My wife and kids touch their screens all the time. I often reach over my wife's shoulder and tap a button or something on the screen rather than reaching for the trackpad.
It may not be that useful for your particular use case but that doesn't mean it's not useful for others.
This is one of those things that once you use it you wonder why it's not more common. Especially for scrolling having touch on a laptop is very convenient and you get used to it quickly it becomes muscle memory to the point that you start touching non touch enabled laptops.
Had a lenovo yoga with touchscreen and replaced it with a thinkpad, until I switched I hadn't realised how much I was using the touchscreen before.
I used a pixelbook with Android apps as a daily driver for a couple years. I wouldn't use the touchscreen unless I absolutely had to.
It gunks up the screen and a mouse is just more precise.
I had the option of "tablet mode" and the pixelbook is pretty much the thinnest notebook/tablet on the market, but even it's 12" size is just too big to hold in "tablet mode" for extended periods of time.
IBM created a Windows compatibility layer. However, that meant that developers saw that they could write their programs once for Windows and OS/2 users would be able to use the programs. The reverse wouldn't be true. So there was little incentive to create native apps for OS/2 compared to Windows.
> Also, OS/2 had a chicken-and-egg problem. Its best selling point was its compatibility with MS-DOS and Windows applications. However, this meant few developers took the time to write OS/2-native apps. So, why run OS/2 at all?
Do developers start believing that an Android app is enough to also court the Windows market? Android apps, even if they run "well" on Windows, won't be as well adapted to the Windows UX as apps intended for Windows. This isn't the case of Microsoft saying "you can now develop for Windows using the Android APIs." It's more, "you can now run Android apps with their phone UX (as submitted to a phone app store) on Windows."
I'm not saying that the feature won't be popular. However, it is potentially a weak strategy. Let's say that Microsoft makes Android apps on laptops/desktops popular. That makes it easier to market ChromeOS/Android-based laptops/desktops. If people see their apps as coming from Android and not Windows, why bother with the Windows license?
I don’t think this is much of a difference for me. I have Android, iOS, and Electron/Web developers. Right now we target Windows with Electron, but could use Android in the future. Either way I’m not really building a Windows desktop app that would give Microsoft a moat. I think they realize that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One of Microsoft's greatest strengths on show here. Embrace and extend.
They made a mess of trying to build an app business with windows RT, Windows 8, windows 10. They can't get into the apple appstore ecosystem so they pivot to embracing the Android ecosystem to have an app catalog on windows.
(Ironically what google did with Android was the play that Microsoft should have done with windows phone - classic OEM play which they had done successfully for years before)
Unfortunately another of their strength lies in the 3rd part: "extinguish". It's only a matter of time before their recent software of WSL, GitHub and Android on Windows becomes yet another walled garden.
I think this is really unlikely. PC gaming is an increasingly important market for Windows in the consumer space. As more casual users abandon conventional PCs for increasingly capable tablets and smartphones, PC gaming is only becoming and even bigger piece of the pie.
The day Microsoft announces that the next version of Windows will be wholly incompatible with player's existing libraries is the day Windows ceases to be relevant to this market. Suddenly, Wine and Proton on Linux go from being "pretty good, but real Windows works better" to being the best option by a mile.
And this is without mentioning how important legacy support is to enterprise customers. A whole lot of the jank and inconsistent UI designs present in Windows 11 is there because enterprise customers still use old software that relies on old features and APIs.
Well, I'm crossing my fingers the Valve Steam Deck satisfies my PC gaming needs (probably not though). I hate Hate HATE that more and more games are wanting to install System level services. It's absolutely not acceptable for the same machine my financial info and other sensative info is on has apps digging deep into the system.
I could run 2 machines but that's also a PITA, maintaining both machines and trying to decide when to use one vs the other. A gaming machine is powerful but I also need that power for video editing and other things. 2 VR rigs, one for non-gaming, one for gaming, would also suck. etc....
I want Windows to lockdown like Mac (and sure, you can turn it off?) but I'd like apps not to be able to muck with the system. Games have no excuse IMO.
The ace in the hole is TPM. What happens when Microsoft starts shipping a TPM based anticheat and DRM? That would destroy Proton forever and allow them to lockdown Windows.
