7 ms·

10.7 Lion allows multi-user remote computing

85 points by solipsist 16y ago

iuguy 16y ago
It seems like Apple have discovered Terminal Services, or the basic networking functionality in X11. Hopefully it'll be much shinier than X11 and less restrictive than Remote Desktop Protocol.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  I imagine it uses Apple Remote Desktop, which is apple's own version of RDP. I don't know much about it but it works pretty damn well for me. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Apple_remote_desktop https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Apple_remote_...
  - nettdata 16y ago
    It's actually using a VNC based application, and uses the VNC protocol. I can "remote desktop" into my desktop using a simple VNC app on my iPad. It seems that they've provided the option of creating a new VNC server/desktop process when connecting in, rather than just attaching to the existing and current desktop. Very cool.
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      For the record, this has been a feature of VNC/X forever; in fact, it's harder to run VNC on an extant X session than it is to just start a new one specifically for VNC. It's just a little annoying when Apple finally integrates tech that's 20+ years old and gets heralded as being "ahead of the curve" or "very cool" for doing it.
      - sjs 16y ago
        It doesn't matter how old the tech is. Apple is bringing it to the masses and nobody has done that before. Why? As you said it's 20 years old.
        cookiecaper 16y ago
        Puh-leese. Apple is "bringing it to the masses", where I guess masses qualifies as < 10% of the desktop market, only because Apple has larger marketshare than anyone who has done it before. This stuff has been part of every Linux distribution for years. People have even written shiny interfaces for it, see remmina or vinagre or any other remote desktop management suite (and yes, these ship with many distributions by default). That OS X has more marketshare than Linux shouldn't automatically make OS X more "cool" on its own merits; after all, Windows has 8-9x as much marketshare as OS X, but I don't see a bunch of threads pop up lavishing MS with praise every time they integrate a new feature into Windows. I don't think Apple should be hailed as super cool and great by technical people just for finally getting around to doing something that has been done thousands of times before for decades. I can understand an ignorant person thinking a feature that's not found in Windows makes Apple "cool", but it's silly for anyone browsing Hacker News to ascribe a bunch of street cred to Apple for this. It's a nice feature and I'm glad to see it go in, it's nice that Apple is adding nice features, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend like Apple is the coolest kid on the block just because they finally got around to writing a semi-normal implementation of VNC, just as my mind wasn't blown when Apple finally integrated workspaces after 15-20+ years of availability on all other respectable WMs. It's more of an "about time" than an "Apple is consummately cool".
        sjs 16y ago
        I appreciate that the pieces have been around for a while but the fact that you think tools such as remmina[1] are appropriate for the masses indicates that you don't quite get it. One has to type in a "server" to connect to a remote machine in remmina, and at that point the average user is already lost. If you think I'm giving Apple "street cred", whatever that means, you've misunderstood me. If you think I'm hailing Apple as "the coolest kid on the block" indicates that you may not be looking at this situation objectively. Please don't put words into my mouth. By bringing something to the masses I mean making it accessible to less technical users. It's available and usable by anyone, just because OS X doesn't have 80% market doesn't make it any less available. I really feel that you have misunderstood me on many levels. It's apparent that you're tired of people hailing Apple for no good reason but I have not done so, so don't take it out on me. I'm not a blind Apple fanatic. [1] http://remmina.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml http://remmina.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml
  - spitfire 16y ago
    You know, you just gave me a brainwave. With server being integrated with client, Apple may be integrating ALL their server products - ARD included. Wouldn't that be cool. Now we just need a nice 1U server again. Now what do they do with xsan and final cut server? I can see FCS being integrated with final cut studio. Maybe even in a distributed fashion (owww git for studios!) But I'm not sure what they could do with xsan. Anyways, we shall see what happens, so far I'm liking the look of things.
- ammmir 16y ago
  it would be nice to get something equivalent to X11 forwarding that would work with all native Mac apps.
- bad_user 16y ago
  What do you mean? X11 obviously copied Apple's innovation. EDIT: every time there's a talk about Android versus iOS there are people complaining about how Google stole interface elements from iOS. This in spite of the fact that no software is revolutionary and every idea is based on previous art; even the interface on iOS. I am just making a joke here based on repeated evidence that even Apple (indeed an innovative software and hardware company) copies / gets inspiration from others and has done so repeatedly. Sorry,
  - chc 16y ago
