Kurt Shintaku's Blog

I got asked this by a friend so I figure it’s worth posting in case it wasn’t well known.  The recent announcement about Remote Desktop (RDP) clients being released for iOS & Android were surprises to most folks – including myself.

• Microsoft unleashes fall wave of enterprise cloud solutions
  “…Further, with Windows Server 2012 R2 Microsoft is introducing the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, available for download in application stores later this month, to provide easy access to PCs and virtual desktops on a variety of devices and platforms, including Windows, Windows RT, iOS, OS X and Android.”
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/oct13/10-07hybridcloudpr.aspx

WAIT… WHAT ABOUT iTAP?
Some folks in the IT industry with experience in this space remembered that for Mac OS X support for RDP & other platforms, the generally accepted way of connecting to Remote Desktop Services was to go to a solution commonly known as “iTap” from a company called HLW Software Development.  The “original” RDP client for Mac OS X from Microsoft had effectively ceased to evolve (it had no edge gateway support, for example, which was a showstopper for Enterprises) and there were no Microsoft-supported clients for iOS & Android.

Then one day, the iTap web site had this written on it:

• iTap Mobile: “Important Update”
  Effective October 8th 2013, iTAP mobile RDP apps for iOS, Mac OS X and Android platforms are discontinued.  We will continue to support the customers who have installed this app up to this date but the app will no longer be available at the application stores and no further updates will be released. We recommend you evaluate the new Microsoft Remote Desktop app available in app stores later this month.
  http://itap-mobile.com/itap-rdp

HMM.  THAT SOUNDS CURIOUS.
Notice that there’s not remarks about Microsoft competing against their business by releasing free RDP clients for iOS/OSX/Android.  Of course that led everyone to believe that iTap’s technology had been acquired by Microsoft.  After all, if their not complaining, may be they got something out of all of this.

And lo-and-behold:

• NEOWIN: “Microsoft buys assets from iTap for Windows Server 2012 R2 Remote Desktop apps”
  QUOTE: ”Microsoft acquired specific IP assets from HLW Software Development GmbH (HLW). This was used as a base for development, on top of which we implemented, amongst other things: RDP 8, RemoteApp support, multitouch, and all new UI.”
  http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-buys-assets-from-itap-for-windows-server-2012-r2-remote-desktop-apps

So there you go.  The key thing here is that this isn’t 1.0 technology:  It’s battle tested through iTap/HLW and the great news is that RDS/RDP customers now get it for no charge.