Microsoft's New Cloud PC Service Can Stream Windows to Mac and iPad

[Rafterman]

This is just another step towards making Windows a service. I have been waiting for Microsoft to do something like this for a while now. This will essentially make every device that has a modern web browser a Windows machine. This is a good move for Microsoft.

But what's the web browser running on?

 

[Rafterman]

If you have a Windows PC already set up, and your home router set up for remote access, you just created your own Windows 365. Probably for a lot cheaper over the long run.

 

[pmiles]

Why do they call it Windows 365? What is 365? Why not 360 at least?

The best talent people at Microsoft have is placing forgettable names on their products that will only end up remembered in time for the biggest failure they were.

360 implies a complete circle... 365 implies all year long all day long.

 

[Geurt]

I’ve read people predicting the death of Apple for a long time too. I was always the one who thought those people were crazy. But honestly take a step back and have a real look at what’s been coming from Apple.

Yes, it is terrible being the biggest IT-company in the world from a market capital perspective. Running the best CPU's in the market already, powering a new Augmented Reality market, a highly profitable market place called AppStore, embarking on the game platforms and digital content streaming, getting Microsoft to deliver the newest functionality of their flagship Office to Apple first... . I think they are pretty bad ass . Maybe not on the business market, but the products they had were dead anyways looking at the suffering of tradition PC-vendors nowadays.

 

[jerryk]

...

That being said I could see this being very appealing for enterprise customers. Rather than working with multiple vendors to deliver a virtualized desktop experience they can work with a single party that can deliver a complete package.

This is the key. These days employees need access to their work environment on any platform they have and wherever they are. And with hybrid work potentially becoming the norm support can be a real headache. Done right, this solves that problem in a clean way for both users and IT.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

It's all fun and games until the internet connection is not 100.00% reliable...
RDP is extremely efficient, but -still- if the connection is acting up there goes your productivity. We are already very dependent on a good internet connection, but that would be next level...

 

[pmiles]

Music streaming
Video streaming
Game streaming
Everything is going streaming

No wonder the new form factor of Macs are what they are and why they have so little in them... the real machine is going to be some super computer in the cloud that will literally be doing all the heavy lifting.

The future... I predicted it. Where's my 15 minutes of fame... Memes?

 

[jerryk]

If you have a Windows PC already set up, and your home router set up for remote access, you just created your own Windows 365. Probably for a lot cheaper over the long run.

This product does not target the individual user. It is for businesses.

 

[ChrisA]

Is this just a simplified RDS-style service where the PC runs on a virtual machine in a datacenter, or is the OS actually streamed to the client? It sounds like the former. I'll be interested to see how a single PC instance translates in to user experience on the different devices, e.g. a desktop computer v. a touchscreen tablet without keyboard.

It works really well. This is how many corporations supply Windows desktops to employees. The entire Windows virtual PC runs on a server in the data center. The local PC is just a screen, keyboard and mouse.

The #1 best advantage is that I can for example work on a Word document at home on my iMac then fly to a company office in the different city, log into my account and continue working on the same document. ANY computer in the entire world can have my personal desktop on it.

I tried this in a pubic access PC inside a Japanese bookstore some years ago. I was on a trip with my wife but I don't read Japanese so a bookstore is kind of boring but I saw a PC and tried logging in. With a fast fiber optic Internet connection, it works very well.

My files remain encrypted on the server in the data center. And again, the PC hardware (including the GPU) can be very high end, more so than I could afford at home.

This crould CRUSH the Apple M1 orM2interms of performance if they used a powerfull enough server. For example I can run my Windows on a 16-core Xeon with 128GB RAM and something like the Nvidia A100 GPU.

Finally you can use free software vsphere from VMware and set this up yourself. This is not new. Try it.It is thebest why to run Windows on a Mac. I have a lower-spec Xeon doing this now. It serves both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20 virtual machines that canbe accessed from PC. Mac and iPad.

 

[npmacuser5]

Microsoft is making better products and services that are moving us to the future than Apple. When Apple’s iPhone cash cow finally dies, I’m afraid so will Apple.

What will die off sooner then Apple, what we today call a PC or Mac. The need for them eroding daily. Especially in the consumer area.

 

[polyphenol]

This appears to be a shot across the bow of Citrix more than Parallels. Pre-pandemic the company I work for mostly used thin clients for most office personnel who didn't require mobility. The thin clients ran a stripped down Linux OS with the sole purpose of remote access to a Windows VPC housed at a data center via Citrix Remote Desktop. The VPCs were managed by a VMWare solution, and could also be accessed from a home computer, iPad, and even an iPhone via the appropriate Citrix app and authentication measures. The cost wound up being enormous though - the cost for data center server space, the cost of Windows and other software licenses plus VMWare's fees to for creation and management of the VPCs and fees to Citrix for the Remote Desktop solution, the cost of the thin clients and physical equipment (which isn't much cheaper than midrange Windows business laptops). We wound up switching everyone out to laptops when we started working from home as it was easier to troubleshoot people on consistent corporate hardware than a mishmash of home equipment.

