YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Android apps running native on macOS

109 points flocked 2 hours ago 33 comments

flocked 2 hours ago | parent

[flagged]

dang 53 minutes ago | parent

This looks like a great submission! But I wanted to let you know that some of your recent comments have been killed by our software because they've been classified as genai text, which is not allowed on HN itself (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079).

(Of course it's fine to use AI tools! We use them heavily ourselves. Just please don't use them to generate or edit text to be read by fellow humans on Hacker News itself.)

It's impossible to know for sure what was LLM generated or edited, but we have to rely on imperfect classifiers or else the site would be completely flooded by genai text, which is not what the community here wants to read, nor in the intended spirit of HN.

sirjaz 1 hour ago | parent

This is awesome, now this needs to work on Windows

Tarball10 1 hour ago | parent

Windows had something like this (Windows Subsystem for Android) which worked really well until Microsoft went and killed it.

forgotpwd16 1 hour ago | parent

WSA was (or is, since still works unofficially) running Android in VM underneath.

majorchord 53 minutes ago | parent

BlueStacks has worked really well for me.

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

Arguably not a bad use of a claude subscription, provided that it actually works.

tantalor 1 hour ago | parent

Reminds me of Google vs. Oracle lawsuit for API fair use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

Zigurd 56 minutes ago | parent

Google v Oracle comes down to an argument over infringement when copying constants. IANAL but I would've said constants are facts and not protectable.

bilalq 1 hour ago | parent

In practice, the Google Play Services dependencies and other walled-garden initiatives from Google will make this less useful than it could otherwise be. But still, this is really cool.

Doohickey-d 1 hour ago | parent

I guess, in practice this can also be likely be made to run google services, the same as they can run on custom ROMs. And it already lists Aurora store as a solution.

So it's definitely something for more tinkerer people, but still quite cool.

als0 52 minutes ago | parent

Everything aside from apps with SafetyNet dependencies. Banking apps come to mind.

chaosharmonic 46 minutes ago | parent

Also, a lot of games. This is actually why I stopped playing Pokemon Go, and never picked up a worse gacha game habit haha

franga2000 32 minutes ago | parent

Soo many more things than banking apps at this point. Things as normal as looking at train schedules, grocery store catalogues, ordering a taxi... sometimes have SafetyNet DRM.

When you publish apps on Google Play, the Play Developer Console even nags you to use harder obfuscation and implement Google's DRM to, allegedly, protect yourself and your users.

Can the EU finally make this shit illegal? Oh wait, they're pusing for mandatory DRM too... Fuck.

bobsmooth 1 hour ago | parent

Can MicroG be ported?

chaosharmonic 47 minutes ago | parent

Optimist take: this will matter less over time as more developers start targeting Steam devices

gambiting 31 minutes ago | parent

...what steam devices? Steam Deck and Machine? I work in video games(at one of the largest publishers - worked at other two in the lasy few years) - and while we usually do some testing on the steam deck it's literally just to see if the windows version runs well. Full on Linux porting effort like Larian did for BG3 is very very rare and extremely hard to justify.

freedomben 26 minutes ago | parent

In your experience, is "Steam Deck Verified" attractive enough to fix any issues you might find when testing? I've been immensely curious about whether it's moved the needle at all

DaiPlusPlus 19 minutes ago | parent

> Full on Linux porting effort like Larian did for BG3 is very very rare and extremely hard to justify

Given the zeitgeist, how realistic are the calls to “just get AI to do it”? I’ve been rattled by just how good some one-shot (or otherwise low-human-effort) Claude ports of some games are (and I don’t mean “decomps”, but instead where an existing open-source and already-cross-platform codebase is ported over to new targets like WASM+Canvas, like C&C Generals: the AI-bros are in full-force posting demos of their new ports on a nearly daily basis - so if it’s as easy as these people say, why aren’t we seeing it from the major publishers?

Rohansi 13 minutes ago | parent

Most games run on Steam devices via Proton (Wine). You don't really need a native port in that case.

iAMkenough 1 hour ago | parent

No app sandboxing? User files and settings stored in the /Applications/ folder, rather than the User’s home folder?

bsimpson 59 minutes ago | parent

People take the iOS version of Fortnite and repackage it to run on Mac.

LoganDark 56 minutes ago | parent

Couple issues with this right off the bat:

- Seemingly relies on the Java virtual machine for simulation -- no support for native ARM binaries?

- Stores data inside the .app

yincrash 14 minutes ago | parent

Looks like it will run native ARM just fine according to the readme?

f17428d27584 52 minutes ago | parent

Handy for Minecraft players on Mac: windows players may be on Java or on bedrock versions, but mobile and console players are all only on bedrock. Being able to run the Android version on Mac means I can play with local console players or join a bedrock realm.

(There are compatibility workarounds if you run your own server but I don’t want the headache of doing so).

Perhaps one day Mojang will enable Macos users to run the iPad (bedrock) version of Minecraft as well..

forgotpwd16 39 minutes ago | parent

Funnily, specifically for Minecraft Bedrock, there's such a project (implementing a limited/specialized compatibility layer) targeting Linux/macOS for few years now.

VCFundedGenYer 30 minutes ago | parent

There was a solution on macOS for quite some time (https://github.com/minecraft-linux/macos-builder/) but Apple is killing off the OpenGL frameworks to make it work.

mkirsten 49 minutes ago | parent

Crazy I was the first to star on GitHub. I’m going to give this a try for some tinkering projects.

tuomas2 45 minutes ago | parent

This is very cool! Next IOS.apk? ;)

forgotpwd16 11 minutes ago | parent

macOS includes[0] a built-in iOS compatibility subsystem. PlayCover allows utilizing it for running arbitrary iOS apps.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/runn...

VCFundedGenYer 34 minutes ago | parent

Naming it Mac.apk is a poor choice. So it's Mac.apk.app?

Overall this repo has a lot of tells of a low quality LLM generated app. Many issues with data structuring, naming etc.