[Simon]

OK, Apple has given us a nice and easy way to access the whole world of X11 apps. I think now's the time they should start looking at the reverse: How about a remote Aqua client system?

Imagine Apple writes a Aqua server app that is able to feed X11 clients Aqua windows. You just fire up a remote ssh session from a UNIX box into your Mac like:

% ssh joesixpack@mymac.mydomain

Then, you type in something like

% remote-aqua

and you get greeted with a "Welcome to Mac OS X" and you get an X11 window running a login to the Finder of the user joesixpack. You get your Finder, your Dock, all your apps just as if you were logged in locally.

Wouldn't that be totally awesome?!?

Of course it would probably be easier to implement it for one remote OS X machine to lgin to another OS X machine and probably some of you would just answer with a VNC or Timbuktu etc. But imagine the flexibility & freedom that you'd get from a X11 solution. Since X11 belongs to almost any standard UNIX distribution you'd be able to log into your Mac from anywhere and on almost any UNIX machine. I already log into my home Mac quite often form my UNIX box at work to do scp or to use X11 apps installed via fink on my home box, but it would be so incredibly practical to be able to run my OS X apps on a remote UNIX box. It would actually bring commercial non-Linux apps like Photoshop or even iPhoto to my Linux machine.

Any input on this idea? I was thinking of submitting this to Apple as OS X feedback...

[ShotgunEd]

Originally posted by Simon:
OK, Apple has given us a nice and easy way to access the whole world of X11 apps. I think now's the time they should start looking at the reverse: How about a remote Aqua client system?

Imagine Apple writes a Aqua server app that is able to feed X11 clients Aqua windows. You just fire up a remote ssh session from a UNIX box into your Mac like:

% ssh joesixpack@mymac.mydomain

Then, you type in something like

% remote-aqua

and you get greeted with a "Welcome to Mac OS X" and you get an X11 window running a login to the Finder of the user joesixpack. You get your Finder, your Dock, all your apps just as if you were logged in locally.

Wouldn't that be totally awesome?!?

Of course it would probably be easier to implement it for one remote OS X machine to lgin to another OS X machine and probably some of you would just answer with a VNC or Timbuktu etc. But imagine the flexibility & freedom that you'd get from a X11 solution. Since X11 belongs to almost any standard UNIX distribution you'd be able to log into your Mac from anywhere and on almost any UNIX machine. I already log into my home Mac quite often form my UNIX box at work to do scp or to use X11 apps installed via fink on my home box, but it would be so incredibly practical to be able to run my OS X apps on a remote UNIX box. It would actually bring commercial non-Linux apps like Photoshop or even iPhoto to my Linux machine.

Any input on this idea? I was thinking of submitting this to Apple as OS X feedback...

Sounds like a great idea, I'm just not entirely sure on the feasibility of it. Submit it as feedback anyways.

[ntsc]

I remeber reading that this feature was already a part of Quartz and that it was designed to send the vector instructions to a client, although it has never been used. I think the idea was that the client would actually do all of the compositing and this made it very efficient over a network or the internet since the vector intructions wouldn't take up anything like as much space as a bitmap desktop. Plus this would make it extemely scalable since you could send large screens resolutions over the same network as smaller ones and there shouldn't be any reduction in quality since vectors are resolution independant.

Someone mentioned it around the DP era so i could be talking out of my arse with this one but i'm sure i remember someone talking about this.

I think this would be really cool if Apple did this. Then I could use my iMac from school instead of those sh!t RM machines!

[Cipher13]

That's a pretty high-bandwidth idea.

Pretty cool, though.

But... I doubt it could be done... Aqua via X11? Aqua is incredibly complex...

It'd be a cut-down version if anything. No fancy looking Dock or anything...

I don't know much about X11 though, so... I digress.

[Saetre]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
That's a pretty high-bandwidth idea.

Pretty cool, though.

But... I doubt it could be done... Aqua via X11? Aqua is incredibly complex...

