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Apple Releases Rendezvous for Linux, Java, Windows
mblase writes "Apple released yesterday a developers preview of their Rendezvous technology for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Java. Rendezvous is an open protocol which uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically find each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers."
Reader xxdarkxxmatterxx adds a link to a story at Macworld about the release."
Umm... Is it just me, or does this seems to be a little bit of a shot across the bow of Microsoft? Here we have Apple giving something to the community that will add some seriously cool networking capabilities, capabilities the likes of which have traditionally fallen within the realm of the OS itself. At the very least this takes away the ability for MS to use something like this for a "New in Longhorn!" marketing point.
I can't imagine that this makes MS particularly happy, but there's certainly not much they can do about it. Rendevous is seriously a cool technology, and I'm glad Apple decided to release it before MS came up with something similar but incompatible (and, of course, under their control).
Admittedly this argument could be made for Solaris, etc. But I would imagine those communities welcome this addition, whereas I would imagine MS to be a bit colder to the idea.
In any event, kudos to Apple.
maybe I'm just reading this (and the info) wrong but is Apple just saying: "No DNS/DHCP/Directory Server needed, because everything is a DNS/DHCP/Directory server!"?
Am I confused (most likely) or does that just seem a little silly?
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I cant wait for my network to fill with UDP broadcasts!
This is basically how system-linked xboxes work.
It's cute for little networks that consist of an apple, a printer and an ipod, but it doesn't scale well.
I like my dhcp, that I can control based on MAC addresses.
But kudos to Apple for opening this source. They really had to, you know, one thing they desperately have to overcome is the awkwardness of mixing Mac's and PCs on the same network.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I have a feeling this will be implemented into standard Linux use real fast. Having this technology for every platform will really help portability of hardware I think too. This is going to be another one of those things that Windows implements but does it horribly unstable so no one can really use it.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
DHCP is real useful when you don't have a DHCP server on the network....yeah....uh-huh
given this is one of the fundamental technologies used for discovery and saring data in itunes, i am surprised it took them so long to release it. It also means that people can write more itunes compatible players (hint to all those linux itunes knockoffs). compatible in the sense that it will appear as a avaiable share and will see other shares on the network. Now all we need is an icaht compatible chat client so that people on a lan do not need a central server to IM :).
It will also be interesting to see how this is applied node discovery in existing p2p systems like gnutella
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Can't speak for the grandparent's logic, but mine is simply that I cast my money towards vendors that encourage openly (and completely, and unambiguously) specified procotols. It effects me because the world is a nicer place when my machine can communicate nicely with the machines of others. It's not that difficult a concept. Some call it "voting with your consumer dollars".
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
How about YOU implement DHCP, if it is so vital to you? Mr. Jobs DID just open the code base, after all, in part for that very reason.
I mean honestly - you whine that it needs to be open so you can code the changes you need, and then you whine when it's finally opened because it doesn't have the features coded for you in advance?
Wowzers. You could be correct. They just said "hey, check out AirPort Express. You can play iTunes all over the house". And then the dandy new giant displays...not bad for watching TV and such on, eh? And here's a funky little thought...the little widgets that will be released with Tiger. Sure, a nice little calculator here, an iTunes controller there...hey wait...it can control iTunes, maybe a controller for a TV tuner...and your TiVo...and...
Speculation...sure. But we're talking about Steve Jobs and his "digital hub" idea that he announced YEARS ago which finally seems to be coming to fruition. He's getting developers excited about the OS with the widgets, with Rendezvous, etc...lookout MacWorld!
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Which had nothing to do with Appletalk (a bundle of protocols) but a lot to do with Localtalk (a hardware standard).
I wouldn't call UPNP "superior" by any stretch of the imagination.
Comparisons have been done. I'd rather have low traffic and better service separation vs the "use-http-for-everything" strategy.
Apple continues to surprise me with their interest in designing software that is compatible for the Windows platform in addition to their own (and in this case, also Unix and GNU/Linux). While from Microsoft, they have typically steered to their flagship products and rarely ported them (with the exception of Office and IE) to other OSes.
Even as a frequent Windows user I have great respect for Apple and find their software for Windows actually crashes less then Microsoft made software(!). In addition, they are rarely so deeply entrenched in the OS that if you wanted ot change extension preferences it doesn't fuss as much.
I'd be interested in trying out this new technology and I'm sure it will make it big hit on all network sizes. Good thing for Apple that they released the specs before MS could claim any competing service! Let's all give some positive input to see this software hit new limits!"Both of then do support the IPv4 link local address (169.x.x.x) and thats it"
I don't know if you are saying that's all that is the same between them, or if that's the only IP range (which isn't even right - it's 169.254.x.y) that they support.
I have Rendezvous working on three different networks of different scales, all of which are using DHCP to allocate addresses in the 10.254.254.x, 192.168.50.x, and 172.18.x.y ranges respectively. I can go to a Mac and try to connect to afp://server.local on any of those networks, and it gives me an authentication dialog.
MDNS and DNS based service discovery are not bound to any IP range, as they are layer 4 services, and IP is layer 3.
Link-local addressing only exists in Rendezvous for when you need it, not for a requirement.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Face it, an x86 port of MacOS is never going to happen. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. Most people don't buy Macs because of thier hardware, MacOS is the selling point, the hardware is just an expensive tax that you need to pay in order to get MacOS. If they ported it to the Intel platform suddenly people could pirate MacOS and run it without paying the hardware tax.
Apples bottom line wouldn't look very attractive
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
After all why would they need Rendevous on non-mac platformsm, unless they were planning on selling a networking device that hooks up to the home network?
