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New Windows Virtual Desktop Feature Will Finally Make the iPad Useful (mspoweruser.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSPoweruser: Last year Microsoft released Windows Virtual Desktop, an Azure-based service that delivers a multi-user Windows 10 experience on any operating system. Now Scott Manchester, Group Manager for Microsoft's Remote Desktop Service, has shown off a new feature for the iOS version of the app which makes the client much more powerful on the iPad. Windows Virtual Desktop will soon support mice in the virtual environment. Unfortunately, only specific mice will be supported -- in the video the Swiftpoint GT and eventually Microsoft's own Bluetooth mice. The feature is said to becoming soon.
I can remotely access a Windows box from my iPad... when will you release an app that let's me access a Mac the same way?
#DeleteChrome
iOS doesn't support mice at all, so there's no way for Microsoft to simply support generic Bluetooth mice. Instead, they have to connect to the mice using a non-standard Bluetooth profile to bypass the restrictions built-into iOS. But that requires the mice themselves to have support for the aforementioned non-standard profile.
If I link back to the original article from September, I can see that with the Windows desktop, you will be able to run Office 365 and some Windows Apps but I think there's a lot of hubris on Microsoft's and TFA's writer to assume that the iPad needs a Windows desktop or would be better because of it.
I'm sure there are some people and companies out there that with this desktop will consider the iPad over Android and Surface tablets but I would have to think there are a lot of people and corporations would just as happy being able to run their apps, businesses, etc. without a Windows Virtual Desktop (especially one that you have to pay for).
I would think a better subject line would be "New Windows Virtual Desktop Provides iPad With Windows Capabilities".
Saying that this desktop *finally* makes the iPad useful is marketing hype at its worst.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Jump Desktop, an RDP and VNC client, works with mice in the same way.
Except it's done so for 8-ish years now instead of 'coming soon'
Android has supported mice since basically forever. Recently purchased a new TV with Amazon FireTV built in (which is based on Android). Just for shits, I sideloaded the Microsoft RDP android app onto it. It is actually surprisingly quite useful on the TV. I no longer need any dongles, or PCs, or anything else hooked up to the TV other than a keyboard/mouse to have a desktop when I want it, leaving all the bulk to the wiring closet.
Apple, you still have a long ass ways to go to catch up.
I have an ipad mini, and it's useful even without remote desktop. I have a friend who's does some flying and he uses an ipad to refer to charts and the like (many pilots do this). So the ipad is most definitely useful.
Wait, so if the Kindle Fire is useful, then the ipad is useful. The assertion wasn't that the ipad was overpriced, but that it was not useful.
In fairness android tablets and chromebooks (tablets with a dock) are also fairly useless. They are too big to replace a phone and not powerful or functional enough to replace a laptop.
A decent Android tablet with Kodi, VNC, RDP and Moonlight (and maybe an X server, but a good one of those is surprisingly hard to find) can serve as a remote interface for practically anything, and play pretty much any media. I've found that fairly handy. The trick is to get it cheap, yet to get one with decent networking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I wish Microsoft would give us the ability to treat connected RDP clients as additional monitors that the current desktop can be extended onto. For example:
1. Boot into Windows with laptop.
2. Boot into Windows with large-screen dual-OS tablet like a Chuwi Hi12
3. Launch RemoteDesktop on the tablet, and set up a new connection... but check the new, extra checkbox that says, "use this as an external monitor and extend the Windows desktop onto it"
4. Connect Remote Desktop on the tablet to Windows on the Laptop. Voila, instant second monitor.
Sadly, AFAIK, there's STILL no good way to achieve this. I know there are a couple of third-party Android apps that try to accomplish this (by running a host app under Windows and using VNC at the Android end)... and they all suck miserably. RDP is unique, because it hooks directly into the Windows rendering pipeline and has extraordinarily high performance. I'm pretty sure that (in theory, at least) you can even run DirectX at nearly full performance over RDP (as long as the GPU at the client end is powerful, since IT'S the one that ultimately gets used). I know that in the past (when I still had a normal desktop PC), I used to routinely run programs on my desktop PC, then use them over the LAN via RDP on a lower-powered laptop elsewhere in the house because they ran faster than if I tried running them directly on the lower-powered laptop itself.
I also wish that Linux had something with performance remotely close to that of Windows via RDP. VNC is dog-ass slow, and remote X11 over a network is (surprisingly) even slower. I'd originally had high hopes for Wayland, until I read that approximately four years ago, its architects declared point-blank that high-performance remote rendering over a network wasn't even on the table or open for negotiation as a design goal. Period, full-stop, end of story.