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AMD Partners With BlueStacks To Bring Android Apps To PCs

Posted by timothy on from the just-pinch-your-mouse dept.

eldavojohn writes "News outlets are reporting that AMD has partnered with BlueStacks to bring Android apps to AppZone Player, something that will apparently allow the more than 500,000 mobile apps to run on your PC. From their announcement: 'What's special about the player on AMD-based products? There are many challenges with running apps that were originally designed for phones or tablets on a PC that in most cases has a larger screen and higher resolution display. To solve this, BlueStacks has designed and optimized the player for AMD Radeon graphics and in particular, our OpenGL drivers found in our APUs and GPUs so you get a great 'big-screen' experience. Additionally, the apps are integrated into AppZone, our online showcase and one-stop-shop for apps accelerated by AMD technology.' Unfortunately this appears to only work on AMD-based PCs (although nowhere does it say that it won't work on Intel CPUs or non-Radeon GPUs). Also no word on how they overcame the difference between a mouse and touchscreen (think pinch to zoom)."

23 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thank you, Press-release-dot.

    Now explain why I would even *want* to use phone apps on my desktop?

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    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by admdrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      explain why I would even *want* to

      Why not? It's new and interesting tech news, and this is /.

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      LegendMUD
    2. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Because you find an app that you wish you had it on your desktop? Duh!
       
      Case in point, the Tango app became very popular in my friends circle. Even when I was in front my laptop, I had to use my phone to video chat with someone. Until recently they did not have a desktop application. I would have definitely used this tool, if I could have.

    3. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by shiftless · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So in other words, there's no reason to use Android apps.

      Yes, Tapatalk is nice....but if you're having to use a phone app on the PC to accomplish something, you're doing it wrong.

    4. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by Jeng · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are oddly enough some apps that don't have a good equivalent on the PC side.

      A good example is Torque Pro, an amazingly awesome OBDII app for $4.99 . Does things stand alone OBDII readers could never do, even ones costing thousands of dollars can't do the things this little program can. And it is easy to use.

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    5. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by war4peace · · Score: 2

      Here's a subjective reason. I have this game called Stone Age Game. You can recruit other players into your clan by typing in their ID, so people send their IDs back and forth. It's a pain to select an ID, change to another screen and then paste it in. It's boring and tedious. On a PC, I could do that in a tenth of the time.
      Stupid reason? Maybe, but it would at least improve my gameplay.

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    6. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Having run my own apps in the iPhone/iPad simulator, I can say it's nowhere near as good as the real thing. And apps on 'the real thing' are usually nowhere near as good as they would be on my desktop, except for portability and touchscreen-specific features. I have no desire for a solution that combines all the downsides of both PCs and portable devices.

      Admittedly, there is the rare phone app that, for no obvious reason, has no match on the PC, but even rarer is an app that would be worth the inconvenience and inevitable compatibility issues that would come from using a shim-ulator like this. And for those, why not just... use your phone?

      Unfortunately, if this takes off (and I can't really imagine it will), it would only encourage lazy developers to build compromised designs that work passably on phones and PCs without taking advantage of the unique strengths of either. It would be another decade of the same write-once-suck-everywhere that Java and Flash brought us.

      And for all of you, who I'm certain aren't interested in the slightest, here's my dramatic reading of the announcement:

      [The new hotness will] allow the more than 500,000 mobile apps to run on your PC

      *based on our estimate that soon all PCs will be Windows 8 multi-touch tablets—Steve Ballmer said so!—and all Android developers partner with us.

      'What's special about the player on AMD-based products?

      We call it: "Vendor lock-in!"

      There are many challenges with running apps that were originally designed for phones or tablets on a PC that in most cases has a larger screen and higher resolution display

      Likewise, there are many challenges with using the Mario Kart wheel to control a 747.

      To solve this, BlueStacks has designed and optimized the player for AMD Radeon graphics and in particular, our OpenGL drivers found in our APUs and GPUs so you get a great 'big-screen' experience.

      To solve this, we use only pink Mario Kart wheels, and in particular, pink wheels covered in our proprietary glitter for the best possible experience.

      Additionally, the apps are integrated into AppZone, our online showcase and one-stop-shop for apps accelerated by AMD technology.'

      You'll be able to use ANY Android app...that's tweaked for our service and available in our store. There'll be dozens!

      BlueStacks has achieved some incredible momentum

      We think it will revolutionize the whole software market, just as CrossOver made Windows a thing of the past!

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    7. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Actually I think the whole X86 OS world has contracted some kind of mass insanity, I mean every damned thing is either trying to ape a cell phone or like this bring cell phone crap onto X86...why? Unity, Win 8, this...why? Why would you WANT your PC to be a supergigantic smartphone when all of the design choices on smartphones is either based on screen size (not applicable) or battery life (not applicable as what works on ARM won't save power on X86) so it just makes no damned sense to me.

