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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.)"
Citrix is near!
Performance: oh dear.
Sooner, the service
From suds of yesteryear.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
What, you're not pining for a bit of Age of Empires on the train home?
To be honest, I can't see the point of running desktop applications on your phone. Anyone else?
xkcdsw: the unofficial archive of Making xkcd Slightly Worse
An answer to a question nobody was asking.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Why not? This is an exploration of business opportunities, so more power to them!
A copy of Wine for a Cellphone ?
Isn't VNC already available on the iPhone? Atleast jail broken iPhones?
The first ever virus for the iPhone...
...and it comes with an official announcement.
O tempora! O mores!
Citrix is thinking of releasing an ICA client for the iPhone. Wow. That is really "Bring[ing] millions of Windows apps to iPhone." Right. ICA is arguably superior(and certainly more common in business type scenarios); but VNC on iPhone is old news and does pretty much the same thing. Hell, it looks like an RDP client is also available.
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.
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.
If you cant see the wire that is emanating fromn a phone it means that people can hear your thoughts on the other end. I for one will not stand for this. Wherefore, phonetically I am hermified securely in a cabolonicrtudinfyutjnuy, smell like dog???
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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?
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?"
Millions of windows apps are already available for the iphone.. it's called VNC.
I have enough issues with our app on Citrix as it is, never mind throwing in an iPhone client into the mix. :(. I hope they just keep using blackberries.
Why not fork?
iPhone spyware and virus coming soon, thanks to windows.
There may be "millions" of Windows apps, but how many are worth a damn? There have always been far less apps available for the Mac, but at the same time, more good ones.
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.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
I live in an Italin commuinity, , folks already talk with their hands and use cellphone and drive with their knees.
What do we do next ? play windows games on them ?
We need another leg . So what do we do now ?
Get male enhancement drugs that last 4 hours to drive the damn car ?
... 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.
have you EVER used Citrix? inferior to VNC in what way? You can complain, rightly so most often, about a lot of things on windows, but I have seen nothing else that remotely compares to the performance of windows remote desktop, which is basically Citrix' idea "reimplimented" by Microsoft. No, VNC is nowhere near as good, don't even pretend it is which would only remove any doubt of your fanboism. Exported Remote X Sessions are better, but still no match for Remote Desktop/Citrix. Give credit where it is due. Citrix works, well. Remote Desktop works, well.
Licensing aside, how do you come to the conclusion that is VNC superior to Citrix?
I cannot speak for him, but licensing itself is a deal breaker for me.
Back to the topic, good for them. Who cares if it's supposedly "answering a question that noone asked". Sometimes, some of the greatest things in the world came from people taking a risk on a new idea. If it's of any use, they will be successful. If it is a failure, then that will have no real impact on the rest of the world.
Citrix?
The guys that sell proprietary, incompatible, inferior OpenVPN replacement and proprietary, incompatible, inferior VNC replacement?
I wish I had mod points today, because the people that modded this steamy tird of a post insightful have no clue what their talking about.
iPhone screen resolution is 320x480 pixels
And that will let you look at the upper left corner of thousands of Windows apps on your iPhone.
Lovely.
I just can't get comfortable with the interface without them.
I don't use Windows, ICA server only works on Windows, and Linux version of ICA client is horrible.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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.
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.
-- Boycott Shell
Actually the protocol citrix uses kicks microsoft rdp protocols ass. But citirx is not very reliable.
The availability of WM apps would be the only thing that could make me remotely consider an iPhone, assuming they run well, which is a long shot at best I would guess. If you're going to have a phone that is also a mobile computer, why would you consider a show horse over a work horse? Windows apps, on the other hand, seems a bit far fetched. I can already do that with LogMeIn.com on my WM phone.
I won't have to listen to colleagues prattle on about how superior their iPhone apps are to my Windows Mobile brick. Now their phones can be a slow and buggy as mine!
... so Citrix was hired to bring desktop Windows apps to the iPhone. Ho ho ho and a ha ha ah.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
So then we again have to choose between multiple browsers/mailapp?? Oh mighty Steve, save us from this peril!
I had only heard this, but wasn't the Citrix Java client already able to run on the iPhone?
\begin{pedantry}
Yeah, but Flash was originally FutureSplash Animator which was based on FutureWave SmartSketch which was originally a PenPoint app.
\end{pedantry}
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Perhaps we could ask Citrix to do the same for Linux next?
Yes, iPhone security will go down the tubes after that.
