Students get iOS apps running on Android

[jackninja1]

Students from the Columbia University have developed an application that allows iOS apps to run on android (very slowly).

 

They have developed some kind of compatibility layer called Cider. The trick is that it makes the iOS app think its running in a native environment.

Being an android developer myself, I cant imagine the pain they had to go through to make it work. 

It is just a concept that it works, or rather, that it can work. I don't think that they will do anything with it. 

It would be cool if the developers where to share the code on github or something, but I don't see that happening.

 

What do you guys think of this?

 

 

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/14/ios-apps-run-on-android/

and

and for the ultrageeks (I wont judge you)

http://jeremya.com/files/pub/2014/03/cider-asplos2014.pdf

[ShadowCaptain]

Hmm its probably slow beacuse its running 2 OS at once, or its emulating iOS

 

Maybe if they installed it natively on the device it would run at full speed

 

Also dont see the point but thats a different story

[JAKEBAB]

This is really cool i hope they stick with it to make the experience snappier.

 

it would be cool to see like a hackios lol

[LOLPhilips]

Yarrrrr,

Hope they come out with this soon.

I be playing spongebob bikini bottom.

[jackninja1]

Hmm its probably slow beacuse its running 2 OS at once, or its emulating iOS

 

Maybe if they installed it natively on the device it would run at full speed

 

Also dont see the point but thats a different story

 

Thats the whole thing it doenst just "emulate" an iOS device.

And the guy did it for school, he did a paper on it.

[Warcony]

I think it would be super cool to be able to hack iOS onto Android devices... nice to have a bigger screen!

[ShadowCaptain]

Thats the whole thing it doenst just "emulate" an iOS device.

And the guy did it for school, he did a paper on it.

 

Its sort of a cross between running natively and an emulation, very clever stuff.

 

Yeah he did a paper on it. But I still don't see the point ^^ Devs can already make apps cross compatible relatively easily, if android was a more consistent platform it would be even simpler. But there might be some legal issues doing this. Plus im sure most android users dont want iOS

 

 

I think it would be super cool to be able to hack iOS onto Android devices... nice to have a bigger screen!

 

iPad and iPad mini?

 

and hopefully the iPhone 6 if rumours come true

[WhatTheQuack]

As cool as that might be, I don't really see the point of this. Most iOS apps are available for Android anyway

 

Also I find it pretty ironic that the video is shot in portrait mode  :angry:

[colonel_mortis]

Looks pretty cool, even if it isn't exactly ready yet (slow, and no GPS etc), but I look forward to seeing what happens with it and similar projects in the future. I'm guessing it will only work with pirated apps though because there's no way Apple would ever let the App Store be used on Android.

 

Hmm its probably slow beacuse its running 2 OS at once, or its emulating iOS

It's actually a translation layer. Rather than running iOS in the background (which is not practical for so many reasons, including performance), it works a bit like wine does for Linux (I presume that was the basis for its name too) and translates the iOS function calls into Android calls. Although this method is faster than running a full VM or booting into the OS, it also means that the developers have to manually code each translation AFAIK, so some more obscure stuff may not work to begin with.

[StingBull]

What's next, people making Hackiphone out of Android phones like they make Hackintoshes out of PCs?

[brownninja97]

thats pretty insane, awesome programming

[beebskadoo]

I hope this goes somewhere, other attempts at this have fallen short. Awesome stuff!

[Panda689]

I haven't had time to read the paper because I am at work, so is this basically WINE? Because I am imagining playing FTL on my S3 right meow.

[Paralectic]

This is even worse than Android themes on a jailbroken iOS device, please NO.

[atrash]

Why bother with ios apps? I thought android are proud to have the most apps among all other phone OSes.

[Samdb]

Why bother with ios apps? I thought android are proud to have the most apps among all other phone OSes.

 

There are some apps that are only available on iOS, this should end that if it goes well.

[atrash]

Samdb, on 19 May 2014 - 9:14 PM, said:

There are some apps that are only available on iOS, this should end that if it goes well.

 

I see..I can't believe there are still iOS only apps out there. I can understand if the the WP doesn't have one but this is a travesty. That particular company with iOS only apps should be spanked hard for this.

[hawthorne]

I have all I need on android, not bothered at all. 

[ShadowCaptain]

There are some apps that are only available on iOS, this should end that if it goes well.

 

Not sure that it is 100% legal. I mean regarding software licences etc Apple/Google might have something to say about this if it becomes a thing, it would effective destroy their platforms. Google have things apple dont, apple have things google dont. This would end that, which is NOT good in my opinion, we need the competition to drive things forward

 

I see..I can't believe there are still iOS only apps out there. I can understand if the the WP doesn't have one but this is a travesty. That particular company with iOS only apps should be spanked hard for this.

 

Why? Its a much more lucrative app store and no piracy (except for jail broken devices which is a very small %)

 

As a dev, I know which platform I would go for. Also easier to develop for. As the devices are much similar. Making a game to run on a handful of iPhones and iPad = easy, making that game work on 5000 android devices = hard

 

[StingBull]

 

Does this graph take into account the ad revenue from the apps?

[ShadowCaptain]

Does this graph take into account the ad revenue from the apps?

 

No, this is revenue paid out by apple/google to the devs

 

Ad Revenue is almost impossible to equate and is rarely information release by developers