they tried... Microsoft to end its Android apps on Windows 11

I honestly think that this had more to do with Amazon than Microsoft.

Android Apps on Windows have always been mostly reliant on the Amazon App store. This is because of the unfortunate situation where mobile computing had been allowed to evolve into an ecosystem where a tiny few gatekeeper app stores dominated the app ecosystem, and for most people, it's the only way they know how to install Android apps.

But in the Google/Apple appstore duopoly, the Amazon App store is/was a distant third at best, and often does not have many of the best apps. This is the same reason why the only time it makes sense to ever buy an Amazon FireHD tablet is if you plan to side-load the Google Play store and use that instead of the Amazon App store.

But not only does the Amazon App store already suck, but Amazon has recently made it clear that they plan to move away from using Android apps and customized versions of Android on their hardware to using an in-house OS instead. That's going to basically leave Microsoft without any reliable Android app store (to the extent that they ever had one).

I'm still a little disappointed, since there is a slowly increasing trend of services that are app-only with no web-based or non-app alternative. Being able to run those apps on a desktop or laptop would have been nice.

But it's worth noting that Android is Linux based, and Microsoft is definitely NOT ending support for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), so it will be interesting to see how things progress down the line. Microsoft is also expanding phone integration. Their existing phone app is already quite handy, and using the capabilities of your phone through the Windows phone app might be an interesting roundabout way to still be able to use Android Apps on your computer.
 
IMO this is entirely because the Amazon store totally sucks ass. It's the online store equivalent of the Nintendo section at Wal-Mart. 2-3 recognizable items and wall-to-wall shovelware.
If there was an officially supported way to download and run apps like Gmail, Calendar, Tasks, Photos, etc. or even just the multitudes of social media and streaming apps then it could have been rather useful. Most of those apps are vastly better than the ones in the Windows store. In fact...probably all of them. Especially compared to trash like MS's "New" Outlook, Gallery, and such.

What's kinda funny is that this was one of MS's original big selling points for Windows 11. The OS didn't even ship with it and now they're already killing it.
 
None of the above matters.... this was Microsoft's deal. They brought the poop, shoveled the poop and threw out the poop.

(it's not like we haven't seen this from Microsoft before)
 
I never tried this as anytime I needed to run android apps on the computer I used BlueStacks. I rarely need to, but when i did, it served its purpose.
 
The times I went on the Amazon store apps it feel like what a parody comedy sketch about a c tier app store would have looked like, I am not sure anyone would have known it was gone without the news.
 
S--- happpens, all the time, especially from big/bigger vendors like Microsoft.

For a while, I was pissed that I could not run iOS apps on Windows. If I understand things (and I may be wrong here), iOS is also UNIX-based in some way.

I hate, hate, hate iTunes for Windows. Makes Apple programmers seem like rank amateurs and barely competent. And released with easily identified bugs. [EDIT]
 
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philb2 said:
S--- happpens, all the time, especially from big/bigger vendors like Microsoft.

For a while, I was pissed that I could not run iOS apps on Windows. If I understand things (and I may be wrong here), iOS is also UNIX-based in some way.

I hate, hate, hate iTunes for Windows. Makes Apple programmers like rank amateurs and barely competent.
Click to expand...
Yes, Apple has it's own BSD-like kernel (xnu), and the OS does share some similarities with BSD and other Unix-like OSes.
 
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