Parallels Access shows why an iPad is a poor PC or Mac

If you’ve ever used Parallels Desktop or its younger competitor, VMware Fusion, you know how magical it is to be able to run a virtual computer on your Mac. I have VMs for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8, as well as Ubuntu 13.04 and the beta OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which lets me test software and OS capabilities easily from one computer. It’s a favorite technology of developers who need to support multiple OSes and browsers. Although recent versions of both products have been minor upgrades, it’s an amazing technology.

So I was excited to see what Parallels would do with the VNC (virtual network computing) technology that lets you remote into another computer and essentially run it over a network or Internet connection. Both Windows and OS X have built-in remoting, which is a boon to those who support nontechnical relatives and coworkers (if their firewalls allow VNC access). There have been VNC applications for the iPad as long as there’s been an iPad, so you can run your PC or Mac from the iPad.

But they’re awkward to use, given how different a computer operating system is from a tablet OS. Even with iOS and OS X sharing a common core and OS X having recently adopted some gestures from iOS, they operate very differently. And PC apps, as any Windows tablet user can attest, are too cramped to be readable or manipulable on a tablet’s 10-inch screen. Windows 8’s poor interface is a major reason that Windows tablets have failed, but the fact that a tablet isn’t a PC and shouldn’t try to be one is a bigger reason that no one’s buying Windows tablets while millions of iPads and Android tablets are selling.

I thought that maybe Parallels Access would change the game, making remote use of a Mac or PC from an iPad a good, workable experience. The $80-per-year service has some cool capabilities, such as the home-screen-like view of all apps (a clone of OS X’s Launchpad or Windows 8’s Start screen), a dock to easily switch among running apps, and a zoom-in pointer that works like iOS’s zoom-in text cursor: Tap and hold to get a magnified view of what’s under the pointer to overcome the cramped PC or Mac screen. Parallels Access also resizes your computer’s desktop to 1,024-by-768-pixel resolution, to match that of the iPad. Apps are also sized to fit that window, essentially acting as a single-screen app in the iPad style.

Even with those smart adjustments, I found Parallels Access unsatisfying. Yes, there’s a thrill of being able to open InDesign or Excel on your iPad. But that thrill quickly dissipates once you realize how little you can actually do.

Say you open a file in InDesign and want to resize the document window so that you can see another window, such as to copy content from one to the other. Sorry, can’t do that. (Ditto in the Finder or Windows Explorer.) You have to switch from one window to another. Yes, it’s just like an iPad, except iPad apps are designed to work this way, whereas OS X and Windows apps assume you have multiple, resizable windows you can arrange and move content among.

The keyboard helpfully offers command keys like Windows and Command not available on the iPad, as well as cursor (arrow) keys. But the keyboard is awfully large, obscuring much of the window. The iPad’s keyboard can take up half the screen when in landscape mode, but apps adjust their display to reposition the text being worked on, so it usually remains in focus — not the case with OS X or Windows apps in Parallels Access. Plus, OS X and Windows use menus and formatting bars at the top of the screen, far from your text. That works great on the large canvas of a computer monitor, but on an iPad screen half taken by a keyboard, it’s impossible.

Drag operations are difficult to accomplish too. This is an iOS issue — its gestures don’t support the kind of dragging you would do for a window, resizing an element, moving a file, and so on. This is a problem when using a browser in iOS as well: Draggable items on a Web page, such as in a form or content management system, don’t drag in iOS, as there is no “tap, hold, and drag” gesture. But when you’re using a PC or Mac, you realize how fundamental that action is to a mouse environment and how it isn’t used in iOS.

Despite the zoom-in pointer, selecting items is difficult, especially within text. And screen display of text sometimes flickers as you try to select text. No question: The mouse is more precise than the finger.

Even with Parallels’ tricks, the apps are still OS X and Windows apps, and they’re simply not designed to run in a touch environment like iOS.

When a connection to Parallels Access is established, your PC or Mac is forced into 1,024-by-768-pixel mode, your windows are rearranged and resized; most are expanded to the full screen. (They’re put back to their original sizes and positions when you disconnect, and your screen is returned to its previous resolution.) You might try to trick Parallels Access by changing the resolution of your computer’s desktop via the OS X Displays system preference or Windows’ Displays control panel. This will indeed make the larger screen resolution appear on your iPad, though it is shrunk to fit the iPad’s screen (rather than be a scrollable window), so the contents become too small to use. That’s why Parallels Access changed the resolution in the first place!

If you switch out of Parallels Access on your iPad, such as to answer an email or use the browser, your connection is interrupted; this is perhaps meant as a safety feature for an unattended computer. On the PC or Mac, you get a full-window alert asking if you want to disconnect. (Obviously, someone else would need to see the message and decide whether to disconnect the connection, as you’re not at your desk to confirm that action). If you switch back to Parallels Access, your computer’s screen resumes where it left off.

Despite its innovations, Parallels Access provides just a window onto your PC or Mac. That window is a real barrier to working with the contents inside. I can see the value of having a VNC app for emergency access to a PC or Mac, such as to send yourself files you didn’t make available to your iPad via a cloud service or through iTunes syncing — assuming you can get someone to turn the computer on and sign in (and you use a password on your computer). But I can’t see spending $80 per year per computer for the privilege, which is what Parallels charges.

Parallels Access is interesting technology that shows what engineers can do when they get creative. But it also reminds me that an iPad isn’t a computer and doesn’t need to be one. After all, if the reason to get an iPad were to run Windows or OS X, you’d use a lightweight PC or Mac laptop instead. And there are desktop-as-a-service apps like CloudOn that provide cloud-based Office environments to the iPad that work reasonably well when a native iPad app like iWork or Quickoffice won’t do.

I often hear from virtualization vendors how they can satisfy IT desires for a common platform by providing virtual Windows desktops to iPads and other tablets. (Office is not the only reason people use PCs.) But these tools, even when done elegantly like Parallels Access, forget that people don’t by iPads to run Windows (or OS X). They buy iPads to run iOS apps and use that environment.

In trying to bridge iOS with OS X and Windows, Parallels Access underscores the basic reality that an iPad is great at being an iPad, and it should be used that way.

This article, “Parallels Access shows why an iPad is a poor PC or Mac,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.