That being said I could see this being very appealing for enterprise customers. Rather than working with multiple vendors to deliver a virtualized desktop experience they can work with a single party that can deliver a complete package.

In days past I supported a highly specific industry app. Most customers used individual PCs. But a few used old MS Terminal Services. And by golly, that worked well. They didn't need Citrix. Just a modest server. And most used cheap/old/rubbish PCs yet got the performance of a best-in-class. Things like loading programs took no time as the program was already loaded. Data never got lost even if someone dropped a PC onto the floor or pulled the plug out as it was on the server. Maintaining printers was easy as you only needed to install it once on the terminal server. All this despite the fact that the app and parts of how it worked were officially not compatible with terminal services!

 

[Digital Dude]

I’m looking forward to trying this.

 

[reinvdo]

The net step will be to stream the OS and other software too, I guess. It leaves Apple biting in dust... For years I asked myself why I have to download 3Gb to upgrade iOS... this is really something form the Stone Age... you can stream media, why not software???

 

[Sabelonada]

I believe there is a co trial panel to change that key mapping. If I recall, at one tine shift-Fkey also worked.

There is an option to disable the F11 mapping.

 

[Attirex]

Subscription will be only US $59,999 per year for home/private single-seat/user license, and only US $499,999 per year for the Windows 10 Cloud Service Hermes Edition.

 

[Spock]

But what's the web browser running on?

One of the several operating systems that aren't Windows?

 

[Sodium Chloride]

What is the difference between this and Shadow Tech?

Shadow PC Cloud Gaming - Your Windows PC in the Cloud

Access a Windows gaming PC from any device: Mac, old PC, smartphone, connected TV, tablet, etc.!

shadow.tech

 

[iDento]

I use parallels to run some stupid ancient software for business on my personal MacBook. Does that mean I can just stream it now?

 

[npmacuser5]

One annoyance is the key mapping between both OSes is different. Debugging from a Mac is annoying because the frequently used F11 key brings up the Mac desktop.

Easily solved on any IOS system. Would make the iPad a real computer. End of argument.

 

[0924487]

Nah. Desktop vitualization software will always have a market.

Profitability though, is a different story after this

 

[LillDrutten]

Well lot of how and what, but not why. The reason people buy mac's or use linux that they dont want the garbage produced by Microsoft.

 

[cgsnipinva]

For Microsoft - this is a great business strategy. Microsoft unifies their cloud offering with their Window Desktop offering to drive business to both. Businesses just need strong network bandwidth and nominal end point machines to set up their employees.

Having said that - the network goes down - so does their capability. Wonder if there is caching of work/data on the endpoint to mitigate this.

 

[justperry]

I (we) got work-related Microsoft Surface last year, they are so bad it's not even funny, today Windows *frustrated me so much that I almost ditched it in the bin.

Windows is still so ffing bad, unbelievable that people claim it's good.

WtF Windows (10) moments.
I send photo's to my exchange to print them, next what happened

1: Opened email in Outlook, wanted to print them directly, got 2 white pages in preview, WTF.

2: Next I wanted to drag the photo's to the desktop, no success, WTF

3: Then I wanted to download them under the 3 dots menu, there's no such option, WTF.

4: Right-click photos, no option, WTF.

5: Right-click to save photos, yes, but get a dialogue window without the original name, WTF.

6: I have to save photo by photo, WTF.

7: Saved first one to desktop, second photo should automatically be saved in the same dir, reverts to default, WTF.

9: Want to flip a photo counterclockwise, no option, just clockwise, WTF.

8: Next select all photos, open them, then want to print them all, can't do, print photo by photo, WTF.

9: Print dialogue is always different in W10, WTF.

10: Printed photo by photo, no option for colour so printed black/white, WTF.

Eventually got the colour prints
It took lots of frustration, wasted paper and much more time than on a mac, plain ridiculous that people have to live with this, if your car would behave like this you would instantly get rid of it.

This was just 1 gripe with Windows, there's a ton more.


The above happened for real today, and then some, it's such a bad OS.

 

[bobcomer]

What is the difference between this and Shadow Tech?

Shadow PC Cloud Gaming - Your Windows PC in the Cloud

Access a Windows gaming PC from any device: Mac, old PC, smartphone, connected TV, tablet, etc.!

shadow.tech

I think the microsoft offering is going to be for businesses only. Shadow Tech doesn't have a node near me, and they require a regional node. Shadow Tech would be better for individuals I think, but I have no idea on their reliability.

 

[bobcomer]

Profitability though, is a different story after this

Parallels has a problem with M1 going forward, their revenue is not apparent if we can never buy a legal, licensable, copy of Windows on Arm. I don't see near as many people buying it.