It'd be a cut-down version if anything. No fancy looking Dock or anything...

I don't know much about X11 though, so... I digress.

Would this even be possible without porting quartz? That's why X11 works on OS X...apple ported it...

[schwa]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
That's a pretty high-bandwidth idea.

Pretty cool, though.

But... I doubt it could be done... Aqua via X11? Aqua is incredibly complex...

It'd be a cut-down version if anything. No fancy looking Dock or anything...

I don't know much about X11 though, so... I digress.

The Dock would stay local. Just as if you run KDE or GNOME, the "desktop environment" is run locally, but individual apps are run remotely but displayed locally.

"Remote Aqua" wouldn't require any more bandwidth than other X-Windows systems. Actually, I think it might require less- don't vector-based drawing models require a smaller footprint than bitmap-based models?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
It'd be a cut-down version if anything. No fancy looking Dock or anything...

Well that's one possibility that would probably work. But knowing Apple's perfectionism I doubt they'd do that. Even if it would make quite some sense. How about a flag like "remote-aqua -quartzlight"

Originally posted by Cipher13:
That's a pretty high-bandwidth idea.

Well, not necessarily network bandwidth. Remember the -C flag on ssh? Right, compression does quite some stuff. I can run a 1200x1000 X11 window full of graphics (plots, diagramms, text, forumal, etc.) with real-time update to my Mac at home over a 512Mbps el crappo cable connection and it works very well. It has some lag, but it's very usable. Nowhere near "ah shucks, molasses".

Also, don't forget at universities, large companies etc. you have huge network bandwidth nowadays. 100Mbps Ethernet everywhere. In such a working environment X11 even with 1600x1200 windows is nothing. We do it all the time at our lab.

Originally posted by ntsc:
I remeber reading that this feature was already a part of Quartz and that it was designed to send the vector instructions to a client, although it has never been used. I think the idea was that the client would actually do all of the compositing and this made it very efficient over a network or the internet since the vector intructions wouldn't take up anything like as much space as a bitmap desktop. Plus this would make it extemely scalable since you could send large screens resolutions over the same network as smaller ones and there shouldn't be any reduction in quality since vectors are resolution independant.

That would be a smart example of another way Apple could deal with the problem w/o lowering the image quality and the über-geek stuff (shadows, transparency, ect.) of Quartz. It would be great to see them give it a shot.

[xtal]

How good would THAT be?

Submit the feedback, I think it's a fantastic idea.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Saetre:
Would this even be possible without porting quartz? That's why X11 works on OS X...apple ported it...

I don't think porting Quartz is necessary - at least not for basic functionality.
After all, even our dear Quartz gets to some stage where it's just drawing pixels onto a certain rectangular area. Pixels = bitmaps = lots of non-destructive compression possible = not huge bandwidth necessary.

On the other hand I'd hate to see Apple do the idea but require some special client-side add-ons or even manipulation to standard X11. As soon as this is necessary or you need root rights to chnage an existing X11 client you can say good-bye to 90% of the freedom and universality the proposed idea would give.

No hard-core UNIX admin is going to screw with his standard distro just to get X11 working for one of his 100 users who has a funny colored computer with some fruit on it.

[Simon]

Originally posted by schwa:
The Dock would stay local. Just as if you run KDE or GNOME, the "desktop environment" is run locally, but individual apps are run remotely but displayed locally.

I'm sorry to say, but I think this is one thing that won't be the same as with other X11 stuff. We can't have a local dock. Why? Because (almost) nobody in the X11 world knows what a OS X dock is and nobody in that world gives a darn. So a stadard X11 client won't have any such functionality. The only possibility would be for some freak to write a UNIX app that works as a client-side dock similar to what KDE or Gnome desktop is. But is that good? I doubt it, because having pure X11 means the Mac comes to every X11 box in the world (about 789,345,012,321 machines). Requiring special add-ons means the Mac is only on non-Mac UNIX machines owned by Mac users. Which are like...ummm, err... let's say there are about three of those in the world.

