BlueStacks Allows You to Run Android Apps on a Mac

Thursday June 28, 2012 12:58 am PDT by Arnold Kim
BlueStacks announced a public alpha version of their Android App Player for the Mac today at Google I/O.

The company had originally released a beta version of their App Player for Windows back in March. The software allows users to run Android apps directly on their Windows PCs, and the newest version begins to extend that functionality to the Mac.


While the Windows version allows you to run any Android app without modification, the early Mac version seems to be limited to 15 initial apps that comes bundled with the download. The bundled apps include Air Control Lite, Alchemy, Basketball Shot, Drag Racing, Elastic World, Facebook, Glow Hockey, Guns'n'Glory, Paper Toss, Pulse, Robo Defense, Seesmic, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Zebra Paint.

Their support page claims that "in the very near future", they plan on opening the Mac version up to over 400,000 Android apps:
The BlueStacks App Player for Mac OSX (alpha) supports both Lion and Snow Leopard. You can test drive a fixed set of curated apps for the first release (alpha-1). In the very near future, BlueStacks will let you select from over 400,000 Android apps to play on your Mac.
The alpha version is available as a free download from the BlueStacks website.

[ 162 comments ]

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Avatar
gorskiegangsta
99 months ago

I'll admit, that I too am perplexed by this. What "amazing" Android apps don't already have an iOS counterpart?


Not the point. The point is that you'll be able to run mobile apps on your desktop/laptop OS - something you cannot do with iOS apps. Whether it's at all productive or useful is a whole another argument.
Rating: 38 Votes
Avatar
devinher
99 months ago
I don't really get this. Why would you want to run Android apps on a Mac? Doesn't Mac already have a much better selection of quality apps than Android?
Rating: 36 Votes
Avatar
chrismarle
99 months ago
Great, enlarged phone apps. Just what I needed on my Mac.
Rating: 13 Votes
Avatar
ChazUK
99 months ago

isn't most of the android apps riddled with spyware?




No. Just no.
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
faroZ06
99 months ago
Bringing apps that require a touch screen to a PC with a keyboard and mouse. Genius.

----------

Console emulators? Google apps? Flash Player? Task Manager?


There are Google apps on the iPhone. As for the emulators.... jailbreak :D:D
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
FlameofAnor
99 months ago

I don't really get this. Why would you want to run Android apps on a Mac? Doesn't Mac already have a much better selection of quality apps than Android?


I'll admit, that I too am perplexed by this. What "amazing" Android apps don't already have an iOS counterpart?
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
Ramsos
99 months ago
Hooray...........no thank you.
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
Exotic-Car Man
99 months ago
Dev use?

Perhaps it could be used by developers. I know this isn't an Android simulator, but I could see it (maybe) coming in handy for devs. It seems like they would just use the Android simulator, though.
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
Apple Poptart
99 months ago
mmm k?
:confused:
Why do I need to run Android apps on my Mac?

I feel like I'm missing something here.
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
iMikeT
99 months ago
And what would be the purpose of running an app to run apps made for another platform on a platform where I can all ready get superior versions of the same apps?
Rating: 5 Votes

[ Read All Comments ]