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Apple Remote Desktop Released
A user writes "Apple Remote Desktop provides remote administration and viewing for Macs. It works back to Mac OS 8.1, over the Internet, provides remote software updates, system checks, screen locking and more. Sweet." Sweet indeed. I could use this for my home network (right now consisting of five Macs, going on six). The cost is $299 for 10 clients, $499 for unlimited clients.
If I have a PowerBook and a desktop Mac, I need to buy a ten-user license? Apple should sell a two-license pack as well for home users.
I do realize that the intended use of this is for schools or businesses, but home users could get some use out of it as well.This makes colocation more doable. So now, we can have total control over CLI and GUI apps. Makes those GVS servers look better and better....
One big bummer, I saw no mention of encryption. Good thing I ordered a cisco 3005. (won't THAT be speedy...)
Think Different. Remotely.
Measure once, cut twice
Good. This looks like the Apple Network Assistant reworked for OS X, which is one of the things we've been waiting for to transition the computer labs at work over from OS 9.
(In case anyone cares, ARS has also been released for OS X -- another key point, since we use it to image machines.)
--saint
I've been using Timbuktu on OS X for some time now. It works great. I don't see any driving reason to change -- is there some benefit to the Apple version I'm not seeing?
The Apple Education store has great discounts, you can get titles such as Final Cut Pro 3 for $299, MS Office v.X for $199, and File Maker Pro 5.5 for $149!
Based on what I've read on Apple's site about this the only client software available is for other Mac's. While that's fine in a lot of cases, most IT shops are Windows based and having a native client that could manage Mac servers and desktops would do nothing but encourage adoption of Apple computers. Plus it'd allow me to remote control my Mac from my Win2k box at home. VNC works for now at least.
Having said all that Microsoft does the same thing. There's no MS Remote Desktop/Terminal Services client for non-Windows OS's either. However there are third party options at least. Here's hoping someone does the same for Apple remote desktop.
John
How does it deal with DHCP IPs? What about when your mac is behind a router with NAT?
As a generic desktop system, Aqua as dazzling. As a Unix, it's also disappointing. No built-in remote display mechanism before this? No virtual desktops? Everything is so big in Aqua that it would be nice to be able to spread things out a bit.
Something makes me think that both of those issues could be addressed at the same time. Yes you could route around it by running X11, but ...meh, that doesn't really address the problem at all here. This looks like it could be a slick application, but can it allow someone to (say) access their Mac from someone else's PC? What software needs to be running on the client & server, and for that matter what work takes place on the client & server? How sensitive is it to bandwidth bottlenecks, and how secure is it? Is it based on any kind of Open protocols? I found a BSD based client for NT Terminal Server today, which is exactly the sort of tool that I like to see about. Could there be BSD/Linux/Win32 clients for this protocol?
Anyway, this certainly has my imagination, but we'll see if it's worth the price. I would have hoped this was the sort of functionality that they'd just throw in with OSX-Server, maybe charging a fee for bundles of clients, but hey I don't work for Apple and I don't work in marketing, so...
</rambling>
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Unfortunately this means we won't need to hire a desk-jumper to click 'Ok' every ten minutes, so unemployment will remain unchanged. Sorry.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Did you mean ASR as in Apple Software Restore? ASR is a good thing.
Cost: $0
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Apple Remote Desktop is like VNC or Timbuktu, not XFree86.
Apple used to have a product called "Apple Network Assistant". It was everything that ARD is, but for OS 8 and 9. I've used it for administering a school network of a couple hundred macs of various ages, and it works great. It really simplifies software installation, among other things. ARD seems like simply an OS X version of ANA.
Atleast, not if they are trying in someway to compete with Microsoft. As of WindowsXP, remote desktop stuff is part of the default installation, "free of charge."
And I don't see why it shouldn't be. I export X over SSH from my buddies machine to mine all of the time to update stuff.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Apple has sold its Network Assistant product separately in much the same way as this new product (which IS its replacement for remote administration). It also has bundled ANA with any Macintosh Server configuration sold.
I would think that the new product would be included with a Server hardware rig as ANA had because it improves the server's value.
For individuals and small places, I'd go the route of VNC or an alternative. However, none of these could provide the asset and admin functions of what ANA (and probably the new product) offers.
That's the nice thing about using OS X. Since it's a BSD family member, more alternatives for the software end are available.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
A great feature ANA had was the ability under the Help menu to contact a local tech, who you could then give control of your session to, and watch as she helped you with something. Very cool in a lab environment.
How do I edit footnotes? Click Help and watch the tech step you through it.
Lies about crimes
So ... any NeXT-heads out there remember how to launch a program on a remote NeXTSTEP machine and have the window pop up on your machine? This works pretty much the same was as -display on XWindows.