How? They've recently bought a ton of gaming IPs, including Bethesda and id, to add to their existing sizable portfolio including some big names like Halo, Forza, Flight Sim, Minecraft, Gears. They seem to have a pretty solid agreement with EA to offer their EA Play service as a part of GamePass Ultimate, allowing access to a sizeable portion of that library for no additional cost to PC and console gamers. They're starting to push hard into Xbox-as-a-service and focusing efforts equally between PC and console, adding the xCloud "Game Everywhere On Everything!" hook.
People seem to forget that Microsoft is the second most valuable tech company in the world behind Apple. Unless some incredible monstrous change or disaster happens to/within the company, they're not going anywhere for a long time.
I find that the argument embedded in that question isn't very insightful.
The developments of personal computing since subscription applications became prevalent and app stores were integrated into operating systems has made things quite different from the era that preceded this one.
Apple used to sell OS upgrades. Today you can basically run Windows 10 for free. The revenue streams are different these days and they have plenty of incentives to turn your OS into a mall.
Windows has essentially always been free. There have been something like two billion PCs sold running Windows. The number of people who purchased a non-OEM copy is relatively small.
Free as in price? The price tag to customers didn't exactly mention the Windows fee, but the very few vendors that sold PC's without Windows pre-installed had a lower price on those options. Luckily many vendors seem to have concluded that Windows is not a sales argument anymore.
Free as in freedom? MS has tried to block out Linux from beeing installed through various chips and methods.
But I believe upgrades have always been an extra purchase until Windows 8? Nowadays it's free OS, free upgrades to get you in the door and buy their services (M365 for Microsoft, iCloud/apps for Apple.)
Until Windows 10 IIRC, Windows 8 was also a paid upgrade. Windows 8.1 acted like a service pack so it wasn't until 10 that upgrades became free, in a way. (Unless you're an enterprise customer, in which case 10 wasn't free either)
> So you're saying it's only a matter of time before Windows, which is 35 years old, might become a walled garden?
Yes - Microsoft had credible plans to wall-off app installation via an iOS-stye app store. Valve considered this threat to be viable enough, they developed SteamOS and promoted Steam Machines.
Since then, Microsoft has continued its cryptographic crusade to plug all avenues for loading software that's not Microsoft-approved from pre-boot, right up to the userland. Currently, Microsoft already have a turnkey walled garden
I think that is a matter of perspective. Operating systems wholly reliant on package managers are arguably walled gardens, since acquiring and running software that only exists outside the official repos can be a hassle.
But I don't think most people mean either of these things when they say "walled garden". They are referring to ecosystems where the user's only choice for installing apps is an app store owned and maintained by the OS vendor.
Which is precisely what makes it not a walled garden: you can just, you know, put whatever software you want on it. That's the expected way to acquire software on Windows.
No it isn't. You can still install and even build packages using the manifest separately. It is just convenience, but doesn't prevent you from installing them yourself.
Prevent, no. However making your promoted paradigm of software installation rely on repos and package maintainers has lead to practices that make it unlikely that you will find any given piece of software in a form you can just drop onto your system and have it run. If you're really lucky there's a static version or an AppImage, if you're unlucky you're pulling down a docker container of someone's build environment and compiling it yourself, if you're really unlucky you have to do without the docker container.
That is on software developers, many of which refuse to package their software. There are Snaps, Appimages, Flatpaks, etc. Free software isn't like Windows where developers are always packaging their software. Package managers don't impact this whatsoever, and what you're basically complaining about is that unpaid contributors make something easier for people that they wouldn't otherwise be able to easily do without them.
I'm complaining that the community's reliance on package management has set the expectation that unpaid contributors make software work on the platform.
The embracing and extending here was "that's a nice idea, we'll re-write that from scratch and use the Microsoft Store as a GUI for it", which doesn't seem like the same thing to me at all.
WSL I struggle to see how WSL could ever be a walled garden. THe only reason it exists is because server infra (including a bunch of Azure!) runs linux, and loads of development workflows are linux-only.
The moment you add something "windows specific" to Linux you prevent it from actually being used because then you can't deploy it.
I really don't see how their Android app support or WSL could realistically go from extend to extinguish.
I don't think Microsoft's MO is to completely dominate your entire stack anymore. They just want to make sure they form some critical piece of it so you can't get rid of them.
If Microsoft extends their Android implementation to provide new features before Android itself does, and these features become popular, then all Microsoft would have to do is start putting out their own "Android" phones to begin eating the market.
WSL, I'll admit, will be trickier to convert. However, they have decades of experience at this so don't put it past them to figure it out.
