Simon Bramfitt

Preempting Apple

While vendors such as Citrix and Wyse have worked hard to foster the perception that the iPhone has what it takes to be a desktop virtualization end-point, the limitations imposed by the 3.5 inch display are painfully visible. Now with the iPad just around the corner screen size is no longer a problem, but this doesn't mean that Windows on the iPad is assured of success.  Setting aside the obvious ergonomic limitations that the lack of physical keyboard imposes, perhaps the most significant shortcoming of the iPad the lack of support for multitasking. Accepting that one of the primary selling points of the iPhone/iPad is the availability of countless numbers of applications, it's doesn't take much to understand that users might want multitasking.  However, while the iPhone 3.X operating system does offer preemptive multitasking. Apple have hobbled it so that multitasking support is restricted only to those applications that Apple grants approval to (in reality this means a subset of Apple developed applications). Which leads to the rather bizarre situation where the only way to get unrestricted multitasking on an iPad is to use it as a thin-client connected back to a remote desktop.

Predictions for 2010 - Apple

Back in May at the Synergy conference Citrix demonstrated XenClient running Vista side by side with OS X on a Mac Book. At the time the only way to do this was by breaking Apple's OS X desktop EULA, running the server edition of OS X or by the liberal use of smoke and mirrors. 

Now with XenClient and CVP both getting closer to launch, we have to move beyond the possibility of smoke and mirrors and start to think about how to do this for real. Why is this important? Well the numbers are starting to come in on BYOPC and it looks like there's enough interest in the idea for it to become a measurable force in the desktop world. Add to this some rough numbers that suggest as many as 40% of BYOPC adopters would (if allowed) choose Mac and it follows that BYOPC could be the vehicle that brings Apple double digit corporate adoption. But that's not going to happen without a little help.  So for my second prediction for 2010.