    Snark is frowned upon on Hacker News. It's generally low in signal and often drags the tone of the conversation down, so it's part of HN culture to downvote snarky comments.
    - trotsky 16y ago
      I'm fairly sure that current HN culture is to downvote snark that you disagree with.
      - vacri 16y ago
        I've noticed that with comments of my own - where I've made a sarcastic comment, then said 'kidding aside now, real comment' and been heavily downmodded. Normally this wouldn't rankle, but in the same threads are far more sarcastic comments with zero content happily getting modded up, sometimes quite strongly. Another time I was arguing against a guy about language, and despite his position being offered in good faith and with a degree of detail in his argument, he was modded into the negs. Comments do seem to do better here when appealing to emotion and popularity rather than internal merit.
    - runinit 16y ago
      Really? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268818 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268818
- trezor 16y ago
  Hopefully it'll be much shinier than X11 and less restrictive than Remote Desktop Protocol. Out of curiosity... In what ways do you find the Remote Desktop Protocol restrictive? Does the protocol itself limit what can be done? From an end-user point of view it seems very flexible and powerful, while lightweigth and responsive.
  - vacri 16y ago
    I'm not an expert in remote protocols, but I also find it snappy. Perhaps the point that for non-server versions it locks out the local console while it's running is the restrictive part?
  - iuguy 16y ago
    Vacri hit the nail on the head - the locking out users on the desktop combined with the licensing restrictions on the server make it a tad too restrictive out of the box. Having said that, when properly configured and licenced Terminal Services is freaking awesome.
    - trezor 16y ago
      Ah right. I thought you meant there were some technical/architectural limitations with the protocol itself and didn't even think about limitations added on top of it via licensing. Thanks for clearing it up.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
voxcogitatio 16y ago
I'm glad to hear that they've catched up to the original UNIX. :)
- rhizome 16y ago
  It's a tough row to hoe, having NIH Syndrome.
- yoda_sl 16y ago
  I would rather say that it is more OS X returning back to its roots where NeXTStep/OpenStep use to have such capability when all the rendering was done with the PostScript built in server. These feature disappeared from OS X, so it is more like a welcome back with a user friendly UI. Back then you usually had to use some terminal command line to make ir happen.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    Amazing that this is the only comment so far that points out this wasn't even Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, because their own OS already had this feature (Display PostScript remoting) twenty years ago. At least until some architect marking their territory was allowed to wilfully break it and replace it with ... nothing.
guptaneil 16y ago
This is going to be absolutely perfect for educational use. Imagine a university computer lab that lets you remotely login from home after the lab has closed to access all the expensive, specialized software the school has already purchased. I know my university was trying to set something like this up, but couldn't find any user-friendly way of doing this.
- jonknee 16y ago
  I doubt there are a bunch of user accounts on a uni computer lab Mac, so this wouldn't be much different than regular screen sharing. It's also still a mess to choose which computer to try, doubly so if you're on an outside network.
  - ben1040 16y ago
    I doubt there are a bunch of user accounts on a uni computer lab Mac But they could always just throw a beefy machine in a closet and have it connect to the same network directory service that the lab machines grab their user accounts from. My old university did the same thing, but did so nearly a decade ago with a Windows terminal server.
  - guptaneil 16y ago
    Each computer on campus is connected to a user directory, so students can login to any computer with their individual student account. I'm assuming that Lion's multiple login feature will work with networked accounts.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      Perhaps, but it's not going to work well to have 100 students logged into the same computer. I think the home example given in the article is a much more likely outcome than a university setting.
      - guptaneil 16y ago
        That's true, it may have to be limited to 10-20 simultaneous logins at a time (or whatever the machine can reasonably handle), but that is still better than 0. Considering my university has a relatively small student body, this would be definitely be a sufficient solution for us.
emehrkay 16y ago
My job wants to use a third party product to do the exact same thing. http://www.aquaconnect.net/mac-terminal-server.php http://www.aquaconnect.net/mac-terminal-server.php This is a great addition to the os. Imagine your house having one [desk|lap]top and a few tablets or phones. Hop on vnc on your docked tablet while someone is using the computer and you're as good as using the desktop. I see this as a move to push both os x and the i[pad|phone] as viable business devices. This is possible with windows right? I vaguely remember using remote desktop a few jobs ago, but I dont remember if it was one account logged in at a time.
- seabee 16y ago
