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Citrix To Bring Millions of Windows Apps To iPhone
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Dec 23, 2008 08:56 AM
from the your-chocolate-got-in-my-melted-cheese dept.
from the your-chocolate-got-in-my-melted-cheese dept.
Anonymous writes "Citrix is putting out word that it's developing an iPhone receiver that could make 'millions' of Windows applications work on Apple's handset. (Something Citrix is calling 'Project Braeburn.')
Aside from Flash and a few other apps, is anyone pining for Windows-based apps on the iPhone? (Exchange on the iPhone seems to be successful, but so does Apple's App store, which has done pretty well without Windows.)"
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Submission: Citrix to Bring Millions of Windows Apps to iPhone by Anonymous Coward
[+]
IT: Citrix XenServer Virtualization Platform Now Free 259 comments
Pedro writes "Citrix announced today that they are giving away their Xen OSS based virtualization platform XenServer with all the goodies included for free. The big highlights are XenMotion, which lets you move VMs from box to box without downtime, and multi server management. The same stuff in VMware land is $5k. They plan to sell new products for XenServer and also the same stuff on Microsoft's virtualization technology called Hyper-V. It will be interesting to see what VMware does. The announcement comes the day before VMware's big user event VMworld."
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Citrix is near! (Score:5, Funny)
Performance: oh dear.
Sooner, the service
From suds of yesteryear.
Burma Shave
Re: (Score:2)
And if you really drink much beer
you rime service with yesteryear.
Re: (Score:2)
So much for "building dramatic tension"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
GGP was an AABA scheme.
It just used some quasi-limerick-style syllable pattern, which is why it sounds so weird.
Citrix knows
that CIO's
won't use a product
without tons of holes
Burma Shave
Still not great, as well as inaccurate, but it's closer.
Re:And with them millions of viruses (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:And with them millions of viruses (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
X server, but with security and compression (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean ssh -CX, which everyone is using? You sound as if security and compression were unavailable for X, and the opposite is true.
Parent
Once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
An answer to a question nobody was asking.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Who wants to pay to run desktop apps over a network to their phone? Build a real client for the phone to save on network costs.
On top of that, most Windows apps aren't suited at all to be used with (relatively) low resolution screens and an all-touch interface. Even todays best smartphones still aren't the sort of thing you'd want to do serious work on for any length of time. Email and calendar work fine, but editing spreadsheets, word processing and presentation work is best left to a device with
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly.
You can already get VNC clients, and there's bound to be a build of rdesktop. Of course these may only be available on jailbroken phones...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The iphone screen is insanely tiny for a Windows application. I'm sure there are some really useful Windows applications that fit nicely in 480x320 pixels but I can't think of any.
The best I can think of it is that a Windows-based company can create new Windows applications for the iphone more easily than they could if they had to switch to a different infrastructure. But running existing desktop Windows applications on a device so different from a PC looks weird unless it's marketing-speech.
Re: (Score:2)
The iphone screen is insanely tiny for a Windows application. I'm sure there are some really useful Windows applications that fit nicely in 480x320 pixels but I can't think of any.
Chat clients, a good part of the common property dialog, a view of solitaire with a few cards on screen at one time, a 5 pixel view of the web after adding the yahoo toolbar to IE...
Who's asking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? This is an exploration of business opportunities, so more power to them!
Re: (Score:2)
iPhone screen resolution is 320x480 pixels.
Mod me troll (Score:2, Funny)
The first ever virus for the iPhone...
...and it comes with an official announcement.
O tempora! O mores!
Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that a lot of people will find this quite useful(I know the iPhone-carrying; but otherwise MS-headed network manager at my workplace will be all over it); but this is neither surprising nor especially interesting, and far from groundbreaking. Citrix will(assuming they manage to beat x11 support out the door) be the third graphical remote protocol to make it to the iPhone. Useful for people in environments that use citrix; but hardly novel.
Re:Umm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Published applications, server clusters, connection management... I could go on for a good while regarding the merits of Citrix.
Parent
RDP (Score:3, Interesting)
The only thing Windows-related I've ever needed on my phone was RDP. And on my Fuze (Windows Mobile 6), it crashes every time I use it. I'm starting to wonder if the iPhone would have been a better choice.
Re: (Score:2)
never had any problems with rdp on my htc himalaya, htc universal or toshiba e800 (windows mobile 2003, 2003se, 5, 6 and 6.1).
using rdp on my universal is especially fun because of the vga screen and full keyboard - firefox through rdp is faster than opera mobile.
Re: (Score:2)
I have the Fuze, and I have zero issues with RDP crashing. Other apps seem to go through crash fests (Opera, activesync, Solitaire for !@%@#%@ sake) but not RDP. I am using RDP to an XP machine with a dedicated internet address and a a hole poked through the corp firewall.
That said, moving to AT&Ts network from Verizon leaves a lot to be desired. More bars in more places my ass. That's probably the source of many crashes.
Do we want this? (Score:3, Interesting)
When I hear this I worry about seeing Windows CE style applications being pushed to the iPhone. Then again I imagine if the applications don't fit the user experience guidelines Apple will simply prevent them from coming to the store.
Re:Do we want this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would that worry anyone? And what is wrong with Windows CE applications?
Parent
This may sway me to an iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This may sway me to an iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
Bingo. While the technorati here at /. may look down their noses at it, there are a gazillion of us corporate types using Citrix (or, as we like to call it, Sh*trix), which is empirically a terminal application. So think of a terminal on the iPhone that lets you get into your entire corporate application empire.
