Who needs Apple? iPhone apps are coming to Android!

Android and iOS have long been divided by their apps – or lack of on each platform – with many developers locking their own apps onto one platform, much to the disdain of smartphone owners everywhere. But now some smart PhD students are breaking down the wall that separates Android and iOS apps by developing a platform known as Cider, which will let you run iOS apps on your Android phone! Yes, really. Does this sound brilliant or what?
Six PhD students at Columbia University’s Department of Computer Science have been hard at work on a project known as Cider, an operating system compatibility architecture that can run apps built for different operating systems on the same smartphone or tablet. In a nutshell, instead of using a virtual machine, Cider achieves its task by effectively translating the foreign iOS code of an app that lets Android’s kernel run the app natively – of course, the specifics are complex, but the results are simple: you’ve got iOS apps running on Google’s own mobile operating system.
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Currently, the results show that it’s far from perfect, with many features missing from apps: GPS, cameras and Bluetooth, for example, are not supported at the moment, as the iOS app isn’t able to interface with its Android equivalent hardware feature, and the app itself will fail if it runs into a problem. Still, it’s a promising start for the six students, and it could pave the way for even more iOS apps to run natively on Android, all without any porting or tweaking needing to be done on the developer’s end – that means it could make development even easier than before, giving you even more choice of what apps you can play with on your Android blower. See Cider in action in the video below.
What iOS apps would you like to see run on your Android phone? Is there anything you’re still desperate to get your hands on, or do you think the Google Play store has everything you need? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Source : gadgetshow.channel5.com