OnLive Desktop brings Windows 7 to the iPad
OnLive Desktop promises a full Windows 7 experience on Apple's iPad tablet, with Android to follow.
Using the same technology developed for its gaming business, where remote servers do the heavy lifting of rendering game assets with the resultant video being streamed to lightweight client devices like tablets and OnLive's own MicroConsole, the company hopes to make Apple's already popular iPad line a more realistic option for business use.
'OnLive Desktop is the first app to deliver a no-compromise, media-rich Windows desktop experience to iPad, opening up powerful new possibilities for consumers and businesses,' OnLive's founder and chief executive Steve Perlman crowed at the launch. 'iPad users will now be able to simply and securely view and edit cloud-hosted documents with full-featured Windows desktop applications like Microsoft Office, just as if they were using a local high-performance PC. Multi-touch gestures respond instantly and smoothly, while HD videos, animations and PC video games-never before usable on a remote desktop-play seamlessly.'
The surprising part of Perlman's announcement, however, is the pricing: basic access will be free to all users, with 2GB of web-based storage and access to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and 'several utilities and touch games' included as standard. The user interface will be remapped to support multi-touch gestures, too, with pinch-to-zoom and flick-to-scroll sitting alongside the traditional Windows 7 Aero features.
For users who need more power, Perlman has confirmed plans to offer OnLive Desktop Pro, a $9.99-a-month upgrade that increases the storage space to 50GB and adds additional PC apps and a cloud-accelerated web browser to the mix. Additionally, OnLive Enterprise will bring large-scale deployment possibilities; although Perlman was somewhat quiet on the pricing for this top-end option.
The OnLive Desktop iPad app is due to launch this Thursday in the US, and 'soon' in the UK. While initially limited to iPad devices, OnLive has confirmed plans to roll the service out to other platforms, including Android tablets and smartphones, PCs, Macs and even the OnLive MicroConsole itself.
Is OnLive Desktop the tablet's killer app, or are you struggling to see the point of interacting with a traditional desktop on a portable device? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replythese devices are touch interface, there really is no point trying to use traditional desktop device through a tablet. i know because i've TeamView'd many times into my desktop, and experience isn't pleasant, every action has to be carefully and precisely done. not worth the effort to use as a tablet killer app.
also, it's on Onlive's virtual machine, not much different from doing things in the cloud, with UI designed for touch interface. what they need to do is to release the server software to use CUDA/OpenCL to allow us at home to make use of it on our machines, then perhaps it's worth the trouble.
Try Pocket Cloud on the iPad with VNC of some flavour on the PC
http://www.wyse.co.uk/products/software/pocketcloud/ipad/index.asp
You have an iPad? A fruit of the devil's loins? Say it ain't so?!? :p
In my eyes onlive need to team up with tvcatchup. If their "revolutionary" data transmission can improve quality of images sent or reduce connection stuttering or reduce bandwidth it'll be a major win.
Think about a corp where for instance the sales staff are all on the road with ultraportables loaded up with win 7 and MS Office plus "additional PC apps", that's something in the region of £1,100 per user conservatively speaking, remove £500 for the iPad leaves £600 difference.
That is 7 years of $9.99 per month. How many business laptops do you think last much beyond 3 - 4 years?
That is not even mentioning the benefits in portability and battery life.
Factor in to it the reduced support cost/warranties/etc. this could be a real winner for corporate non power users.
I wonder how they managed to get that sorted with microsoft.
I personally wont use it but I can see how it would be good for schools, small businesses or charities.
I always stated my grievance with Apple was from experience
Probably by saying that if they didn't agree to it they'd use Open Office instead. Can't see as MS would want large numbers of people being exposed to how good a free alternative it is - better to keep as many as possible on their ubiquitous package, even at a small financial hit.
I think it's a great idea, as nmunky said, there could be serious financial incentives to use it for some people - providing it works reliably.
You kept the iPad though... (I'm just winding you up; ignore me. :D)
Corporate app store?
Why? Have you even read apple's app store guidelines in the last couple of years? Just because you can't install any old crap doesn't mean Apple's policy is a bad one. As long as you don't play silly buggers and use Apple's private APIs, break the UI rules, or produce something crap (Fart apps generally don't get in much these days), you're generally fine, let's face it it's (From a submission point of view) nothing different to the dozens of VNC apps out there already.
Haters gotta hate I guess.
Essentially you're right it's just a remote desktop client, but if it's bundled as a "OnLive Windows 7 Client" It's possible it wouldn't get through. Apple might feel that people would be "confused" by it or that the Windows 7 interface wouldn't be sufficiently usable to reach apple's standards.
If it can really allow you to watch a video on the client then that alone will pretty much set it apart from all the other RDP and VNC clients and that's great but we're not talking about remotely connecting to *your* pc here, this is a cloud based pc and as such it opens a whole other kettle of fish concerning privacy and security.
I just really tire of all this *cloud* development. It's great and all but most of us have 8mb down, 2mb up ADSL lines, when we all have Gigabit up / down then great but until then It's just taking away from good work on projects that run locally
But Imagine, If someone wrote an x86 VM for the iPad and then tried to put that on the app store? Reckon that would get in?
Edit: I also dislike their monopolic attitude to applications as well, it puts app developers on the back foot, for example look at pages and numbers for example, now apple could do anything they liked with it because they make the rules, whereas people like Quickoffice inc. have to abide by whatever rules apple set them and conform to the limitations without complaint or just be kicked off the app store.
Edit2: And all this rubbish about how the file system is "unintuitive" ffs... If the iPhone had a proper file system with user accessable areas it would open up huge possibilities for developers and users. Imagine being able to just drag your documents on to your phone, edit them on the fly, upload them to dropbox and then carry on working on them locally. But as Apple have it your files are pretty much locked into a specific app and you have to sync them through iTunes. Ah iTunes... Don't get me started on that one...
Your Colleague hands you a USB Key with some urgent documents on it...
Lawyered
You are an apple user, you scornfully look at said colleague and make a comment like
"you need to get a mac, it can....."
The response will be,
"So can PC's and have do since the late 90's, if you actually bothered to research and open your eyes to the fact that your the only one in the office who can't cause Apple choose not to support it"
You then whip put your macbook air just to sync those documents over cause fundamentally tablets still cant exist as stand alone devices.
Like a supermodel, they're too skinny to be of any practical use in the real world and focus on looks more than anything else.
Ok not an actual representation of real world events and maybe a bit extreme at that but just how i imagine the chain of events at this hour of the day.