If you're struggling to decide between Android or Windows, BlueStacks has a solution for you: choose both. The unique piece of software ties a matrimonial knot between a full version of Android and your Windows machine, allowing you to jump at will between the two operating systems. The marriage is so smooth, in fact, you can create Android app shortcuts on your Windows desktop.
In a conversation today at CNET's San Francisco offices, BlueStacks Senior Vice President Apu Kumar said that BlueStacks is a response to what his company perceives as two complementary needs: the consumers' desire to have their apps available everywhere, and the desire for a unified device.
BlueStack Systems Inc., which is based in Silicon Valley, has created a software tunnel that allows bidirectional communication between the Android side and the Windows side. This means that it can use Windows print drivers to print while in the Android interface, and create shortcuts for Android apps on the Windows desktop.
BlueStacks supports over-the-air updating, too, so the company can push out Android updates to its users automatically. Kumar said that he expected to get updates to users faster than the phone companies have been.
It hasn't been an entirely smooth ride for the company. Besides the "heavy lifting" that Kumar said involved development difficulties of getting the software to work with different screen dimensions, scale correctly, different configurations, and multiple devices, there were other problems. One of the big hangups was caused by Google restricting its marketplace to specific ARM-powered devices. The company got around that problem when Amazon.com opened its Android app marketplace. "Amazon was chosen," Kumar said, "because they have transaction mechanisms, and it's a heavy brand across the world."
No comments:
Post a Comment