Given Microsoft is using/embracing Amazon's replacements for "Google Play Services" isn't the threat here more that Amazon might finally extend Android after a decade of trying and failing?
(Whether or not you agree that "Google Play Services" is already that EEE play, the incumbent, seemingly not going anywhere, and Microsoft/Amazon are playing underdog in this game.)
How does "someone can install Linux in a VM on Windows"[1] translate into "ajvs won't be able to use Linux anymore"? I don't see how you can make such a claim with a straight face.
Am I misreading? It looks like they ported the DirectX runtime to Linux under GPL 2.
>> "This is the real and full D3D12 API, no imitations, pretender or reimplementation here… this is the real deal. libd3d12.so is compiled from the same source code as d3d12.dll on Windows but for a Linux target. It offers the same level of functionality and performance (minus virtualization overhead). The only exception is Present(). There is currently no presentation integration with WSL as WSL is a console only experience today. The D3D12 API can be used for offscreen rendering and compute, but there is no swapchain support to copy pixels directly to the screen (yet )."
1. Their kernel implementation is effectively just a paravirtualized proxy to the Windows DX API. So it won't be useful for bare metal users.
2. Only the kernel driver is open source (and presumably that is only thanks to the GPL). The user-mode library is a proprietary component shipped with Windows. I assume this is also DRMed to only work on top of Hyper-V/WSL2, just like many of their VSCode extensions deliberately block usage with unbranded builds (see also: AARD code[1], this isn't exactly new for them).
I agree, it's a good-faith effort on Microsoft's part. I think people have a hard time believing they can operate in a non-adversarial way (which is understandable if you lived through the 90s lol)
3. Linux technically stays an option but is unable to run apps without NT underneath, and nobody writes plain Linux apps because of market effects
Weak because people could still write apps for just Linux, plausible because convincing people to divert effort to the MS way would work and is classic EEE.
No one in their right mind would right linux apps targeted to run WSL only. Even if they do, it would never capture the market of pure linux. Also any modifications done to linux should be GPLd hence i don’t think thats a problem either.
Your use of "extinguish" describes a situation where you can use exactly what you have now, in exactly the way you're doing now? And the terrible thing which "extinguish" means to you is "future people who might have given me free stuff might not, and it will be Microsoft's fault"? And not only that, but the way MS will "convince people to divert effort" is by making something people want more? And that is somehow terribly unfair?
The current world is that there are programs written for Linux distributions with certain subsystems (audio, window manager, systemd, etc) which don't work on other distributions without those subsystems. People who ignore binary blob video card drivers, etc. A Microsoft Ubuntu with DirectX that only runs in WSL would be just another thing like that. It would be practically no different to "macOS is UNIX but you can't run all macOS programs on other Unixes" which hasn't extinguished Linux or Unix.
Even moreso when people who want to write for DirectX can do so for Windows. Why would those people target DirectX on Linux which only runs on WSL? And if it doesn't only run on WSL, let's say DirectX on Linux works on any Ubuntu and Valve use it for Steam and gaming on Linux becomes massively popular by targetting DirectX for video ... how do you then connect to "nobody writes plain Linux apps because 3D games are an option" and from there to "and now despite being massively more popular, Linux is extinguished and this is bad because even though I can run literally any other distribution and write and run my own software and all previous software, I can no longer be bothered to and that's both bad and Microsoft's fault"?
> Ironically what google did with Android was the play that Microsoft should have done with windows phone - classic OEM play which they had done successfully for years before
Windows CE was certainly an interesting platform. The problem was it tried to be some sort of ... hybrid. On one side it tried to have some semblance of being Windows (not just in terms of UI but also in terms of APIs), on the other side it was different enough to not be Windows (weird CPU architectures such as Hitachi's SuperH, for one). Not to mention unlike Apple's Xcode and Android Studio, developing for Windows CE required paying through the nose for Visual Studio and addons (or pirating them).
And then, once the iPhone and Android hit the market, Microsoft just stopped development or even trying to catch up... and when they entered the field again, they messed it up completely.
The Windows Android layer can only install from the amazon store and does not include any google play stuff, right? Is the amazon android app ecosystem that much better than the current windows store?
To answer your second question, very likely. Microsoft would have zero luck populating their own Android store from scratch. It's a win-win for both companies as they're playing second fiddle to the Google Play Store and maybe even the Samsung store. Attracting developers to submit apps requires a large market.
What would be the reason to use android apps on windows besides them not being available on windows? What feature could an android app running on windows do that a windows application couldn't do?