      So I just don't get it. Maybe its me but I've never messed with a smartphone and thought "You know what would be cool? We put this on a big ass desktop monitor, so i can't haul it around! Wouldn't that be great?".

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    8. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      Now explain why I would even *want* to use phone apps on my desktop?

      Because there are hundreds of thousands of them and, statistically, there has to be at least one good one.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    9. Re:Blah.blah..marketing..marteting..blah by jrmech · · Score: 2

      Now explain why I would even *want* to use phone apps on my desktop?

      Data acquisition apps, displaying data on your PC...

  2. Mouse versus touchscreen by dgatwood · · Score: 2

    Also no word on how they overcame the difference between a mouse and touchscreen (think pinch to zoom).

    Multi-touch trackpad, perhaps?

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    1. Re:Mouse versus touchscreen by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't see how there's any relevant difference at all between a desktop and a touch-screen tablet interface. Just use the same interface for both and everything will be fine. /Unity developer

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    2. Re:Mouse versus touchscreen by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

      Or maybe pinch to zoom is irrelevant because the screen is large enough that you don't need to zoom.

  3. Control differences by somersault · · Score: 2

    Pinch to zoom is pretty easily handled by the mouse wheel, or say click both the left and right mouse button and drag. You could also do 3 finger touch if you include the middle button. Things that wouldn't work with a mouse would be rotations for example. Those could be handled by buttons on the keyboard, or I guess mouse gestures or other button combinations (left and middle to rotate left for example).

    --
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    1. Re:Control differences by QuasiSteve · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Rotation is easily handled - moving the mouse left/right while holding the mousewheel down, for example. Unless there's also a need for panning while simultaneously zooming and rotating, of course.

      On the other hand, how many apps do the two-finger rotation thing? And how many of those have you cursed for having it because every time you merely want to zoom, the app decides that you also want to rotate the view by 1 degree?

      I see the lack of an accelerometer in most computers as a bigger issue. Even when it does have an accelerometer, that also happens to be accessible (perhaps as part of a laptop's mechanisms to help prevent damage to HDDs), a laptop isn't exactly something you start tilting around to e.g. play a racing game.

      Still, there's plenty of apps that don't even need those things or you can make do with a kludge.

    2. Re:Control differences by Richy_T · · Score: 2

      Hmm. Wiimote perhaps?

    3. Re:Control differences by Urza9814 · · Score: 2

      I see the lack of an accelerometer in most computers as a bigger issue. Even when it does have an accelerometer, that also happens to be accessible (perhaps as part of a laptop's mechanisms to help prevent damage to HDDs), a laptop isn't exactly something you start tilting around to e.g. play a racing game.

      Most likely they'll just use the arrow keys...

  4. Bring it to Linux by phorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And then I'll be happy. Especially if it allows me to use Netflix, etc. (one of the few reasons I might boot to windows on my PC still)

    1. Re:Bring it to Linux by h4rr4r · · Score: 2

      I would think the bigger issue would be that arm emulation on x86 is painfully slow. Once you have that working reasonably well no need to port anything, just run the whole android os in the emulator.

    2. Re:Bring it to Linux by Disfnord · · Score: 2

      Netflix works fine on my Linux desktop. Just need to install DeCSS to get the DVDs to play.

  5. Screen real estate by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 2

    The problem with phone applications in general is they are designed for either a small display (phone) or large display (tablet).
    A UI scrunched-up to fit a phone display suddenly becomes way too spacious when run on a tablet (let alone a 23" 1920x1600 monitor). Android tries to address this by allowing multiple layouts for your UI based on the display it's running on but I've not seen many applications actually implement that. I wonder how BlueStack is planning to address that. TFA sounds like they are mainly pimping "cloud sync" of app info.

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  6. like finglonger by mestar · · Score: 2

    "There are many challenges with running apps that were originally designed for phones or tablets on a PC that in most cases has a larger screen and higher resolution display."

    If only there was a way that you can limit the amount of screen a single app can take. If only... But, one can dream, one can dream...

  7. Windows 8 Tablets by Arterion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You guys are missing the point! This is all about Windows 8 tablets, which are going to be on the market very soon. The Windows app store is going to be sparse, and honestly, the biggest drawback to getting a Windows tablet. With Bluestacks, you get all the Metro apps AND all your android apps. This is a HUGE deal.

    Think about when Intel comes out with the next generation of ultra low power x86 processors: Windows 8 tablets running on x86. You get everything you could want: Real desktop apps, Metro Apps, and all the Android smartphone/tablet apps. Throw it in a case with a bluetooth keyboard + trackpack (or mouse), and why would anyone need or want a laptop? I think it could probably replace the desktop for many users.

    I'm telling you, this is HUGE. It will allows Windows 8 tablets to overcome their barrier to entering the market: a mature app store.

    --
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