Just a heads up people.... If you open safari and type in the address bar: vnc://ip-address:port it will open Remote Desktop / screen sharing
Good to know. Now all I have to do is ask my parents to look up their IP:port. Easy... /s
They’re probably killing it for security reasons, which is good. My only ask is: if you can share your screen with Face Time/ Messages, and it has end to end encryption; why can’t you also allow remote control? Is there a significant difference in risk/security?
You can control their computers, but they have to grant permissions once its started. I do this with my ageing non-technical family members.
Apples free solutions are view only. I don’t need unattended access, just co-navigating.
1. Sign up for a free DynamicDNS service, such as No-IP.com. 2. Install the No-IP.com Client on your parent's Mac. 3. Configure your parent's router to assign a Static IP Address to your parent's Mac. 4. Forward port 5900 on your parent's router to the Static IP address of your parent's Mac. 5. Configure macOS to allow Remote Management. 6. Use macOS' built-in Screen Sharing.app to control your parent's computer.
Some of these steps sound difficult, but with some research and effort it is pretty simple.
VPN, DynamicDNS, and Screen Sharing can be used to access your Mac at home.
If you are advanced enough that you need access to more than one computer at home (i.e. to the entire home network), you can set up a VPN server at home. Basically any router comes with a VPN server nowadays. Once you have established a VPN tunnel to your router, you are able to communicate remotely with any IP host on your home network.
If you just need access to files stored on one Mac, use iCloud Drive or any other cloud file storage service.
Back to My Mac was a poor-man’s VPN solution before real VPN became available on consumer-grade routers. This was also mostly for homes with one computer. At one point, a manual crank as a backup system for an electric starter became an outdated offering and got removed as an option from every modern car. Did it prevent someone from buying a new car I’m the past 40 years?
I use teamviewer to help my father with his Mac problems. Not perfect, annoyances actually, but much more flexible. Back to my Mac just isn’t very useful. So I stopped bothering with it.
Just another example of Apple struggling with services.
It's not made for managing other peoples' Macs, it's for getting back to YOUR Mac. Hence the name. And it was really good at that.
Remotix is far better and hassle free compared to BTMM. Works on iOS and MacOS. You can screenshare with any Mac anywhere (if it meets the OS requirement). Grandma dosen’t need to know anything or configure anything on her Mac. She just needs to install the free Remotix Agent. A remote helper connects instantly with the Remotix app. I’ve used it for years. Screensharing couldn’t be easier.
Just a heads up people.... If you open safari and type in the address bar: vnc://ip-address:port it will open Remote Desktop / screen sharing
Good to know. Now all I have to do is ask my parents to look up their IP:port. Easy... /s
They’re probably killing it for security reasons, which is good. My only ask is: if you can share your screen with Face Time/ Messages, and it has end to end encryption; why can’t you also allow remote control? Is there a significant difference in risk/security?
Get them a static IP and then you won't have to ask them.
You can do remote control via iMessages. There must be a person on the other side to accept the connection, though.
My company also wrote some software that uses wide area Bonjour. It's awesome. We still have plans to use the DNS update protocol too.
But this tech really didn't catch on like centralised 'cloud' solutions.
Why?
Well two reasons I think:
1. it was so simple people couldn't get their heads around it - particularly IT types who wanted to open firewall ports and configure routers and set up DynamicDNS - none of which was needed and most of which would get in the way. IT people make their money by ensuring that things are as complex as possible, they don't advertise solutions that don't require their extensive involvement and specialist knowledge.
2. There was nothing to sell (monentize), so nobody bothered explaining the feature. Centralised cloud solutions are easy to monentize. With iCloud disk space you need to pay $$$ per month - but with BTMM you already owned the disk space and you had to pay nothing. Something to 'sell' means lots of people will tell you that you should be buying it, how to buy it and who to buy it from.
For a limited part of the market - wide area Bonjour and DNS update protocol enables people to easily access services on your own servers - like VNC or a web server or an SMB/CIFS/AFS server, or a printer server or an SSH server. That is not your average consumer. Apple are having a lot of success with consumer devices and services and this is 'refocusing' on that market.
Right now, I can access my mother's computer through Messages Screen Sharing. Is this also going away with Mojave?
We don't think so, but it isn't a great solution for full-featured remote controlling.
While that may be, for those of us with, shall we say, technologically-challenged parents, being able to quickly and easily control their cursor from my own home instead of driving across town to figure out what she did this time to make the mail thingie not work.... Ugh. Look, Screen Sharing is fine and I don't want to lose that ability.
Just a heads up people.... If you open safari and type in the address bar: vnc://ip-address:port it will open Remote Desktop / screen sharing
Good to know. Now all I have to do is ask my parents to look up their IP:port. Easy... /s
They’re probably killing it for security reasons, which is good. My only ask is: if you can share your screen with Face Time/ Messages, and it has end to end encryption; why can’t you also allow remote control? Is there a significant difference in risk/security?
Get them a static IP and then you won't have to ask them.
You can do remote control via iMessages. There must be a person on the other side to accept the connection, though.
Yeah, thought of that right after my post. This is by far the easiest way to troubleshoot someone else's Mac, if you can get them to set up Messages.
For helping family members, it’s it’s iMessage sharing, or, more often for me, using a free remote client like Teamviewer.
I never used BTMM personally.
The Apple ecosystem looks finally dead. No more Apple Monitor, Apple printer, Apple routers and now many features like back to my mac are axed. Soon also Airport utility will be gone then who knows what next. I come from another era, an era where maybe Apple was the underdog and not the largest company in the us economy, but all was back to user experience. Now all it seems is that apple wants me to join Apple Music pushing me from within the music app! Or Apple pay in every site i visit if they have it within my safari browising. Not to talk about dozens of bugs and the sixteenth request today for my password even to go to the toilet. All is down to money money money. I will stick with my old laser printer and my airport routers led by a mac pro and an apple monitor. Maybe a couple of oses version down the lane. Am i a dinosaur? Or Apple just became Microsoft?