Yes, Citrix, also the guys that support the open source Xen virtualization platform.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
OWe have two sets of responses here so far. One camp says "why on earth would I want to do this?" The other camp says "it's already here, old news, move along, why do I need to know?" I love the /. naysayers and whiners, entertaining even while they completely fail to provide any insight on this.
To answer the first camp, #1 if VNC did it, obviously there is demand. The demand doesn't come from geeks using a remote program to administer their servers, the real demand comes from running windows apps on a citrix/VNC/terminal server with the full power of the server behind it, but with an interface fitting a mobile device. For example, my company has a "wireless warehouse" program which runs on a terminal server, but we have wireless scanner guns which connect to this terminal server via RDC and display the app. The power of a full version of windows in the palm of your hand. Okay it's still windows, but at least it's not windows mobile.
To answer the second camp, why this is significant is competition, and markets opening up for similar style applications. Granted, the iPhone has no bar code scanner yet, so my example won't fit here, but now you have VNC, Citrix, and RDC all making an appearance on the iPhone. That means competition, and it also means that the demand is already there. It also means opportunities are opening for business ideas, which is a direction Apple wanted to go... business applications. That could potentially be huge. Build it and they just might come.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The mindset of some people is truly amazing. Quote, "I find no use for it so why would anyone else?" Really brilliant. It's right up there with "640K is all they will need."
The market for this type of app is the corporate market. This is an area of great growth. More and more corporations are moving to mobile computing devices, i.e. hand helds like the iPhone. If you can't connect, talk to, run Windows apps then you may was well toss your iPhone in the dust bin because you have basically conceded the market to Blackberrys.
Take your head out of your ass and realize there is more to the universe than your pathetic little world.
Yes there is. i can work on that for you if you want. just email me ;P
There are Presentation Server versions for several flavors of *nix.
You're right, Citrix has much better network performance than VNC.
I'd call FreeNX superior to citrix in that it is both free and has similar network performance to citrix.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Umm...just where did the word "Free" enter the conversation? iPhone apps can (and many do) cost money. I didn't see anything in TFA that suggested this would be a free client.
Feh - Citrix had ICA clients for Java, Palm and Windows CE around ten years ago when Metaframe 1.0 came out. This is really only useful to the niche market of corporate Citrix customers Apple is trying to woo away from Blackberry.
As an additional comment, let me clear up some misconceptions about Citrix I read earlier in the thread.
1) Citrix and VNC are two entirely different things. Both let you look at things remotely, but VNC is an add-on for one session, while Citrix is a delivery/presentation platform.
2) Citrix is actually a rewrite of the Win32 kernel that allows MULTIPLE USERS to run Windows sessions on a host simultaneously. This is useful for a lot of reasons, but the point is to run **Windows** apps remotely.
3) That said, I know there is a have Unix host version, but I do not know much about it. Presumably it does the same thing as Citrix for Windows - remote desktop and application support for Unix apps, but without the headaches of X.
3) You can use ICA/RDP to provide the same remote visibility as VNC. In fact - everyone in the hinterlands with servers >= Win2K or desktops >= WinXP is already a Citrix customer because Microsoft licensed the multiuser kernel code modifications from Citrix to implement the Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance features, as well as the "RDP App Server" mode of Win2k+.
4) ICA and RDP are protocols for communicating mouse clicks, keystrokes and screen updates between client and host. ICA is one component of the Citrix platform, but only one component. (I think you can even set your Citrix servers to use RDP instead of ICA if you want.
-Steve
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)
* according to Wikipedia, there is one deal in the Windows version that is unsolvable.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
For those who don't eat fruit, Braeburn is a kind of apple.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
They refer to how many more bars you will seek out to drink after dealing with it ;)
I've also had no problems with the RDP on the Fuze, and at 640x480 I can at least see what I'm working on. About the only annoying thing is that for some reason world of warcraft won't let you run via an RDP session via my home computer (not that I'd use it for actual playing the game, but it would suffice for auction house and doing cooldowns and stuff). I haven't tried VNC for this yet.
But seriously everything else I need to do on my servers for normal work is terrific...