Or maybe I'd even say "people don't like to use terrible app stores unless forced". Unfortunately, all of the commercial ones I have used are really terrible (gPlay, the Apple App Store, the MS Store), though at least on everything but iOS you aren't 'forced' to use them per se, just aggressively encouraged. It's kind of mind-boggling to me that none of them have managed to make an acceptable example, how hard can search + suggest be? Even when they implement wishlist/bookmarking, it's clunky and frustrating.
I don't think Google Play or the Apple App Store are terrible, at least for end-users. They have the apps people want and function as advertised.
The Microsoft Store struggled because initially it was limited to UWP apps. Developers could not easily ship their existing Windows software on it. Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by excluding the store from Windows' biggest selling point: it's extensive library of existing software.
To make things worse, the store has always been a bit...buggy, compared to the contemporaries I mentioned earlier. I have, on more than one occasion, spent half an hour troubleshooting why a game wouldn't download and install, with the store throwing obtuse unhelpful errors.
Hmm, I would say my experience with gPlay is that the signal-to-noise ratio is very high, often even when you specifically know what you're after, it can be hard to find the app you want and not an imitator. It also goes to great lengths to get promo/featured apps and games in front of you, no matter what. Also the filtering leaves a lot to be desired, for example there's no way to look for a game that has no advertising and no IAP, just a purchase price (the cynic in me assumes that's because of Google's priorities). The Apple App Store (I only deal with it on macOS) has fewer, better apps, but even less filtering/sorting, and maddeningly no kind of wishlist/bookmark, so I sometimes see something passing and mean to check it out, but then can't remember and never try again.
It's really hard to say if the Apple App store is good for users since user's have no choice there is no way to know. I know for me, searching for apps on the Apple App store is particularly frustrating. So many bad apps trying to scam people for subscriptions for simple apps.
I could certainly imagine a successful Steam iOS store that had a better experience for games than the Apple iOS App Store. Better reviews, better community, better suggestions, and sales (something the Apple App Store doesn't do AFAIK), more ways for devs to connect with users, better store pages with more options for devs, better categories/tags, etc... Also cross platform so buying some iOS game gets me the same game on Android, PC, Mac, Linux, were appropriate
Also Steam allows adult content if that's your thing.
Windows is using Amazons Android store? That raises some uncomfortable questions about privacy:
> Regardless of whether you choose to apply Amazon DRM, Amazon wraps your app with code that enables the app to communicate with the Amazon Appstore client to collect analytics, evaluate and enforce program policies, and share aggregated information with you. Your app will always communicate with the Amazon Appstore client when it starts, even if you choose not to apply DRM.
I don't know if the telemetry applies to all apps on the Amazon store, or only apps installed on Fire devices. If the former, I would feel very uneasy about installing Amazon store apps on Windows.
Android can run on <1GB RAM devices, and I'm willing to bet WSL's port runs a lot less background services. Couple that with Hyper-V VMs being able to release memory back to the host and it probably won't be too bad. (Maybe even lighter than some Electron apps)
Are you comparing a wrapper around a native app(chromium) to an app running on an OS emulated on a VM, with non-physical connection to a physical drive?
I guess the drive bandwidth itself would punish an app enough. Random disk reads and writes are no where near native performance.
Android over vm is much worse than electron, for wide usage.
Would you say WSL2 apps are meaningfully heavier than "native"? Because I'm not sure that's the case, and this is just the same. And just like WSL2, you're running a VM with much less background services and bootstrappers.
Drive bandwidth is really no concern here, you have so many Android phones with I/O much worse than computer SSDs. Not everything is a flagship with UFS 3.0+.
I’ll give you an analogy.
Imagine an Engine directly connected to the wheels, rather than a drive train vs via axle and drive train. Even if the engine is the best or even the worst, there is a loss of energy happening when its not connected directly.
Similarly you are putting more effort on PC to get similar performance of a mid range phone by pushing the energy via drivetrain(VM). Electron is just a wrapper around a native app. Teams is based on it. Then Teams on android running on PC would be based on an entire VM.
Wsl2 apps are not heavy, but they’re limited by the performance penalty of using a drive train(vm).
And apps on android are performant on phones because, there is only one app running the UI in foreground, and many OEMS cheat by killing background services.
I see no sense it makes to run an Android native app when PC alternative is available.
If the app has ended up using flutter or react native, the would be 3 abstracted layers deep.
