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Okay, I don't really listen to your radio program Mr. Limbaugh, but from what I can tell it seems your a complete jackass. However, as a life long IT guy, I've always tried to help out a user even if they are a nut case.

1.) Screen Sharing - Use VNC. http://www.redstonesoftware.com/products/vine/server/vineosx/index.html. Its free, easy to use, and if someone whines about it being insecure - kick them, hard.

2.) Email backup with Time Machine - You failed to mention just what email program you are using, I fear you may be using Apple Mail. If so you have you have my condolences as Apple Email is not truly an email program, but some sort of psychological test program designed at driving its users insane. I suggest using thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/. There are many add-on for backup email. Again its free and easy to use.

Somewhere along the line Apple got this reputation that ANY thing they make is solid gold and perfect in all ways. I can assure you this is very much not true. Hopefully this helps and lets you get back to your insane rantings.

Isn't this just a $500 VNC client? Yeah, maybe it does some other stuff too, but talk about highway robbery. On the surface, Apple seems gung-ho about proclaiming how well OS X interopterates with other platforms. Opening Microsoft file formats, mapping Windows network shares, and running Unix X11 applications all work great, but no effort is made to ensure that the same is true in the other direciton. Just try connecting and using a Mac desktop with a non-Apple VNC client and see how well that goes. It isn't pretty.

When remotely supporting our Mac customers, the best option we've found is to disable the builtin Remote Desktop and just have them use OSXvnc. Not only do you not have to pay the equivalent of a second computer, but it works fine with VNC clients on every platform. (Most importantly, Linux.)

Actually, there's a VNC client for Mac OS X. We've been using it where I work to connect to Linux and Windows boxes with no problems.

For our part, here's what we've settled on:

x11vnc -forever -passwd mysecretpw

For Mac OS X, there are several options; what I believe to be the best options are below.

On the server end of things, there's OSXvnc, a nice free VNC server for Mac OS X. (There's even an OS9vnc, on the same page.)

The best free client for Mac OS X, in my opinion, is Chicken of the VNC.

At the commercial end of the spectrum is Apple Remote Desktop 2.1. Apple Remote Desktop is much more than just a remote control solution; it provides desktop and systems management tools, software distribution tools, mass screen sharing, scripted actions, and all sorts of other features. But as of version 2, the remote screen protocol is based on VNC. With one checkbox, any VNC client can connect to any machine running Apple's VNC server software (which it confusingly calls "Remote Desktop Client"), and Apple's client software (which it calls "Remote Desktop Admin") can connect to ordinary VNC servers on any platform. Apple Remote Desktop does automatic resolution scaling, full screen, etc., and as of 2.1, even supports multiple monitors - even when using free VNC clients to connect! The VNC server piece (the one Apple calls "Client") is free, but there's a catch: at least one copy Remote Desktop Admin is required to be "legal", but then Remote Desktop Client can be installed on an unlimited number of machines in your organization.

I'm sure someone can tell me...
whats wrong with vnc programs like osxvnc exactly? I've only ever used them on a lan myself but i've even shared mouse & keyboard using X2OSX (like x2x or x2vnc but you've guessed it.. ) And certainly we've had a mac around that people have VNC'd into before just using tightvnc or whatever from their linux or windows boxen.

theres probably something... i'd just like to know what the feature is you guys are paying for? ...its not that remote shellscript thing is it because guys... err...

Forgive me for being rude, but the LAME thing here is your quickness at dismissing it. It is a pretty cool product for the price.

1. Fink - get the GNU POSIX environment on!
2. OSXVNC - get somewhere else
3. OO.o
4. Mozilla / Firefox / etc. - and the plugins:
   • Flash
   • Acrobat Reader
   • StumbleUpon toolbar - it's like having your own personalized fark (not that I read fark, but this is probably why)
5. MPlayer - it handles just about all the codecs
6. WS Manager - Multiple desktop manager. I'm too cheap to pay to upgrade from OS 10.2 to 10.3 for Exposé, even with my wife's educational discount.

Might I suggest OSX VNC? The last release was September 17, 2003, so it would seem that it is currently being actively maintained. Of course, that's only the server. If you need a client, well, there's Chicken of the VNC. Last version was released January 16, 2003.

Looks like you lose here.

I suppose that you want something like OSXvnc, which allows you to share your main (and only) quartz display.

But you may also want to check out Xvnc for MacOS X, which allows you to share secondary X Window sessions (:1 through :99, in theory). This is one of the few huge advantages of X over Quartz/Aqua: you can create several simultaneous sessions that are kept alive independently, and that may be created by different users. It is a really useful feature but unfortunately you can only launch X applications in them, not common Cocoa/Carbon/Classic ones, and you need an X-Win window manager such as WindowMaker or AfterStep or even a full desktop environment as KDE or Gnome.

The VNC server OSXvnc works quite well for me.

If you're interested in real fun, start a server and on the same machine connect to that server using VNCThing.

Michael.

OSXvnc.
Very nice, and easy to use. It's even got (more-or-less) builtin support for launching it from a shell.

here's a link for the only OS X VNC server that I know of:
http://www.redstonesoftware.com/osxvnc/

Other VNC servers and clients can be found at:
www.realvnc.com

It works, but you'd better be running a 100Mbps LAN with plenty of horsepower on both ends of the connection. OS X is a lotta GUI to be managing remotely.

Funny you should ask. The company I work for is developing software that I think does just what you asked for. It's a Mac OS X application (codenamed Eggplant) that can test software running on Mac OS X or Linux (or Windows or *nix for that matter).

Eggplant uses a TCP/IP connection to remotely control the system being tested, under script control. Because it interacts from the user's perspective, by generating mouse and keyboard events and watching what happens on the screen, Eggplant can test anything that has an interface, no matter what language or toolkit it was created with. I think it's pretty cool. And it's the only project I've ever worked on that had a purple vegetable as an app icon!

Check Redstone Software if you want to join the beta program (happening now). Version 1 should ship soon, but the marketing guys will probably come up with some suitably boring name by then...