6 ms·

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 restrict

by 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
    - nettdata 16y ago
      Get pissy much? I consider it "very cool" in the sense that this is a cool feature that I finally get to use in the OS I prefer to work in. I don't care if it's been around for decades or done a thousand times before on other OS's, it's being done by them now, and I find it useful. I'd rather see them do stuff like this and be praised for it than do stuff like this and get shit on by people with the tiresome "it's about time" or "Linux had this a zillion years ago and did it better" crowd.
      - cookiecaper 16y ago
        OK. As long as you have the same attitude when Microsoft implements the Dock for Windows users, and everyone says, "Microsoft is really cool, this is a great new feature! Way to go Microsoft", without any acknowledgment of the origin. It's just the whole culture around Mac. Apple gets lavished and rewarded, heralded as "clairvoyant" (the term used in a big thread yesterday about iPad) and similar silly pronouncements, seemingly no matter what they do -- whether the idea and existing implementations are older than the average age of Apple's workforce or not. People go around with Apple bumper stickers and define themselves by their association with the Apple brand. They hire people and choose friends based on whether the candidates use a Mac. And, when Apple finally implements an old idea, they are super awesome for getting around to it 20 years after almost everyone else. It's just a bit annoying for those of us not infected, I guess. (I have a MacBook Pro, for the record. I run Arch Linux on it. This has caused several Mac fanboys much distress.)
        greattypo 16y ago
        > People go around with Apple bumper stickers and define themselves by their association with the Apple brand. Sometimes, it seems like just as many people define themselves by their lack of association with the Apple brand..
        cookiecaper 16y ago
        I'm sure there are. I'm not one of these, generally. I carry around a MBP and consequently display the Apple logo everywhere I use that. I just don't buy into the dogma or the reality distortion field that makes some hail an old style of VNC implementation as innovative and awesome.
    - chc 16y ago
      Yes, but people are reluctant to give credit for feature ideas in implementations that they feel to be inadequate. The Linux GUI has traditionally been one of the biggest objections people have to the whole operating system (though it seems to be less so lately), so they don't get credit for most of the features of their GUI. Similarly, Apple rarely gets credit for introducing digital photography to the consumer space because few people knew or cared about their camera product. To offer an alternate perspective: This will likely be a new thing to lots of people who aren't very technologically literate.
      - cookiecaper 16y ago
        It's just a cop-out. The GUI on Linux has been good for a long time -- certainly comparable to Windows, which ripped KDE4 off much more directly than OS X in Vista and 7. People just make excuses for things. Remmina and Vinagre both make it easy to connect to "Jeff on Box 1", "John on Box 1", "WALMART on WALMART Box". You just have to add the IP address and give it a name, and you have to have an IP address to connect on OS X too.
        jimbokun 16y ago
        "You just have to add the IP address and give it a name, and you have to have an IP address to connect on OS X too." I will be curious to see if you actually need to know your IP address. This seems like exactly the kind of thing Apple would abstract away for the user, which is one reason why many people are willing to pay a premium for OS X over Linux.
        m_eiman 16y ago
        If you're on the same LAN or conbecting to another computer using the same MobileMe account you don't need to find the IP. Both cases use Bonjour/zeroconf.
        cookiecaper 16y ago
        You generally have to. Another guy replied with a few circumstances where zeroconf will broadcast the availability, and vinagre at least supports zeroconf so it would work fine with that. Outside of a LAN or MobileMe tunnel, you have to have an IP address or DNS record. Most people aren't going to set up dyndns, so it'll be an IP address.
    - cema 16y ago
      But why? It may not be ahead of the curve but it is cool, all right.
    - gonzo 16y ago
      not "20+" years old, either. The evidence shows that VNC isn't from much before 1997 or 1998.
      - iuguy 16y ago
        X11 is much older.
      - vacri 16y ago
        IIRC, one of the negatives about Ubuntu choosing to move away from X11 towards Unity is that they will be losing the network-friendliness for remote screens for which X11 is specifically designed. X Windows was designed around running multiple thin-clients as a primary purpose. Wiki says X started in 1984, with X11 being released in 1987 - it'll be 24 years old this year.
        gonzo 16y ago
        It's not "X Windows", either. It's either "X" or "The X Window System". I ran X9 on a Decstation in 1985 or so.
        vacri 16y ago
        heh, sorry, I always unintentionally do that, and it always gets up the nose of the old guard :)
        rtaycher 16y ago
        I think you mean Wayland not Unity, and I don't think its mainly Ubuntu pushing it. There probably are some issues with unity and network transparency due to dbus use for shell components(and I think the universal menu) but that's a separate issue.
        vacri 16y ago
        My mistake, swap in Wayland. Most of the moaning I've heard on the web about it is from Ubuntu - probably because I use debian and watch those crowds more.
    - jimbokun 16y ago
      Well first, pretty much every tech is 20+ years old before it is packaged for the general public. Remember Douglas Engelbart? Second, this has been Apple's post NeXt philosophy, and it is much better than the Not Invented Here philosophy that preceded it. Many OS X features are simply a better user interface for some Unix feature or other. Apple should be applauded for this. Too much great technology has failed to make a difference in the lives of Muggles because of the incomprehensible incantations required to invoke it.
- 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.

