Apple Alerting Customers to Upcoming Discontinuation of Back to My Mac in macOS Mojave

[Feenician]

Apple is getting so greedy and yet Google just keeps delivering. I'll just go ahead and leave here (it's free BTW): remotedesktop.google.com
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remotedesktop.google.com enjoy

Yeah, fortunately Google never shutter any projects. Well, except for Lively, Reader, Deskbar, Click-to-Call, Writely, Hello, Send to Phone, Audio Ads, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Ride Finder, Shared Stuff, Page Creator, Marratech, Goog-411, Google Labs, Google Buzz, Powermeter, Real Estate, Google Directory, Google Sets, Fast Flip, Image Labeler, Aardvark, Google Gears, Google Bookmarks, Google Notebook, Google Code Search, News Badges, Google Related, Latitude, Flu Vaccine Finder, Google Health, Knol, One Pass, Listen, Slide, Building Maker, Meebo, Talk, SMS, iGoogle, Schemer, Notifier, Orkut, Hotpot, Music Trends, Refine, SearchWiki, US Government Search, Sparrow, Web Accelerator, Google Accelerator, Accessible Search, Google Video, Helpouts, Friend Connect, Google Radio Ads, Jaiku, SideWiki, Wave and many more. But apart from all those you can totally rely on Google to keep services running.

 

[joshalo3]

But I'm still getting that free remote desktop thought right!?

 

[Feenician]

But I'm still getting that free remote desktop thought right!?

Until you don’t, sure. Nothing is “free” however.

 

[Detnator]

The only decent free replacement is TeamViewer. Recommending iCloud Drive is bulls_it, whoever thought of that should just slit their wrists.

This is further evidence of the slow decline of Apple since Steve Jobs died.

Ummm… huh? You wrote some good stuff in that post until this bit of obnoxious FUD. They're not recommending just iCloud Drive. They're recommending iCloud Drive and Screen Sharing.app, which together are every bit as capable as TV, and they're built in. No wrist slitting required.
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Yeah, fortunately Google never shutter any projects. Well, except for Lively, Reader, Deskbar, Click-to-Call, Writely, Hello, Send to Phone, Audio Ads, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Ride Finder, Shared Stuff, Page Creator, Marratech, Goog-411, Google Labs, Google Buzz, Powermeter, Real Estate, Google Directory, Google Sets, Fast Flip, Image Labeler, Aardvark, Google Gears, Google Bookmarks, Google Notebook, Google Code Search, News Badges, Google Related, Latitude, Flu Vaccine Finder, Google Health, Knol, One Pass, Listen, Slide, Building Maker, Meebo, Talk, SMS, iGoogle, Schemer, Notifier, Orkut, Hotpot, Music Trends, Refine, SearchWiki, US Government Search, Sparrow, Web Accelerator, Google Accelerator, Accessible Search, Google Video, Helpouts, Friend Connect, Google Radio Ads, Jaiku, SideWiki, Wave and many more. But apart from all those you can totally rely on Google to keep services running.

LOL. This is awesome.

And then there's the fact that Google makes it possible to wiretap the Secret Service and destroy other people's businesses, they've known about it for years and won't do anything about it:

 

[Feenician]

Ummm… huh? You wrote some good stuff in that post until this bit of obnoxious FUD. They're not recommending just iCloud Drive. They're recommending iCloud Drive and Screen Sharing.app, which together are every bit as capable as TV, and they're built in. No wrist slitting required.
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LOL. This is awesome.

And then there's the fact that Google makes it possible to wiretap the Secret Service and destroy other people's businesses, they've known about it for years and won't do anything about it:

That list is only up to 2015. How many messaging apps alone have they dropped since then?

I’m half way through that TED talk. Man, they just don’t care what they put on their platform. DuckDuckGo for life.

Edit: finished watching it. That’s a real eye opener. What a horribly immoral company.

 

[Detnator]

I’m half way through that TED talk. Man, they just don’t care what they put on their platform. DuckDuckGo for life.

Edit: finished watching it. That’s a real eye opener. What a horribly immoral company.

Yep.

While certainly some of the directions Apple is heading, and some of Apple's products and services are really starting to suck sometimes, it still all sucks a whole lot less than the alternatives.


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A trillion dollar company eliminating features from their OS? Apple — if you can’t get it to work right, hire some damn developers and put them on this. I agree it was unreliable, but that means you make it better. You sell “Pro” machines, and this caters to pro users.