  The server versions of Windows allow that, it's called Remote Desktop Services (or Terminal Services pre-2008). Way better than using VNC, probably because it hooks all the window control drawing on the server and does it on the client instead, rather than sending over raw bitmaps for buttons/textboxes etc.
- cschneid 16y ago
  This is gonna make my Mac Pro way cooler as a central computing "mainframe" for my house...
jpr 16y ago
Is it just me or are 99% of tech "news" and "innovation" just reinvention of stuff already found in UNIX, Lisp etc. decades ago?
- nkassis 16y ago
  It's not just you. Every new thing that's any good is usually a retake on something already though about in the early computer times. But some of the implementation back then were crude. With the reinvention there is usually a rethinking and polishing.
- ugh 16y ago
  No need for the quotation marks. It’s news because you can’t do it with out-of-the-box OS X right now. It’s not innovation (the UI might be, I don’t know) but the article doesn’t claim it is. Technology, however beautiful, often doesn’t matter if many people are unable to use it. It’s news when said technology might become more accessible in the future.
- iuguy 16y ago
  It's not new. The way I see it is as in the film industry, it's a reboot. It's shinier, it may lack the depth and revelation of the original, but what it lacks in that area it makes up for in special effects and ease of consumption. Consider Sendmail vs Exim, or Tron vs Tron:Legacy. Both are essentially the same thing, but one is infinitely easier on the eye.
- noonespecial 16y ago
  It more or less all started with Doug Engelbart giving the "mother of all Demos" in 1968. It's all been catch-up since that event.
- gvb 16y ago
  It's not just you, Henry Spencer reportedly said it (first?) in 1987. "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-2
kaffeinecoma 16y ago
I'd like to see a remote login implementation for OSX that allows you to login remotely, and also adjusts the screen size to match that of the actual physical device you're on. The existing implementation of screen sharing is frustrating for me to use because I'm often remoting in from a 15" Macbook to a Macpro tower with two heads @ 1920x1200 each. So the options are scale to 1) down the display (slow, fuzzy) or 2) scroll all over the place. An ideal solution would be to let me log into a virtual display that matches the size of my physical remote terminal. In other words, make the server think it has a head the same size as the client.
pnathan 16y ago
Er, ssh? I don't see what the big deal is. I've been able to remotely ssh into my mac for years.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  now imagine this at the gui level. imagine being on your mac, pick up your ipad, move to the next room, and swipe and have access to the same apps currently running. jut look at what apples been putting out the last few years. look at lions big features. full screen mode doesnt sound impressive. but that would make those apps much easier to use on the ipad. im nut saying this is all new stuff, rather, its going to be packaged by apple, and that is going to mean something.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    I just want to apologize for the awful spelling and punctuation. It was written on an iPad. "im nut saying..." >_<
  - pak 16y ago
    If you want to do this right now, check out Screens for iPad.
    - jasonlotito 16y ago
      Yeah, I've seen that before. I'm not talking about just that. What I'm talking about is having the full screen mode Apple is developing will have support for turning the app into an iPad version with little effort. Basically, by following their API and implementing official full screen support, when the time comes to implement Mac to iPad support like I'm describing, instead of seeing the Mac's desktop, your seeing the application on your iPad in an "iPadified" version of the app.
tjarratt 16y ago
The way I like to think of this feature is as a throwback to the days of "dumb" terminals that would connect to a server where you stored your files, account info, etc. "Back to Unix".
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Why not? With HTTP we went back to the future vis-a-vis 3270.
jasonlotito 16y ago
a lot of the comments are fairly shortsighted. i called this some time ago, and it makes sense. consider how mobile our live are right now. consider the wireless nature of everything. imagine having your computer be situated out of sigh, and your screen is mobile. your ipad and iphone connect to the same central hub. the computer becomes an appliance at home. just look at lion and the elements of ios its pulling in. now imagine apple making it easy to do all of this. airdrop, mobileme, app store, all of this are elements to a grand vision.
- thefonz 16y ago
  yes, and especially with rumors that iPhone 5 having NFC technology. Imagine being able to walk up to any mac and just swipe your iPhone and all your settings, bookmarks, etc. will just transfer over and you will be able to use it, just like you were infront of you mac at home.
tambourine_man 16y ago
If I understood it correctly, this has been possible for years in OSX. You just need to be “fast user switched out” instead of logged out: - Log in with user A - Fast User Switch to user B - Log in to user A with VNC. It works just fine.
wangweij 16y ago
This is nothing special. Lion says it would include a server version of Mac OS X, and this is just a very basic function for any server OS. Although I haven't played with OS X server before, I'm quite sure this feature has been there for some time.

