Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple Remote Desktop Released

Posted by pudge on from the big-brother-is-not-all-that-bad dept.

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.

22 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. No dual licenses? by krugdm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:No dual licenses? by Praxxis · · Score: 5, Informative

      While it is not a robust and does not come with all the bells and whistles, you may want to consider using OSXvnc. It's free, provides basic desktop access via a VNC client or Web Browers, and did I mention it's free.

      Check it out; http://www.osxvnc.com/

      --
      -Praxxis
    2. Re:No dual licenses? by nachoman · · Score: 5, Informative

      And for those who don't know, VNC (the official version) IS available for old version of mac OS (both for 64K and PPC processors). Oh, and it works with Linux and windows too. http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

      I've used VNC a lot of linux, windows and a bit on the mac. It works great and you can't beat the price.

  2. Another step. by saintlupus · · Score: 2

    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

  3. Worth mentioning.... by Daniel+Wood · · Score: 2, Informative
    The Apple Education store sells this for $149(10 User) and $299(Unlimited).

    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!

  4. What about firewalls & NAT by michaeldouma · · Score: 2

    How does it deal with DHCP IPs? What about when your mac is behind a router with NAT?

  5. Free & open competition by babbage · · Score: 2
    Is this really going to be better than the combination of ssh and vnc? I realize that those by themsleves have drawbacks -- remote Aqua is definitely a kludge, but it is a workable kludge and I do use it almost every day -- but will this be so much better as to justify the price?

    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
    1. Re:Free & open competition by babbage · · Score: 4, Interesting
      As I pointed out myself (well, indirectly I guess), I use VNC on OSX more or less every day. I like it, for the most part, but, well, it's lightweight and it feels lightweight. It's easy to find small clients for almost any platform -- that's a huge plus. You can run it over SSH for instant encryption, and that's another plus.

      But the protocol VNC uses is just weird -- as near as I can tell, the client sends raw keystrokes & mouse positions and clicks and so on, and the remote server sends raw bitmaps. The division of labor there between the client, the server, and the strain on the network is far from optimal (but it makes the cross platform stuff possible, so I'm not knocking it). As I understand things, X11 deals with these issues by having the remote "client" send vector data to the local "server", which handles all the drawing work. If you can compare it, protocols like HTTP take this even further by having the client pass parameters to the server, which parses them and sends back, essentally, html "source code" to the browser which figures out what to do with everything it gets. In both X11 and HTTP, you trade low network burden for high network throughput, while VNC does almost no work on the client end and tries to cram lots of data back & forth across the wire -- and since bandwidth is usually a bigger bottleneck than CPU or RAM power, it's not such a great use of available resources.

      And this is why I'm wondering how this protocol works. Is it an older protocol in newer clothing? (I read the posts about it being a new version of an old Apple program, but that just shunts the question: how did *it* work?) Is it related to X11, or some kind of NeXT technology? Is it related to SNMP or NetInfo? Or is it just VNC with a snazzy interface? As interesting as it looks, I wouldn't spend the money on it before being able to learn more about it...

      --
      DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
    2. Re:Free & open competition by schwatoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd be really surprised if Apple Remote Desktop did anything other than send 'raw bitmaps' across the network. Considering the range of GUI applications the user can run on his machine there wouldn't be a viable 'vector' based protocol (you'd need something that could cope with Cocoa, Carbon (in both varieties), Classic and even Java).

      They might have done something clever and used the built-in Cocoa Distributed Objects (which rock btw) and just proxy your GUI widgets off of another computer. That would keep the bandwidth costs down for Aqua. But considering all the real apps (IE, Office, Adobe *) are all Carbon apps anyway there wouldn't be much to gain.

      --
      I have trouble with passwords among other things.
    3. Re:Free & open competition by overunderunderdone · · Score: 2

      But the protocol VNC uses is just weird -- as near as I can tell, the client sends raw keystrokes & mouse positions and clicks and so on, and the remote server sends raw bitmaps.

      I don't really know but I seem to recall remote display was one of the supposed advantages to using Quartz. Since it is a sort of "Display PDF" I would think there must be better ways of doing remote display than simply pushing pixels.

      Theres an old article on Quartz/Aqua on Ars Techinica. It doesn't say anything about remote display but it discusses the technology and may provide some clues as to how they might be doing it.

    4. Re:Free & open competition by stripes · · Score: 2
      No virtual desktops?

      I have seen at least three, two as downloads (I can't remember if they were free or shareware) from Apple's web site.

  6. Very cool by rjamestaylor · · Score: 3, Funny
    We'll be setting up a room of iMacs for digital editing/image processing and this will make that setup manageable. Freaking cool and at a great time.

    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
  7. s/ARS/ASR/ ? by extra88 · · Score: 2

    Did you mean ASR as in Apple Software Restore? ASR is a good thing.

    1. Re:s/ARS/ASR/ ? by saintlupus · · Score: 2

      Did you mean ASR as in Apple Software Restore? [apple.com] ASR is a good thing.

      Yeah, that's what I meant. In addition to using the new version of ASR (Apple Software Restore) I'm also dealing with a new version of ARS (Action Recovery System?), the client software for our help desk ticket database.

      Acronym soup. Yummy.

      --saint

  8. Re:Or you could run XFree86... not! by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 2

    Apple Remote Desktop is like VNC or Timbuktu, not XFree86.

  9. Apple Network Assistant by Agent000 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  10. In the Past by Spencerian · · Score: 2

    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.
  11. Remote Desktop != NXHosting by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  12. A Real Thin Client? by smyle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

  13. How Secure is it? by Oniros · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.)

  14. This is so cool... by megaduck · · Score: 2

    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:

    1. Select all of your clients.
    2. Copy the Office folder into a pre-determined spot on the clients.
    3. Create an alias on the desktop of the clients.

    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 .sig for rent.
    1. Re:This is so cool... by stripes · · Score: 2
      1. Select all of your clients.

      vi /tmp/clients (scribble scribble)

      2. Copy the Office folder into a pre-determined spot on the clients.

      foreach c ($(cat /tmp/clients))
      scp -r /Applications/Office $c:/Applications/Office
      end

      3. Create an alias on the desktop of the clients.

      foreach u ($(cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd))
      ln -s /Applications/Office ~$u/Desktop/Office
      end

      (Ok, I left out the part where you execute this on each client...or each fileserver that holds home directories...or just one system that mounts all home directories...)

      P.S. I know that the *nixes have similar capability, but somehow I suspect that the Apple solution is a little friendlier.

      Maybe it is just me, but I find shell scripts way simpler to write then Apple Script...maybe I just don't have a good tutorial on Apple Script, but I have a real hard time doing anything in it. Any good recommendations?

      P.S. these scripts were never tested, may not work.