Blue stack is a nice idea but it is just not practical.
- Android applications are available on PCs, Macs and now Windows 8.
- This has been made possible via an emulation environment that mimics Android but runs on Mac and Win XP, Vista, 7 and now 8.
- The issue is whether users of these devices care about running these applications. I suspect the answer is no.
- The first issue is the quality of the apps themselves.
- Google Play has a lot of useless junk and even the good stuff is optimised to run on small screens.
- There are very few Android apps optimised for tablets, meaning that almost all apps are simply the phone app zoomed up.
- This is a poor user experience.
- Take that and add, no touch based input, an even larger screen and the fact that apps are no longer running natively and what looked like a great idea rapidly runs out of puff.
- Favourite games suddenly become much less appealing when one has to re learn the inputs with a mouse or track pad rather than a finger.
- If one can get around the issue with the quality of the applications, I can just about see this flying on Windows 8 tablets.
- However, most developers have made commitments to Windows 8 and applications written directly onto the system are always going to work better than ones sitting in an emulator.
- Furthermore they will consume less system resources meaning that they drain less battery life, and perform better.
- Blue Stack has been installed by a number of PC vendors on their factory builds but it has hardly been a revelation.
- Hence, I suspect that the vast majority of users would rather do other things on their larger computing devices and as such I doubt whether Blue Stack will ever become an important part of the compute experience.
- With no pull from users for the capability to run Android apps on computers, Blue Stack’s ability to command a price for its product is likely to wither and with it the company.