Saying we'll drop the dock means we're screwed. Because we need the dock being served by the X11 server. Exactly like the menu bar. X11 apps have their menu bars in the windows - no problem. But we have a global menu bar and we need that one. We want it that way. I.e. we need it. And we need the dock. First of all, it's useful and second of all how many users do this:

Code:
mouse goes to dock, mouse double-clicks Safari icon

and how many do this:

Code:
% open -a /Applocations/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS\ X/Resources/...blabla.../Safari

Exactly, there are about two Mac users in the world who do it the second way. The rest does it the first way, i.e. we NEED and we want dock functionality. The menu bar we need too. This is why I was proposing a 1-window approach to remote-aqua. It's not the same as with X11, we need the whole screen with menu bar and dock.

On the other hand that could also make it easier for Apple. All they need to do is export the display to a remote device like the X11 users always do. If they would do the "single app gets served to its own window" X11 approach they first have to re-write OS X to get it to run apps in multiple user-sessions side by side - something which is a no-go now. If it would already work we'd have multiple log-ins a la Linux or (please no!) a la Windows. Apple doesn't allow this because OS X can't do it (yet). Just doing a complete session graphics export to a remote display is much easier.

"Remote Aqua" wouldn't require any more bandwidth than other X-Windows systems. Actually, I think it might require less- don't vector-based drawing models require a smaller footprint than bitmap-based models?

I don't believe one or the other would necessarily require more/less bandwidth. If Apple did a good inovative job we should be able to get similar results. Remember that they could be able to sense inactive parts of the screen (like a Finder window on top of your desktop with nothing changing inside), not send those (redundant info) and have the X client only update those areas or windows where something actually changed. It's not like if you would have to update 1600x1200 at 32bit color with 90Hz. That would be a nightmare.

[Simon]

Originally posted by xtal:
How good would THAT be?

Submit the feedback, I think it's a fantastic idea.

Thanks. Looking at the positive responses I'm getting to the idea I think I will. I'll just collect the ideas and input here and send it to Apple all together when the thread has died down.

[kman42]

NeXT did this with display postscript, right? OSX now uses display PDF, so I'm not sure how feasible it would be.

The likely scenario would be a remote system that is only compatible with other OSX boxes so that the desktop environment could run locally. There is no way that Apple is going to open-source the Aqua desktop environment so that any *nix box could run it locally.

While it wouldn't be quite the same as having an 'Aqua X11', just being able to run gui apps remotely within a local OSX environment would be cool. Imagine using interfacing with photoshop on your lowly G3 iBook with photoshop running on a PowerMac. That could be cool.

kman

[Simon]

Originally posted by kman42:
NeXT did this with display postscript, right? OSX now uses display PDF, so I'm not sure how feasible it would be.

PDF ~= compressed PS

I don't think it would be much harder. I didn't know however that NeXT already did something like X11 serving. I just remember all the people claiming display PS was nice but slow like hell.

The likely scenario would be a remote system that is only compatible with other OSX boxes so that the desktop environment could run locally.

Indeed, that's the most likely scenario. But it's just not as universal and not as cool.

There is no way that Apple is going to open-source the Aqua desktop environment so that any *nix box could run it locally.

Nobody is saying they will open-source it. Jee wiz. God help them. All they have to accomplish is (which is probably hell of a lot of work albeit) to write an X server (like xFree86) which takes Aqua display data and converts it into something an X11 client can properly decode into an X11 window. The idea sounds simple (and yes, the idea actually is easy), but it's probably not at all easy to actually program it. Nevertheless why should it be impossible?

While it wouldn't be quite the same as having an 'Aqua X11', just being able to run gui apps remotely within a local OSX environment would be cool.

Yeah that would already be pretty cool. I'd think it would even be cool to just be able to do it locally, like on Linux, i.e. ctrl-alt-f1 to ctrl-alt-f12 gives you different screens for different concurrent login sessions.
This has already been wished for countless times on this forum and many have sent the idea to Apple (including myself).