by 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
  - nettdata 16y ago
    Get pissy much? I consider it "very cool" in the sense that this is a cool feature that I finally get to use in the OS I prefer to work in. I don't care if it's been around for decades or done a thousand times before on other OS's, it's being done by them now, and I find it useful. I'd rather see them do stuff like this and be praised for it than do stuff like this and get shit on by people with the tiresome "it's about time" or "Linux had this a zillion years ago and did it better" crowd.
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      OK. As long as you have the same attitude when Microsoft implements the Dock for Windows users, and everyone says, "Microsoft is really cool, this is a great new feature! Way to go Microsoft", without any acknowledgment of the origin. It's just the whole culture around Mac. Apple gets lavished and rewarded, heralded as "clairvoyant" (the term used in a big thread yesterday about iPad) and similar silly pronouncements, seemingly no matter what they do -- whether the idea and existing implementations are older than the average age of Apple's workforce or not. People go around with Apple bumper stickers and define themselves by their association with the Apple brand. They hire people and choose friends based on whether the candidates use a Mac. And, when Apple finally implements an old idea, they are super awesome for getting around to it 20 years after almost everyone else. It's just a bit annoying for those of us not infected, I guess. (I have a MacBook Pro, for the record. I run Arch Linux on it. This has caused several Mac fanboys much distress.)
      - greattypo 16y ago
        > People go around with Apple bumper stickers and define themselves by their association with the Apple brand. Sometimes, it seems like just as many people define themselves by their lack of association with the Apple brand..
        cookiecaper 16y ago
        I'm sure there are. I'm not one of these, generally. I carry around a MBP and consequently display the Apple logo everywhere I use that. I just don't buy into the dogma or the reality distortion field that makes some hail an old style of VNC implementation as innovative and awesome.
  - chc 16y ago
    Yes, but people are reluctant to give credit for feature ideas in implementations that they feel to be inadequate. The Linux GUI has traditionally been one of the biggest objections people have to the whole operating system (though it seems to be less so lately), so they don't get credit for most of the features of their GUI. Similarly, Apple rarely gets credit for introducing digital photography to the consumer space because few people knew or cared about their camera product. To offer an alternate perspective: This will likely be a new thing to lots of people who aren't very technologically literate.
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      It's just a cop-out. The GUI on Linux has been good for a long time -- certainly comparable to Windows, which ripped KDE4 off much more directly than OS X in Vista and 7. People just make excuses for things. Remmina and Vinagre both make it easy to connect to "Jeff on Box 1", "John on Box 1", "WALMART on WALMART Box". You just have to add the IP address and give it a name, and you have to have an IP address to connect on OS X too.
      - jimbokun 16y ago
        "You just have to add the IP address and give it a name, and you have to have an IP address to connect on OS X too." I will be curious to see if you actually need to know your IP address. This seems like exactly the kind of thing Apple would abstract away for the user, which is one reason why many people are willing to pay a premium for OS X over Linux.
        m_eiman 16y ago
        If you're on the same LAN or conbecting to another computer using the same MobileMe account you don't need to find the IP. Both cases use Bonjour/zeroconf.
        cookiecaper 16y ago
        You generally have to. Another guy replied with a few circumstances where zeroconf will broadcast the availability, and vinagre at least supports zeroconf so it would work fine with that. Outside of a LAN or MobileMe tunnel, you have to have an IP address or DNS record. Most people aren't going to set up dyndns, so it'll be an IP address.
  - cema 16y ago
    But why? It may not be ahead of the curve but it is cool, all right.
  - gonzo 16y ago
    not "20+" years old, either. The evidence shows that VNC isn't from much before 1997 or 1998.
    - iuguy 16y ago
      X11 is much older.
    - vacri 16y ago
      IIRC, one of the negatives about Ubuntu choosing to move away from X11 towards Unity is that they will be losing the network-friendliness for remote screens for which X11 is specifically designed. X Windows was designed around running multiple thin-clients as a primary purpose. Wiki says X started in 1984, with X11 being released in 1987 - it'll be 24 years old this year.
      - gonzo 16y ago
        It's not "X Windows", either. It's either "X" or "The X Window System". I ran X9 on a Decstation in 1985 or so.
        vacri 16y ago
        heh, sorry, I always unintentionally do that, and it always gets up the nose of the old guard :)
      - rtaycher 16y ago
        I think you mean Wayland not Unity, and I don't think its mainly Ubuntu pushing it. There probably are some issues with unity and network transparency due to dbus use for shell components(and I think the universal menu) but that's a separate issue.
        vacri 16y ago
        My mistake, swap in Wayland. Most of the moaning I've heard on the web about it is from Ubuntu - probably because I use debian and watch those crowds more.
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    Well first, pretty much every tech is 20+ years old before it is packaged for the general public. Remember Douglas Engelbart? Second, this has been Apple's post NeXt philosophy, and it is much better than the Not Invented Here philosophy that preceded it. Many OS X features are simply a better user interface for some Unix feature or other. Apple should be applauded for this. Too much great technology has failed to make a difference in the lives of Muggles because of the incomprehensible incantations required to invoke it.
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.