The Swede in the middle of Silicon Valley

Showing posts with label thin client. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thin client. Show all posts

Monday, July 6, 2009

iPhone, a next potential thin client?


I've blogged about this before but after discussing it with friends and colleagues recently I got a new eye-opener. Looking at thin clients on the market today many of them has equal or less performance compared to the iPhone 3G(S).

As you may know Citrix has release an application called Citrix Receiver allowing you connect to a Citrix server and control Microsft Windows applications from your iPhone. As this may be a step in the right direction it's really not enough as you're limited by the size of your screen on the iPhone.

Looking at patents filed by Apple there's one that comes to mind within this category; #20080002350. This patent describes how you would be able to dock your MacBook (Pro) in an iMac looking device (see MacRumors). I haven't read the details of what this patent covers as far as which devices that's potential candidates but the iPhone surely could be one in conjunction with a remote X like environment like Sun offers using it's thin clients.

Another touch which Gizmodo posted about is to make something similar to what Asus is planning to release soon. A keyboard with a built-in computer. However in this case the computer would be the phone and the keyboard would really just be a docking-station.

So Apple, hopefully you're R&D department has someone reading blogs and ideas how Apples products could be utilized, and if so, dump the projector stupidity and give us a solution to use the iPhone as a thin client.