The next step is to allow such log-ins from one OS X box to the other.
This as well has been mentioned countless times on this board and again, many have sent the idea to Apple (including myself).

But since Apple hasn't done any of this yet (maybe they have worked on it but nobody has even seen an alpha yet) and since I'm one hell of an impatient guy I decided to take the idea to the max and suggest this to Apple. I know it's a real über-geek feature and I know it's not for Joe Sixpack and his Mac (used mainly for e-mail and minimizing QuickTime movies into the dock), but it would be so incredibly cool!

This would be one of these beautiful Apple inovations which would get non-Mac UNIX geeks to just go like "OMG" and wonder what other cool stuff can be done with OS X. I know my cluster admin (one of these real clichee hardcore Linux guys, only uses vi and csh) would drop his jaw down right on the floor if on my ugly el cheapo CRT (normally running RedHat) here at work I could suddenly let Aqua appear, show him some iPhoto work and tell him that this was all coming from my Mac at home.

[Mithras]

Architecturally, from what I've learned, Quartz is very different from Display PS.

Display PS sent raw Postscript commands from the applications to the window server, via a Mach port. So it was pretty easy to redirect those commands over a network port rather than a local port.

Quartz, on the other hand, uses a shared memory architecture. That means that it'd require significant engineering to figure out how to push it out over the network.

As it is, VNC with Tight encoding works pretty well, but I agree that I'd like to see something from Apple that's more official.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Mithras:
Quartz, on the other hand, uses a shared memory architecture. That means that it'd require significant engineering to figure out how to push it out over the network.

That sounds indeed difficult. Maybe Apple could split the job into several smaller pieces and get solve the problems one by one as they arrive. I'd be ready to wait quite some time as long as I know that the final result will be one kick-ass cool universal X11 solution that gets Macs on every X11 UNIX client out there.

Actually, kman already mentioned possible steps to get there. Allow me to some do some (longish) dreaming here...

<dreaming>

WWDC 2003, Phil Shiller takes the stage and starts talking about how great USB printer sharing is on the new APX Base Station and about how many people are using the minimize-QT-movie-to-dock feature every day to get serious work done. After hours of senseless mumbling he finally cuts the crap and says something the Apple world won't forget for the next 200 years (and something that made most UNIX admins go so bad that they couldn't continue to work on the Pentagon's servers for two years thus causing the Iraq war never to happen).

He mentions that OS X will conquer a totally new market - the x86 world. Everybody breaks out in tears, developers start hugging each other and falling on their knees, Steve whipes a tear drop off his IBM Thinkpad (still running OpenStep) and Phil is rocking back and forth on stage, a big fat grin on his face (reminding the present media of some strange guy at MS who once jumped around on stage full to the brim with cocain, speed and dollars).

Developers are just starting to calm down again and putting back their cleenex when they realize that they have to port all their apps once more. At this point Quark programmers are the only guys still smiling because they haven't ported anything yet. So no unnecessary work after all. Heh.
Some developers immediately start crying again, others start looking in their pockets for their 45 magnum to assist them in telling Phil to port the crap himself and get f***ed.

Phil knew it would come out that way. His grin broadens. He knows they're ripe for the real news. He then calmly says that this will be possible without porting one line of code.
Those developers that have not shot themselves yet or tried to shoot Phil look up with a sign of on their faces and start to wonder where this circus is going to end.

Phil ends it. He says: "We are going to bring Aqua onto X11 and every UNIX box on the world will be able to log onto a Mac. The whole Linux/UNIX world could be running Mac OS X within days of the release of <<Remote-Aqua>>."
Flashes of lightening come out of the stage and Phil disappears quickly (walks over the bodies of the suicide devs over to the Quark devs, because they're the only guys who still like him and aren't pointing semi-automatic weapons at him) because as a marketing guy although he knows squat about computers, he knows when to call the real programmers to do the dirty work.

