
| https://www.android-x86.org/
| mdaniel wrote:
| The trick to that is similar to the Intel/Apple split: just
| having the OS doesn't help if the apps are for a different
| architecture. (I'm aware of qemu/Rosetta/etc but that's not
| something that Android has ever tried to solve (AFAIK) -
| rather, they declare any native library packages at the .apk
| level and one is expected to pick the right installer for the
| right architecture)
| chasil wrote:
| I think that Android-x86 has an ARM emulator.
|
| Doesn't Dalvik/ART compile Java Bytecode down to a native
| layer anyway, so this wouldn't matter?
| bitwize wrote:
| It does matter because lots of Android apps (esp. games)
| have native-code bits in them that are linked in with
| JNI.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I think one thing that really killed it is that the Amazon store
| is very scarce. I never used it, in part because none of the
| "good" apps were in the store. I'm surprised Amazon still even
| has an Android store.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| Amazon has their own Android tablets, tvs so they have a vested
| interest in running their own store.
|
| Unfortunately, shipping Google Apps (GApps) requires meeting
| certain standards and conditions, which WSA was likely unable
| to do. Since GApps gatekeep the majority of the average persons
| Android experience, WSA was doomed for most everyone except the
| techies that could shoe horn GApps onto WSA.
|
| The real problem is the on going engineering effort required to
| update and maintain WSA. Google can't even do it for Chrome OS,
| we're on Android 14 but ChromeOS is still on 11 (at least as of
| Dec 2023). It's just a different beast than a Linux subsystem.
| PreInternet01 wrote:
| So, this is the second time a "run your Android apps on Windows"
| initiative fizzles out: before WSA (which was Amazon-centric),
| there was a late-2020 "Your Phone" feature that (briefly) allowed
| Samsung apps on Windows desktops.
|
| Not sure if this means anything other than "phone apps run best
| on, well, a phone", especially since I can't think of anything
| from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop, other than
| instant messages, which are already available in various ways?
| bsimpson wrote:
| If I ran Windows on my Legion Go, I'd probably be looking into
| WSA.
|
| Windows is famously crappy on touchscreens. It would be really
| nice to have something like ChromeOS or Android be the UI for a
| gaming handheld.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I remember sometime in the last decade Google had an extension
| to run Android apps in Chrome. I tested it with a comics app,
| which I wanted for the bigger screen, and it worked fine. When
| I tried to search for the extension years later I couldn't find
| it.
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| I remember ARChon Runtime: https://archon-runtime.github.io/
| geku3 wrote:
| It was called ARC Welder.
| mdaniel wrote:
| while not as fun as "in Chrome," I can this second run quite
| a few Android apps in ChromeOS on my Pixelbook. They are a UI
| abomination, but it does give me "local" access to 1Password
| and a few other things which would be annoying as PWAs
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| There are plenty of applications I would like to run in a
| completely sandboxed environment separate from the blast radius
| of my phone. Anything by Facebook would be a given. Chat
| applications which still do not have a serviceable web
| interface. Whatever.
| basch wrote:
| I haven't tried it, but allegedly Outlook for Android runs
| better on Windows than the new Outlook for Windows. Which makes
| some sense, as one is a native app and one is a web app.
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/i-ac...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I don't know how they plan to shaft business users with
| that. It's so slow.
|
| I noticed recently that Microsoft relented and soon starts
| introducing CoPilot features into old outlook (or 'real' or
| 'full' outlook as people are calling it at work). Previously
| it was coupled to 'new' outlook only to promote adoption. But
| it really sees a lot of pushback from users. I hope this will
| continue into not canning the real outlook at all.
|
| Microsoft are always pushing 'more change management' as a
| 'solution' but some changes are simply not good and it's
| normal for users to resist. If anything they push too much
| (like turning on features by default, and sending reminders
| that you have not used feature xyz enough last week through
| Viva Insights)
|
| And the skullduggery they're doing with the consumer windows
| mail migration (pulling the user's email into their cloud
| without making this very clear) is totally out of line IMO.
|
| Personally I don't even hate the web version so much. I use
| it daily because Microsoft never made a native outlook for my
| platform anyway. But I'm not a heavy user of mail and I do
| see its limitations.
| basch wrote:
| its sort of the business model at this point. you cant just
| subscribe to security updates without new features. to
| justify the cost they always have to cram new, and by new i
| mean change.