As for the citrix thing, I mean, why not? They have to know the resolution they're working with, I imagine they could do a scrolling/zooming type interface just like you do for browsing, why wouldn't you want it available? No one is forcing you to use it if you don't want it.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Are you serious? Either you're a troll, or you're completely clueless as to what Citrix is. Citrix allows you to stream applications (remote desktop streaming is probably the least used feature) at extremely high speeds across a LAN or WAN. As in a user clicks a program icon from their start menu and it launches a program and they have no idea it's not running on their computer. Or they click a link on a webpage and it launches a program that appears to be running locally. Like, you're running Linux or OSX and you click a link and a window pops up and there is Excel 2007 at almost full speed. Maybe I'm not up with the times, but I'm pretty sure VNC can't approach that. Not only this, but Citrix also allows integration with LDAP, AD, eDirectory, or whatever directory service you run to allow granular control over user access. I don't even think VNC is directory-aware. Then, on top of that, it they also have software that allows you to cluster and load-balance streamed applications across multiple pieces of hardware. VNC is truly not even in the same category of software as Citrix. I'm not saying it's perfect, or that you would have any reason to use it, but to compare Citrix to VNC is just plain silly. OpenVPN is even sillier, you're confusing a VPN with a service that is commonly used over a VPN.
instead of remaining stuck in the Windows past.
I've got a Windows phone - and there are nowhere near a million apps that run on it. A few thousand, maybe.
And I'm not even going to think about the speed of emulating the x86 instruction set on a slow cellphone processor.
You do know that Citrix is a Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) add-on that displays applications in their own window instead of an entire desktop? Applications run on the server, not on the iPhone. Unless the Citrix client itself is filled with holes, there is nothing that can infect the iPhone, just the Windows Server hosting Citrix and the application.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Transgaming's Cider libraries run on the iPhone now. That's how Puzzle Quest is being released on the iPhone...
Well, this is actually an answer to a question asked by the Fortune 500. Even if they intended to write native clients for their custom apps, this sort of things gives them flexibility.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
VMware recently announced its Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) after it's acquisition of the French mobile virtualization company Trango. Their intention is to allow any application to run on any mobile device just as they have done with desktop and server virtualization. That means, you won't need an internet connection to use RDP or VNC to access your desktop computer from your home.
Citrix's announcement is not unlike the empty marketing threats against VMware that we've seen before. I'm sure Microsoft will be rolling out their mobile virtualization any day now. Its going to be interesting who prevails in this previously untapped space.
I can't imagine anything more painful than running a Windows application designed for full-screen PCs over the air on an iphone where the keyboard is going to take up a big portion of the screen everytime I do text-entry. I've used VNC to get into my home computer to look up a few things, and it is slow and painful to do anything really productive. I could see this being useful for a system admin who gets a page and wants to Citrix in to look at what the problem might be or to bounce a server, but I sincerely "hope" no company is really expecting to have their line-workers out in the field Citrixing in on an iPhone to use some full-featured Windows program. It seems it would be better to rewrite the application for the web, or even in Objective-C if you're really hell bent on using the iPhone than trying this for any day-to-day production work.
.NET guy wrote for in the field sales or service. I think it would tremendously help iPhones get company adoptions and improve the software ecosystem for the Windows mobile platform.
On the other hand, what I think would be incredibily useful, would be if you could BUY the Windows Mobile OS off the shelf in a ligthweight emulator to use the iPhone to run Windows Mobile applications that are already designed for the screen size. I would think MS would make a lot more money and get a lot more "bang" out of the platform if they did this and sold the OS for $40-50, which you know is more than the OEMs are paying per console, but would let me run the wierd proprietary apps that my company's
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Well that explains why your post was so insightful.
Not entirely true, the Citrix client has the capability of local file access, hardware access such as audio, local printer access, and a few other goodies. There are plenty of hooks into the client, if you opt to enable them.
The need it to convert over the two most commonly used Windows applicateions.
solitare and minesweeper.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Whose there? ... ...
thrash
thrash
thrash
thrash ... ...
thrash
thrash
thrash
thrash
thrash ... ...
Blue Screen!!!
And how do they plan to fit the memory bill of Windows apps, considering also that a dynamic code regeneration emulator blows even more than the native app? All this on a mobile device? With its limited UI? Sure there's plenty of people around wasting their time in worthless efforts.
Are there "millions" of Windows apps? What subset of them work on a 320X480 screen without a keyboard?
