
Google Play starts rolling out to Chrome OS stable - flinner
http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/21/google-play-starts-rolling-out-to-chrome-os-stable/
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zxv
I've been pleasantly surprised by the breadth of apps that work on my
Chromebook Pixel. Pretty much everything I use on my nexus phone works, albeit
some with a small window size.

For me, the biggest advantage is the performance boost of android media
players, such as Netflix, Hulu, and You Tube.

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chambo622
What do you mean by the performance boost of Android media players? Do they
perform better on Chrome OS than watching video in the browser? I'd imagine
that in a lot of cases, the max bitrate served to mobile clients may be lower
than the web, although I'm not sure this is true for all the services you
named.

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zxv
Compared to running in a browser window, the android apps for Neflix, Hulu and
YouTube exhibit far less jitter, dropped fames, delayed frames, etc. This is
true even on a Pixel with an i7 processor and 16G of ram, so it's not a
question of CPU or memory resources, and also true on a symetrical 1GB
internet connection.

For me, this eliminates need need to carry a tablet for consuming video or
audio media.

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mankash666
The next step is the play store for Chrome on Linux. Then Mac. Then windows.
That'll be awesome

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0xFFC
It is unrelated technology. First version of Android runtime for chrome was
ARC welder , if I remember correctly. But that didn't go anywhere. Right now
they are using something similar to docker technology which runs Android apps
in sandbox in chrome.

You can watch the talk in Google io 2016.

So in this scenario there not feasible way to port this runtime to other
platforms because it is not using chrome runtime.unless they redesign it.

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tmzt
My understanding of how this works, mostly from reading commit messages and
poking around the repo, is to add a wayland compositor/server to the aura
component of chromium. Aura is the window manager, compositor, and render of
ui items such as the task bar and status icons of ChromeOS. It looks like the
Android portion is largely based on the same fork as ARC, with the rendering
performed through Wayland. It also looks like a large number of Android APIs
had to be reimplemented which may excacerbate the fragmentation problem.

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0xFFC
Cool , did they used Wayland? I didn't know that. It is quite fascinating,
Wayland finds its actual place in industry.

About API reimplantation, I do remember a little bit, you are correct, the guy
in Google talk mentioned it is simultaneous development to Android and they
are not using Android underlying technology on top of namespace,etc (Linux
syscalls).

I would love to read a blog post about this, and since your poked around in
source code you are right person. So please, if you have any spare time, write
a blog post.

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petecox
Perhaps the new 'Pixel' phone is ChromeOS based - yet another platform but
like BB10 and Sailfish including Android apps.

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tdkl
Probably too soon for that, considering they basically have Play in beta for
Chrome OS. But I could bet that this might be a future someday... But even if
it makes updates easier, it will involve carriers and Android update situation
might happen again.

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soylentcola
I think it's definitely a way to start combining the Pixel branding with the
ChromeOS branding under "Pixel" to make any future crossover easier. Other
than that, though, why would carriers have to be involved? Sure, if you buy a
carrier-branded device they get their hands in it but it could just as easily
work the way Nexus did on any non-carrier-branded device. If anything, I see
the "Pixel" move as a way to start moving away from that side of Android and
all it entails.

Idle speculation: I wonder if the end goal is for "Android" to stick around as
the "anyone can port it to their device" OS as it is currently, with "Pixel"
being Google's more in-house label that they can treat like Apple does iOS or
Google currently does with standard, unbranded Nexus.

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pixelmonkey
Does anyone know how this works (under the hood)? Is it just a very good
Android emulator?

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webaholic
There is no need to emulate. They have the same runtime on chrome as they have
on android. There is very light weight wrapper which enables the runtime to
work on chrome.

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em3rgent0rdr
just more adware. What is really needed is access to the F-Droid repository.

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pawadu
> “A beta release of the Play store is available to users now on the Acer R11
> and Asus Flip (and coming soon to Pixel 2015) and can be enabled from the
> Settings page,”

Not really ...

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davidw
Care to elaborate?

I'm kind of considering getting an Asus Flip (or maybe a Pixel) as it's clear
that a tablet without a keyboard is pretty limited in its functionality for
people who like to create rather than simply consume content. Having some apps
available would greatly add to the appeal of those devices.

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wwwdonohue
> Google Play starts rolling out to Chrome OS stable

Made it sound like it was coming to all Chrome OS devices (or, at least the
ones Google said would be getting it on dev sometime in "late 2016"~). It's
just out for two Chromebooks. Got me hook, line, and sinker Venturebeat!

(Maybe I was dumb to think that was happening. I saw this when I first woke
up. Thought it was a huge surprise designed to beef up the hype before the
Oct. 4 event.)

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iamdave
This, and I'm posting from my R11 right now, I see the button to enable the
Play store but it's Greyed out.

I'm also on the developer channel, apparently you need to be on the stable
channel to work. Which requires a powerwash (equivalent of a factory reset for
the uninitiated) to revert back to. Damned if I do, damned if I don't because
I rather like having Arch Linux a few keystrokes away, but I also want to play
with a few Android apps on the toilet :P

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mark_l_watson
After Samsung's awful rollout of the Note 7 with battery problems, and the
costs of bringing a product to market without enough testing, I have some
sympathy for this slow Play on Chrome OS rollout.

If there are end user problems running Android apps on a Chromebook, it is
better to have a smaller and more manageable test set of users.

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tdkl
Um, rolling out software has no comparison to pulling out millions of phones
and replace them all around the planet. This is just how Google ships stuff -
from the announcement to the day when 0 people care.

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mark_l_watson
I should have explained myself better. The Android on Chrome OS is I think a
big deal because one thing that Chrome OS has going for it is its security
model. I could be wrong, but I consider my Android phone less secure than my
Chromebook. If the security gets botched up on Chromebooks, that would be bad.

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tdkl
I agree about being a big deal, one might even think if the Android update
problem could be surmounted by eventually bringing Chrome OS as a host running
Android apps to mobile devices.

