Google Pushes Developers To Adapt Android Apps for Chromebooks (arstechnica.com) 12
The number of people using Android Apps on Chromebooks grew 50 percent year over year, according to a blog post from Chrome OS product managers Fahd Imtiaz and Sanj Nathwani this week. The execs cited internal Google data recorded from 2020-2021. From a report: In 2021, as some smartphones moved to Android 12, Google worked on updating Chromebooks to support Android 11, while attempting to boost security and performance by bringing Android on Chrome OS to a virtual machine, rather than a container. The company also improved its general usability, using runtime improvements to make the resizing and scaling of Android apps on Chromebooks work better, as well as app rendering. As the developer-focused blog noted, Chromebooks on Chrome OS 93 or newer (the latest is Chrome OS 96) automatically run Android apps made for mobile devices in a window that's set to stay in a "phone or tablet orientation." And, yes, you can turn this feature off. Additionally, Imtiaz and Nathwani pointed to Android's Nearby Share feature coming to Chrome 96 for Android 11 and Android 9 apps as another way to try to get developers excited about making their apps fit devices with larger screens.
Do it yourselves or pay. (Score:2)
Google/Alphabet has all the resources they need to accomplish this on their own. However, if they feel they do not then they need only pay developers to port their apps.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess the real issue isn't so much getting Android apps running on ChromeOS (or any modern OS), it's more the issue that getting a phone app working on a laptop in and of itself doesn't solve the usability problem in all cases. If you have a touch screen, it's probably okay, but i suspect the vast majority of apps were not designed to use a keyboard and trackpad, and there's precious little Google can do about that for third party apps.
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Many applications are open source. For the ones that are not, they can either pay for the developers to port it or make a version of their own.
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...they can either pay for the developers to port it or make a version of their own.
Then make a mobile version too, while they're about it, and use their control of the Play Store to downrate the original and push their version? Devs best be careful what they wish for since Google dropped the "don't" from their motto.
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If that's their play then they should do it. What they shouldn't be doing is expecting people to do it for them without compensation.
Re: Do it yourselves or pay. (Score:2)
Given the shit state of many websites on a normal computer these days that use oversized layouts and require scrolling to see more than four rows of information, I won't hold my breath that apps designed for mobile devices will be usable in any form.
Why adapt Google anything! (Score:1)
ChromeOS is definitely getting better (Score:2)
I use Android music apps on my 4K Chromebook so I can read two pages of sheet music at a time. The touchscreen means I don't have to fiddle with foot pedals to turn pages, either, just swipe to turn, even easier than paper. Works really well for me.
Chromebooks should run Android on bare metal (Score:2)
Google can certainly afford to produce a polished Android desktop. It's odd that the trivial amount (for Google) of money involved seems to be a dealbreaker when non-shit DEs are considered.
Waiting for enthusiasts to do your work for you is silly. Cheap. but silly.
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Agreed, the VM causes issues.
I will say the VM approach works very well on most Android apps EXCEPT for ones that need access to your LAN, then it's behind a VM NAT and becomes a nightmare to try to deal with. I'm talking about remote control and UPNP/DLNA type applications are all but useless due to the VM approach.
I tried (Score:2)
Last time I tried to install the Android version of Slack on some of our office Chromebooks (Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i), it didn't work - turns out the Android version is only set to work on ARM CPUs, and it's not available to be installed on Chromebooks that have Intel CPUs.
We did have it installed on another Chromebook (Lenovo Duet) which has an ARM CPU.
No obvious indicator that it's a CPU limitation - when I emailed Slack (to their credit, they got back to me very quickly) they said "so this is a bit of a p
Probably make sense for a lot of app developers (Score:1)
If it makes sense for an app developer to make their app tablet-friendly, then it likely makes sense for them to make it ChromeOS-friendly. While there's a bit more to it to make use of some ChromeOS-specific features, for the most part the challenge is in making good use of the larger screen space - which is much easier if the app already has different layouts for phone- and tablet-sized screens.
Google could certainly help by making cheap Chrome-OS devices available to app developers.