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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Software Upgrades Utilities (Apple) Apple

Apple Remote Desktop 2 Released 69

Posted by pudge from the neato dept.
chasingporsches writes "Today Apple released Apple Remote Desktop 2, a major upgrade of their network management software. New features include new software management support, and VNC support, which allows you to control and view any VNC-enabled Mac, Windows, or UNIX-based machine. Unlimited client price is $499, 10-client $299. It's not available as a free upgrade, but you can get a discounted price if you purchased the previous version today or later."
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Apple Remote Desktop 2 Released More

Apple Remote Desktop 2 Released

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  • Up-To-Date Program (Score:5, Informative)

    by chlorophyl ( 753341 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:16PM (#9485948)
    For those of you who have or will purchase version 1.2 (version 2.0 won't ship till July) - you can get the new version for $19.95 by using these forms.

    Up-To-Date 10 Client [apple.com]
    Up-To-Date Unlimited Client [apple.com]

    • Re:Up-To-Date Program (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jeffehobbs ( 419930 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:23PM (#9486046) Homepage
      ...which is kind of bullshit for existing owners, because oddly enough I had purchased it before today and there's no even slightly discounted upgrade path whatsoever. It looks like I have to fork out $500 again, which seems to be a reoccurring theme from the New Apple.

      Even $50-100 off for existing owners would have been a nice bone to throw.

      Boo Apple thumbs down hiss boo.

      ~jeff
      • Yes I agree it's kind of odd for an "up-to-date" program. For the OS, you can usually qualify for the up-to-date if you purchased a version before the new one was released. But essentially with this, you are only qualified if you buy the old version afterwards.

        Hopefully this isn't a sign of "up-to-date" programs to come, especially with Tiger on the horizon.

        • Actually, Apple's OS Up-to-Date programs have always been similar. If you buy the old version on or after the date the new product is announced, you get to use the up-to-date program...if you buy the old version before the new one was announced, they don't feel sorry for you. It was this way with Jaguar and Panther, and may be the same for Tiger, then.
        • No, the up-to-date programs are only ever officially for people who bought a product after the new one was announced. They usually extend unofficially a few months into the past. I bought a PowerBook last year with OS X 10.2. 10.3 was released about a month later, and I got an upgrade for the price of postage just by filling in the correct form, in spite of the fact the offer didn't extend that far back. Other people found the same, including some who had bought their machines a couple months earlier.

      • Re:Up-To-Date Program (Score:2, Redundant)

        by Photar ( 5491 )
        Its not like your old one is going to break.
        Additionally, it has been known for quite some time that Apple was preparing a new release of Remote Desktop. Its not their fault you bought RD 1 late in the product cycle.

        I say it was a poor purchasing move on YOUR part.
        • How insightful. Blame the customer for being poorly informed. Your statement would make sense if this was the first time Apple did this sort of thing. I used to have to monitor the spy sites who would watch the plastic production facilities for discontinuing work on current products to know there was a new one on the way from Apple.

          Another example is their Operating System releases. No direct upgrade path from Jaguar to Panther, and the same looks to be true from Panther to Tiger. Oh sure, every year

          • Re:Up-To-Date Program (Score:5, Insightful)

            by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @02:23PM (#9487397) Journal
            How insightful. Blame the customer for being poorly informed.

            Yes, I will. If people are going to buy a product they need to be well informed about that product, including any planned or upcoming releases. Be intelligent and take responsibility for your decisions. It's not like it was a secret that new stuff was due.

            Your statement would make sense if this was the first time Apple did this sort of thing.

            Actualy, the more it happens, the more it makes sense that you should be paying attention to product cycles.

            I used to have to monitor the spy sites who would watch the plastic production facilities for discontinuing work on current products to know there was a new one on the way from Apple.

            Or, you could realize that Apple has a ~6 month product release cycle and not buy new machines without checking up on when the next one's are due.

            Another example is their Operating System releases. No direct upgrade path from Jaguar to Panther, and the same looks to be true from Panther to Tiger.

            WTF?

            Oh sure, every year or two let's sink another $120+ USD into a new OS that isn't more then a glorified SP with a few goodies thrown in to make me giggle.

            I see you've subscribed to redhat.
            • Yes, I will. If people are going to buy a product they need to be well informed about that product, including any planned or upcoming releases. Be intelligent and take responsibility for your decisions. It's not like it was a secret that new stuff was due.

              Informed my ass. Apple keeps new releases completely secret. If a IT director has to check spymac.com on a daily basis to avoid being screwed, then Apple deserves what it gets.
          • If you think that the improvements that have been added are only worthy of a "service pack" version number, then it shouldn't bother you to not buy it. However, from 10.2 to 10.3 we got fast user switching, better finder, better network browser, expose, file vault, font book.... I'd say it's worth it. We'll see with Tiger.
          • Then keep on using your old versions. I know folks still using 10.1 and 10.2. I'd certainly upgrade to 10.2, but 10.3... If it's just a glorified SP, then skip it. No one is making you buy a new OS- nor are they making you upgrade your ARD. If the old one works... USE IT! It has nothing to do with being poorly informed. Since when has Apple had evil applications that expired when a new version came out, forcing you to upgrade whether or not you want to or have the money, why would you assume they would st
          • And mods- this isn't flamebait. Just because you don't agree with it it doesn't mean it's a troll or flame.
          • everyones comments have been well stated and I admit that I was wrong.