:(
Rather disappointing that something that was bundled in with the OS (yes, -NXHost worked for ANY program on NeXT) now costs you $250-$300.
NXHosting worked on an app/window level, while Remote Desktop works on the whole screen. Also, Remote Desktop has a bunch of management features that aren't mentioned in this thread.
Does this mean Apple may be looking at a real thin client solution, maybe?
Citrix makes platform-independent desktops for Windows and Unix (Solaris only last I checked, but that's been awhile). Also, LTSP is out there for Linux. I'd love to be able to buy a beefy Mac and be able to have multiple sessions running from it, especially if the client was platform-independent.
Hey, I can dream, can't I?
</speculation>
Sleep is just a poor substitute for caffeine, anyway. -Bob Lehmann
The specs of the Apple Remote Desktop don't mention any security / encryption, yet they suggest using it over the internet.
How secure is it? Are the streams of data encrypted?
Or is only the authentication secure?
Some of you might know as it seems to be a new version of Apple Network Assistant which is part of AppleShareIP.
(BTW this is much more than VNC or Timbuktu, it has lots of administration features, like mirroring HDs, etc. the remote display is just the tip of the iceberg.)
The client runs all the way back to 8.1, which is great. But the controller app ONLY runs on Mac OS X. I was really hoping it would be carbon, because I'm not ready to upgrade my entire school district to OS X yet. We were going to buy several licenses of the controller app for the people that work in our computer labs, but I guess we'll stick with ANA 3.5.2 for now. Dang.
People seem to be missing the point here. While the remote viewing portion of this is cool, it's not why this is the cat's pajamas. Combine this tool with AppleScript and NetInfo, and you could administrate a monstrous Apple network from your desk with ease. This is not designed for fixing a friend's box remotely, although it will do that like a champ. This seems to be built for enterprise installations.
I'm doing a huge MS Office (on windows) rollout for 8,000 machines for the City of San Diego. If we were running Macs with Remote Desktop, it could save us over a million dollars in planning and labor. Think about it. All you would have to do is write an AppleScript that would:
That's a hell of a lot simpler than trying to monkey around with login scripts and automated installations in the Windows world. Admittedly, there are Windows products that offer the same functionality (SMS and Altiris come to mind), but the license fees for 8000 clients would be... staggering. With this product you only need to spend a few thousand for a large IT department. Sweet Jesus, I think Apple might be ready for the enterprise.
P.S. I know that the *nixes have similar capability, but somehow I suspect that the Apple solution is a little friendlier.
This
"Apple Remote Desktop is like
VNC or Timbuktu, not XFree86."
Besides,... XFree86 sucks.
--Richard
Has anyone had a look at OSX-VNC yet? It's very much the same idea as what's being discussed here. --AND-- It's Free... Check it out: Http://www.osxvnc.com
-dewhite
VNC is nice, granted. (And this deals with secure tunneling etc.) Timbuktu is similar to VNC (and predates it by many years), but slightly different (and I have no idea if TBK2 encrypts the streams) since it's never been focused on the UNIX community, so it doesn't deal with things like X11.
:-)
ADR, in spite of the name, has more to do with system mangement than screen sharing or viewing. Screen sharing and viewing sure demos better than a progress bar that indicates the status of your multicast push of a software package to 15 macs simultaneously, so I can understand why Apple chose the screen sharing feature to focus on.
If ADR really is the OS X version of Apple Network Assistant, then the screen sharing is probably one of the least important features. ANA could easily generate reports so a Mac net admin could quickly inventory all of the Macs in the network to find out things like which ones had less than 128 MB of RAM, or which ones had LaserWriter driver version 8.7.1, or had their color depth set to 8 bit, or just about any other info you could imagine wanting to find out.
For classroom or training environments, the screen sharing is nice because the management station can actually push out it's own screen to all the clients (multicast, of course) so you can keep the students focused on watching a shared screen rather than playing around on their computers (for example). (Also it's kind of fun to be able to speak into your mic and have it come out one or more of the clients' speakers... "BACK AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!!")
Having said all this about Network Assistant, it does have some downsides. First of all, trying to sycnh up a bunch of (non-preemptive-multitasking) Mac OS 9 clients while they have users doing actual work so you can multicast-push a new file out to them has been a pain. Being able to schedule these kind of things would be nice too, as would better handling of failures (say one Mac doesn't get all of the file for some reason). Hopefully ADR addresses some of these concerns.
Not trying to flame anyone, just trying to clarify why "Mac Managers" care about this app and how it differs from Timbuktu and VNC, both of which are also good tools but for different circumstances.