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Rendezvous, Microsoft And Apple
serendigital writes "MacCentral reports that a BusinessWeek article entitled: 'A Rendezvous with Redmond?' has -- with Rendezvous -- created an actual threat to Microsoft. As reported by MacCentral, it's interesting to note that BusinesWeek's 'Byte of the Apple' columnist Charles Haddad is on temporary leave and this article was written by a substitute columnist."
The author suggests that Apple should release a Rendezvous enabled VOIP app. It seems to me that he's almost hit the nail on the head. Imagine if all new Macs came with not only that app, but also a phone jack that you could plug your telephone into. Maybe partner with a long distance company to provide a .Mac internet-to-phone calling plan! The possibilities are wide open for a company who owns the hardware, the software, and has little bit of capital.
the real question is if this will dissapear into obscurity as JINI has (a similar technology using Java).
I work for a high-tech company, that must remain nameless, and in my work I talk to IT people on a regular basses across the U.S. I am astounded that most of these people even have jobs. I must however convey that every now and then I come across a person of the highest integrity and the ability to get the job done right. The sad part is, that this only happens in about one in twenty contacts, way too low of a number to have these people running our country. When they've been bad, I have no idea how the company is even running, but when they've been good, it's been crystal clear why they hold that position and are an asset to the computing world.
Food for thought, when ever I converse with the people who do a great job and run they're IT department efficiently, and Apple/Macintosh is part of the conversation, they have no problem with it. I quote in a conversation just last Friday, "in our company we do what ever it takes to get the job done in the most efficient and effective way, at this time Mac's are not part of our makeup, but if that's the direction we need to go in the future, then we will. I am loyal to my company, not Microsoft and certainly not Dell.
I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that "Pop-pop" is rendezvous-enabled. No need to "host" a game -- you just see each other, double-click to request a game.
What is interesting is that even though "normal host a game over IP" stuff still works, and is dead-easy to config, rendezvous seems to be relatively easy to drop into an app.
I was skeptical at first, but now I'm curious to see what neato things people will start to implement using rendezvous.
-- clvrmnky
What's the state of ZeroConf on Linux? How long before the major distributions have out-of-the-box support for Rendezvous? What would be required to make that happen?
Also, what exactly are the security implications? Obviously there are certain things you don't want to broadcast to just anybody! Rendezvous could make wardriving even easier...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This article is perfectible...
The first thing Apple shipped using rendez-vous was iChat. The iTunes demo refered to has yet to ship. (you can get the same fuctionnality using iCommune though).
Then, it's not that magical. It only works on one subnet, no way to manually add hosts to the resolver (at least not without serious hacking).
What's the deal with Safari helping you change your printer config? IF your printer advertises itself as a web serveur via Rendez-vous, AND you ask safari to display Rendez-vous-discovered bookmarks, then yes, you can directly access the printer's config pages. But the article does not make this clear at all. And this is different from auto-discovering printers, which I have yet to test since the old HPs we use are still go for a couple hundred thousand pages.
The wild guesses about distributed computing are still a pipe dream, Rendez-vous or not.
And at work, somehow, aliases of Rendez-vous-mountedd servers won't resolve after unmounting the server. Aliases made of servers mounted via AFP or Appletalk will resolve and mount the server.
Rendez-vous is cool, but it still has a long way to go before it is as polished (from a user POV) as the old Appletalk system.
a) Ignore
b) FUD
c) Embrace/extend/destroy
One important question: Does the Apple Public Source License (under which Rendezvous has been released) give Apple the ability to stop Microsoft from embracing/extending/destroying?
The big criticism of of AppleTalk was that it was too chatty (really, I think the issue was overblown, but that was the reputation it picked up). And yet, Rendezvous seems to be doing a lot of the same things that AppleTalk was doing.
Has Rendezvous really addressed the issue that got AppleTalk locked out of a lot of corporate networks? I wonder how it compares to AT.
I don't know about the most recent machines, but most ATA drives can be placed right into my PowerMac G4. I done it all be myself.
I can also pretty much put in any kind of memory I want, so long as it complies with the expected stats:
168 Pin PC100 SDRAM DIMM
Changing modems and NICs are easy on Macs too, assuming you're just putting them in the PCI slot. You just have to make sure you have a driver for them. It is true that sometimes Mac drivers do not exist for the cards, but as I understand this is also true in *nix. Sound cards aren't as easy to change but I have never in my 10+ years of using computers felt a need to change mine.
The reason I prefer Macs is...surprise, surprise! The ease of Hardware configuartion! I have used PCs for many things over the years, and consistently found that setting up new hardware can be difficult on PCs whereas it is generally a breeze on the Mac.
