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Chrome OS Can Now Run Android Apps With No Porting Required
An anonymous reader writes On Thursday, Google launched "App Runtime for Chrome (Beta)" which allows Android apps to run on Chrome OS without the need for porting. At the moment, only Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words, and Vine are available on the platform with the rest of the Play Store's offerings to come later. Google "built an entire Android stack into Chrome OS using Native Client" in order to achieve this.
Chrome already runs on Android. These apps already run on Android. That's pretty much the whole Chrome OS experience.
If Chromebooks weren't locked-down pieces of shit, then users could already install Android on them, and get the best of Android and the "best" of Chrome OS.
Seriously, everything about Chromebooks is fucking idiotic. The hardware sucks. The hardware isn't even that inexpensive compared to low-end laptops running real operating systems. Chrome OS sucks. There's basically no software for Chrome OS. Chrome OS and Chromebooks really don't have any redeeming qualities. Running Android on them would at least make them kind of not as shitty.
He probably wasn't fully aware how crippled Chromebooks truly are. He probably saw a $200 Chromebook on Amazon, thought it was just a cheap laptop, and bought it without realizing how fucking useless it is, especially without a reliable Internet connection. For a device that's supposedly targeting non-technical people, it sure can catch people by surprise unless they do some pretty serious technical investigation into what they're actually getting and the tradeoffs that are involved. Anyone can go out and buy a typical Windows or Mac laptop and get something that works well with or without an Internet connection. Yet if they go out and buy a Chromebook, which looks almost identical, they'll unexpectedly get a system that's damn near useless.