June 20, 2007

John Welch

However, for me, the biggest announcement was from a new company, Aqua Connect. They have the first iteration of a product that I have wanted on Mac OS X, literally, since Mac OS X came out, and that is a terminal server. 

This is potentially huge, as while the current version is based on VNC, and therefore has more than a bit of overhead, Renee Mehrian, CEO of Aqua Connect told me that they are working on a version based on RDP (the protocol that things like Windows Terminal Server and Citrix use), which has a much lighter overhead than VNC, and better client support. If they can pull this off, especially with decent 2-D and 3-D video support, this could sell Macs and software to a lot of people who only need/want one application.

Want to use Keynote instead of PowerPoint? Instead of buying separate Macs for everyone, you buy an Xserve or two, an Aqua Connect license, and a truckload of iWork licenses. Then use the RDP client for your platform (and they are everywhere), log into the server, and commence to Keynoting. Now the RDP version isn’t out, isn’t announced, but Renee told me Aqua Connect knows they really need that to get the product to where they want it to be, so that down the line, you can have load balancing, session balancing, etc. For those of you who’ve never lived the Citrix or Terminal Server life, it’s a very nice way to manage your desktops, and give people access to applications they might not otherwise be able to run. For me, it’s how I can run my Active Directory network from my Macbook Pro. I’m also going to look into getting the VNC-based product for now, because it’s simply too useful to wait on, and honestly, I really want Aqua Connect to succeed.

So it was an interesting WWDC, even though there’s always tons I can’t talk about. This is one of the few where the biggest news wasn’t really from Apple. That’s not necessarily bad, although for the folks in the pony crowd, I feel your pain.

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