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Chrome OS Can Now Run Android Apps With No Porting Required

Posted by timothy on from the that-could-be-big dept.

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.

27 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow by Teresita · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That makes my little Chromebox that much more awesome. Redmond be very afraid.

  2. Why not all apps at once? by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    I wonder why all apps aren't available at once. I understand this App Runtime for Chrome akin to the Java RunTime, which when installed, would have all Java applications available. What am I [mis]understanding?

    1. Re:Why not all apps at once? by nleven · · Score: 2

      I would assume this emulation layer is still not perfect. Say, many android apps have arm binaries. There are other subtle gaps in user differences as well. You really don't want to make it look like an android emulator for chrome os.

    2. Re:Why not all apps at once? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Even if it were perfect, almost no ChromeOS devices have touchscreens and almost all Android devices do (especially if you count on the ones Google even slightly endorses, not the media-player-mystery-HDMI-dongle stuff). For applications that are basically hobbled by the touchscreen, a keyboard and mouse will be an improvement. For those that are enhanced by, or actively dependent on, it, that will be a bit of a mess no matter how perfect the runtime is.

      Unless those proportions change fairly markedly, it probably makes sense for them to start with some popular, mouse and keyboard friendly, applications that don't lean on native ARM blobs much or at all.

    3. Re:Why not all apps at once? by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Some points here:

      - Most Android apps are Java bytecode, not native code, so the underlying processor architecture is irrelevant (for those apps)
      - x86 is a supported Android platform, so many apps that do require native code have x86 binaries available
      - Intel provides an ARM emulator for the x86 version of Android so that x86 Android devices can run ARM binaries
      - Some ChromeOS devices use ARM processors to begin with.

    4. Re:Why not all apps at once? by iamacat · · Score: 2

      Luckily all chromebooks come with multitouch touchpads which are perfectly capable of handling pinch/rotate gestures.

    5. Re:Why not all apps at once? by scorp1us · · Score: 2

      Google's NaCL only works with x86[64] the majority of apps use native libraries that are ARM. Only pure Android SDK apps (Java and java dependencies) will work. So say if you use libZbar (bar code decoding library) which is supplied in x86 and ARM, will work, is that app packaged the x86 version... which they didn't do becuase no one runs android on x86....

      So that's the main technical reason.

      --
      Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
    6. Re:Why not all apps at once? by BitZtream · · Score: 2

      Since when did Google test android apps?

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  3. Re:Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Chromebook seems to be doing pretty well.

    According to US market-watcher NPD, during the 11 months from January through November 2013, the platform’s share of the computing device market had risen to 9.6 per cent from just 0.2 per cent in the same months of the previous year.

    Giving it the ability to run Android apps just makes it more capable. Assuming the "emulation" works well on the underpowered hardware running most Chromebooks.

  4. Re:Is this the new emulator story for Android devs by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

    The Moto G series of Android phones is cheap, easy to put into developer mode to load your apps via usb, runs kitkat, and takes less time to load your compiled app onto than it takes to even start up the emulator on a quad core pc. And there's plenty of $100 android tablets around if you want to test larger displays. The AVD emulator absolutely sucks, and would have been better with a simulator.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  5. Re:Why not just run Chrome on Android on Chromeboo by Teresita · · Score: 2

    Here's why ChromeOS (and Chrome and Chromiumn) is not idiotic: I'm tired of having to install the latest Flash player just so the ads don't crash the whole shooting match. So to hell with it, I have a Chromebox attached to the living room TV for Youtubes and Netflixes, let Google keep the thing updated. If I install 7 on something, I get Firefox and DON'T add Flash. Life is good. For Slashdot I use Lynx since there's no pictures anyway, it's faster, loads ALL the comments on one page, and has a much smaller RAM footprint.

  6. Re:Android by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The cynic in me suggests this is a pre-emptive strike against alternative open-source OSes Tizen and Firefox OS.

    By utilizing a Chrome-only technology (NaCl), by value-adding, Google kills off Gecko and Webkit competitors running a pure HTML5 platform.

    (Also stifling adoption of BB and Sailfish, which both include Android compatibility)

  7. Re:Why not just run Chrome on Android on Chromeboo by msobkow · · Score: 5, Funny

    So your friend's husband bought a web-connected device, knowing fully well that they live in a rural area with shitty web connections?

    What your you going to complain about next? Not being able to tow semi-trailers with your Yugo?

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  8. Re:Why not just run Chrome on Android on Chromeboo by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2
    There are still plenty of XP boxes out there, and plenty more that are running XP in a VM.

    Most of these boxes have zero need to access the greater Internet, since they're for internal use (business, civil service) or running stand-alone games or whatever (home), so nobody in these scenarios cares about SHA2 certs. XP will still have users at the end of the decade, same as DOS and Win3x apps are still around.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  9. Here's where this gets funny by atari2600a · · Score: 2

    There are 2 Acer C710's in the house right now. My own spec-upped one w/ a custom seabios booting directly to ubuntu, & my little brother's friend has a stock one. I bolt in all OMG go to the app store go to the app store! You can download Google Play! He's all what's Google Play? "The app store!"

  10. Re:Is this the new emulator story for Android devs by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Been there, done that. Show me a $100 tablet that's actually running Ice Cream Sandwich or Kit Kat... as opposed to all of the ones running Gingerbread with a skin hack to look like ICS/KK and displaying a bullshit version number in Setup.

