A Peek at Unity Touch in VMware Horizon View 5.2 Feature Pack 1

Not long after Horizon View 5.2 was launched, VMware followed up with Feature Pack 1. Boy, the company wasn't kidding when it said it would focus on EUC this year!

The FP1 release marks the official launch of Project AppShift, the technology that enhances the Windows desktop user experience on mobile devices. As you may be well aware, using a Windows desktop on a tablet can be challenging and difficult given the amount of zooming and scrolling that you have to do in order to execute the command. Project AppShift, now officially named Unity Touch addresses these challenges by decorating the Windows desktop with enhancements like larger icons and quicker, easier access to commonly used task and other tweaks to make it a much more pleasant user experience.

Now, for those of you that have been testing and paying around with Unity Touch, if you have come across some technical difficulties in that it is not working as advertised, please note that the Windows Firewall Service is required to be turned on and that, by default, when you apply the batch file supplied with the VMware View Optimization Guide for Windows 7, it automatically turns that service off. I am pretty sure that in the next release of the Optimization Guide batch file VMware will address this issue -- for now, just be aware of it.

Of course as a new feature, you must observe the minimum software requirements that are needed for this to function properly as follows:

• View Agent 5.2 or newer
• View Connection Server 5.2 or newer
• Remote Experience Agent

Have you used Unity Touch yet? I am eager to hear from those that have been testing it who can offer some feedback on any nuances or drawbacks that you have observed. Please share so that other may also learn from your experiences in the comments section here.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/25/2013 at 1:36 PM