New Windows Virtual Desktop Feature Will Finally Make the iPad Useful (mspoweruser.com) 99
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.
Hey Apple, see what Microsoft did? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Been doing this for years. Not sure what this article is about. Also can do it from a Mac, or my iPhone. And even play windows games.
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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?
Apple already baked VNC into macOS and there are dozens of VNC clients on the App Store. There’s no need for them to release something that we’ve already been able to do for years. The only reason Microsoft needs to do this is because Microsoft uses a proprietary standard, so it’s up to them to support it.
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Stock VNC is an insecure piece of crap. Yes, you can tunnel it over shortly through a vpn, but having to manually set that up is sub-optimal - especially when we’re talking about doing this from an iPad.
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“Shortly” was intended to be “ssh or”. Whether that was my typo or this iPad “fixing” it for me, i can’t say - but I should’ve proof read before hitting submit, regardless.
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What makes you think Apple is interested in serious work? If they were the iPad pro wouldn't be running iOS.
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or maybe slashdot should just null posts with those characters.. It's the same reason it doesn't allow emoticons.. It would turn this site into a twatter shitfest..
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or maybe slashdot should just null posts with those characters.. It's the same reason it doesn't allow emoticons.. It would turn this site into a twatter shitfest..
Yeah, only support ASCII art trolls- that suits you old timers much better than a proper quote character.
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Slashdot advertises UTF-8 support in meta tags in this page and in the HTTP headers. When the iOS device submits the form, it also sets the content type to UTF-8. Slashdot then interprets this as some random 8-bit codepage. If Slashdot advertised ASCII support, then iOS would use ASCII for form submission. Advertising that you accept UTF-8 and then breaking on any non-ASCII characters is just plain broken.
Soylent News' fork of Slashcode fixed these issues ages ago.
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I don't understand what was wrong with the original ASCII apostrophes, etc.
And I don't understand why the ASCII guys wasted so many bits on supporting so many different braces - the !|! should be enough to replace them all |see, just like that|.
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And no, asking slashdot to bend over backwards because iPads are doing the wrong thing
You mean the wrong thing where they parse a page that sets its encoding to UTF-8 in both meta tags and HTTP headers, send a response with HTTP headers indicating that it contains UTF-8 data, and are surprised when the server then incorrectly handles UTF-8 data?
Re: Will Slashdot finally post IOS apostrophes cor (Score:2)
Or you could turn off smart punctuation in the keyboard settings with no loss of functionality
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Apart from a handful of niche applications (assisted communication for certain disabilities, things that involve GIS in the field) it still seems like a lot of money for what is essentially a magazine-sized e-reader.
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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.
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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.
The person I responded to said it wasn't useful. I strongly implied that it was overpriced.
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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.
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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.
The only people who have no use for a laptop are people who do nothing productive, even for recreation. Laptops are easy to sell because people love the idea of mobility, tablets get sold because laptops don't end up delivering on being a desktop that is mobile because you have to lug around bags and backpacks. The problem is
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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.
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I tried to find an X server for DOS some years ago and came back empty. A bit surprising for me.
There apparently used to be a commercial xfree for dos called xappeal [nabble.com] but it seems to have pretty well vanished.
There were several commercial X servers for Windows 3.1, like Chameleon Xoftware. Chameleon also had a good TCP stack for Windows 3.1, but the one that Microsoft eventually released is also adequate for this purpose. Or if you can find the TGV stack, that was the fastest. It seems unfortunate to have to run Windows just to run an X server on your DOS machine, but it's an option.
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My wife has one. They are just laptops with a touch screen.
For anyone wondering why it's only specific mice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Why the fuck hasn't Apple allowed bluetooth mice at least on an application-specific basis?
I'm mostly willing to go along with the idea why they're not allowed generically as input devices because Apple's precious touch interface would quickly get corrupted by mouse UI logic, but on a lot of apps the touch screen is totally worthless.
Re: For anyone wondering why it's only specific mi (Score:1)
It's just like all the other reasons for their choices.
Because fuck you, and your wallet
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Back then, even development tools were part of the growing idea of a walled garden, creating an entire "Free Tools" movement written about extensively in magazines at the time. Apple tried really hard to stop you from developing for their hardware unless you first gave them money for their tool chains, and every applic
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Why the fuck hasn't Apple allowed bluetooth mice at least on an application-specific basis?
