Chrome OS Will Finally Run Android Apps in the Background (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: While it's no longer a novelty to run Android apps on your Chromebook, that doesn't mean they run well. To date, most of those apps pause when you switch away -- fine for a phone, but not what you'd expect on a computer with a multi-window interface. However, they're about to become far more functional. Chrome Unboxed has learned that the Chrome OS 64 beta introduces Android Parallel Tasks, which lets Android apps run at full bore regardless of what you're doing. You could watch a video in a mobile app while you're surfing the web, or take a break from a mobile game without jarring transitions. There's no guarantee that Android Parallel Tasks will reach the stable Chrome OS 64, so you might not want to plan a purchase around the feature.

Comments

Re:Give the option to run full fat Linux apps

[squiggleslash]

You can do that already by putting it in developer mode. The concept behind Chromebooks is that they're heavily sandboxed by default, so the environment is safe and you don't have to worry about viruses or other security issues (beyond those inherent in sharing your data with Google.) Android apps are relatively easy to fit into that idea, raw ix86 binaries not so much.

Non-android apks

[DrYak]

it's curious how rarely I see operational .APKs on non-Android platforms.

Jolla's Sailfish OS,
Samsung's Tizen,
and Blackberry
(and of course TFA's ChromeOS) :
all have Android compatibility layers.

Microsoft Windows made an attempt but didn't succeed. (WSL is what they managed to salvage out of the remnant of their failed attempt).