85 points by solipsist 16y ago

iuguy 16y ago

It seems like Apple have discovered Terminal Services, or the basic networking functionality in X11. Hopefully it'll be much shinier than X11 and less restrictive than Remote Desktop Protocol.

JonnieCache 16y ago
I imagine it uses Apple Remote Desktop, which is apple's own version of RDP. I don't know much about it but it works pretty damn well for me. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Apple_remote_desktop https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Apple_remote_...
- nettdata 16y ago
  It's actually using a VNC based application, and uses the VNC protocol. I can "remote desktop" into my desktop using a simple VNC app on my iPad. It seems that they've provided the option of creating a new VNC server/desktop process when connecting in, rather than just attaching to the existing and current desktop. Very cool.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    For the record, this has been a feature of VNC/X forever; in fact, it's harder to run VNC on an extant X session than it is to just start a new one specifically for VNC. It's just a little annoying when Apple finally integrates tech that's 20+ years old and gets heralded as being "ahead of the curve" or "very cool" for doing it.
    - sjs 16y ago
      It doesn't matter how old the tech is. Apple is bringing it to the masses and nobody has done that before. Why? As you said it's 20 years old.
      - cookiecaper 16y ago
        Puh-leese. Apple is "bringing it to the masses", where I guess masses qualifies as < 10% of the desktop market, only because Apple has larger marketshare than anyone who has done it before. This stuff has been part of every Linux distribution for years. People have even written shiny interfaces for it, see remmina or vinagre or any other remote desktop management suite (and yes, these ship with many distributions by default). That OS X has more marketshare than Linux shouldn't automatically make OS X more "cool" on its own merits; after all, Windows has 8-9x as much marketshare as OS X, but I don't see a bunch of threads pop up lavishing MS with praise every time they integrate a new feature into Windows. I don't think Apple should be hailed as super cool and great by technical people just for finally getting around to doing something that has been done thousands of times before for decades. I can understand an ignorant person thinking a feature that's not found in Windows makes Apple "cool", but it's silly for anyone browsing Hacker News to ascribe a bunch of street cred to Apple for this. It's a nice feature and I'm glad to see it go in, it's nice that Apple is adding nice features, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend like Apple is the coolest kid on the block just because they finally got around to writing a semi-normal implementation of VNC, just as my mind wasn't blown when Apple finally integrated workspaces after 15-20+ years of availability on all other respectable WMs. It's more of an "about time" than an "Apple is consummately cool".
        sjs 16y ago
        I appreciate that the pieces have been around for a while but the fact that you think tools such as remmina[1] are appropriate for the masses indicates that you don't quite get it. One has to type in a "server" to connect to a remote machine in remmina, and at that point the average user is already lost. If you think I'm giving Apple "street cred", whatever that means, you've misunderstood me. If you think I'm hailing Apple as "the coolest kid on the block" indicates that you may not be looking at this situation objectively. Please don't put words into my mouth. By bringing something to the masses I mean making it accessible to less technical users. It's available and usable by anyone, just because OS X doesn't have 80% market doesn't make it any less available. I really feel that you have misunderstood me on many levels. It's apparent that you're tired of people hailing Apple for no good reason but I have not done so, so don't take it out on me. I'm not a blind Apple fanatic. [1] http://remmina.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml http://remmina.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml
- spitfire 16y ago
  You know, you just gave me a brainwave. With server being integrated with client, Apple may be integrating ALL their server products - ARD included. Wouldn't that be cool. Now we just need a nice 1U server again. Now what do they do with xsan and final cut server? I can see FCS being integrated with final cut studio. Maybe even in a distributed fashion (owww git for studios!) But I'm not sure what they could do with xsan. Anyways, we shall see what happens, so far I'm liking the look of things.
ammmir 16y ago
it would be nice to get something equivalent to X11 forwarding that would work with all native Mac apps.
bad_user 16y ago
What do you mean? X11 obviously copied Apple's innovation. EDIT: every time there's a talk about Android versus iOS there are people complaining about how Google stole interface elements from iOS. This in spite of the fact that no software is revolutionary and every idea is based on previous art; even the interface on iOS. I am just making a joke here based on repeated evidence that even Apple (indeed an innovative software and hardware company) copies / gets inspiration from others and has done so repeatedly. Sorry,
- chc 16y ago
  Snark is frowned upon on Hacker News. It's generally low in signal and often drags the tone of the conversation down, so it's part of HN culture to downvote snarky comments.
  - trotsky 16y ago
    I'm fairly sure that current HN culture is to downvote snark that you disagree with.
    - vacri 16y ago
      I've noticed that with comments of my own - where I've made a sarcastic comment, then said 'kidding aside now, real comment' and been heavily downmodded. Normally this wouldn't rankle, but in the same threads are far more sarcastic comments with zero content happily getting modded up, sometimes quite strongly. Another time I was arguing against a guy about language, and despite his position being offered in good faith and with a degree of detail in his argument, he was modded into the negs. Comments do seem to do better here when appealing to emotion and popularity rather than internal merit.
  - runinit 16y ago
    Really? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268818 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268818
trezor 16y ago
Hopefully it'll be much shinier than X11 and less restrictive than Remote Desktop Protocol. Out of curiosity... In what ways do you find the Remote Desktop Protocol restrictive? Does the protocol itself limit what can be done? From an end-user point of view it seems very flexible and powerful, while lightweigth and responsive.
- vacri 16y ago
  I'm not an expert in remote protocols, but I also find it snappy. Perhaps the point that for non-server versions it locks out the local console while it's running is the restrictive part?
- iuguy 16y ago
  Vacri hit the nail on the head - the locking out users on the desktop combined with the licensing restrictions on the server make it a tad too restrictive out of the box. Having said that, when properly configured and licenced Terminal Services is freaking awesome.
  - trezor 16y ago
    Ah right. I thought you meant there were some technical/architectural limitations with the protocol itself and didn't even think about limitations added on top of it via licensing. Thanks for clearing it up.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