From a geeky perspective, I'd be interested in seeing the citrix client running on an iphone. But I have to ask what problem we're trying to solve. Do users really need this, or would the majority be satisfied with a native VNC client or Windows Terminal Server client? (I know I would.) The iphone already supports the Cisco VPN client. (Yay.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
While they're claiming the apps will actually run on the iPhone, they run on a back end server and are displayed on the phone. If you're familiar with Unix, think X server, but with security and compression.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
I want to see the list of millions of apps.
that's exactly what VNC does. remote desktop streaming doesn't just mean you're staring at the desktop and can't run any programs or open other windows. whether the remote applications are rendered inside of the VNC window or not is merely a UI design choice. "VNC" is just any remote desktop client/server that uses the RFB protocol, which, like RDP, doesn't care how you lay out your application windows. if you want the remote programs to sit directly on your desktop (not exactly a feat engineering) you can run something like MetaVNC.
and the RFB protocol also happens to be extensible, so even if the original VNC wasn't directory-aware, there are certainly clients/servers out now that are. in fact, RealVNC has supported LDAP for quite a while.
No worries here, apple will kick this application out faster than you can say citrix since they can't control the apps anymore with it. Apple is all about control and marketing. Also running windows apps on the iphone is not "hip" and will in their eyes destroy the iphone image no matter how usefull it is.
Very good points.
I think this is a good move for iPhone users and Citrix...
However do people realize you can already do this on a Windows Mobile(PocketPC) phone?
Not only are there are ton of applications for Windows Mobile, but you can use the RDP features available since before 2004 to remote into your desktop computer or a server and run applications or access your entire desktop - on a 3G, 4G, or even a 2G connection.
I hope this doesn't turn into another 'innovation' iPhone brought to users after people were using it for 4 years.
PS There are a couple of real GPS applications now available for the iPhone, so it now catches up free/cheap phones that have had these features with Verizon and Alltel for over 4 years as well. - And NO Google Maps is not a GPS application on the iPhone.
Way to go Apple and iPhone, two 4 year old technologies being added to your Phone that everyone else has been using for years.
I truly am starting to feel sorry for iPhone fans getting the Apple marketing hook...
They did a short demo at least 9 months ago. Here's the prerelease video demo.
It's in the latter third of the video.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I don't think you should say that. I think we should let all the Apple fans get angry about Windows apps on iPhones and then realise that it is quite useful, then let Apple ban it and then have to rationalize how that is good for them.
It's fun to listen too.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
just having installed Silverlight(R)(TM) on my Mac so I could watch NetFlix. I can't imagine doing that to my iPhone, too.
Social media and technology thoughts: http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com
But there are millions of Windows users out there who would like some compatibility with their desktop apps. Despite my Slashdot ID, I was a Macophile who had to switch to Windows years ago for work compatibility purposes (long before there was a Boot Camp). I'd love to be able to use various Windows programs on an iPhone. In fact, if I could, it would make me more likely to buy one. There are a lot of Windows programs they just don't make for Apple.
Slashdot is not the universe, people. There are lots of people out there who use Windows, whether they like it or not.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I think this could be very useful. Mostly for RDP. There just are times when you've got to get in to support a server. I do it with a verizon 3g connection on my laptop but this would enable me to not have the laptop with me. If I had an iPhone. Right now ATT reception in my town is so bad that it's Verizon or silence. But they're building a new tower a mile away so there's hope.
You mean ssh -CX, which everyone is using? You sound as if security and compression were unavailable for X, and the opposite is true.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
With a citrix client it is possible to run applications without the control of Apple. Maybe Microsoft is behind this, since they have such a big position in Citrix.
Except the iPhone OS doesn't really have "hooks into the client" - applications run in their own sandbox.
... and then they built the supercollider.
that could make 'millions' of Windows applications work on Apple's handset
For a Windows application to work on the iPhone, wouldn't the application have to work in the first place? It would be pretty amazing to see an application working on an iPhone when they can't usually manage that under Windows.
... and then they built the supercollider.
NoMachine needs to get off their ass and get an NX client for the iPhone out to beat Citrix to the punch. That essentially kills 3 birds with one stone (X11, VNC, RDP).
The KVM guys (Quaram?) should also put out a client too, since they seem all high and mighty about their own remote desktop protocol.
As someone who has worked in and around and out of citrix farms, app serves and all that jazz for a few years. I can tell you 2 things citrix is not.
Fast and Stable
Not a few people who use Windows, ha ha.
;-)
BeerSmith.
Every book-specific exam-writing program for classes I teach.
TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress
Lots of other Windows software that I get at a "discounted" rate from work.
Even if there were Mac analogues for all of these, expecting people to switch OSs just because you want them to is unrealistic. People want to use what they know.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you