Microsoft Preparing to Launch New Versions of Remote Desktop for iOS and OS X

Cool. I use the Mac RDC app all the time, an official iPad version might help me stay in Metro/modern more on my Win 8 box when used remotely.

B

Except for the corporate world, I do not see this being used a lot. And even in the corporate world, it is usually only in the small to medium size companies where there is a chance that you have an Admin working on a Mac that would need Remote desktop solution for Microsoft.

And in that case, as the article points out there are a lot of alternatives out there (I have toyed with a few) and most are way better than what Microsoft has ever put out.

perfect for me! All our work computers are Windows and I use macs!

Used quite a bit.

Cuban Missles said:

Except for the corporate world, I do not see this being used a lot.

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I run my Mac Mini as a headless home media server and have been using VNC to remote into it from iPad, which 9 times out of 10 won't connect properly for one reason or another. I can't believe how poorly remote access has been implemented by OS X. Microsoft has built excellent remote desktop tools into every version of Windows since NT 4.0 so I don't know why Apple can't offer a decent FREE tool for iOS and OS X.

I agree Remote Desktop is a great corporate tool, but i'll definitely be giving this a shot if it works well at home, given they don't charge some ridiculous price like other remote solutions for Mac, if its not free already.

Meh, Chrome Remote Desktop works great, and it's free. It's not iOS-compatible, but I doubt this Microsoftware will be free.

I've wished for years that Apple would do this. I want to be able to use my MacOSX machine from my iPodTouch or iPad at times. Very useful. Apple's missing the boat.

Cuban Missles said:

even in the corporate world, it is usually only in the small to medium size companies where there is a chance that you have an Admin working on a Mac that would need Remote desktop solution for Microsoft.

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Macs, maybe. But I imagine there are a lot of people who would be interested in having remote access to their Windows desktop on an iPad.

Cuban Missles said:

there are a lot of alternatives out there (I have toyed with a few) and most are way better than what Microsoft has ever put out.

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I've never had any problem with RDC. In fact, I have always found it to be faster and more responsive than similar solutions, including OS X's own screen sharing feature.

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Exotic-Car Man said:

I doubt this Microsoftware will be free.

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RDC has historically been free. And it actually works well.

ChrisCW11 said:

I run my Mac Mini as a headless home media server and have been using VNC to remote into it from iPad, which 9 times out of 10 won't connect properly for one reason or another. I can't believe how poorly remote access has been implemented by OS X. Microsoft has built excellent remote desktop tools into every version of Windows since NT 4.0 so I don't know why Apple can't offer a decent FREE tool for iOS and OS X.

I agree Remote Desktop is a great corporate tool, but i'll definitely be giving this a shot if it works well at home, given they don't charge some ridiculous price like other remote solutions for Mac, if its not free already.

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I am assuming that the tool mentioned in this article allows you to remote from an Apple product to a Microsoft product. Remoting from Apple to Apple is not something I expect this tool to provide. You may want to look at this more closely before buying.

This is great news, if for no other reason than I can stop using the MochaSoft Remote Desktop app and start using Microsoft's version. (Same with my iPad-using clients.)

Jump Desktop is Excellent

I like Jump Desktop for the Mac. They have a version for the iPad but I do not use it much since I feel you really need a mouse. I am using the 4.0 Beta now because it syncs with DropBox my Computer Connection Settings. They support RDP and VNC Connections.

Elbon said:

Macs, maybe. But I imagine there are a lot of people who would be interested in having remote access to their Windows desktop on an iPad.



I've never had any problem with RDC. In fact, I have always found it to be faster and more responsive than similar solutions, including OS X's own screen sharing feature.

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RDC has historically been free. And it actually works well.

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Your point about remoting from an iPad is well taken. And yes, when I have used it, it was free.

Teamviewer 8 has worked good for me, and it's free also.

Maybe this will give CoRD a run for its money.

Doubt it though...

Finally. As a Mac guy who works in a Windows world this makes me very happy.

spencers said:

Maybe this will give CoRD a run for its money.

Doubt it though...

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Unless CoRD has been updated to support NLA, it is useless in the enterprise. Last time I tried it, it did not so I bought Jump Desktop as the current Microsoft offering included in Office 2011 always crashed on me.

It's about time. Microsoft's client doesn't currently even work with some virtualized implementations of Server 2012. I've resorted to using CoRD, but that has its own issues.

Having RemoteApp support will be very useful for our (university) students.

Usage will certainly be remote...

Nice, hope they fully support international keyboard/IME and also video/audio to utilize Lync.

ChristianJapan said:

Nice, hope they fully support international keyboard/IME and also video/audio to utilize Lync.

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Lync over RDP seems like a bad idea. I haven't used the Mac client, but it exists. What's wrong with it?

B

ChrisCW11 said:

I run my Mac Mini as a headless home media server and have been using VNC to remote into it from iPad, which 9 times out of 10 won't connect properly for one reason or another. I can't believe how poorly remote access has been implemented by OS X.

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The stock VNC protocol is a sucky piece of insecure garbage - eight character max password, weak encryption... RDP works much better (I wish it was incorporated into OS X).

The OS X extensions to VNC improve things dramatically, but that doesn't play well with stock VNC clients.

Hopefully you're tunneling over ssh.

ChrisCW11 said:

I run my Mac Mini as a headless home media server and have been using VNC to remote into it from iPad, which 9 times out of 10 won't connect properly for one reason or another. I can't believe how poorly remote access has been implemented by OS X. Microsoft has built excellent remote desktop tools into every version of Windows since NT 4.0 so I don't know why Apple can't offer a decent FREE tool for iOS and OS X.

I agree Remote Desktop is a great corporate tool, but i'll definitely be giving this a shot if it works well at home, given they don't charge some ridiculous price like other remote solutions for Mac, if its not free already.

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As someone else who does the same thing, I'm not sure why you've been having problems. I've used RD solutions for the Mac not only for connecting to my HMPC, but also for providing tech support to clients in other locations (all the way from a couple blocks away to a thousand miles away), and I have had no more or less problems with connecting than I've seen with MS RD.

For me, for my HMPC, if I'm porting in from my iPad, I use MochaVNC, and have never had problems with it. Occasionally, the connection fails and I need to try again. From my MBP, I love the native screen sharing function that's built into Mac OS X. It's absolutely bulletproof, in my experience.

Now, of course, both of our tales are anecdotal, and give no real indication of where things are at overall. But the fact that I can have such a good experience, while you're having such a bad one, seems to indicate to me that I'm extraordinarily lucky, you're extraordinarily unlucky, or something's not setup correctly on your machines.

The screenshot is a bit misleading. Shouldn't it show the OSX app connecting to a remote Windows machine?

RoyalTSX

After struggling with CoRD and the Microsoft RDP app for years I stumbled upon RoyalTSX. I can't sing this app's praises enough. It's saved collections, settings, and FreeRDP implementation work really well. It also doesn't crash all the time like CoRd did.

I'm honestly surprised more people don't know about it.

http://www.royaltsx.com/main/home/osx.aspx

That kind of sounds like a shill, but it is really great.

balamw said:

Lync over RDP seems like a bad idea. I haven't used the Mac client, but it exists. What's wrong with it?

B

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I was more looking into the iOS part of the news ... would be great to have remote desktop capability on iPad with full audio support. We have Lync 2013 native on iOS device which works quite ok. But its limited use with the single-active-app concept of iOS; you can't really do screen sharing as required for presentations etc. Mac client I didn't tried as Mac's are very limited in our company.