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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.)"

17 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Citrix is near! by smittyoneeach · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  2. Once again... by dr_strang · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  3. Why not? by vvaduva · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why not? This is an exploration of business opportunities, so more power to them!

  4. Umm... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Umm... by 222 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I hate to sound like an ass, but there is a massive difference between ICA and X11 or VNC as far as real world implementations go. Aside from the overwhelming technical differences, real world usage scenarios are also vastly different. I suppose I'm biased, as we're a Citrix shop here, but one of these things is definitely not like the other, rightly so. X11 is flexible enough to be a remote display protocol, and VNC simply does what it set out to; not bad in either case.

      Published applications, server clusters, connection management... I could go on for a good while regarding the merits of Citrix.

  5. RDP by jshackney · · 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.

  6. This may sway me to an iPhone by whoisearth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?"

    1. Re:This may sway me to an iPhone by cbelt3 · · Score: 4, 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.

    2. Re:This may sway me to an iPhone by uptownguy · · Score: 3, 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...

      --


      I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
  7. Re:Do we want this? by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why would that worry anyone? And what is wrong with Windows CE applications?

  8. Feedback Loop by TomSawyer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
  9. Er...no. by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

  10. Re:Windows Games on your iPhone! by larry+bagina · · 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.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  11. Re:And with them millions of viruses by wastedlife · · Score: 5, Informative

    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"
  12. Re:And with them millions of viruses by The+Spoonman · · Score: 3, Informative

    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
  13. Re:Windows Games on your iPhone! by Hal_Porter · · 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 running at ~400Mhz. The fastest ARM a QCT Snapdragon ARM at 1Ghz 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.

    --
    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;
  14. X server, but with security and compression by Doctor+O · · Score: 3, Insightful

    think X server, but with security and compression

    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?