I am a cider drinker I drink it all of the day......
Boffins run iOS apps on Android hardware
Boffins from Columbia University have shown off a tool called “Cider” that runs iOS apps inside Android. Detailed in this paper (PDF), Cider is complex enough that your correspondent probably can't do much better than to quote the authors' explanation of how it works. So let's get into that: "Cider enhances the domestic …
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Friday 16th May 2014 07:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Slightly poor name choice there...
I think he gets the pun. The point is that the name is already being used for software that lets apps made for one OS run on another OS. Meaning it will likely cause confusion if this new cider was to become popular.
But this thing is lagtastic and I doubt they'll ever fix that issue. Personally I just went out and bought a 64gb cellular ipad mini for 250 quid in the sales. Why bother with this virtualisation crap? It's better to carry more gadgets around.
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Friday 16th May 2014 07:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Slightly poor name choice there...
I think he gets the pun. The point is that it's already being used as the name of software that allows apps made for one OS to run on another. So if this new cider becomes popular, the name would likely cause confusion.
Although it won't become popular because it's lagtastic and any decent app made for iOS is also made for android and vice versa.
Personally I just went out and bought a 64 gb cellular ipad mini in the sales. Now I have android and iOS. Carrying more gadgets is better anyway.
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Friday 16th May 2014 08:17 GMT sorry, what?
Re: Slightly poor name choice there...
I see you spotted your silly mention of "virtualization" and tried to remove it...
That it is somewhat laggy is clear but I'm sure this would disappear, given enough grunt from the host device.
Apple would sue over reproduction of their APIs I'm sure, but this is very cool.
I'd love to understand what they mean by "Diplomatic functions". Aren't those grand parties with Ferrero Roche?
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Friday 16th May 2014 11:27 GMT Paul Shirley
Re: "run **UNMODIFIED** foreign binaries"
...like Intel dynamically recompiling ARM code on x86 Android?
Plenty of hard work here but the so called innovation strikes me as little more than giving new names to the old techniques of runtime recompilation and interface shims/emulation. Still, the renaming scam worked for IBM for decades, is still working for Microsoft ;)
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Friday 16th May 2014 12:27 GMT Tom 38
Re: "run **UNMODIFIED** foreign binaries"
like Intel dynamically recompiling ARM code on x86 Android
Not at all like that, because this isn't recompiling or translating opcodes or anything like that, it is simply a shim around syscalls - the same original instructions run, not different instructions inferred from the original instructions.
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Friday 16th May 2014 21:46 GMT GBE
I bought Android so I could AVOID iTunes
Same here. I had an iPod touch for a while, and I loved the device itself, but getting music to and from it was a nightmare because it required use of the iTunes application. The iTunes app was huge, slow, buggy, crashed a lot, and was based on all sorts of insanely stupid assumptions that caused no end of grief.
With my Android phone, I just plug in the USB cable, mount the fileystem, and copy files back and forth. It's completely brilliant!
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Tuesday 20th May 2014 09:34 GMT JDX
Re: I bought Android so I could AVOID iTunes
I recently caved and put iTunes on my Windows7 PC because it was a pain having to turn on the Mac just to put content on my iPad. I've heard terrible things about the Windows version in particular (the Mac one seems fine) but so far so good,,, maybe it improved a lot in recent versions or I'm just lucky.
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Friday 16th May 2014 15:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "and the drawback to that is?"
"Not having your apps pre-checked to make sure they aren't sending your contact details and phone usage to scammers in russia is reason enough to want to use the Apple app store rather than the Google one."
Ahh... I see
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/06/mobile_trojan_apple_app_store_shocker/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/01/boffins_say_theyve_fooled_apple_with_malware_app/
Good job Apple are perfect then.
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Friday 16th May 2014 09:00 GMT Adam 1
Officially yes, but you can still download the APK and install it directly. Not that I would recommend installing anything from Adobe that isn't frequently patched. I think their patches this month through windows update outnumbered the OS patches so abandonware from them is something I would recommend to avoid.
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Friday 16th May 2014 09:04 GMT jzlondon
Wow
That is a seriously impressive piece of code.
Much of the library functionality is implemented in starkly different ways between Android and iOS, so there must be some fairly deep translation going on under some of that. And it looks to be pretty complete if it's able to run those fairly diverse demos without crashing.
Kudos.
I know that there are various other multi-platform options out there, but they generally operate via source code translation and build-time shims. Given how different this is, I'm guessing that most of it was built from scratch.
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Friday 16th May 2014 10:12 GMT Steve Crook
Stop gap
At the rate mobile processors are improving, it won't be long before virtualisation is preferable. Given the fruity firms aversion to cross compilers, I doubt this'll ever escape from academia...
The main result will be IP/copyright lawyers everywhere wondering if they can afford another beach front property...
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Friday 16th May 2014 12:36 GMT Tom 38
Re: Stop gap
This isn't virtualisation, it's emulation. The linked PDF does explain:
While virtual machines (VMs) are useful for desktop and
server computers to run apps intended for one platform on
a different platform [36, 44], using them for smartphones
and tablets is problematic for at least two reasons.
[…]
To address these problems, we created Cider, an OS com-
patibility architecture
This is how FreeBSD's linux emulation works, the linux binary is linked to it's linux libraries, and a special rtld that maps any linux syscall (which would be handled by the linux kernel) to an equivalent BSD syscall.
For cider they have to do a bunch more work to make API stubs for iOS user-space libraries, but the premise is identical.
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Saturday 17th May 2014 13:24 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: But the Other Way Around
You need to read up on how patents work.
Like proving that there is no bug in your code that will send PASSENGER PLUNGING TO THEIR DEATH, SCREAMING, there is no way to prove that no patents have been violated ("violating patents", a nice form of unspeak come to think of it...)
the only way to run them if it's proven that Android violates Apple patents!
Samsung won't care about Yankees claiming ownership of idea space.
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Monday 19th May 2014 00:17 GMT Neoc
It'd be nice
When I moved from an iPad 1 to an Android slab, I found equivalent apps for all my iTune apps with little problem. Except for one - it was (and as far as I am concerned still is) the best comic-book/manga reader around. Unfortunately, the author has no plans to rewrite it for Android. So if Cider does get released, I'll finally be able to completely ditch my ageing iPad.