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Networking (Apple) Businesses Apple Hardware

Apple Remote Desktop Released 52

Posted by pudge 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.
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Apple Remote Desktop Released More

Apple Remote Desktop Released

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  • No dual licenses? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by krugdm ( 322700 ) <slashdot&ikrug,com> on Thursday March 14, 2002 @07:01PM (#3165210) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Re:No dual licenses? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Praxxis ( 34799 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @07:56PM (#3165557) Homepage
      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/

      • Re:No dual licenses? (Score:5, Informative)

        by nachoman ( 87476 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:22PM (#3166240)
        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/ [att.com]

        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.
        • There is also a patch [noaa.gov] to use on the standard to make it compile under OSX. It only shows you X11 apps though (no aqua).

          There is also an alternative server [uklinux.net] and viewer [mac.com]. Theres a few viewers linked from the last link.

            1. It only shows you X11 apps though (no aqua).

            It seems you are confusing OSXVnc [osxvnc.com] with Xvnc for OS X [noaa.gov].

            OSXVnc allows you to control your main (and only) Aqua/Quartz display (thus allowing you to work with your machine just as if you were sitting in front of it, as with the Windows and classic MacOS versions). I haven't tried it, but it displays all the Aqua applications and should also display Classic and X11 applications running in the main display.

            Xvnc for MacOS X, on the other hand, is a patch for Xvnc that allows it to run under MacOS X. Xvnc allows you to create up to 99 X11 virtual desktops (with any X11 window manager) and run all your X11 applications (MacGimp, LyX, etc), but you can't run your Aqua applications in them.


      • This does look good, but should one be concerned that it hasn't been updated in nearly a year? Are there newer/better versions available? Has anyone taken the code and made it more feature-ful/stable/faster in the last year?
  • 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...)
  • 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
    • Did you mean ASR as in Apple Software Restore? [apple.com] ASR is a good thing.
      • 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

    • 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.

  • 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?

    • Re:Sounds like Timbuktu to me (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've been using the Classic one, Apple Network Administrator for some time now. The benefit it has over Timbuktu is that it's geared towards *administering* mac workstations. It's more than just a remote tool. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but the Apple one gives you more tools for that particular purpose.
  • 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!

  • Based on what I've read on Apple's site [apple.com] 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 [rdesktop.org] 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?
    • While I'm not sure about DHCP addresses, it would be pretty easy for the software to scan a range of IP addresses or a the local subnet for available clients, much like Timbuktu does.

      As for NAT, I imagine the admin computer has to live behind the router as well.

      Another possibility would be mapping the port(s) on the router to direct the ARD traffic to the client (great if you're at work and need to access your home computer, but not-so-great in the other direction).
  • 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>

    • As others have pointed out there are a number [versiontracker.com] of VNC options for OS X.

      • Re:Free & open competition (Score:4, Interesting)

        by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:56PM (#3166341) Homepage Journal
        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...

        • 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.

        • 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 [arstechnica.com] 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.
    • 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.

  • Very cool (Score:3, Funny)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:56PM (#3166130) Journal
    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.


  • Cost: $0
  • 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.

    • Re:Apple shouldn't charge at all... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's only free with XP Professional which itself lists for I believe $200 more per desktop. Actual cost I'm sure is less, but far from free. And it only does remote screen sharing and not all the other administrative functions. Not the same at all.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • Being a former employee at NeXT and Apple Enterprise yes this wonderful NXHost capability is a nice modern transition.

      Now if you'll recall NeXSTEP 3.x to Openstep 4.2 ran $799 per Single-user copy and Developer added an additional $4999.

      We won't even begin to mention the Hierarchical structure costs of WebObjects during the 2.x and 3.x days before the 4.x days of lower pricing arrived and server deployments costs of $50,000 unlimited dumped to $699.

      I would say this is a fair price. Afterall, the cost to run that Black Hardware or SPARC or even Gecko HP PA-RISC 700 based workstations was steep.

      Do I ever hope the folks in Cupertino roll out an Enteprise and Mid-level rackserver hardware set of options.

  • A Real Thin Client? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by smyle ( 108107 )
    <speculation>
    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>

  • How Secure is it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Oniros ( 53181 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @01:44PM (#3168992)
    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.
    • But this is perfect for me. I'm the only admin here and this gives me yet another reason to press for an upgrade to a good OS X capable machine to replace the decrepit 8150 I use now. And I need a laptop since they want me to travel this summer... I smell titanium!

    • well you only need one copmuter running osx. an admin copmuter, i a mnot currently running osx either, but found that to do administrative tasks, just restart. so simple. i have a couple teachers at the school that i a mworking at who are using osx all the time. so i am definitelly getting this software.

  • 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.

    • 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.

  • vnc (Score:1)

    by dewhite ( 412211 )
    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
    • 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.

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