MAJOR Business killer application. Instantly, the iPhone can become the defacto business palmtop environment. Sure, businesses will need to scale applications dependent on 1024x768 or higher screen sizes, or get used to virtual screens (imagine a virtual screen using the tilt sensors for screen panning ? Cool !).
Apple is gonna kill the Crackberry if this works.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Its seriously the coolest thing ever, and best of all free.
http://www.xk72.com [xk72.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
MAJOR Business killer application.
Why is your application killing businesses?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This may sway me to an iPhone (Score:4, Informative)
The program is called WinAdmin -- it is $11.99 -- and I bought it on my second day of owning an iPhone. Works great.
There is a lot of FUD out there about how the BlackBerry and WM phones are "business" phones ... but having owned 10+ models of PDAs/Smartphones over the last 10 years, I can honestly say that the iPhone is the best business phone I've ever owned. You just need to know what apps to download...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Already done (Score:2, Informative)
Millions of windows apps are already available for the iphone.. it's called VNC.
Feedback Loop (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a little over a week ago my boss brought this up:
He was referring to an article that he forgot to link to and I got the URL from an IM. It seems some "journalist" had an article due and the iPhone is hot and top 10 lists are easy to write. The #6 slot was dedicated to the enterprise shortfall of the iPhone by not including native support for editing MS-Office documents.
My boss doesn't even have a PDA. However, the other executives with PDAs have bought into the marketing line that needing to edit office documents on your phone is a sign of importance. That strokes their ego a lot more than pointing out it's more a sign of the need for a collaboration platform that can operate without duplicating and shuttling large binaries.
Re: (Score:2)
make the public need desktop applications on the PDA and the PDA fails. Wow, where have I seen and heard that one before.
Seems like yet another sign that some people in management didn't get there because of their mental skills.
And isn't there Google Docs for the iPhone or something like that if the idiots ever actually want to attempt full word processing on a PDA?
LoB
Er...no. (Score:3, Informative)
This is NOT "bringing Windows apps to the iPhone."
This is allowing the iPhone to connect to a Citrix server (which your company needs to buy and set up). You can then run apps directly on the server, or open a remote desktop session to a PC on the network.
The iPhone isn't RUNNING anything other than the client. And unless you run your own Citrix server (signs point to "no"), you don't have access to "millions of apps" except in theory. You have access to the apps that your company decides to put on the server, or (IF they decide to enable remote desktop) the apps they let you install on your company PC.
In other words, you're not playing Fallout on this.
And, since TFP seems unclear about this--no, this will NOT get you Flash in your web browser. And, no, Flash is NOT a Windows app.
LOL, Microsoft sucks at writing iPhone apps so Cit (Score:2)
... so Citrix was hired to bring desktop Windows apps to the iPhone. Ho ho ho and a ha ha ah.
LoB
One word: FreeCell. (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously. Not the crappy, ugly version that comes with Vista, not one of the so-so clones, just the good old, highly-addictive, always-winnable*, 8-bit-graphics version that came with Windows from 95 through XP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCell_(Windows) [wikipedia.org]
* according to Wikipedia, there is one deal in the Windows version that is unsolvable.
Cute. (Score:3, Informative)
For those who don't eat fruit, Braeburn is a kind of apple. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Citrix?
The guys that sell proprietary, incompatible, inferior OpenVPN replacement and proprietary, incompatible, inferior VNC replacement?
Licensing aside, how do you come to the conclusion that is VNC superior to Citrix?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't use Windows, ICA server only works on Windows, and Linux version of ICA client is horrible.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Citrix, also the guys that support the open source Xen virtualization platform [xensource.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you ever tried playing any RTS using a small screen and no keyboard? It may sound like a "neat" idea but you'll have to put the computer on easy and suffer with the handicap of not being able to do anything fast or efficient. When I first got my Tablet PC, I was psyched to be able to play RTS and other dexterity limit games with a pen (or almost touch screen) and I have to tell you, it's not as cool as it sounds. Even games like MOO2 and GalCiv that are turn based so you can take your time were less
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The iPhone uses an ARM processor. Unless you have a C&C binary compiled for Win32/ARM, WINE won't do jack shit for you.
Re:Windows Games on your iPhone! (Score:4, Informative)
An ARM would choke emulating an x86 anyway. In fact even if you recompiled the x86 binaries to run on Arm it would still suck because desktop class x86s like Core2 have a higher clock rate, are out of order, have big caches and fast SDRAM.
An iPhone apparently has a ARM1176JZF [engadget.com] running at ~400Mhz [macosrumors.com]. The fastest ARM a QCT Snapdragon ARM at 1Ghz [qctconnect.com] will most likely be slower than the slowest netbook class x86, an Intel Atom at 1.6Ghz.
Of course ARM uses much less power, but for single thread integer performance ARM is in a completely different class from x86.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Checking my facts:
Flash has always been Mac and Windows.
Word for Mac was released in 1985.
The first version of Word for Windows was released in 1989.
Redmond released the first version of Excel for the Mac in 1985, and the first Windows version (numbered 2.05 to line up with the Mac and bundled with a run-time Windows environment) in November 1987.
Re: (Score:2)
\begin{pedantry}
Yeah, but Flash was originally FutureSplash Animator which was based on FutureWave SmartSketch which was originally a PenPoint app.
\end{pedantry}
William
Re: (Score:2)
It's actually a free app in the regular iTunes App store. No jail break needed. It however kind of sucks since it's really difficult to control a desktop that expect you to have a seperate full keyboard and a seperate mouse.