Welcome to Kraft Kennedy

My wife recently got me an Apple TV as a Christmas gift over the holidays. It’s a great little device. It attaches to your home network either via WiFi or via direct Ethernet connection and can be used to stream content to your TV. At home, we use it to rent movies and stream our iTunes music and photos. It has another excellent feature called AirPlay which lets you display content from your iPhone or iPad onto your television. At home, this is useful for playing games and showing web pages on the TV. But I got to thinking, what if we had one of these in the office connected to our conference room projector?
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Several months ago I posted an article about MacBook Airs and if they were ready for business. It’s been 4 or so months and I thought I would follow up with my thoughts and findings.

I started out running only the Apple OS X operating system. I had Office 2011 for Mac for my productivity suite and I was able to do many work related tasks. However, I found myself using Citrix or my Windows computer for other work related applications such as our Document Management System iManage, our ticketing system ConnectWise and other web applications that only work fully with Internet Explorer.

I then decided to purchase the external DVD drive so I could install Windows directly on the MacBook Air via the built in Boot camp utility. This lets you dual boot between Windows and OS X as opposed to running a virtualization product such as VMware Fusion or Parallels. I use VMware Fusion on my home iMac and it works great. On a laptop with limited RAM, CPU and battery life, virtualization does not make sense.

Running native Windows via Boot camp works VERY well. The Apple hardware runs Windows as good, if not better, than a computer made to run Windows. Apple includes all the Windows drivers and makes the process very easy. Over time, I found myself using Windows exclusively and never booting into OS X as I use this primarily for work duties. I decided to take the plunge and remove the OS X partition so that Windows is the only operating system. I did this to give more space to Windows as I only have the 64 GB solid state drive.
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I recently encountered an issue on an iPad where the Citrix Receiver was able to connect to a XenApp farm and enumerate applications but was not able to launch them. Attempting to launch resulted in the black screen and spinning wheel, which eventually timed out and returned to the application list. The environment consisted of Citrix XenApp 5 for Windows 2003, Citrix Receiver for iPad 4.2.3, Citrix Web Interface 5.4, Citrix Secure Gateway 3.2.1.

I contacted Citrix support and learned that the Receiver does not currently support Subject Alternative Name (SAN) certificates (a.k.a. Unified Communications or UC certificates) unless the principal name (the “Issued to” name) is the first entry in the subject alternative name list.  Since the first entry in the subject alternative name list IS the principal name, this is another way of saying that subject alternative names are not currently supported.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve had the chance to try out tethering – or Personal Hotspot – on my iPhone 4 and AT&T.  This was a new feature available in iOS 4.3 and I wanted to see how it compared to the Sprint MiFi card I used to use.

After upgrading the OS, enabling this feature was very simple.  I chose to turn it on using AT&T’s website which now had two ‘Bundled Features’ that included tethering.  4GB for iPhone Enterprise for $60/mo or 4GB for iPhone at $45/mo.

One thing of note is the fact that after I changed my plan, I lost the ability to go back to the ‘grandfathered’ unlimited data plan.  This may be a small concern for some users who might exceed the 4GB (2GB non-tethering plan) limit.

Once enabled, my iPhone now included a Personal Hotspot section under Settings where I can turn it on and set a WiFi password.  It offers three methods of tethering including USB, Bluetooth, and WiFi with each of these methods activated when I turn on Personal Hotspot depending on what is enabled and what I want to use.  While it allows for up to five connections it does differ from the MiFi card by only allowing three WiFi connections at once.  You have to round out the five connections with either one USB connection or up to three Bluetooth connections.

Now for the experience.  My typical usage was a trip from Grand Central to White Plains via Metro North along with the usual ‘no WiFi’ locations I found myself in.  The first thing I noticed was that while sitting on a train in Grand Central, waiting for it to depart, I could now tether.  This was not possible with my old Sprint MiFi card.  Understood that’s more of a function of Sprint vs. AT&T, but still huge.

I also noticed that not only was the speed much faster, the connection dropped less while commuting to and from White Plains.  There were times where my Sprint device would have outages between two stops along the route almost every time.  This didn’t happen with AT&T.  And while there were the typical ‘I have five bars why is nothing working’ instances with Hotspot, it seemed to be pretty stable once a connection was made.

Overall I am happy with the experience.  It’s one less device I need to carry and all in all an upgrade in connectivity, as well as speed, moving from Sprint to AT&T.

When the Citrix Receiver for the iPad was first released, I was very excited.  However, I became quickly frustrated with its use.  The Windows interface was not meant to be navigated by something as un-precise as a finger.  Menus and small buttons were very hard to select correctly.  Also, you couldn’t actually leave the Citrix application to run another app without your session getting disconnected.  Both Apple’s iOS and the Citrix Receiver app have come a long way so I decided to have another look.  I also decided to go through all of the settings to see if I could make it work better for me.  I was pleasantly surprised with the new client.
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Recently, I decided to purchase the new MacBook Air. Until this year, I was a long time PC user, so Apple products are still relatively new to me. I wanted something that I could do more work on than the iPad but still be small and light. I wanted something I could use on the train as well as use in meetings while in the office. I originally purchased the iPad as a personal device for casual email and web browsing at home. It works fantastic for that, but when I tried to use it at work to take notes or draft lengthy emails, I found the on-screen keyboard of the iPad lacking. This is why I decided to purchase the MacBook Air.
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Macs continue to gain traction in the personal computing space.  This in turn has required Windows administrators to become more familiar with Macs and the limitations they may have when connecting to a typical corporate Windows environment.  In the past, Citrix has done an OK job providing Mac support for XenApp through a basic ICA client.  Specifically, they created a functional no-frills client that supports the latest, as well as past, Mac Operating Systems.  The client primarily supported ICA connections through an ICA file.  The Program Neighborhood Agent functionality did not exist and published applications (not desktops) launched through Citrix Web Interface were presented in a kludgy window.  This changes with the release of the 11.0 plug-in (formally called client). 

Primarily, the 11.0 plug-in finally enables seamless functionality of published applications on Macs.  Seamless published applications (opposed from the desktop) present themselves to the user as if they are running locally.  This in turn allows the user to run published and local applications side-by-side for an improved experience.  More importantly, this seamless functionality opens the door for corporate environments who serve applications through the Program Neighborhood Agent or Citrix Web Interface to give Mac clients a user experience that is in line with what Windows clients have supported for years. 

Also included in this update is the introduction of Citrix’s Dazzle interface.  It looks like Citrix has larger plans for Dazzle suite, but from a client perspective, applications served through the Program Neighborhood website are presented in an iTunes like interface.  I think the logic Citrix is following is that users would be acclimated easily to an application delivery interface that mimics iTunes on the assumption that most users are already familiar with iTunes. The interface is clean, intuitive and even gives the user the ability to add the application to the OS X dock. The “Add” function threw an error for me when I was testing testing the client , but in theory it *should* work.  I’ll post the fix when I come across it, but this bug doesn’t takeaway from the huge functionality upgrade in this client.

It is unfortunate Citrix took years to finally give Macs the same support that the Windows client has had for years, but better late then never, right?  Download it here.

Dazzle interface of the 11.0 Mac plug-in: