iPhone gets virtual Windows desktop
'Bout time too
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Virtual desktop provider Citrix has, again, announced it'll be developing a client for the iPhone, providing the option of a Windows desktop on an iPhone: albeit at a distance.
Citrix runs services such as GoToMyPC that allow remote access to desktop computers, as well as more comprehensive virtual desktop products that allow thin clients to connect and act as though they're running the desktop locally. The company demonstrated remote access from an iPhone back in June (two minutes 30 seconds into the following video), but it will be early next year before we see a real iPhone product:
Citrix has announced the project before, since setting up a poll of users to see if anyone wanted an iPhone version, but now the company is promising that iPhone users will be able to interact with XenApp (for applications) and XenDesktop (for the whole desktop experience) remotely by the middle of 2009.
Desktop virtualisation certainly has its place, but accessing a desktop interface from a hand-held is of more dubious value - you're certainly not going to do a day's work sliding around your virtual desktop from a phone, and it's hard to think of an application that wouldn't be better served using a proper mobile client rather than via a shrunken interface on a touch-screen phone.
Citrix already provides clients for S60 and Windows Mobile devices, and a device like HTC's Advantage, or something along the lines of the Redfly, makes the process quite practical: it's a shame the iPhone can't support a larger screen or keyboard, at least not yet. ®
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COMMENTS
@jeffrey
sick of getting support calls from parents? there is an easy fix for that...tell them to buy a mac '...because, mum, they are sooo intuitive, they never, ever crash and are stable as a rock' ;-) i do still get the occasional call, but my reply now is '...sorry mum, i don't know anything about macs'. perhaps a sexy mac book air wan't the best place for her to start? at least i was able to show her how to use that silly time machine...
paris - because sometimes it's just easier saying '...i dunno?!'.
@ac (coward) and Jessica Werkz
>What is great is the choice of apps available for the iPhone now
Umm... have a look around, the iPhone is WAY behind the times in terms of application breadth
>Get a life, get a phone that always works
Once again I seem to have been sold a dud, it JUST WORKS.
And I dont have to sign up to The Church just to be able to install the apps I want. I dont want to have to ask MS's permission to install stuff and I dont have to, I OWN this phone.
Meh, bloody sheeple.
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@mike lee
The last version I used was a couple of years ago but I have yet to here anybody say, apart from yourself, that Windows Mobile works OK, even by Minnowsoft's standards ...erm...FFS.
A great supporter of everything Windows, Paul Thurrot, reckons the Gateless coders in Seattle should start over with the woeful Mobile 6.1.
I feel sorry for the wretched phone manufacturers who design and build probably decent phones and then have to squirt a wobbly lump of software on it which makes their devices as stable as a very unstable thing having a particularly unstable time on an unstable day of the month.
Get a life, get a phone that always works.
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