Android apps running native on macOS

Windows and Linux do the same, they store the data in the user home folder. So not sure if your argument stands, maybe Android is different in that regard, but also it's easier to back up the data this way.

Users don't always have write access to the apps.

I see that. Good!

The README and wiki really smell of letting Claude loose with little/no oversight or taste. I hope the authors consider putting more of their own thoughts and opinions into how this project is presented.

Everything aside from apps with SafetyNet dependencies. Banking apps come to mind.

time to RE play services

...what steam devices? Steam Deck and Machine? I work in video games(at one of the largest publishers - worked at other two in the last few years) - and while we usually do some testing on the steam deck it's literally just to see if the windows version runs well. Full on Linux porting effort like Larian did for BG3 is very very rare and extremely hard to justify.

Or matter more, as chromeOS is killed and Android comes to laptop form factor?

I'm no expert on the matter, but I've developed and published multiple Android apps to the Play Store. Some of those apps have needed Google Play Services APIs. Google has also been actively making moves to lock down control and offering things like the Play Integrity API that some apps use.

By your phrasing, it sounds like you're implying my understanding is wrong somehow. If so, what am I missing?

I'm not the commenter but this is my experience in about 10% or so of cases. I've been running a network audit of baby tracking apps and the information they phone home with (results are pretty Orwellian so far) and a few of the apps have been virtually impossible to emulate without an active Google Play account that is verified against Google's servers.

I have tried that project a couple years ago! My son moved on to mostly enjoying modded Java Edition but it was useful in a pinch, though it shared a few annoying characteristics that reminded me of my previous solution, playing on an Xbox One X with mouse and keyboard attached. Namely, that it wasn't as smooth as it is on a PC to bring up the chat and quickly type commands, requiring extra mouse clicks IIRC.

I don't think anything to do with Intel matters, as the existing Mac solution they provide is just running Java Edition which already runs natively on ARM anyway.

Honestly I'm confused why they haven't brought Bedrock to Mac yet, as MS makes Mac versions of tons of stuff, from Edge to Copilot to Office; and Minecraft Bedrock Edition not only sells for money but has recurring in-app-purchase revenue, and Macs seem to be selling well.

Why does dropping Intel support relate to this?

Most iPad apps can already be ran on OSX.

Yeah, Apple went 90% of the way there, but decided it was up to the developer.

I get it, because if you're a developer you don't want to be deluged with support requests from a platform that you don't care about.

But also, it feels more like a favor to big corporate interests who are probably worried about "security" in the sense that macOS is only 95% locked down. It's still possible to have true root if you disable a few things, and it probably makes the kind of companies who make apps that refuse to run on a jailbroken device worry.

When Apple pulls the last plug on letting us mere users actually own our computers and moves the macOS to the iOS model where Apple will decide what programs you can run, it will probably come with the small benefit that all iOS apps will be required to be installable on Mac.

They absolutely can, you can download and run virtually every app off the iOS app store on a mac, and it runs in an emulator which is entirely native, no virtualization involved. Pretty sure it doesn't even need XCode. Mojang is likely actively detecting and locking out the emulator from the release version of the app.

Macs can install/run iPad/iPhone apps through the App Store if the app developer enables the feature. A bunch of app developers don't though, and iOS apps have DRM that macOS ones don't

Isn’t that what catalyst does?

That's already here.

Also it's way worse than that, since most things are written in React Native or some other cross-platform framework, then that's wrapped in a mobile app, then you try to access a website to do some trivial task that the Web is great at (Place a takeout order or pay $6 for parking) and are told to download a 500MB "App"... and create an account... 'we sent a code to your email, go check it...' 'Ask App not to track?' 'Allow location?' etc)

Claude is listed as a credited contributor, so Claude did make this.

Does this project do something like that OR does it use the JVM OR does it do something else altogether?

> no virtual machine

lol.

I saw a hint of machine code recompilation in the libraries list (like capstone), but couldn't find enough to verify if recompilation means more than just extracting the dalvik stuff and reformatting it to run on a normal JVM

I read the page, but didn't clone the repository locally to run an AI agent over it.

Yeah, Microsoft tried 'both ways' to expand their quite small Windows Phone applications catalogue. And while Project Astoria [1] aimed at bringing Android apps, Project Islandwood was about easing porting of iOS applications [2]. Then MS decided that Windows Phone platform has no future.

[1] - https://www.windowslatest.com/2016/02/26/project-astoria-por...

[2] - https://www.windowslatest.com/2016/02/09/project-islandwood-...

WSA was (or is, since still works unofficially) running Android in VM underneath.

isn't BlueStacks full of chinese ads nowadays?

It is based on VM, so it is a lot slower.

You can't even run Instagram on a low-end laptop.

I was referring to ability to run Android apps on IOS system. There are some related projects (Husk, UTM) but Apple essentially makes it almost impossible to use on ordinary iPhones.

And yet somehow Microsoft / Mojang don't see fit to enable Minecraft Bedrock for iPads on Macs. Pretty frustrating for cross-platform play. It's pretty funny that Bluestacks / Mac.apk work just fine for playing the Android Bedrock version on a Mac when the iOS app is right there.

I always do my best to emulate AI writing - just to keep you guessing.

It's just overused and cliche now

It may not be verbose, but it's still faffing around by using an idiom

  <cmd> force-off  # force off

> For writings of more than a page, most readers are going to use LLM summarizations anyway.

Citation very much needed. And I sure hope you’re not right, or we’re already beyond fucked.

I remember the first time I heard a young girl talking to her friends in the TikTok pattern. That was a clear sign we were doomed.

You're absolutely right!

"Why does it matter to you?" Many Claudisms are grating to many people. Annoying is enough of a justification.

For one, say what it does instead of what it doesn't do

"Run Android apps natively on Apple Silicon Macs. Uses translation instead of emulation."

No, slop generally doesn't get the point across efficiently.

It's hard to parse, it's grating, and in addition to the strange language you have to apply additional skepticism due to gross inaccuracy being more likely than in human-written text.

Variety is the Spice of Life

If you run a readability analysis on slop it scores very poorly. LLMs generally continue to be mediocre with the veneer of quality without context to guide them.

Cliches annoyed people before LLMs. There is a whole microgenre of essay ranting about the proliferation of various annoying cliches, bits of jargon, etc. the proliferation of Claude prose is simply rendering certain turns of phrase into annoying cliches, which people are reacting to in the normal way. Cliches also get the point across but nonetheless lots of people find them grating.

Then I can probably vibecode a native reverse-engineered solution to both those specific problems in less effort than it took to vibecode an Android translator for Mac.

>What about that chinese cat feeder whose app requires a suspicious number of permissions, and requires max version of android 2 versions behind the current one?

Did you read the project page? This runs with no sandbox. If you want to run shady chinese apps, you should be running it in android emulator (a VM), not this translation layer.

>It's pretty nice and would be cool if I could do the same for Android.

android emulator?

If I could I would do it during development. The app I work on needs hardware so it’s not an option.