Splashtop, a company renowned for its remote desktop solutions, has announced a new app for the iPad that will allow users to try out the Windows 8 Metro touch experience right on their iPads. Windows 8 is still months away for now but the Windows 8 Consumer Preview has long been out and Win8 Metro Testbed allows you to get a feel of how Windows 8 would run on a tablet.
This solution from Splashtop is mainly targeted at developers who may want to write apps for Windows 8 but may not want to purchase a Windows 8 tablet. Instead, they can simply run the Consumer Preview of Win 8 on an iPad, test native Metro UI touch gestures on an iPad and then code and compile new apps on their Windows PC accordingly. Of course, people who just want to try out Win 8 for tablets can download the app too.
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview running on a PC is a prerequisite for downloading the app. Installation of a small streamer file is also needed. Once you have both these things the next step is to simply download and install Win8 Metro Testbed on your iPad. The app will then basically stream Windows 8 to your iPad at 60 frames per second. That’s very smooth and should work very well over a strong Wi-Fi connection.
Native Windows 8 metro touch gestures are enabled via the app. These include swiping right to view the Charms (options) menu, swiping left to switch between apps, swiping down to bring up additional menus and pinching the screen to navigate files, folders, apps and the like. Swiping either right or left within Internet Explorer allows you to move between pages, and swiping slowly from the left enables the ‘snapping’ feature which allows you to run two apps side by side.
This app is, as aforementioned, essentially for developers who are presently designing or will design apps for Windows 8 tablets sometime in the future and will let them evaluate touch gestures and functionality of their apps. According to a Splashtop representatives a Windows 8 tablet, when out, could cost anywhere up to $ 1000. Most devs would prefer not having to dish out that amount of cash for the hardware, and the app from Splashtop is hence a perfectly cheap alternative for them and will prove to be just as useful.
The co-founder of Splashtop, Mark lee, also pointed out that most developers already own an ipad because Apple’s App Store generates over 80 percent of all tablet app revenue. Therefore, it makes sense for Splashtop to release the app.
The app is not perfect though. This is to be expected, since actual Windows 8 tablets aren’t even out yet. There is no camera support. One major drawback is also present. Once connected, the display of your iPad readjusts to that of the iPad 2, 1024 by 768 pixels. This is the minimum for Metro apps, but this resolution doesn’t support ‘snapping’ apps side by side. You can choose to use the 1366 by 768 resolution instead but this creates ugly black bars on the top and bottom of the screen.
If Splashtop’s app offers a full fledged Windows 8 expereince, this could also impact sales of Windows 8 tablets negatively, in the future. The iPad is an immensely popular tablet, and if people can simply use Windows 8 for an extremely small fraction of the price a Windows 8 tablet will be on an iPad, there will be no need for people to go spend money on the actual hardware. Needless to say, Microsoft is not thrilled with the idea but also needs to attract the attention of developers of popular tablet apps to its platform.
Win8 Metro Testbed is available at half-price right now. You can get it for $25 from the Apple App Store. After the limited time offer is over, the app will return to being for $50. Via
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