For helping family members, it’s it’s iMessage sharing, or, more often for me, using a free remote client like Teamviewer.
I never used BTMM personally.
Me neither. And I had no idea you could screen share using iMessages.
If you need to share an iCloud account password then this Back To Mac thing is not what you should be using to support your parents remotely.
The Apple ecosystem looks finally dead. No more Apple Monitor, Apple printer, Apple routers and now many features like back to my mac are axed. Soon also Airport utility will be gone then who knows what next. I come from another era, an era where maybe Apple was the underdog and not the largest company in the us economy, but all was back to user experience. Now all it seems is that apple wants me to join Apple Music pushing me from within the music app! Or Apple pay in every site i visit if they have it within my safari browising. Not to talk about dozens of bugs and the sixteenth request today for my password even to go to the toilet. All is down to money money money. I will stick with my old laser printer and my airport routers led by a mac pro and an apple monitor. Maybe a couple of oses version down the lane. Am i a dinosaur? Or Apple just became Microsoft?
Yes, you're a dinosaur if you're going to bring up printers, which they haven't made in two decades. Also, there are displays coming, they said so.
What does "Or Apple pay in every site i visit if they have it within my safari browising." even mean?
For helping family members, it’s it’s iMessage sharing, or, more often for me, using a free remote client like Teamviewer.
I never used BTMM personally.
Me neither. And I had no idea you could screen share using iMessages.
If you need to share an iCloud account password then this Back To Mac thing is not what you should be using to support your parents remotely.
If you're chatting via Macs in Messages, click "Details" and tap the little overlapping squares icon. Works great.
Apple Remote Desktop is horrendous. It takes an age to connect, and navigating the remote Mac computer is nigh on impossible with an Apple Magic Trackpad 2. I have to use a wired mouse to move the cursor around, especially when I'm remotely trying to scroll up or down inside a long document. ARD is also very expensive when compared to Windows Remote Desktop (which performs far better, is quicker to load, seamless to navigate) as the latter is FREE and makes working on a remote PC no different to being sat in front of it. With correctly installed drivers, WRD also handles the Magic Trackpad 2 inputs with no lag. ARD has been around for years and little improvement has been made to its core performance. It is slow, buggy, and overly complex for day-day use.
Isn’t this directly tied to the discontinuation of the Airport routers? Wasn’t BTMM basically designed to work seamlessly with Airports? Without the Airport backbone, it would have to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to “just work.” So it was dead the moment the Airports were discontinued?
Comments
2. Install the No-IP.com Client on your parent's Mac.
3. Configure your parent's router to assign a Static IP Address to your parent's Mac.
4. Forward port 5900 on your parent's router to the Static IP address of your parent's Mac.
5. Configure macOS to allow Remote Management.
6. Use macOS' built-in Screen Sharing.app to control your parent's computer.
Some of these steps sound difficult, but with some research and effort it is pretty simple.
If you are advanced enough that you need access to more than one computer at home (i.e. to the entire home network), you can set up a VPN server at home. Basically any router comes with a VPN server nowadays. Once you have established a VPN tunnel to your router, you are able to communicate remotely with any IP host on your home network.
If you just need access to files stored on one Mac, use iCloud Drive or any other cloud file storage service.
Back to My Mac was a poor-man’s VPN solution before real VPN became available on consumer-grade routers. This was also mostly for homes with one computer. At one point, a manual crank as a backup system for an electric starter became an outdated offering and got removed as an option from every modern car. Did it prevent someone from
buying a new car I’m the past 40 years?
No they're not.
Command-K in finder, no need for Safari.
https://help.dyn.com/bonjour-and-dns-discovery/
My company also wrote some software that uses wide area Bonjour. It's awesome. We still have plans to use the DNS update protocol too.
But this tech really didn't catch on like centralised 'cloud' solutions.
Why?
Well two reasons I think:
1. it was so simple people couldn't get their heads around it - particularly IT types who wanted to open firewall ports and configure routers and set up DynamicDNS - none of which was needed and most of which would get in the way. IT people make their money by ensuring that things are as complex as possible, they don't advertise solutions that don't require their extensive involvement and specialist knowledge.
2. There was nothing to sell (monentize), so nobody bothered explaining the feature. Centralised cloud solutions are easy to monentize. With iCloud disk space you need to pay $$$ per month - but with BTMM you already owned the disk space and you had to pay nothing. Something to 'sell' means lots of people will tell you that you should be buying it, how to buy it and who to buy it from.
For a limited part of the market - wide area Bonjour and DNS update protocol enables people to easily access services on your own servers - like VNC or a web server or an SMB/CIFS/AFS server, or a printer server or an SSH server. That is not your average consumer. Apple are having a lot of success with consumer devices and services and this is 'refocusing' on that market.
I come from another era, an era where maybe Apple was the underdog and not the largest company in the us economy, but all was back to user experience. Now all it seems is that apple wants me to join Apple Music pushing me from within the music app! Or Apple pay in every site i visit if they have it within my safari browising. Not to talk about dozens of bugs and the sixteenth request today for my password even to go to the toilet. All is down to money money money. I will stick with my old laser printer and my airport routers led by a mac pro and an apple monitor. Maybe a couple of oses version down the lane. Am i a dinosaur? Or Apple just became Microsoft?
If you need to share an iCloud account password then this Back To Mac thing is not what you should be using to support your parents remotely.
What does "Or Apple pay in every site i visit if they have it within my safari browising." even mean?
If you're chatting via Macs in Messages, click "Details" and tap the little overlapping squares icon. Works great.