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With the release of Citrix Receiver for iPhone 1.02 including AG and RSA support, the ability to securely deliver any app, anywhere, is closer than ever to reality ( we already cover WinMo, Symbian and close to BlackBerry and Android ). One question I have been pondering with Martin Duursma and few others on the team is what is next ? It's great we can get to all these other Windows and RIA apps, but the app many of us use most is email. The question is, what is missing from the native iPhone email or Outlook ? What features would be most useful for a mobile app that we would use all the time from any device?
The native iPhone email client does a good job, but not everything. Attachment viewing is limited and sometimes crashes if the file is too big. You can't write an email and attach a file from your PC or file server. Also many company IT policies do not even allow iPhone access because of security concerns and lack of data / device control. Many of these obstacles could be overcome if the app was hosted on XenApp provided there was fast access and a great user experience. There are probably many new features that could enhance the email experience but you don't even know you want it or need it. Xobni is a good example of an Outlook value-add that I find useful even though I didn't even know I needed it before I started using it every day. So there must be mobile email features that would make your life easier, more productive, or just provide a better experience. What if you had an app that was optimized for the device real estate and mobile scenario ( ie just the functionality that you are likely to need when using your mobile device vs when using a laptop/desktop). If you could have the Nirvana app that was continuously available as a hosted app. Imagine the possibilities !
Some things that come to mind are listed below, do you agree or have more for the list ? Please add your votes and comments.
Comments (3)
Jul 28
Anonymous says:
E-mail reader for the car? Yes, that's a great idea! Just what the world nee...E-mail reader for the car? Yes, that's a great idea! Just what the world needs, more distracted drivers. Readers for the, what's the term nowadays, visually impaired - that may be a better use for that technology.
Aug 17
Simon Bramfitt says:
+1 We are slowly coming to terms with the fact that any sort of active multi-ta...+1
We are slowly coming to terms with the fact that any sort of active multi-tasking while driving increases the risk of accidents, we need fewer distractions when driving not more.
I wonder how long it will before we start seeing smart phones displaying warning notices advising the user not to use the device while driving - we already have these for in car GPS systems.
Aug 17
Simon Bramfitt says:
It was somewhat ridiculous that until the iPhone 3.0 release the only way to get...It was somewhat ridiculous that until the iPhone 3.0 release the only way to get cut and paste on a iPhone was to use the Citrix Receiver to remote to Windows, but it did clearly show the limitations on relying on the local device OS for everything.
A better example of a rich context aware application might be the Google's voice search capability. IPhone can't to voice to text, but by uploading the voice bytes to a Google data center, you can exploit Google's raw processing power to convert the voice to text, perform the search and then leverage the iPhone to display the results.
Building hybrid client/server apps that are aware of the capabilities of the mobile end point and can cooperate with a backend server is certainly worth some thought.
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