VM->android->js/dart vm->app
You’re not understanding my point, VMs will never have native performance as long as there is a a pass through layer.Running a apt-update on wsl2 is much much slower than running apt-update on my ubuntu laptop.
> To enable these types of experiences, we are introducing a new component on top of Windows 11 called Windows Subsystem for Android™, which powers the Amazon Appstore and its catalog. The Subsystem includes the Linux kernel and the Android OS based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) version 11.
> The Windows Subsystem for Android is available across the full spectrum of Windows processor types (AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm).
So, on your Windows-ARM laptop, you can run android apps now. Being able to run android apps was one appealing feature of chromebooks IMO.
> We are partnering with Amazon in engaging the developer community, and we will have more details to share about early developer programs to publish Android apps to the Amazon Appstore
I had assumed that the Amazon App store had withered on the vine, but I guess their Kindles have kept it alive.
> The Windows Subsystem for Android is available across the full spectrum of Windows processor types (AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm).
But scroll down to see "Feature-specific requirements for Windows 11"
> Apps available at Amazon Appstore. Additional requirements apply, including 8 GB of RAM, a solid-state drive (SSD), and a supported processor (Intel® Core™ i3 8th Generation, AMD Ryzen™ 3000, Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 8c, or above).
IIRC "WSA" does ARM translation instead of relying on x86 builds like (classic) BlueStacks. Seems like BlueStacks 5 added ARM compatibility and also recommends a powerful CPU. (Microsoft's are basically "recommended" system requirements, and IIRC WSL2 also requires some large amount of RAM)
I got the impression developers shunned Amazon app store because it's a bad experience for them. Quite often am I seeing apps there that are many versions behind the play store.
I always assumed it was just because nobody uses the Amazon app store.
From a consumer perspective, the Amazon app store has no real reason to exist. It's just another place to download the same apps that are already in the Play Store, only with the extra hassle of needing to sideload it and set up a separate account from the one you already use for most other things on your phone.
If Amazon is actively making the app submission process worse for developers, then that is a colossal failure on Amazon's part to understand their market position. Developers are not the ones who need Amazon in this relationship.
Did some quick search, people on reddit are saying you can install any apk which means you can install it. It remains to see how easy it is to do so though.
This is a good tech demo but feature wise pretty useless. Windows 8 and the UWP mess already proved that people don't want "apps" on their PCs. I can't think of a single Android app that I would use on my desktop or laptop right now.
I can't think of a single Android app that I would use on my desktop or laptop right now
Sure, but other people can have different needs. I installed Bluestacks just so that I could run my bank's Android app on my desktop: unlike the bank's website, to pay with the app I only have to enter a 5-digit code. But having the app run on a phone is error prone and slow and a lot of manual typing because all its input (account numbers, amounts, ...) come from other documents/pdfs/websites/emails and I can navigate all of that much faster on a desktop. So: the app on the desktop is, for me, the fastest and most convenient banking way I found so far.
It was handy being able to use certain apps that don't exist properly on computers like Instagram, SMS, some other messaging apps. Copy and past works and you can install apk files by dropping them into the window. I found it quiet interesting.
Many apps don't have websites and only have mobile apps! It gives another incentive to developers to not release iOS-first apps - they will get simultaneously on Windows and Android instead of the now niche iOS market!
In classic Microsoft scattershot leadership, the preview is only available to Beta channel members, but not Dev channel members. Typically, new features would go Dev > Beta > RC > Final. This is going Beta > Dev > RC > release.
Surprise - Dev channel members (who were there because they wanted Android apps as soon as possible) are pissed. It also doesn't help that Microsoft removed the ability to switch to the Beta channel from the Dev channel a few months ago without notice.
I guess the technicality they can use here is "we're not shipping a device based on AOSP, but a software feature based on AOSP". Even Surface hardware is technically a Windows-based device with AOSP features.
Requires use of Hyper-V... does this mean they will bring Hyper-V to Home edition? Seems like many users who would run Android apps are likely to crossover with the group of users who are not going to upgrade their Windows license to Pro or better.
Windows Subsystem for Android™... runs in a Hyper-V Virtual Machine, like the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
> The newest version of WSL uses Hyper-V architecture to enable its virtualization. This architecture will be available in the 'Virtual Machine Platform' optional component. This optional component will be available on all SKUs. You can expect to see more details about this experience soon as we get closer to the WSL 2 release.
Mobile exclusive games, apps and messengers.