|
| google feels the same way. things that work need to be
| rebuilt and rereleased to justify headcount.
|
| the mail -> new outlook is just another in the long
| tradition of microsoft pushing a new native gui framework,
| only to abandon it in house. How can they ever expect
| developers developers developers to commit to another
| future abandonware.
|
| https://irrlicht3d.org/index.php?t=1626
|
| they really should be going in reverse and making all their
| apps pure native and then getting them to also render as
| html.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| New Outlook still doesn't handle S/MIME. That means it's
| between annoying to useless in large companies, depending
| on the volume of such e-mails you're getting.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| What email client is popular in large enterprises then?
| Last time I worked in a company like that it was all
| microsoft software, including outlook, by policy
| w3ll_w3ll_w3ll wrote:
| Old Outlook
| chris_wot wrote:
| Microsoft love to force things onto end users these days.
| The latest thing is the "focussed inbox". Suddenly our
| school had it enabled and a whole bunch of people didn't
| see their emails as it hived them off to the Other tab.
| leptons wrote:
| >one is a web app.
|
| Still using the Outlook application installed on Windows.
| Recently purchased Office 2021 (for $40, they had a sale)
| which came with the Outlook application. It does get updates
| every now and then so I know they're still supporting it.
| I've been using the Outlook application for a few decades, no
| plan to stop, and I will never use their online version.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Outlook is hot garbage and has been for a lot time. Every
| single version.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I can't operate without it (the Windows native version).
| Everything else pales in comparison from a productivity
| standpoint.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Bad take. The old native Outlook is actually great. The web
| version is fine.
|
| The new Electron monster is horrible and looks like a toy.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| The prior mail app lacked many things/opening images and such
| was broken, but it was incredibly lightweight and did its
| job, then MS decided to kill it and add a gigabloated version
| of web outlook that runs worse than outlook directly on the
| web...
|
| Never change Microsoft
| wredue wrote:
| I can say that New Outlook is slow as fuck, does
| counterintuitive things (especially with actions on multiple
| selections), and has hordes of other somewhat annoying bugs
| (for example, deleting many emails will often count you as a
| double click.
| pjmlp wrote:
| If you're counting that, than this is the 3rd time.
|
| The first one was Project Astoria, whose ashes gave birth to
| WSL.
| mook wrote:
| That would have been WSL1, right? As in, the thing that tried
| to implement Linux syscall interfaces on top of the Windows
| kernel?
|
| The current thing (WSL2) is "just" a VM (with lots of work to
| make it work nicer)...
| creshal wrote:
| > As in, the thing that tried to implement Linux syscall
| interfaces on top of the Windows kernel?
|
| It's really funny, NT was supposed to be great at three
| things:
|
| - be easily ported to different hardware architectures,
| which then never actually became relevant (and nowadays
| macOS is the best example for actual architecture
| migrations!)
|
| - have a much more sophisticated and elaborate security
| model than those filthy unices (and now we're getting sudo
| on Windows, because 30 years later, it's still too
| complicated for anyone to use as intended)
|
| - allow fluid switching between different userlands, be it
| win32, OS/2 (RIP), Unix (RIP), and anything else you could
| want in the future! (except no, you're getting VMs now)
| cherryteastain wrote:
| >macOS is the best example for actual architecture
| migrations
|
| Eh, they did 2 migrations while supporting at most 2
| architectures concurrently. Nothing compared to Linux
| which is maintained for x86, POWER, ARM, s390x, MIPS etc
| concurrently
| ArchOversight wrote:
| macOS did migrations. Linux is just supported on those
| architectures at the same time without any real layer
| that allows users to switch from for example x86 to ARM
| without recompiling the entire world to match.
| anthk wrote:
| > security
|
| Who cares, everyone either misplaces ACL's or ran
| everything as Administrator or close.
|
| Under Linux/Unix, we had ACL's too, but nobody used them
| unless you were in a networked environment.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The issue with VMs for Linux, which Windows isn't the
| first, rather the last from several attempts done by UNIX
| vendors, and IBM/Unisys mainframes/micros is that Linux
| kernel syscalls have become more relevant than POSIX.
|
| Thus it is easier and cheaper to plug a Linux VM, than
| implement POSIX, and then get the same kind of complaints
| from Linux folks using macOS, or other UNIX proper
| environments.
| izacus wrote:
| Well, you're a bit cherry picking here aren't you? Ignoring big
| success of software like Bluestacks, which is spawning these
| competitors?
