OnLive Desktop for iPad Now Available on App Store

Who cares? Why not iWork?

Because some people prefer Microsoft office. it's always nice to have choice

Hmm not sure i like the idea of streaming my data back and forth to a 3rd party such as onlive.

Look... you call an 800 number and give the guy that answers your credit card information for a flight to Florida on one date and a return flight a week later for your family.

The guy has your credit info, the billing address of your home, and knows when you and your family will be far from home. He is also in a federal prison that holds a contract with a national airline to book their reservations. He also has a few old friends that live near your city and are free on parole for violent crimes. You don't give that a thought and go merrily off on your vacation.

I say, stream your data with that same level of concern.

Because some people prefer Microsoft office. it's always nice to have choice

Yeah, let's be honest - iWork isn't quite at the level of Office yet. PowerPoint and Keynote? Pretty much. Word and Pages? Kinda, but Word still has more formatting options. Excel and Numbers? Not even.

Hmm not sure i like the idea of streaming my data back and forth to a 3rd party such as onlive.

THIS is so Cool!

This will blow away any reason to feel like an iPad can't be used in enterprise situations. Okay, okay, I know it's really hard to write a 20 page Word document on it because it lacks a keyboard, but it really makes nothing impossible to work around easily to get the job done.

Who cares? Why not iWork?

I'm waiting for Office to release its iPad app...I am sure they will release it soon enough...

A great way to get the office suite on your iPad.

Still, you'd think they would make a promo video where the document doesn't lag when scrolling and zooming.

THIS is so Cool!

This will blow away any reason to feel like an iPad can't be used in enterprise situations. Okay, okay, I know it's really hard to write a 20 page Word document on it because it lacks a keyboard, but it really makes nothing impossible to work around easily to get the job done.

Wrong. The pure fact that the document leaves a coporate network and goes to a third party already makes this unsuitable for most organisations .

This app is actually quite responsive! I'm surprised there's not as much lag as I was expecting. Here are some complaints I have, which I bet they're working on:

1. Printing. For med school, I have to open up PowerPoint presentations and print them out 6 slides per page, and the formatting never comes out right when using Keynote, so I HAVE to use MS Office, which I hate installing on my Mac. Unfortunately, onlive desktop (obviously) can't print any documents. This can be solved on their end by adding printing over internet support or by adding native iOS printing support.

2. Accessing documents. Getting files into the onlive desktop is a kludge that involves uploading the files to their desktop via their website from a Mac or PC. If I'm out and about with just my iPad, it's obviously silly to require me to go home to my Mac to upload files that I want to work on. This can be solved by adding Dropbox support.

3. Accessing a web browser. There's no access to a web browser, which is totally understandable considering that's the upside of paying for the $10/month plan. But again, that makes it a pain to actually get documents into the the onlive desktop since most of the documents that I need to edit are located on my school's website, so having a web browser to download the documents first would solve this problem.

4. Native keyboard. The app doesn't make use of the iPad's native keyboard. I am actually very surprised by how well Windows 7’s keyboard works! But it's still be nice to use the iPad's native keyboard. This is something that I'm sure Onlive could add in an app update. (by the way, the stylus support is much better than I had expected too!)


What makes this really interesting is that they plan on making a Mac client too, so theoretically you could pay $10/month and have access to Windows and Office in the cloud, where you can keep your office documents with zero syncing whatsoever (since for each session you're accessing the same persistent desktop). Very nice proposition for someone like me who doesn't want to run bootcamp on my 64GB MacBook Air (it would take up too much space). I can take my iPad to school, work on a document there, and then open the app on my Mac too (inside a window) when I get home and continue my work.

I feel like this is exactly where Windows needs to be for me personally: just another app on my iPad's home screen! :D