The chief of Apple's X11 group takes the stage and announces that Steve had a vision while buying his last set of 3000 turtlenecks. And this vision was to get the Mac onto every UNIX box on the planet. At first Steve went to Jonathan Yve and asked if they couldn't do an 7" thick steel telescope arm which would extend from the iMac to any machine on the planet and forward a 17" display to that machine. Yve thought this would be probably too difficult and when Moby heard the idea he as well as Coppola and Seal already told Steve that they hated the idea and wouldn't do another one of those faked interviews for the Apple intro of the new iMac with it's ridiculous 7" steel arm.
Steve - pretty depressed - went back to his backyard orchard and called Phil. Phil was at some gym trying to loose two ounzes of weight so he couldn't talk to Steve - acute cardiac arrest. Steve, getting desperate, called one of his new young programmers and decided that maybe the guy was a genius and had an idea. The poor guy didn't. Steve fired him. Days passed and Steve was still in atrabilious pain when one day in the hallway at Apple Steve ran into the guy in charge of ther Apple X11 app and asked him about it since this was the only guy who he hadn't asked yet.
The guy had this idea about putting Aqua onto a X11 session and sending it around the world.

This is how it all started. Steve didn't like the idea as much as his 7" thick steel telescope arm, but at least it was a solution.
So, now the head of the X11 group suddenly had 500 million Dollars for R&D and a staff of three-hundred programmers and 4000 PR dudes with five Harward degrees. They (the programmers did at least - the PR guys discussed the pschedelic effect of some color of the window widgets in the mean time) came up with an incredible great idea - but, it was going to take them two years to complete it. So they decided to split it up. The head of the X11 group announces: "Under your seats you will find a CD. It contains the first release of Remote-Aqua. We will release the second one in a year and in two years from today the third and final release. The roadmap is:

1st release: Your Mac is able to have multiple concurrent login sessions of different users. All it requires is the key combo ctrl-alt-esc-command-f1-f2-x-1-1-alpha where alpha is the session number you want to go to. It's all integrated into the OS. You don't need additional apps. All you need are three hands for the key combo and just this 700MB update which is available from our V.90 modem download servers. It may take some time, but...

2nd release: Your Mac can forward such login sessions to any other Mac on the local network. It works also with Rendezvous. All you need is Ethernet. It's all integrated into the OS. You don't need additional apps and you don't need three hands anymore. Just this 3.6GB update which is available from our ISDN modem download servers. It may take some time, but...

3rd release: We finalized the new Apple X11 Server. It takes the Quartz images of a login session, compresses them and sends them to any existing X11 client. All you need is Ethernet and a T3 to connect to our update servers and grab the 36TB update.

You got the first release now. In two years the work will be complete and you can enjoy full functionality. It will come right around the time when we release the dual 1.420001 GHz PowerMac and Bluetooth on the iBook.

People applaud so Phil has to take the stage again (kicking the programmer back into his office where he belongs) and grins with the satisfaction of a guy who has just earned billions of dollars with another guy's work. Developers start hugging each other again, Steve drops a second tear, the Quark devs try to find someone who explains to them how a port would work if you would ever really want to write one and Phil takes another heart pill with some coke. The show ends again with lightening and Steve lets a coffin (0.0003% market share written on the side) slide away. The guys covering the event for the media call for some psychiatrists for the devs and Moby ends the show by mentioning how cool this auto-sensing backlight on the back of the Remote-Aqua CD cover will be. (We will be able to find the CD even in the dark)!

</dreaming>

That's what came to my mind about splitting this app up... I think I need a drink.

[Drizzt]

What it was about X11 in the developpement of MacOS X is now known as Apple X11 0.2.

I don't think that a Aqua->X11 tunnel could be possible, Quartz is doing things X11 was never meant for and needs platform dependent extensions to do.