            Btw, thx mod for making my parent post flamebait-I guess any opposing point of view is flamebait to someone with the likes of you! ;)
      • It looks like I have to fork out $500 again, which seems to be a reoccurring theme from the New Apple.

        Unplug it, throw it out, and buy a new one. Welcome to Steve Jobs' Apple.

        OK, mod me down, I can take it, but you know it's the truth.

      • Re:Up-To-Date Program (Score:3, Informative)

        by sakusha ( 441986 )
        I suppose you were even more pissed off to discover that ARD 1.2 Client was rolled into MacOS X 10.3 for free.

      • Re:Up-To-Date Program (Score:4, Insightful)

        by burns210 ( 572621 ) <maburns@gmail.com> on Monday June 21, 2004 @07:17PM (#9490166) Homepage Journal
        It isn't like version you already bought won't work... You bought this software knowning its abilities and decided to pay the money for it. Would it have been nice for Apple to have given you a discount? Yes, absolutely, just about any discount is 'nice'... Do you deserve to bitch and moan because you no longer have the latest ang greatest? No.

  • Dream of Administrator? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cyfer2000 ( 548592 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:27PM (#9486083) Journal
    Apple Remote Desktop lets you execute UNIX shell scripts or commands on any number of your client systems at once.

    Is this a dream or nightmare of an administrator?

    • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:55PM (#9486346)
      There are lots of tools that provide this sort of thing for a Unix box, both free and commercial. Hell, rolling your own with expect and ssh is simple; I've done it several times.
      Why would a pretty GUI on top of this sort of thing be a nightmare?
      • abulaifa wrote:
        >
        > There are lots of tools that provide this sort of
        > thing for a Unix box, both free and commercial.
        >
        I agree, remote admin tools are pretty thick on the ground. However, using VNC as the connection is kinda neat. (Or has anyone done this before?)
        Any idea how many or which ports/services you need to have open on a remote UNIX (i.e., Solaris) client to run, say a shell script this way?

        • Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)

          by abulafia ( 7826 )
          Any idea how many or which ports/services you need to have open on a remote UNIX (i.e., Solaris) client to run, say a shell script this way?

          If you are referring to "using VNC" when you say "this way", you need 5900+N open, where N is the VNC server you're running, open to run it natively.

          Alternately you can tunnel it over, for instance, ssh, and then you only need 22 open.

          To be really sneaky, you can tunnel SSH over DNS [oblomovka.com], in which case you need 53/UDP open. (PPT slides: http://www.doxpara.com/bo2004.p

    • #!/bin/ksh command=$1 for hostname in $(cat hosts.txt) do echo "ssh $hostname $command" ssh $hostname $command done

      Please make cheques payable to...

  • You gotta wonder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by foidulus ( 743482 ) * on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:40PM (#9486209)
    what else Mr. Jobs is planning to reveal at the WWDC. We already got a few updates(G5 speed bump, upgrade to the remote control desktop). Besides Tiger, what else is there? New displays, while interesting, aren't really that groundbreaking(though I could be wrong), a G5 iMac? Probably not all that interesting for developers.
    There really isn't a whole lot of chance that there will be a G5 powerbook, so could Steve be holding back on something really groundbreaking?
    Lets use this post for pointless speculation!
    • I am hoping for an update to XCode. With Code Warrior no longer supporting Java and the other Java tools have their own issues, it would be nice to see XCode support Java as well as it supports Objective-C.

      The odds are slim but one can dream!

      • Re:You gotta wonder (Score:4, Interesting)

        by foidulus ( 743482 ) * on Monday June 21, 2004 @12:52PM (#9486322)
        Well, a new XCode is rumored to be part of Tiger. At think secret [thinksecret.com] they have a rumor that XCode 1.5 has been seeded. You can download version 1.2, I haven't yet(because I am happy with it's C support, and I use Eclipse for Java) from Apple for free, I'm not really sure of what the extra features are.
        I haven't messed around with the distributed build and fix and continue features of XCode(which seem to be the most interesting), but after I get my G5(currently only have an iBook :( ) I think I will try playing with those.
        But yeah, for the time being you are probably better off running Eclipse versus XCode for Java. While XCode "works" under Java(and does automatically set the look and feel to be Aqua), there aren't that many features.
    • Don't forget AirTunes/Airport Express. My pointless speculation is that the next generation iPod will have WiFi so it functions as (among other things) a remote control for iTunes on your G5 in the other room with the 250-gig music library ....
      • Oh yeah, forgot about that one! Too bad I already bought an airport(a non-apple one though, in Japan iodata sells routers/access cards with the aiport name, Apple's wireless stuff is called Air-Mac) or I would have bought this, not too much more than a standard 802.11g router, plus you get features. As for remote control, you can throw together some nice web based stuff if you have a laptop, but it's still not very nice. You can also control it w/ a bluetooth phone, but you have to be within bluetooth ra

      • Re:You gotta wonder (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Not a bad idea but why the hell would they announce it at a DEVELOPERS conference?? Last year they announced the G5 because it was a huge step for nearly all developers on the Mac platform. Having good information about the forthcoming system was very beneficial to software and hardware developers alike.

