Chrome OS Will Finally Run Android Apps in the Background (engadget.com) 42
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.
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We had Multi-tasking consumer level OS for a while now. I am actually surprised to hear that this was an issue.
Perhaps I should find the DesqView app for Chrome?
OS development hit a brick wall 20 years ago. (Score:2, Insightful)
We often talk about the so-called "AI winter", where artificial intelligence stagnated for decades. Even today we're not out of it, with the most advanced "artificial intelligence" around just tending to be complex statistical models that give desirable outputs, rather than anything resembling actual cognition.
I think we've been in an "OS winter" since about 1995 or 1996. That was the last time we saw anything truly innovative when it comes to OSes, with the release of Windows 95. That was the last time we
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OS development has totally stagnated. There hasn't been much forward progress since the mid 1990s, and there has actually been a lot of backward regression.
While it might seem that way, I think there are 2 major points you are missing and you are under valuing the differences between then and now.
The first is that until the late 90s consumer OSes were significantly limited by the hardware they ran on. There were very real limits to memory, disk space, and bandwidth. The "great jumps" during that time happened around significant hardware changes. The last was the time of the Pentium which unlocked the path to the resources we now have available. While we still
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Android is a BIG step backwards in operating systems.
Based on the rest of your post, the problem is more that you are trying to use the wrong tool for the job than a specific fault of the OS. You think trying to use iOS as a desktop OS would net you better results? They were specifically designed to be run on limited hardware (compared to laptops and desktops) and relatively small screens.
It isn't self hosting unless you chroot it, and then, you can't get a native windowed program running on it, unless you use VNC to open a session to the chroot.
While the idea of running Android on a real computer is cool and even somewhat useful, you're asking it to do something it wasn't designed for. This isn't some failing of th
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You could just use a real OS, like Windows 10.
And this is related how exactly? There are apps for Android that do not have a desktop equivalent. No web site. No app for any desktop OS. Neither Windows 10 nor desktop* Linux run android apps either without heroic efforts. Being able to run Android apps is a useful addition and completely orthogonal with a desire to run conventional desktop apps.
*Technically, Android is Linux since it runs a Linux kernel.
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I like the part where you don't actually name any apps with no desktop equivalent to reduce the attack surface of that bullshit claim.
Start with dating apps. There are many that have no desktop apps but just among the ones I have used:
Hinge
Happn
Tinder (until very recently and the recently added website is so very buggy that is little point in using it)
Waze went years before it finally added a functional website.
It's not a long list but then, I don't use many mobile apps. If I did I'm sure I could find a lot more.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
"Write once, run anywhere." (Score:3)
For such an amazingly portable runtime platform, it's curious how rarely I see operational .APKs on non-Android platforms.
This was not quite the panacea that we were led to believe so long ago.
Non-android apks (Score:4, Informative)
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).
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Because APKs on chrome OS sucks, and it's the same company backing the same product on both platforms.
working (Score:2)
Do any of them work well enough?
Myriad's Aliendalvik anrdoid layer on Jolla's Sailfish OS more or less works.
The draw back is that it's still based around the "almost not Java" Dalvik JVM-like JIT engine, (well not exactly. It's Myriad's own variation of Dalvik)
so it's still stuck in the world of Android 4.4 Kitkat (so no support for Android 5.0 Lollipop only apps).
The other draw back is that Sailfish OS it selfs lacks drivers and frameworks for some hardware feature (e.g.: finger print scanners. There's a raw device showing up in /dev/
Use a real OS (Score:2)
Who cares? Nobody is impressed with barely functional crap powered by the worlds most prolific cyber stalking company.
HTTP (Score:2)
When was the last time you typed out an HTTP request by hand? What are you doing wrong with your life, that this is a necessary feature?
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of Chrome OS on the desktop?
Well, it does use Linux Kernel...