| novagameco wrote:
| Your phone is still available and really cool. But it mirrors
| your phone instead of running the apps on your PC
| bonton89 wrote:
| My user case could basically be summed as running apps that I
| never wanted on my phone in the first place.
| freitasm wrote:
| > So, this is the second time a "run your Android apps on
| Windows" initiative fizzles out: before WSA (which was Amazon-
| centric), there was a late-2020 "Your Phone" feature that
| (briefly) allowed Samsung apps on Windows desktops.
|
| This feature still exists and it works. It's partly developed
| by Samsung, so that's why it works.
| mnahkies wrote:
| Some of the challenger banking apps are mobile only which might
| be a use-case. Ideally I'd like to see them offer a
| desktop/responsive web app though
| kevincox wrote:
| Most of these use device attestation anyways so they are
| unlikely to run on Windows. The bank wants to ensure that the
| user doesn't have root access which isn't the case on
| Windows.
| bane wrote:
| Not super well supported, but there's a Samsung Dex app for
| Windows and MacOS (I think unsupported now) that let's you plug
| your phone into your computer, and get Dex in a window. Runs
| the phone apps on the phone, gets your android store etc. but
| you get an "ok" minimal desktop that lets you do your phone
| stuff with a mouse and keyboard.
|
| After I figured that out I basically dropped all the run
| Android on a desktop things.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| There's also https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy which works
| for any Android, not just Samsung
| sockdolager wrote:
| Your Phone / Phone Link still supports this. See:
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/setting-up-apps-
| in....
| 13of40 wrote:
| I was using the Google Photos map search via BlueStacks on my
| Windows machine briefly, but that's only because Google made
| the perplexing decision to not put that on desktop.
| skissane wrote:
| > Not sure if this means anything other than "phone apps run
| best on, well, a phone", especially since I can't think of
| anything from my phone that I would truly like on my desktop,
| other than instant messages, which are already available in
| various ways?
|
| Sometimes I go to this coworking space. They have an
| iOS/Android app you need to use to book a desk, message the
| admins, unlock the front door, pay, etc. No web app. Forces me
| to get my phone out when I'd rather just stay on my laptop. If
| I could run their app on my laptop (haven't looked into it
| yet), I'd like that
| uncletammy wrote:
| It forces you to consent to whatever arbitrary EULA that the
| people running the coworking space probably haven't read.
| skissane wrote:
| You can do that in a webapp too. At first login, you have
| to click "Agree" to lengthy terms and conditions displayed.
| Until you click "Agree", your login session is only good
| for the terms screen, not the rest of the webapp.
| kyriakos wrote:
| "Your phone" feature still works. Apps don't run on your PC but
| are displayed on the PC desktop from your phone. I have a
| Samsung phone and use this feature dialy.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > especially since I can't think of anything from my phone that
| I would truly like on my desktop
|
| The SMS and Calls.
|
| Seriously, at this point, my phone is the least useful device I
| own for managing both of these functions. The only utility in
| having them in some broken down hard to use form is for the
| slight convenience of being able to use them outside of my home
| if I wanted to. I rarely want to. I'd much prefer these
| functions to be on my PC.
|
| It'd also mean I could just ignore my phone much more
| effectively and just pick up on everything at my desk when i
| get home.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I use KDE connect for that on Windows too, it does both SMS
| and calling. Your phone only needs to be in the same network
| which isn't an issue on your desk when you get home.
| nullwarp wrote:
| Yeah KDE connect fan here - works great absolutely amazing
| piece of open source software.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I used it (Windows Subsystem for Android) to install Kindle on a
| Windows ARM tablet.
|
| I really liked it, but I found the native version of Kindle ran
| better because there wasn't the "startup" hit.
| PhyllisEngine wrote:
| I work a lot with Android, but didn't really have much reason to
| use it when I can just run an emulator. It's sad to see Microsoft
| killing it so early.
| djmips wrote:
| What emulators do you reccomend?
| watermelon0 wrote:
| Worth mentioning, although this was launched 2 years ago, it's
| still not available in many countries:
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/countries-and-re...
| jjordan wrote:
| This is such a bummer. I've been waiting to use Android apps like
| native apps on Windows for years since they first started teasing
| this. What's the next best thing?
| heresaPizza wrote:
| I tried it and it was not worthy. The thing they showed the
| most was tiktok, that has a decent web app and looks much
| better on a big display. The same applies for basically all of
| them.
