From the company that brought you:
Zune
Kin
Xbox One (3rd Xbox)
Xbox Series X|S
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate UPGRADE Limited Numbered Signature Edition
Windows 11 24H2
…and so many more memorable monikers, comes a BRAND NEW NAME for the Remote Desktop client!
Note also the availability of both
Windows App for Mac
Windows App for Windows
Keep being you, MS.
I guess it goes to show that naming things is not that important?
Tell that to the Wii U though.
Dumb name is dumb, checks out.
Don’t forget the recent renaming of Active Directory to Entra ID.
This is too funny. Moving from such a specific term to something so overloaded feels like a product manager tossing a grenade into search results and slamming the door shut. Especially when Remote Desktop is already the Kleenex of its category!
Can’t let people centrally manage roaming signatures in Exchange Online. Or finish switching from Control Panel to Settings in less than a decade.
Can rename AAD to Entra ID and Remote Desktop to Windows App FOR NO GODDAMNED REASON.
And yet, can also turn Excel into a Turing complete functional language with MAP, REDUCE and LAMBDAs, as well as making Terminal and WSL.
wait, wut?
oooooh, Azure AD. Well, cloud things have to have “snappy” names!
The fundamental contradiction of Microsoft - great at concepts, so often terrible at execution / marketing. (e.g., “TV Meets Web” - Google, 2010 vs. “WebTV” - Microsoft, 1997; Tablet PC in 2002; Microsoft Reader & eBooks in like 2000; etc.)
:LaughCryEmoji:
Especially this.
We all feel like a Window sApp sometimes.
I suspect this is exactly the reason why. They’re moving to a name that they can protect via trademark. “Remote desktop” is too descriptive of a term and would be difficult to enforce as a trademark.
But what the hell is Windows App? It’s so generic and doesn’t really describe what it does.
What, just because it could be used to describe any app you run on Windows?
They might be able to trademark it since they have a trademark on “Windows,” but that still doesn’t make this name any less dumb.
Also, it’s not even accurate if they’re saying it’s because you use it to remote into a Windows machine, because you can use the Remote Desktop client to RDP into a Linux box…
Windows Remote is 100% better than Windows App.
No disagreement there. But at least from a trademark perspective, “Remote Desktop” isn’t great.
Is my neck of the woods the only place “RDP” is the actual generic name/verb/etc? “RDP into the server and frob the groo” etc.
I never heard RDP/RDC/remote desktop used generically, and Windows App is even more generic but less descriptive. There are several applications that can be described as “a remote desktop”, but every piece of software you run on your PC is “a Windows app”.
Nope what I use on the daily.
It’s generally understood here at my shop too, although RDP into server X will get you some funny looks from some people here for sure.