voxcogitatio 16y ago

I'm glad to hear that they've catched up to the original UNIX. :)

rhizome 16y ago
It's a tough row to hoe, having NIH Syndrome.
yoda_sl 16y ago
I would rather say that it is more OS X returning back to its roots where NeXTStep/OpenStep use to have such capability when all the rendering was done with the PostScript built in server. These feature disappeared from OS X, so it is more like a welcome back with a user friendly UI. Back then you usually had to use some terminal command line to make ir happen.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Amazing that this is the only comment so far that points out this wasn't even Not-Invented-Here Syndrome, because their own OS already had this feature (Display PostScript remoting) twenty years ago. At least until some architect marking their territory was allowed to wilfully break it and replace it with ... nothing.

guptaneil 16y ago

This is going to be absolutely perfect for educational use. Imagine a university computer lab that lets you remotely login from home after the lab has closed to access all the expensive, specialized software the school has already purchased. I know my university was trying to set something like this up, but couldn't find any user-friendly way of doing this.

jonknee 16y ago
I doubt there are a bunch of user accounts on a uni computer lab Mac, so this wouldn't be much different than regular screen sharing. It's also still a mess to choose which computer to try, doubly so if you're on an outside network.
- ben1040 16y ago
  I doubt there are a bunch of user accounts on a uni computer lab Mac But they could always just throw a beefy machine in a closet and have it connect to the same network directory service that the lab machines grab their user accounts from. My old university did the same thing, but did so nearly a decade ago with a Windows terminal server.
- guptaneil 16y ago
  Each computer on campus is connected to a user directory, so students can login to any computer with their individual student account. I'm assuming that Lion's multiple login feature will work with networked accounts.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    Perhaps, but it's not going to work well to have 100 students logged into the same computer. I think the home example given in the article is a much more likely outcome than a university setting.
    - guptaneil 16y ago
      That's true, it may have to be limited to 10-20 simultaneous logins at a time (or whatever the machine can reasonably handle), but that is still better than 0. Considering my university has a relatively small student body, this would be definitely be a sufficient solution for us.

emehrkay 16y ago

My job wants to use a third party product to do the exact same thing. http://www.aquaconnect.net/mac-terminal-server.php http://www.aquaconnect.net/mac-terminal-server.php This is a great addition to the os. Imagine your house having one [desk|lap]top and a few tablets or phones. Hop on vnc on your docked tablet while someone is using the computer and you're as good as using the desktop. I see this as a move to push both os x and the i[pad|phone] as viable business devices. This is possible with windows right? I vaguely remember using remote desktop a few jobs ago, but I dont remember if it was one account logged in at a time.

seabee 16y ago
The server versions of Windows allow that, it's called Remote Desktop Services (or Terminal Services pre-2008). Way better than using VNC, probably because it hooks all the window control drawing on the server and does it on the client instead, rather than sending over raw bitmaps for buttons/textboxes etc.
cschneid 16y ago
This is gonna make my Mac Pro way cooler as a central computing "mainframe" for my house...

