[bhauer]

I have attempted to approximate what I call PAO on today's existing technologies by using application servers at my home and at a data center. However, I think you're missing the notion of multiple concurrent views of singular applications, with each view adapting to the capabilities of the device at hand.

The closest approximation is connecting multiple web browsers via WebSocket to a self-hosted web application with a responsive user interface, and then using the WebSocket to relay all UI interaction at a fine-grained level. But if you read my blog entry about PAO, you'd recognize that as a facsimile of what I want—an effort to create PAO out of the mish-mash of technologies we have today.

The guts of what Microsoft is building here would be a key building block if something like PAO were to ever materialize. It will be necessary for applications to understand the capabilities of the view as they change. What's missing still is supporting multiple concurrent views with a singular application state and secure network transport for those views.