    Neighbor just bought 2 today running Jelly Bean, which is newer than ICS. Dell Venue 7, $105.00 each. 2 gigs ram, 16 gigs storage, 2 (rather crappy) cams, but nice displays and long battery life.

    I doubt Dell went to the trouble to print up packaging with fake specs and get them stocked in stores ... so these are the real McCoy. Same as the 32 gig Kingston USB 2.0 stick I bought on sale this week for $15 that I'm installing Fedora 20 on for another laptop. There's some crazy loss-leaders out there if you look.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  11. Re:Android by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They aren't being used by students because they need to be able to run general purpose software. They are bought by budget minded people who only need a web browser and web apps to use a computer which is the case for most non-technical people these days.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
  12. Re: Wow by exomondo · · Score: 2

    Um, yes. Tell me what is your assessment of Chrome?. I've used it for about a year, and it is vastly superior to any windows OS I've seen yet.

    The OS is nice, I agree but outside of very basic tasks it doesn't really have the capability (mostly lack of 3rd party support) to do much else. Personally I don't need MS Office, I use Google Docs because even if there is some little formatting bug when importing a document it's no big deal so as far as that is concerned ChromeOS works but if you're gaming it's no good, same goes for professional photo, audio, video editing/production or architectural and product design, simulation, etc...

    I can absolutely see this replacing Windows for office workers (presuming they don't mind the few-and-far-between formatting bugs with GDocs importing DOCX) and those people just concerned with web browsing and email but leveraging dinky smartphone apps doesn't really make it any more useful, that stuff is perfectly at home already on a smartphone which most people have. Kinda like this whole Metro apps stuff in Windows 8, pretty pointless on a desktop even if there was a huge catalog of applications.

  13. Never failed before by Sun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, OS/2 running Windows apps was a huge push forward for IBM. Wine completely changed the Linux desktop picture, and BSD's Linux binary compatibility made it an effective super set of Linux, to the point nobody bothers to install the later (not to mention the similar capability of SCO Unix: they wouldn't be where they are today without it).

    I hear that ChromOS is a nice platform and is doing well. I'm glad, in a "diversity is good" non-committed sort of way. I don't think this particular feature will change much.

    Shachar

    1. Re:Never failed before by Sun · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I heard that claim before. Aside from the Novel Wordperfect stink, that is just not so.

      What people fail to consider when saying this is that, even if it were still true (and I don't think it is), it is immaterial. Wine does not need to, and does not do so, implement every one of Windows' APIs. It just needs to implement those APIs that programs are actually using.

      MS cannot change interfaces to existing APIs. That will break application compatibility (without which, MS has no monopoly). They can add new functionality all they want. Until applications start using them (i.e. - after release), they are immaterial to Wine.

      Also, you simply assumed everything else I said was the same. Linux interfaces in BSD are not subject to the same rules, and yet they did very little to drive adoption of BSD based OSes.

      It all boils down to this. If you want to run Windows apps, you are going to do so on Windows. If you want to run Linux apps, you are going to do so on Linux. If you want to run Android apps, you are going to do so on Android. Every so often, you will want 90% from your native OS, and the support for those extra 10% would be great. It is not, however, something that drives large scale market shifts.

      Shachar

      P.S.
      Judge Jackson's finding of facts had everything to do with IE integration, some to do with Java embrace and extend, and nothing at all to do with private APIs.

  14. Re: Wow by Wootery · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can absolutely see this replacing Windows for office workers (presuming they don't mind the few-and-far-between formatting bugs with GDocs importing DOCX)

    Err, what? There are several elephants in the room who'd like to be acknowledged.

    • - Not all organisations trust Google with their documents, which may contain proprietary information
    • - Using Google Docs introduces a dependency on Google (they're uptime track-record is pretty damn good though, granted)
    • - Using Google Docs introduces a dependency on an Internet connection

    These are the real problems with cloud-based office software. They would apply even if Google Docs were totally free of bugs, and capable of everything that MS Office is capable of.

    Of course all those points apply equally to Microsoft's surprisingly good web-based Office offerings, and to any other rival 'cloud-based office software' services.

  15. What's the diff? by countach · · Score: 2

    So to ask a stupid question... since Android contains Chrome, and now Chrome contains Android, why are they different, and/or why do they need to be different?

  16. Re:Why not just run Chrome on Android on Chromeboo by hink · · Score: 2

    RE: "Locked down" http://lmgtfy.com/?q=install+l...
    RE: "no offline use" http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chromeboo...
    Things that were true when they first came out have changed. Wow, that NEVER happens with software and hardware. Try keeping up with things.

    --
    - speaking only for myself, as always
  17. Re:Wow by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    I agree, Windows is an excellent gaming OS. But when I work, I want OS X on my desk and Linux on my server.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  18. Re:Why not just run Chrome on Android on Chromeboo by Minwee · · Score: 2

    Perjhaps he has about your levell of just how cripled Chromebooks are.

    Now you'rehow about some specifics of just how crippled Chromebooks are?

    I have one, and we'll compare notes..

    I didn't know this before right now, but it looks that Chromebooks have bad keyboards.

  19. Re: Wow by stephanruby · · Score: 2

    • - Using Google Docs introduces a dependency on Google (they're uptime track-record is pretty damn good though, granted)
    • - Using Google Docs introduces a dependency on an Internet connection

    Google Docs/Google Drive does offer offline access.

  20. Not true, NaCl supports arm as well by Technomancer · · Score: 2

    http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/native-client-support-on-arm.html

    And PNaCl supports whatever you have, since it uses intermediate code that is compiled and optimized on the client system.