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Apple Releases Remote Desktop 3
Dan Uricoli writes to tell us MacFixIt is reporting that today Apple computer has released remote desktop 3 " Some of the new or updated features include; a Remote Spotlight search, Dashboard widget, Curtain mode, user history reports, and more.
This is a full-fledged adminstrative tool.
You can observe multiple computers, send UNIX commands to Mac OS X clients. (3.0 is 10.3.9 and Tiger only if I remember right), install packages on multiple computers, copy files to multiple computers, shut down, wake up, sleep, restart, search for files, install packages.
And new in 3.0 (Deuce) is remote spotlight searching, user history reports, and some automator and applescripting for (albeit limited) automation. There's also some nice UI improvements, things like being able to save task templates and remote drag-and-drop (drag a file from the computer you're controlling onto your desktop and vice versa) and remote clipboard (copy-and-paste)
I use ARD 2.x with PCs with VNC installed all the time. Works great!
The administrator portion of ARD is not meant for the user that wants to control his Mac desktop from another computer on the same network. It is meant for the administrators of those Macs on the network. Not just to take control of the desktop remotely, but for generating hardware/software reports, pushing out files, removing files, performing mass installs of packages, etc...
The client portion of ARD is free. Beginning with 10.3, the client was included with the OS. It is also available for download from Apple's website. You do not need ARD administrator in oder to control a Mac that has the client enabled. In the client there is a setting to enable VNC access. After doing so, that computer can be controlled just like any other computer running a VNC server.
I do not work in a Mac only environment. But ARD has proven valuable enough for each member of our staff to have their own licensed copy. It saves quite a bit of time when trying to manage ~2000 Macs spread out over the nine buildings in our WAN.
I do agree that the $499 price is a bit much, considering the major incompatibilities between releases. The main problem is that all those running ARD administrator must be upgraded at the same time. The reason being that a v2 admin cannot fully interact with a v1 client. Once the v1 client is updated (free) to v2, a v1 admin cannot fully interact with the v2 client. Heck, a v2.2 and v2.1 don't even play nice together. I haven't used v3 of the admin yet, but I am not holding my breath for this to change.
For all of you who are shrieking about how outrageously overpriced ARD seems to be, compared to the "free" Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection or VNC, a few important points that nobody else has managed to mention:
VNC only does ONE thing: it allows remote control of machines graphically (screen sharing). In order to do any of the things one might wish to do to a remote machine, you have to SEE its desktop and perform those tasks as if you were actually sitting at the other computer. There is no way to perform tasks simultaneously on multiple remote computers, or to simply send instructions to the remote computer, except by controlling it and manually performing them using mouse/keyboard just as you would if you were sitting there. The VNC protocol is essentially bitmapped and everything being done - every frame of every screenful of data - has to be transmitted continuously, and all you get is a mirror image of the remote computer's screen.
RDC is functionally similar to VNC, with the following additions:
(1) In addition to screen sharing, you can also optionally map your printers and disks so that they appear on the remote computer while you're controlling it, so you could, for instance, print a work document and send it to your printer wherever you happen to be at, or put a software installation CD in your drive wherever you happen to be at, and then install that software onto the remote computer because it would also appear in its My Computer as an available drive. Likewise, you can map sounds on the remote computer to yours so that you can hear them.
(2) The RDC protocol is (for lack of a better term) vector-based, meaning that instead of transmitting the remote computer's screen image pixel-by-pixel, this is all performed using the RDC display language. To use an anology, if VNC is a bitmapped inkjet printer, RDC is a postscript printer. This makes the RDC protocol much faster, and remote control is significantly snappier and more responsive as a result. This also means that the desktop you are controlling does not need to be appear identically on both machines; consequently, if the remote computer has a giant widescreen monitor and you're connecting to it on a laptop with a much smaller screen, you don't have to choose between everything being scaled down in size to fit or having to scroll around in order to view the total desktop area; the placement of the taskbar and desktop icons will be adjusted to fit your screen's size.
Comparing RDC and VNC, they mostly have the same features and work the same way: whatever you need to accomplish on the remote computer has to be done by screen sharing and performing the tasks as if you were sitting at the other machine.
Apple Remote Desktop is a VASTLY different product.
First of all, yes, ARD does have a screen sharing capability, just like VNC and RDC, and apparently uses a VNC server as the underlying mechanism. The ARD client component has been a standard part of Mac OS X since Panther (10.3) and can be installed on any other machines free of charge. So any Mac can BE controlled remotely either right out of the box or by installing the client which doesn't have a cost. Any Mac can CONTROL another one with any VNC client, without purchasing any copies of the full ARD product for either machine. Of course, if you do have the full ARD product, it allows you to remotely control any other computer that either has the ARD client OR is running the VNC server, including *nix and Windows machines.
However, beyond screen sharing, ARD does a ton of other things that neither RDC or VNC do at all, period, including:
(1) A huge number of tasks can be performed on a remote computer simply by transmitting commands to that computer -- NOT by viewing its screen and then manually performing the task. This includes everything from shutting a machine down to installing software packages and executing UNIX commands and shell scripts. NONE of these tasks require you to actually view the remote computer's sc