Idea: ProxyPC: A seamless integration between Tablets and PCs

We are seeing a lot of activity in tablets lately starting with the iPad. Google has promised us the ChromeOS tablet. There are other contenders and plans like HP+WebOS. With the flurry of activity, it has become almost certain that each one of us who is not a passive consumer of information will now need to have a PC and tablet and a phone.

The tablets are highly constrained devices but do what they do extremely well. They have to be rugged, light, consume as little power as possible, typically support multitouch and so on. PCs or Macs on the other hand do not have weight restrictions, OS constraints, power constraints and typically run apps that rely on a mouse pointer and have awesome power-hungry graphics cards.

Things like AutoCAD/Photoshop/CS4/Visual Studio/Eclipse will probably never ever run on iPad/ChomeOS tablet. For the guys who view the computer as a consumption device it is a non issue. But for those who "create stuff" or work in an enterprise using legacy applications or develop code, they will find themselves switching back and forth between the tablet and the PC often and there is a lot of scope for improvement here.    

The idea being suggested here is a technique using VNC that every geek would likely reinvent, but to make it available out of the box and make it an obvious way for the non tech savvy to use these things. There is also a small piece of hardware that seems inevitable. But someone out there may be able to suggest a Software only solution.

So let me begin without much ado. Shortly after the iPad was out, we began to see solutions like : Mac OSX Running on the iPad! With Flash!

What is being shown there is actually MacOS running on a Mac being displayed on an iPad through VNC. There is also a Windows 7 on the iPad: Hack n Mod

These stories talk about a special application called Desktop Connect that costs $11.99 and enables VNC on an iPad, which should have been freely available by default(cough). 

But what these guys have done just scraped the surface of what is possible. Remotely connecting to the desktop currently has many shortcomings.

  • One needs to physically go to the PC/Mac and turn it on or leave the PC permanently on even if it is rarely used.
  • Fingers are too fat to be a substitute for a mouse pointer.
  • The experience is not seamless and one is continuously aware that he is now temporarily working remotely on another computer.

I just listed the pain points most obvious to me. I am curious to see what other hurdles affect the quality of such usage. Anyone who can attack the pain points using clever solutions has the opportunity to show off a cool hack if he is of the open source type and a source of $$$ if he is the entreprenurial type. 

ProxyPC:

So let me set the conversation going by putting out some suggestions.

Let us say there exists a PC or Mac with the following abilities. Let call it ProxyPC for now.

  • It has Bluetooth and/or WiFi capability. 
  • Another device like an iPad can launch a document on the ProxyPC by asking the Device to "wake up" from suspension or hibernation if it is not already active.
  • The iPad/ChromeOS tablet can ask the ProxyPC to launch a document in an associated application. For Eg. It can ask the PC to open a psd file in Photoshop.
  • Once the document is opened the VNC connection is seamlessly opened behind the scenes and the user gets the illusion that the file is opened locally on the tablet. 
  • The saved file can be easily synced back to the tablet or cloud. 
  • The user would actually sit in front of the PC only when the screen refreshes too rapidly AND needs a lot of computing power like in high end games. Things like movies would be watched locally on the tablet. 

This brings together the best of both worlds: We have the portability and battery life and multi-touch of the tablet... the raw CPU and graphics card power and large storage of the PC. The only time anyone would physically sit in front of the PC is to get a lot of typing done or play games at very high frame rates.

Combined input from fingers+stylus.

Fingers are too imprecise for many input activities. So we will need better pointing if the ProxyPC session has to be productive. Some novel experiments are underway combining pen and finger multitouch input. Thus we can simultaneously achieve accuracy as well as easy finger input. Will future iPads have stylus input as well? Will Chrome OS tablets have fingers+stylus? Should we demand it? I invite you to watch video for some inspiration.

Careful integration:

The real entrepreneurial challenge here is to identify each tiny pain point and make solutions where users have an out of the box fantastic experience. Just buy the ProxyPC capable computer and install an App on your tablet and get maximum integration with minimum user setup/configuration/tweaking. I would have bought such a device if it were available. Ask yourself whether you would buy such a device?

Will apple approve such a use of "its" device??

Maybe not. But there is a huge opportunity out there... and many competitors will emerge. Many enterprises could choose to use such a device where legacy tools like Lotus notes is accessed from a ProxyPC. A huge majority of people whose reliance on PCs is limited would immediately love to switch over to minimize pain. Also if users use their Tablets as the primary internet connected device and use the PC as lonely rarely booted devices, nuisances such as virus would be significantly reduced. In a corporate set up one could even use Citrix to run large number of legacy apps on a single system reducing maintenance costs in many ways.

All I can say is there appears to be an interesting opportunity here and some small fortunes to be made. While no technological miracles have been suggested here, the ideas bring value to users. The devil lies in the details. For Eg how well does the clipboard work?

I am curious to know about such products already in the market. Do you think this is a fertile ground for exploration. If not, why not? If you think it is worth it, post a comment to tell the rest the world what you care about the most. How it could be made even better?