Yes mobile gaming is a thing and some people prefer playing them on a PC for competitive advantage.
Try googling the number of tutorials based on how to run X app on bluestacks.
Most interesting thing about this is the use of Amazon Appstore. It's like Microsoft is acquiescing by not trying to build yet another app store (even an Android store) and lure developers and support costs along the way.
MS is probably aware that Amazon could see this as a backdoor into Windows software licensing too.
I think that it has more do with Microsoft not wanting to build their own replacement for "Google Play Services" just yet. Amazon has a decade or so investment in their alternative to "Google Play Services".
There's a growing number of mobile apps that don't expose all their features through their web apps, e.g. Cash, Venmo, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat etc.
It's a total pain for me to have to always open my phone and use the tiny keyboard to carry out some trivial task.
Any app that has developers who think that making an Android version (TAM: 1B+ users) is more important than creating a native Windows version (also 1B+ users), is an app that I will want to run on Windows. I mean, I'd rather have a native Windows app, but if that's not an option, I'd rather have an Android app than a website in most cases.
Maybe Venmo since there is no desktop/web client. It frustrates me that Venmo has become so popular in my circles when it’s smartphone-only. I have a smartphone so I’ll keep using it there, but I could imagine some might appreciate the option to run apps like Venmo on a PC.
Lots of games, and some apps/services are mobile-first. I play a few different android games on my PC in an emulator. The best (IMO) Twitter client around is also Android-only.
Windows doesn't have a lot of great touch friendly apps since Windows 8 was a huge failure.
I could see myself using this if I ever bought a windows tablet.
For example, if you like comic books, the touch friendly comic readers on windows are pretty bad. Also the biggest comic store, Comixology from Amazon, is not available in a windows app version.
It's probably more interesting on things like Microsoft surface. Not sure Microsoft have the stomach for it yet, but they possibly could have another crack at doing phones.
In the long term, will my bank force me to install app and stop supporting browser ? Right now desktop (and somtimes legal requirements) is one major reason for them supporting the browser.
Only in a world without Linux distros. Something you have to pay money for, agree to a bunch of dubious legalese, and cede control over how your device operates is pretty much the opposite of "open".
I would say Microsoft needed an Android store and Amazon wanted another large customer base for theirs. I bet Google had no interest in obliging for either of them
And Amazon has a lot of versions of popular apps with their requirements for Google Play Services patched out as it doesn't appear on FireOS (without a bunch of work by the user).
That’s certainly part of the advantage, but I always wonder about the geography here. Amazon and Microsoft are both headquartered in Seattle (technically Redmond for MS, but it’s only a short drive). I imagine there’s a lot of cross pollination going on. They’ve also made noises in the past about integrating Alexa and Cortana, and it’s quite easy to turn a PC into an always-on Alexa device. Everything that makes sense about the Amazon collaboration would make more sense if it was a Google-Microsoft collaboration, except the geography and cross-pollination aspects. Surface Duo has play services and no one bats an eye.
That’s just my unfalsifiable hypothesis, and I’d like to hear other takes.
Google would never have wanted to put the Play Store on Windows because they actually compete with Windows. Access to the Play Store is a selling point of ChromeOS.
Google is still very much an ads company. Play? Chrome OS? Those are for Hoovering data. They are effectively loss leaders. Put another way, Google doesn't need to sell hardware, or software. It needs sources for data.
I gave up on Bluestacks years ago. Was too slow to start/load, had some graphic issues with some apps, overall a mediocre experience. Nowadays I use Memu, it's fast and way more flexible than Bluestacks ever was.
For me the biggest problem with Bluestacks is that apps crash frequently and at random on both 4 and 5. It's really baffling that it manages to be so low-quality compared to its competition when they all seem to be using Virtualbox at their core.
I just tried it with sideloading an instagram apk (since I don't live in the USA and don't have an USA Amazon Account for the Store) and it works perfectly fine. Just turn on developer mode and use adb to connect & sideload
What about this makes you think that? Microsoft cares about getting Android _users_, I don't think they care that much about the Android OS beyond their rather poor implementation on the Surface Duo.
I'm asking what makes you feel that way? Google is actively releasing new Android versions (Android 12 announced yesterday) full of new features. In what way does that make you feel that Google has lost interest in Android?
They probably have a decent estimate of the investment cost it would take to compete with "Google Play Services". Seems a big part of why they are working with Amazon for this Windows support.
I'm reasonably certain those are not the most popular mobile games right now.