- Because in the world of protocols, your "standard" isn't actually a standard unless you can get other people to follow it. Making it easy for others to follow you gives you influence the industry.
- Because Apple would rather live in an open world than in a Microsoft world. (Don't forget, Rendezvous is *not* an Apple invention. It's Apple's name for "zero-conf," and Apple never claimed to have invented it. Apple just made it popular.)
- Because Apple's not selling Rendezvous anyway. They're selling computers, and people will buy Apple computers if they play nicely with others, and if it's easy for others to play nicely with them.
Well it's actually more than that. It's the control over the hardware and the software that gives Apple the it just works vibe. Apple only has to qualify and QC a small subset of hardware, if Apple opens up to the PC world with the myriad of hardware combinations available, there is no way they could produce the same user experience.
zeroconf enabled DHCP server can point you in the right direction. Zeroconf outside of local networks makes no sense. When you ask for all the local printers, you don't want to get every one on the entire frickin internet.
For enterprise wide networks, you zeroconf/rendezvous acquire a DHCP server and a Directory server. From there, they will point you to the rest of the services in your enterprise *outside* of your local network.
Correct multicast switching is not a problem. Do you personally mess with something that intentionally messes up the broadcast address in TCP/IP?
This is a general purpose service *discovery* protocol. It doesn't define how different devices talk to each other, merely provides a way for them to discover each other's existance.
Knowing another service exists is different from being granted the rights to use that service.
Stuart Cheshire, the guy that first proposed Zeroconf and started the ZeroConf group did so as an Apple employee on Apple's dime. I think it's fair to say that it is an Apple technology that they opened up as a standard from the very beginning. This announcement is just that Apple is opening up it's own in-house implementation of an open standard that also started in their labs.
Most people don't buy Macs because of thier hardware, /.izens use iBooks/Powerbooks with Linux on them. Why? Because Apple's laptops are a nice piece of hardware. They have decent, if not overwhelming performance stats, they automatically go to sleep when you close the lid, they look nice, certain models don't weigh a whole lot for all the features you get, and they have long battery life.
You would be surprised. Outside of the eMac(which is basically just a machine to get OS X), all other apple hardware has some definite selling points.
A portion of
The iMac has a small form factor, it is very quiet(key among recording studios), and it is sleek, stylish, and dare I say almost sexy. Currently the iMac is a horrible deal, but I would bet on a performance boost and/or price drop beforre back to school season this year.
And I'm not going to start a G5 vs. AMD vs. Intel flamewar, but there are people who believe that the powermacs give the most bang for the buck(but then there are people who disagree, you make your own conclusions)
So Apple hardware(outside of the eMac of course) isn't all that bad. If you are going on pure performance per dollar then maybe it doesn't look great, but keep in mind people have a lot of different needs for their computers.
Look at Solaris on x86. It is very much the poor cousin of the SPARC version, because Sun can control the hardware for the SPARC version and ensure that it is thoroughly tested. Solaris x86 also runs reasonably well on Sun supplied x86 kit, for the same reason. Beyond that, you'd better make sure you pay close attention to the hardware compatibility lists (and, of course, you can't run any SPARC-Solaris binary apps, which are probably the reason you went with Solaris in the first place). OS X on x86 would share another disadvantage with Solaris on x86 - multithreading. Apps on the Mac usually make quite heavy use of multithreading, which is something that x86 does very badly (i.e. context switches on PowerPC are much less costly than x86), so the x86 version would almost certainly run noticeably slower. This would lead people to claim that Apple had released a `crippled' version of the software to drive demand for Macs.
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He's probably talking about the fact that Apple doesn't offer the specs for the hardware inside the iPod so that he can run Linux on it and listen to Ogg... this is just my guess, but it's probably correct.
Mind, if he had looked at an iPod for a few minutes, he would have noticed that the guts of the iPod run on technology from PortalPlayer
Apple can't open what it doesn't own...
At any rate... you best remember that this is the same type of person who would likely complain that they can't get easy access to the instruction set documentation for the processor in their stereo receiver.... ie .... best just ignore him.
If I had the points left, I'd mod him down as a troll.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
We have a couple of hundred Macs and I can see a lot of them coming up and going down just by turning on my Rendezvous enabled iChat. They have to broadcast when they make any changes. Add a couple of hundred happy Windows users into this (running god only knows what kind of Rendezvous enabled apps) and we have even more wasted bandwith. I am an old school "save the bandwith for real work" person. Your comment about wireless was something I hadn't thought about, all our APs are indeed 11b. //sigh
Definitly not hardware controlled. I was annoyed when my powerbook running yellow dog linux wouldn't go to sleep when I closed the lid.
Mount an iPod and have a look in /Volumes// sometime with Terminal.app . It's all there...
sigs are for fools and trolls. no signature is *always* appropriate. you should turn them off in your preferences.
There must be something going on behind the scenes where Apple and Microsoft have made a deal to keep their operating systems on separate platforms. If Apple released an OS for the intel platform, Microsoft could probably easily release a version of Windows for Mac hardware. That would be a head-on confrontation worth watching.
Ironically, when Pink came out, IBM still had leverage with OS/2, so they still had some influence over the intel platform. If Apple and IBM both adopted Pink, they would probably have had an opportunity to curb Microsoft's dominance, compared to the chances of that happening today. Apple probably didn't release Rhapsody for intel because they knew it was too late. Maybe they just used it as a bargaining chip, the way Microsoft uses the threat of discontinuing Office for the Mac.
It's a shame to see corporate politics get in the way of producing better software. Pink, Rhapsody, Java... all the promises of cross-platform programs have never happened. Consumers should be able to go into a store and buy an application that would work on any platform, but as usual, benefits are skewed in favor of the corporatioins rather than the consumer.