What I'd like is X11/Terminal Server like functionnality from MacOS X Server. Imagine Apple releasing miniBook with a stylet and optionnal keyboard, including a Airport Extreme card.. and actually just running the compositing layer of Quartz. The server does the maths, the client draws it. You wouldn't need a G4 for that, and it would be quite fast (with good XServe as backend..).

Since only the Quartz API calls and textures would go on the network, it would be quite fast (Quartz already knows what and what not to redraw).

[Millennium]

Remote-hosting Aqua is theoretically doable. However, it could not be based on X11; it would require a new system.

Quartz, or, to be more precise, CGServices, has things in place to work with remote hosting. However, CGRendering -what we commonly think of as Quartz- doesn't hook into that, and in fact it would require some pretty major work to get it working. Many of the problems are similar to those involved with getting virtual consoles to work, actually.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Drizzt:
What I'd like is X11/Terminal Server like functionnality from MacOS X Server.

Nice idea, but unfortunately that's once again a proprietary solution. That works for us OS X users, but for nobody else. I'll take it, but it's by a long shot not as universal as doing this over X11...

[Simon]

Originally posted by Millenium:
Remote-hosting Aqua is theoretically doable. However, it could not be based on X11; it would require a new system.

Millenium, thanks for that post - seems you know what your talking about.

Thanks also for blowing my fantasy bubble. Looks like that's it. Scrap Aqua over X11. Too bad. I'd have liked it.

At least now I don't have to compile all this into one reasonable feedback post to Apple.

[Simon]

ah shucks. double-post again. these database errors are making me go apeshït!
admins, please fix em.

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Simon:
ah shucks. double-post again. these database errors are making me go apeshït!
admins, please fix em.

Terminal Server is proprietary.. but there still is a client for Mac and X11/Unix..

[Simon]

Originally posted by Drizzt:
Terminal Server is proprietary.. but there still is a client for Mac and X11/Unix..

Yes, but an Quartz->X11 server won't work obviously, so we'd need at least a Quartz plug-in if not a totally new X11 client. No way Apple would open-source Quartz and no way all UNIX admins update their distro just for us Mac users to have some fun...

I think the universal accessibility of my orginal idea would only work if it wouldn't need more on the client side than existing X11 clients offer.

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Simon:
Yes, but an Quartz->X11 server won't work obviously, so we'd need at least a Quartz plug-in if not a totally new X11 client. No way Apple would open-source Quartz and no way all UNIX admins update their distro just for us Mac users to have some fun...

I think the universal accessibility of my orginal idea would only work if it wouldn't need more on the client side than existing X11 clients offer.

The thing is, it's impossible.

You don't need a whole new X11 client.. it could be only a binary you know..

[Simon]

Originally posted by Drizzt:
The thing is, it's impossible.

You don't need a whole new X11 client.. it could be only a binary you know..

True it could. But why should I find this binary on an old Sun running Solaris from 1994? Of course a binary would work, but Apple would have to make it for countless hardware plattforms running three zillion different flavors of Unix. And then we'd need to be able to install this stuff on a client machine without root rights. Sounds tricky and not exactly very feasible to me...

[soellman]

written by apple too:

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

no really, sending vector commands is how all those remote control programs work (vnc, etc). Except, of course, for X11 (with some exceptions, the shape extension and whatnot). I know that in the NeXT days, the display subsystem was network transparent (on a window by window basis) but it's my understanding that Apple ripped that part out to make way for what Quartz now is. I'm not sure how hard it would be for Apple or a third-party developer to put window by window network transparency back in.. I would imagine it would be pretty friggin hard, but I'm no developer..
-o

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by soellman:
written by apple too:

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

no really, sending vector commands is how all those remote control programs work (vnc, etc). Except, of course, for X11 (with some exceptions, the shape extension and whatnot). I know that in the NeXT days, the display subsystem was network transparent (on a window by window basis) but it's my understanding that Apple ripped that part out to make way for what Quartz now is. I'm not sure how hard it would be for Apple or a third-party developer to put window by window network transparency back in.. I would imagine it would be pretty friggin hard, but I'm no developer..
-o

Little OT, but Apple's Remote Desktop is one of the worst pieces of software ever written.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Little OT, but Apple's Remote Desktop is one of the worst pieces of software ever written.

