Now run iOS apps on Android with Cider OS Compatibility Architecture

Do you want to run iOS apps on Android? Six PhD students at Columbia University's Department of Computer Science have developed an operating system compatibility architecture, dubbed Cider, which allows both iOS and Android applications to run together on the same device. The Cider Demo demonstrates the execution of iOS apps, such as Apple Remote and iBooks, on a Google Nexus 7.

The software is still in its infancy, but it can run apps, albeit with slow performance. Cider simply tricks the app that it’s running on the appropriate OS, adapting to code on the fly and making it run with Android’s kernel and programming libraries. It’s a very smart piece of software, and one that will surely become better in the future. As it stands, it’s mostly a proof of concept, showing that Cider can become the cross-platform solution to people who want the best of two worlds in terms of mobile apps.

"Users who want to run iOS gaming apps on their smartphones are stuck with the smaller screen sizes of the devices. Users who prefer the larger selection of hardware form factors available for Android are stuck with the poorer quality and selection of Android games available compared to the well populated Apple App Store," reads the Cider report.

"Android users cannot access the rich multimedia content available in Apple iTunes, and iOS users cannot easily access Flash-based Web content. Some companies release cross-platform variants of their software, but this requires developers to master many different graphical, system, and library APIs, and creates additional support and maintenance burden on the company."

It’s not an emulator, it’s a native layer that allows native apps to run on Android. In this instance, the students are demoing the apps on an original Nexus 7.


“Cider enhances the domestic operating system, Android, of a device with kernel-managed, per-thread personas to mimic the application binary interface of a foreign operating system, iOS, enabling it to run unmodified foreign binaries. This is accomplished using a novel combination of binary compatibility techniques including two new mechanisms: compile-time code adaptation, and diplomatic functions.”

“Compile-time code adaptation enables existing unmodified foreign source code to be reused in the domestic kernel, reducing implementation effort required to support multiple binary interfaces for executing domestic and foreign applications. Diplomatic functions leverage per-thread personas, and allow foreign applications to use domestic libraries to access proprietary software and hardware interfaces.”

For most of you, that also probably went over your heads. But while this is also cool, it might not ever be released due to ensuing legal problems that would arise. Still, it’s really cool to see this work.

There have been similar developments in the past with Android apps running on Windows PCs via BlueStacks, and Blackberry offered support for Android Apps on the Blackberry PlayBook. Compatibility is never perfect and performance can’t be compared to running on the native software platform, but it’s good enough to be useful, and that’s what Cider can deliver.