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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 tha

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
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - iuguy 16y ago
    > It doesn't matter how old the tech is. Apple is bringing it to the masses and nobody has done that before. Nobody has done that before, except for a company with about 90% of the Desktop market share, first party remote desktop services, a third party market with services to 'go to your pc', implementations of some sort of VNC-type service and goodness knows what else to secure it all.
- 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.

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
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- iuguy 16y ago
  > It doesn't matter how old the tech is. Apple is bringing it to the masses and nobody has done that before. Nobody has done that before, except for a company with about 90% of the Desktop market share, first party remote desktop services, a third party market with services to 'go to your pc', implementations of some sort of VNC-type service and goodness knows what else to secure it all.
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.