jpr 16y ago

Is it just me or are 99% of tech "news" and "innovation" just reinvention of stuff already found in UNIX, Lisp etc. decades ago?

nkassis 16y ago
It's not just you. Every new thing that's any good is usually a retake on something already though about in the early computer times. But some of the implementation back then were crude. With the reinvention there is usually a rethinking and polishing.
ugh 16y ago
No need for the quotation marks. It’s news because you can’t do it with out-of-the-box OS X right now. It’s not innovation (the UI might be, I don’t know) but the article doesn’t claim it is. Technology, however beautiful, often doesn’t matter if many people are unable to use it. It’s news when said technology might become more accessible in the future.
iuguy 16y ago
It's not new. The way I see it is as in the film industry, it's a reboot. It's shinier, it may lack the depth and revelation of the original, but what it lacks in that area it makes up for in special effects and ease of consumption. Consider Sendmail vs Exim, or Tron vs Tron:Legacy. Both are essentially the same thing, but one is infinitely easier on the eye.
noonespecial 16y ago
It more or less all started with Doug Engelbart giving the "mother of all Demos" in 1968. It's all been catch-up since that event.
gvb 16y ago
It's not just you, Henry Spencer reportedly said it (first?) in 1987. "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-2

kaffeinecoma 16y ago

I'd like to see a remote login implementation for OSX that allows you to login remotely, and also adjusts the screen size to match that of the actual physical device you're on. The existing implementation of screen sharing is frustrating for me to use because I'm often remoting in from a 15" Macbook to a Macpro tower with two heads @ 1920x1200 each. So the options are scale to 1) down the display (slow, fuzzy) or 2) scroll all over the place. An ideal solution would be to let me log into a virtual display that matches the size of my physical remote terminal. In other words, make the server think it has a head the same size as the client.

pnathan 16y ago

Er, ssh? I don't see what the big deal is. I've been able to remotely ssh into my mac for years.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jasonlotito 16y ago
now imagine this at the gui level. imagine being on your mac, pick up your ipad, move to the next room, and swipe and have access to the same apps currently running. jut look at what apples been putting out the last few years. look at lions big features. full screen mode doesnt sound impressive. but that would make those apps much easier to use on the ipad. im nut saying this is all new stuff, rather, its going to be packaged by apple, and that is going to mean something.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  I just want to apologize for the awful spelling and punctuation. It was written on an iPad. "im nut saying..." >_<
- pak 16y ago
  If you want to do this right now, check out Screens for iPad.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    Yeah, I've seen that before. I'm not talking about just that. What I'm talking about is having the full screen mode Apple is developing will have support for turning the app into an iPad version with little effort. Basically, by following their API and implementing official full screen support, when the time comes to implement Mac to iPad support like I'm describing, instead of seeing the Mac's desktop, your seeing the application on your iPad in an "iPadified" version of the app.

tjarratt 16y ago

The way I like to think of this feature is as a throwback to the days of "dumb" terminals that would connect to a server where you stored your files, account info, etc. "Back to Unix".

jacques_chester 16y ago
Why not? With HTTP we went back to the future vis-a-vis 3270.

jasonlotito 16y ago

a lot of the comments are fairly shortsighted. i called this some time ago, and it makes sense. consider how mobile our live are right now. consider the wireless nature of everything. imagine having your computer be situated out of sigh, and your screen is mobile. your ipad and iphone connect to the same central hub. the computer becomes an appliance at home. just look at lion and the elements of ios its pulling in. now imagine apple making it easy to do all of this. airdrop, mobileme, app store, all of this are elements to a grand vision.

thefonz 16y ago
yes, and especially with rumors that iPhone 5 having NFC technology. Imagine being able to walk up to any mac and just swipe your iPhone and all your settings, bookmarks, etc. will just transfer over and you will be able to use it, just like you were infront of you mac at home.

tambourine_man 16y ago

If I understood it correctly, this has been possible for years in OSX. You just need to be “fast user switched out” instead of logged out: - Log in with user A - Fast User Switch to user B - Log in to user A with VNC. It works just fine.

wangweij 16y ago

This is nothing special. Lion says it would include a server version of Mac OS X, and this is just a very basic function for any server OS. Although I haven't played with OS X server before, I'm quite sure this feature has been there for some time.