[OT: I thought the worst thing ever written was Word 6 for Macintosh? ]

Would you care to explain? I've never used it before, i.e. no own experience, so I'm interested in hearing why it's a POS.

BTW, Apple's Remote Desktop isn't even close to what we have been talking about here. It obviously doesn't allow user A to log in remotely while user B is logged in locally and let both have independent sessions. It's all because OS X has no multiple user login sessions capability. This really sucks. Before we go to X11 or Quartz clients, Apple should get OS X to do this, at least IMHO.

[Gul Banana]

Originally posted by Simon:
And we need the dock. First of all, it's useful and second of all how many users do this:

Code:
mouse goes to dock, mouse double-clicks Safari icon

and how many do this:

Code:
% open -a /Applocations/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS\ X/Resources/...blabla.../Safari

Exactly, there are about two Mac users in the world who do it the second way.

You only need to do this:

Code:
open /Applications/Safari.app

Or, with aliases,

Code:
safari website.com

I guess you can add a third person to the tally.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
I guess you can add a third person to the tally.

actually, I prefer the shorter

Code:
lynx website

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Simon:
[OT: I thought the worst thing ever written was Word 6 for Macintosh? ]

Would you care to explain? I've never used it before, i.e. no own experience, so I'm interested in hearing why it's a POS.

BTW, Apple's Remote Desktop isn't even close to what we have been talking about here. It obviously doesn't allow user A to log in remotely while user B is logged in locally and let both have independent sessions. It's all because OS X has no multiple user login sessions capability. This really sucks. Before we go to X11 or Quartz clients, Apple should get OS X to do this, at least IMHO.

Word 6... *shudder*
I've long since cleansed my mind of that experience.

Anyway... okay, ARD. You constantly have to remove and re-add systems to the list that allows you to use them; sometimes they're recognised, sometimes they're not. If not, try again. And again. It is majorly under-featured compared to Timbuktu, and much slower.

I've run into SO MANY bugs it isn't funny. The most annoying being you cannot take control of a system if it's screensaver is running. You can't wake a system from sleep as advertised, and once alseep, a system isn't recognised.

The most annoying bug (this happens when trying to view a screensavered machine) is one that happens 80% of the time when attempting to look or control, screensaver or not, irrelevent of screen bitdepth - "blah blah can't control/view screen under 256 colours" or whatever, and it chokes, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can't control nor observe the system.

Useless POS.
Get Timbuktu instead if you were considering ARD.

Anyway, back to X11..

[Drizzt]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Word 6... *shudder*
I've long since cleansed my mind of that experience.

Anyway... okay, ARD. You constantly have to remove and re-add systems to the list that allows you to use them; sometimes they're recognised, sometimes they're not. If not, try again. And again. It is majorly under-featured compared to Timbuktu, and much slower.

I've run into SO MANY bugs it isn't funny. The most annoying being you cannot take control of a system if it's screensaver is running. You can't wake a system from sleep as advertised, and once alseep, a system isn't recognised.

The most annoying bug (this happens when trying to view a screensavered machine) is one that happens 80% of the time when attempting to look or control, screensaver or not, irrelevent of screen bitdepth - "blah blah can't control/view screen under 256 colours" or whatever, and it chokes, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can't control nor observe the system.

Useless POS.
Get Timbuktu instead if you were considering ARD.

Anyway, back to X11..

I got the last part to happen when there's no one loggued-in, wake up the system and try again, it will work..

[Mithras]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
You only need to do this:
open /Applications/Safari.app

Or, with aliases,
safari website.com

Getting OT, but actually all you need is:
open -a Safari

or
open http://forums.macnn.com

and that's enough.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Mithras:
open http://forums.macnn.com
and that's enough.

Very cool. Thanks for the tip! Didn't know that.