Early Thursday morning OnLive sent over an email stating that the OnLive Desktop app, slated to launch for the iPad on Thursday, won't hit Apple's App Store until Friday the 13th (insert scary movie sound effect here). The delay is due to an overwhelming response to the upcoming virtual Windows 7 desktop.
"As you know, on Monday OnLive announced the new OnLive Desktop app, which will deliver a seamless and media-rich Windows desktop experience on iPad, and opened up our websites for signing up for the service," an OnLive rep stated in an email. "Although we had planned to go live on Thursday, Jan 12, we've had such a large influx of signups, we are taking another day to deploy more servers to handle the load, and we expect to go live on Friday, Jan 13."
"Sorry about any inconvenience and appreciate your patience," the rep added. "We want the first users to have the best experience possible."
When it does arrive, the OnLive Desktop app will stream a Windows 7 desktop and include pre-installed Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This virtual desktop will be fine-tuned for the iPad, supporting instant-response multi-touch gestures while offering a full on-screen Windows keyboard and handwriting recognition.
"iPad users will now be able to simply and securely view and edit cloud-hosted documents with full-featured Windows desktop applications like Microsoft Office, just as if they were using a local high-performance PC," said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO. "Multi-touch gestures respond instantly and smoothly, while HD videos, animations and PC video games—never before usable on a remote desktop—play seamlessly."
The free iPad app will also come packed with 2 GB of secure cloud storage. Later, OnLive plans to release a Pro version that comes with additional Windows-based apps and 50 GB of cloud-based storage, costing $9.99 USD per month. An Enterprise version is also in the works for businesses and organizations of all sizes.
As for other platforms, the OnLive Desktop app will be available for Android, smartphones, and the stand-alone OnLive MicroConsole (with Bluetooth and keyboard/mouse support). The Windows-based virtual desktop will also arrive on the PC and Mac clients with support for your typical desktop LCD and HDTVs. So far there's no word on when these will be available, only that they are "coming soon."
For more information and to set up a free account early, head here.
