One problem with mobile devices is that they are limited to running apps coded for either the Apple XNU kernel or Android Linux kernel.  You cannot download an app from the Apple App Store and run it on an Android device and vice-versa…or is there a way?

A group of Columbia University PhD. students have developed a software solution called Cider that allows Android devices to run both Android and iOS apps on the same device without invoking a virtual machine.  Here is a video showing a demonstration of the application:

This is pretty cool!  At this point the software is only a research project and isn’t able to use things like the device’s camera, GPS signal, cellular radio, etc so some applications do not have full functionality.  The students are continuing to work on the project so maybe a more full featured version will become publicly available some time in the future.  This would be totally awesome for those of us in education  because it would allow us to be freed from reliance on a single platform.