| Tiberium wrote:
| Interesting to note that there's an alternative specifically for
| running Android games on Windows - Google Play Games [1] which is
| Google's official offering, and it does not rely on WSA tech so
| that it works on Windows 10 as well.
|
| [1] - https://play.google.com/googleplaygames
| MenhirMike wrote:
| Looks similar to BlueStacks or MSI App Player, especially since
| it also requires hardware virtualization, so I assume it's like
| the Android SDK (that I think used QEMU?). Definitely worth
| looking at if there are Android apps that you want to run on a
| Desktop. (I used it for the Ace Attorney games before we got
| proper ports to modern systems.)
| rdudek wrote:
| I just wish it had support for the full Google Play store and
| not something super limited.
| mdaniel wrote:
| "Limited" is too limited of a word: as very best I can tell
| from the several times I've tried it they seem to do
| everything in their power to cherry-pick the most spammy ad-
| ridden garbage one could possibly want to see from the Play
| Store. So, OT1H, sure, I get it, ad-tech company wants the
| biggest ad-vector they can get; OTOH, it still has to be
| something folks _want_ to play and so their gamble did not
| pay off when I instaclosed their spam-store offering and saw
| _zero_ ads
| nashashmi wrote:
| Also, LD Player is an alternative. It is from a Chinese
| company.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| Doesn't run on some hardware where Bluestacks does.
| asveikau wrote:
| The idea made more sense when Windows Phone was something they
| were still pursuing. In an alternate timeline, maybe it would
| have been easy to run Android apps on Windows Phone. Of course,
| you'd still wonder why not just use an Android phone. And I'm
| sure it would have been botched by many caveats.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Of the 4 people affected by this, 2 are were just trying it on a
| dare, 1 died, and the last one works directly for Microsoft.
| dboreham wrote:
| Hmm...MS has evolved into Google? I'm still waiting for WSA to be
| released!
| nor0x wrote:
| WSA is a great feature for developers. not having to deal with
| sluggish Android emulators was a big plus for me.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Are you not using an x86 emulator or something? Forget to
| install or enable your CPU virtualization extensions?
|
| Because the emulator ain't sluggish, and if it is you'd get
| that same sluggishness with WSA since it's largely the same
| underlying tech. It's still using a virtual machine and
| emulation, it's not like a simulator.
| dakna wrote:
| I had high hopes for WSA as an enterprise platform, not as a
| consumer platform. Give enterprises an easy way to build one
| custom workflow app for mobile incl. offline support and syncing,
| then use the same app on your desktop. There is already great
| tooling for work profiles and mobile device management. Too bad
| this didn't get enough traction.
| calibas wrote:
| There needs to be more of a consequence for large companies who
| create platforms like this, then get a bunch of developers &
| users dependent on it, and then pull out the rug.
|
| And not necessarily government regulations. Maybe a contract that
| guarantees operation for X number of years should become the
| standard, or even better, an explicit agreement to open-source
| discontinued products so the community can continue running them.
| elaus wrote:
| Ideally people (devs) would remember companies like that and
| avoid them in the future when they decide on which platforms to
| build their next project or which APIs to trust.
|
| But in reality people (me included) will be annoyed today and
| forget it tomorrow, when a cool new platform is announced.
| madsbuch wrote:
| this is already the case. most devs I speak with stear away
| from GCP for large integrated projects.
| bsimpson wrote:
| The usual excuse for not open-sourcing is that commercial
| products aren't developed in a vacuum. Flash, for instance,
| supposedly included a bunch of codecs that Adobe didn't have
| the license to redistribute as source.
|
| At a bigger company, there are presumably dependencies on in-
| house build systems, standard libraries, etc. Maintaining open-
| source versions of those is unfortunately a non-trivial task.
| FiniteLooper wrote:
| Ah yes, remember Silverlight?
| bitwize wrote:
| Ah, the only feature that made me even remotely interested in
| Windows 11... dead. Welp, I can tell my friends that Windows 11
| is a _complete_ shitshow now, thanks Microsoft.
| nwah1 wrote:
| WSA was becoming an alternative to the Android Emulator for MAUI
| development. This is the only reason that I'm sad.
|
| They should just open source this and let the community maintain
| it.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Prob just a way to hire good Android devs away from Google or
| something. Can't believe anyone senior at MS ever really thought
| this was anything but a technical/PR exercise
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-05 23:00 UTC)