Their "computer replacement device" is designed to be used by touching the screen, even the "Pro" version. That should tell you everything about Apple's approach to serious work.
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I don't mind the lack of a mouse so much - it's a small-screen device and the touchscreen is usually better in this form factor. It does bug me that the 'Pro' keyboard has an emoji button but no escape key though.
I suspect that the argument for not supporting mice is that they don't want people doing crappy ports of desktop apps that require a mouse and then getting complaints from users that they don't work well with touchscreens. Apple's decision to ship one-button mouse worked out well for them in t
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I suspect that the argument for not supporting mice is that they don't want people doing crappy ports of desktop apps that require a mouse and then getting complaints from users that they don't work well with touchscreens.
Like I said, this tells you everything about Apple's "Pro" strategy: Must be child friendly.
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Why the fuck hasn't Apple allowed bluetooth mice at least on an application-specific basis?
So lets ignore that there was no problem with Apple allowing it in this app - and more importantly also ignore all the other apps that already support them for years (including 3rd party RDP apps) - isn't self righteous indignation great even if it means you have to ignore reality?
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I feel like the loopholes of non-standard bluetooth profiles miss the point and are a worse problem than allowing generic bluetooth mice generally. It's happened, but it feels like some kind of weird exception.
Apple *could* have allowed BT mice, but totally ignored them in standard UI APIs, so that nothing was mouse-enabled by default and required apps to use some other UI API to obtain mouse functionality. They protect the touch UI, apps that want to enable mouse functionality gain it without going down
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Apple *could* have
... included a 8" floppy in the iPad. The End.
Windows Tablet... (Score:1)
Tell my why I bought an Ipad again?
I thought all those apple fanboz told me that the ipad was windowz killer.... hmm.
Re: Windows Tablet... (Score:2)
Mac users were telling us for years that macos didn't need touchscreen support because that would result in gorilla arm. Apple then release a touchscreen laptop - the iPad Pro with keyboard accessory but no trackpad. Yay, gorilla arm!
So now Apple's solution is Marzipan - porting your favourite iOS app to the desktop. But still no touchscreen convertible macbook Air, nor mouse input for the iPad Pro.
It's a strategy that avoids the debacle of Windows 8 but the elephant in the room is Google: tablets running C
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The mouse in the elephant's room is Google very short support window for ChromeOS products. Zillions of Chromebook will "expire" by getting a bottom-right notification that your computer will not get further updates, buy a newer one. I'm not sure whether the users will buy the same thing over again when they're free to get anything else anyway. Likely, they will use their EOL Chromebook until youtube or something doesn't work anymore.
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Issue with subject - iPad More useful with MS? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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but I think there's a lot of hubris on Microsoft's
Actually I think the hubris is on Apple's side for daring to market the iPad pro as a replacement for a computer and then shipping an OS that isn't more worthy than the title of "toy for the rich".
Jump (Score:5, Informative)
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'
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Ay? The RDC app's free. It's also the best I've come across on iOS.
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Re: Jump (Score:2)
Been using it for years, haven't paid a cent.
Crawl out from under the rock (Score:2)
This has been on Amazon Workspaces for a while now. I'm using a Swiftpoint mouse with my company iPad pro and Windows on Amazon Workspaces. I think it's been a year already. And I only use AWS as a last resort. Web browsing, email, and even Office work well on the iPad Pro 99% of the time. iPad isn't a desktop, but it's improved. A lot. When it comes to productivity, it is more limited by the app developers than the platform itself at this point.
Android (Score:3)
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.
Can we use RDP as virtual additional monitors yet? (Score:3)
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.
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https://symless.com/synergy [symless.com]
From the website:
Synergy is a software download that shares one mouse and one keyboard between multiple computers. It combines your desktop devices together into one cohesive experience. You can even copy and paste between your computers. Synergy works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Raspberry Pi. You only need a regular WiFi or Ethernet connection. Simply move your mouse between your computers effortlessly.
I've used this, and, apart from not being able to move windows or applicatio
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I've used Synergy too. It's an extraordinarily useful program, but it's NOT a way to extend computer #1's desktop onto computer #2 via RDP... it's a way to have computers 1 and 2 running independently side by side, but use a single mouse and keyboard with both (treating them both AS IF they were actually one computer with its desktop extended onto a second monitor).