        But something like this for the iPod is best suited for a consumer-oriented event. There's very little that can currently be done in the way of iPod development by 3rd parties (Apple seems to keep to a few

  • The binoculars (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Fulkkari ( 603331 )

    Is it just me, but the binoculars (logo) and the black box makes me think of some kind of suspicious and/or illegal activity (spying, voyeurism, intrusion of private rights). A white box would have been better, because it is associated with goodness and cleanness while black is all that dirty stuff. Not a very good choice, huh?

    Oh, well. That aside, Apple Remote Desktop is maybe the coolest administration program I've seen. Very impressive. Nobody should stop from buying it because of the box it is packaged

    • A white box would have been better, because it is associated with goodness and cleanness while black is all that dirty stuff.
      Be careful; symbols have cultural bias, and Apple has an international clientele. White is associated with death in Korea, for instance, not "goodness and cleanness." You associate white with that, but that's hardly a universal.
      • Be careful; symbols have cultural bias

        Yes. I realized it was stupid of me. My point was just that the logo reminded me of some "Big Brother" watching my every move. Not a big deal, but I just felt like posting on this story.

  • chicken of the vnc, x2osx , tightvnc (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm sure someone can tell me...
    whats wrong with vnc programs like osxvnc [redstonesoftware.com] exactly? I've only ever used them on a lan myself but i've even shared mouse & keyboard using X2OSX (like x2x or x2vnc but you've guessed it.. ) And certainly we've had a mac around that people have VNC'd into before just using tightvnc or whatever from their linux or windows boxen.

    theres probably something... i'd just like to know what the feature is you guys are paying for? ...its not that remote shellscript thing is it beca

    • Re:chicken of the vnc, x2osx , tightvnc (Score:4, Informative)

      by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Monday June 21, 2004 @02:32PM (#9487518) Homepage Journal
      What's wrong with VNC?

      Nothing, except that it's slower than a dead snail in treacle on a cold day. Those 24-bit Aqua bitmaps don't compress well.

      • 24-bit Aqua (Score:3, Informative)

        by dad2viii ( 715790 ) *
        The point about graphics hogging bandwidth is valid, but ARD is configurable to allow 16-bit (both 1.2 ad 2.0) and even 8-bit graphics (verified only for 1.2), too. Apple advises minimizing animation in the UI and otherwise to make the most of the link.
    • This is wrong:

      They don't make use of Rendezvous, so it get's a big pain in the ass if your clients use DHCP on the LAN.

      And Remote Desktop does much more than VNC. You can send files, the admin can display his/her screen on several other people's screens (great for teaching), look at several remote screens at the same time, force reboot machines, put remote machines to sleep, wake machines up from sleep, etc.

  • SQL Question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by breadiu ( 706188 )
    I work for an orginaztion that is trying to implement an asset management system, and I know that Microsoft's SMS [microsoft.com] software stores its data in a SQL server. Apple says RD2 can "generate reports on data stored in the built-in SQL database." They also link [apple.com] to PostgreSQL. Does anyone know if it is possible to export RD2's data to a MS SQL server?
  • Is there anyone here who has used Apple's Remote Desktop as well as the windows RDP system and VNC? I've been very happy with Windows RDP, though there is the obvious bummer of it being served only on Windows AFAIK. It is incredibly fast, certainly replacing VNC on the windows machines I need to access remotely.

    So, where does Apple's RD stand? Better than VNC but slower than Win rdesktop?

    • Re:What's this like compared to VNC? Win rdesktop? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ARD and Windows RDP really have two completely different targeted uses. ARD is ultimately for system administration, similar to VNC, Timbuktu, or pcAnywhere (but with more/different features). Windows RDP is mainly used to deploy applications to users with those applications running on the server instead of on the client machine.

      FWIW, I hate how slow VNC is, and ARD is faster (at least the current rev), but it seems to operate under UDP and is kind of irritating over lower-speed wan links. In terms of o
      • Windows RDP is mainly used to deploy applications to users with those applications running on the server instead of on the client machine.

        I can't say I've read up on whatever marketing material MS has, but that really isn't strictly the case. A single-user RDP server comes with XP and is used by a good number of savvy XP users. Nor can Win RDP export individual applications ala Citrix or X11, at least not how I've seen it configured; though if one can do that, I'd love to know how, as it'd be darn useful

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