Microsoft Remote Desktop 4+

Nice new GUI, but randomly(?) consumes ridiculous amounts of energy

This review is based on my experience from running version "Version 10.1.6 (910)" of Remote Desktop for Mac OS X daily during a couple of weeks on a "MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) 3.3 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 High Sierra version 10.13.3 (17D102)".

1) I really like the new GUI. Adding functionality for groups of VMs is brilliant and much appreciated for my use cases, since I tend to have quite a few VMs for various purposes.

2) CPU utilisation is often 100-160% and the computer gets really hot. I have absolutely no clue why. I have played around with screen resolutions trying to avoid any potential computations from real-time scaling the image feed, but to no avail. I also tried to turn off the little thumbnail previews, but that did not help. Even when I close ALL VM view windows, the CPU is spinning like a maniac (>100% CPU) and the activity monitor is clearly accusing Remote Desktop 10 of being the black sheep every time. Strange. What could possibly take that excessive amount of CPU power, when the program is seemingly doing "nothing"? Probably it is just some unfortunate bug. But the effect is that the program is not reliable as a professional tool while on battery. While on mains power it is of course less of a problem, but be prepared to wear thick pants due to the excessive level of heat radiating from the bottom of the MacBook when using the program. Shorts is definitely a no-go with Remote Desktop 10, when the problem occurs. The rest of the time it runs at a steady 20% of my i7 CPU power (for one VM view). However, if the annoying random energy waste behavior/bug would be fixed, the program would be wonderful.

3) A minor feature request though: It would be nice if the program could switch between cable-LAN and WiFi without losing the connection all the time.

No Retina support

Quite unusable on newer Macs as it lacks Retina support. As a result, the remote Windows desktop is rendered blurry and user experience is greatly reduced.

Otherways does its job well, and but the missing Retina support is a deal breaker.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the feedback. Retina support will be coming, we just have to work on some other tasks first to ensure that the experience is as great as it can be (for example, adding scale factor remoting).

Saves a screenshot when disconnecting

Basic but seem to do what it should. However, a huge flaw is that it takes a screenshot when you disconnect and displays it in the connection list.

I understand the idea, but you must be able to disable it or at least remove the screenshot if you don't want it. As it stands now, you need to remember to show the desktop before disconnecting.