Tired of choosing between Apple's iOS and Google's Android? Welcome project Cider.

Cider, the product of six Columbia University students, allows iOS apps to run within the Android ecosystem. The nature of the design is such that it runs at the basic kernel level, not within the visible user space.

Of course, as you can see above, the results aren't yet stellar. There are plenty of kinks to work out, one of which is simply getting Apple and Google to shake hands. Still, the prospects are promising, and hint at a future where platforms won't be so exclusive (or simply won't be allowed to be).

The Columbia Department of Computer Science students highlighted the segmentation and restrictions the current mobile ecosystem imposes on the supply and demand side, something Cider can help alleviate.

"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."

Need they go on? It's plain and simple: at this point Android is no longer just some cheap, open source alternative to Apple's OS. Both iOS and Android are equally proficient in different tasks, and both are appealing to consumers for a variety of reasons. Having iOS apps run on Android, or vice versa, isn't the only cross-platform possibility in the future: Microsoft has also been rumored to be interested in bringing Android's vast app selection to the somewhat paltry Windows Store. Of course, in a still-young industry, all the key players will hold onto their properties for as long as possible — that is, until polished cross-platform options like Cider leak out.

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