Honestly, it really is just familiarity that drives my preference. If I had been raised on Windows, no doubt I would use that instead.
However, I think that it's wrong to say that the appearance of a computer should have no say in your preference.
When I get my next car, my #1 priority is that it be a nice shade of blue. I really don't have any major preference beyond that, so long as it looks good, gets decent mileage and is fairly dependable. These days, a lot of cars fit that bill, but if it ain't blue, I ain't buying it. Is it a stupid criteria? Maybe. But it's a criteria nonetheless. A lot of people tie up their identity in their "look", and their computer might fall under that too.
If you were buying some piece of shit computer that looked pretty, then I'd agree that it was a stupid decision. But Apple computers aren't pieces of shit.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Since you can now run bash and other unix-y things on Macs, I've noticed there have been a lot more people at the 2002 LISA conference with Mac laptops than PC laptops. At the 2000 LISA conference, most people had Sony Vaios.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
The best demo of Rendezvous currently is iChat. I used it to wow one of my clients back in December when I upgraded them to Jaguar. They were always having to e-mail files back and forth to one another, blah blah blah.
Now, they just launch iChat when they log in in the morning, and boom-- instant, zero-config buddy list of everyone in the department. Need to ask someone a question? No more hollering over cubes or using the phone, a quick IM does the trick. Need to send someone a file? No more e-mailing or putting it on the server for the person who needs it. Drag it and drop it onto their name in the buddy list, and they'll get a dialog, "Person wants to send you file filename, do you wish to accept?"
The only people who think something like this is a bad thing are the ignorant ones. OF COURSE the devices that use Rendezvous will OFFER security and configurability options-- but the point is, you don't NEED them if all you want to do is get on a network and print to a networked printer. And you don't need to have silly little wizards walk you through the process. Rendezvous is the logical extension of Apple's whole 'it just works' philosophy, and is a wonderful modern incarnation of AppleTalk.
~Philly
Appletalk scales better than you think. We've had a network carrying traffic for thousands of appletalk-speaking devices, and we only very rarely have a network-related appletalk problem. However, its worth noting we have a router routing Appletalk, and the network is structured, not flat.
One thing that would make scaling RV better would be to route link-local addresses. We discussed trying this, but haven't tried it yet. This would allow for multiple 'RV' networks. In all probability, RV may not be ready for this kind of thing, but I don't know all there is to know about RV yet.
As for security, that always has been and always will be between the application layer and the network layer. Think about it: if your host and/or application is insecure, then it won't matter if you run ZeroConf/RV or not.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I've only read a bit about it, but as far as I understand it, Rendezvous systems only broadcast when they first come on line. They broadcast - 'Here I am and here are my services'. At that point all the other machines on the net cache that info. Then they broadcast a 'who else is out there' message' so that they can sync up with other machines that booted previously. If any new service comes on line after bootup, only the info for that new service is broadcast, and only once. So, once a network is set up, there are no 'continuous' broadcasts to clog the network. I believe a system can broadcast a message to tell the net to resync at any time, but that is not normally required and shouldn't happen very often.
One of the reasons why Apple systems became so popular in the 80's was because of this type of technology that they developed (i.e. AppleTalk Name Binding Protocol). A small publishing business could take a few Macs and a LaserWriter and plug them together using simple cabling and magically the printer just appeared in everyone's Chooser. No print servers required, no DNS, no DHCP. It all 'just worked' the way people needed and wanted it to work.
Since then, networks have gotten more pervasive, and the kinds of peripherals available are much greater and more sophisticated than just printers. So Apple learned from their mistakes (e.g. the chattiness of AT), updated for new types of peripherals and networking requirements and essentially developed (with other peer companies) a next generation of AppleTalk NBP, and they call it Rendezvous/ZeroConf.
Microsoft has simililar technology already in SMB. But most would agree that it is very hard to set up without significant technical expertise and of course it is proprietary, among other well documented limitations.
What is so annoying in threads like this is that so many people just make shit up with a predisposed biased perspective because Apple had something to do with it, and assume Apple can't do anything right. And then so many other people just run with the crap. They assume that some idiot made up some stupid protocol and that there was no thought process and no peer review. They never read the docs and talk about real information. They can't imagine that some smart people may have actually come up with a cool idea, thought about the potential issues and tradeoffs, and solved them as best as anyone could. Luckily there are a few people that try to comat the crap, but most just ignore the real information and continue on spouting the crap, because they really just want to bash.
Just wait a year or so. Rendezvous will be ubiquitous. And people will be benefitting from it and wonder how they ever lived without it. Apple will have lead the way, yet again. And Windows and Linux users will benefit from it just as much as Apple users.