Like Wine, BlueStacks doesn't emulate the actual hardware of a device.

It does this by bridging the gap between the Windows program's application programming interface (API) calls and the underlying operating system. This popular open-source program, along with its commercial brother, CrossOver, enables Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unix users to run Windows applications. The most well-known modern emulator is Wine. While BlueStacks plans to patent some of the technology in its Android emulator, LayerCake, the technique dates back for decades. Since Microsoft plans to make it difficult to dual-boot or root any other operating system on Windows 8 systems and to make it impossible to add or switch operating systems on Windows RT (Windows 8 on ARM) tablets and phones, BlueStacks likely will be the only way to run Android applications on Windows 8 PCs, tablets, and smartphones.īlueStacks does this not by using a virtual machine (VM) as such but by running an emulation of the Android Davlik (also a VM) on top of Windows.

What's more telling is that PC-giant ASUS has signed a deal with BlueStacks to include its Android app player on the company's next generation PCs, including the models running Windows 8, It's not just we techies who like BlueStacks. I've only tinkered with it myself, but everyone I know who uses it a lot think it's great. While still in beta, the BlueStacks App Player delivers the goods. BlueStacks now makes it possible to run Android applications on Windows systems. So you love Draw Something, Air Attack HD, or some other Android application? If you wanted to run that or any other Android app on your Windows PC, you were out of luck – until recently.

Want to run Android apps on Windows? BlueStacks has an app for that.

Bluestacks for mac review