[Info-vax] VSI licensing policy (again), was: Re: VSI has a new CEO

[John Dallman]

In article <sfero7$1o3a$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, arne at vajhoej.dk (Arne Vajhøj)
wrote:
> On 8/16/2021 5:22 PM, Michael S wrote:
> > I have no idea how many people really want to run Android apps on 
> > their laptops.
> If Android tablets were super popular then having a single app run on
> both Windows ARM and Android tablet could be nice, but iOS tablets 
> seem way more popular than Android tablets.

A lot of Android tablets are sold, but they're mostly "family devices"
for use by kids, very cheap, and not very powerful. Business use of
tablets is almost exclusively iOS, and the high-end ones are as fast as
good laptops. 

Microsoft have said that Windows 11 will run Android apps on x86 Windows,
as well as ARM Windows. This is possible for a combination of reasons: 

- Many Android apps are entirely written in Java or Kotlin (which runs 
  on Java infrastructure), and JIT-compiled for the device, on the
  device, at install time. Such apps don't ship any ARM native code. 

- Some Android apps that do ship native code ship both x86 and ARM, 
  because the usual app building tools do that by default. 

- For apps that ship ARM native code but not x86, Intel have produced 
  a binary translator for running ARM code on their processors, which
  will be bundled with Windows 11. 

John