Citrix To Bring Millions of Windows Apps To iPhone

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.)"

RDP

[jshackney]

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.

Do we want this?

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

This may sway me to an iPhone

[whoisearth]

Working in IT, one of the problems I have with my blackberry is that the ability to RDP into my work enviroment is not possible on a free scale, therefore work is not persuing the opportunity. With citrix available on an iPhone, all of a sudden, my ability to work has increased exponentially. Now if it works properly, that's a whole other story... And I can just see our remote desktop support going "You're logging into work how now?". "You think we're going to support this?"

Feedback Loop

[TomSawyer]

Just a little over a week ago my boss brought this up:

Bullet #6 is probably the biggest complaint I hear from all PDA users.

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:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

fails at man-machine interface

[Anonymous Coward]

... common desktop apps are inefficient and frustrating when you take away the mouse, keyboard and hi res monitors.

When considering windows applications the iphone suffers from small screen and a touchscreen.

I think this will end up as a conduit for iphone optimized windows hosted apps (gross) + whatever existing windows apps are not frustrating to work with when 'served out' to an iphone using the vnc client.

Re:Windows Games on your iPhone!

[techprophet]

Well for that Wine could be ported more easily than C&C. Why? Wine already runs on OSX (which the iPhone supposedly runs). Releasing it bundled with C&C would be simple. C&C already runs perfectly in Wine, so there is nothing to fear.

Re:Cool iphone Spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent needs to take his medication, but he's right. Citrix is a remote client which attaches to a server in a remote session-like arrangement. Nothing actually RUNS on your iPhone except the client. There's no possibility of evil viruses scampering up the line into your iPhone, and if you don't understand that, then you've watched "The Net" or "Hackers" too many times.

In fact, on a highly-secure application I worked on, we actually used Citrix to enhance security--rather than put the app on everyone's desktop, we put the app on it's own locked down highly protected machine, and made users Citrix in to use the app. This insulated us from the possibly untrustworthy user machine.

Re:This may sway me to an iPhone

[WiiVault]

I will second this. The iPhone pre App Store was a joke for the power user/ biz type. Not anymore, with FTP clients, terminal apps, VNC, VOIP, and Exchange support, the iPhone has become at least as good as the best biz phone, with the possible exception of its delicate hardware and inclusion of camera. The apps make any phone and right now Apple has a serious lead.