If you just want people to pay the $80 for your outdated Remote Desktop by removing features from your OS, that’s just pathetic. You’re richer than God, quit nickel and diming everyone especially for features that used to be included.

Go ahead, I dare someone to reply to me and try to refute these points.

Ok... I will...

Do you even understand what BTMM does? It provides easy NAT traversal. That's it.

1. BTMM is most certainly not a PRO feature. LOL. Pros know how to configure their routers, or they can afford to pay an IT guy $100 to do it. BTMM is most certainly a "let's make NAT traversal easy for consumers" feature.

2. That easy NAT traversal isn't available in ARD anyway.

ARD adds nothing that BTMM provided that isn't still included with free, built in Screen Sharing, and File Sharing. If you want to whine, you really should get your facts straight.

Consider yourself replied to and your points refuted.


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80 bucks to remote into another machine? meanwhile, windows has microsoft remote desktop included for free, and one of the best out there.

Back to My Mac = Free. Apple Remote Desktop = $79.99. Thanks Apple.

What *******s. I guess I'll have to use DropBox for everything now.

This to me sums up the problem with todays Apple, they honestly think money is no object for people. … The perception is starting to shift for me (not in a binary way), but on a sliding scale, from a company that wanted to delight me, to a company that just wants to extract cash.

iCloud Drive can absolutely not be a replacement, and since i only used it once in a while, I am not paying for a software replacement.

Many Back to My Mac users are likely to be unhappy with Apple's suggestion to transition to Apple Remote Desktop for remote management given its high price and the fact that it sees few updates

The fact they think ARD is a viable alternative at $80 is absurd.

I haven't read all 10 pages of comments here. I got through about 3 or 4 before I found all the above quotes (including the one from the article itself) and got fed up.

What's absurd is the level of unsubstantiated FUD - stemming from either ignorance or just plain trolling - on this forum (including in the MR article itself).

See also my post above to autrefois whose dare I couldn't refuse. Do any of you actually know what BTMM and ARD are/do? They are completely irrelevant to each other. Why Apple even felt the need to put ARD in there as an "alternative" to BTMM is really the only thing that's wrong here. It provides nothing that BTMM provided.

Screen sharing is still free with the built in (to macOS) Screen Sharing.app. File Sharing is still free the same way it's always been (Finder > Go > Connect to Server...), or by dragging files into or out of the Screen Sharing window, or via iCloud Drive. The only thing we're losing is:

Screen and file sharing is free and always has been. What is going away is free [and easy] NAT traversal.

Instead…

Apple wants you to go and have to screw with your router now.

Aw, what the hell, Apple? ...there's no other good way to punch through a firewall without manual intervention. I use this all the time.

And the $80 ARD doesn't provide that anyway.

It sucks that they're removing this feature. The one thing autrefois said above that is right is "Apple — if you can’t get it to work right, hire some damn developers and put them on this. I agree it was unreliable, but that means you make it better."...

But all this whining about $80 ARD...? People need to get their facts straight before spreading all this (false) hate.

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maybe I am not getting this right, but my workflow requires copying terra bytes data between Macs, of which one of them functions as a server. And no, iCloud is not a solution for me, I'm talking 10s of terabytes here. Guess I'll have to go back to using external disks for that... <G>

How did BTMM help you with that?? What are you losing here?

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Just another (of many) swings of the axe, to the tree that Jobs grew. I'm still irritated by the loss of screensharing over ichat. Being able to troubleshoot any other mac users machine for them without requiring them to be competent (patient) enough to install extra software was really handy.

High Sierra Messages app. Looks like it's still there, to me (see attached)...

 

[GuillaumeB]

Yeh well any solution like this one which requires you to install something on the client side to access the server is useless. Real remote control should happen within a simple browser whichever it might be and from any OS) Full stop. To this day dwservice.net is the simplest solution I found ( have not tried noVNC or Apache Guacamole but their installation is a pain)

 

[autrefois]

Ok... I will...

Do you even understand what BTMM does? It provides easy NAT traversal. That's it.

I know what it does, but don’t know the terminology or technical details. I am not tech savvy, am a professional, and have been able to use BTMM without knowing the technical details. Isn’t that the idea?

1. BTMM is most certainly not a PRO feature. LOL. Pros know how to configure their routers, or they can afford to pay an IT guy $100 to do it. BTMM is most certainly a "let's make NAT traversal easy for consumers" feature.

You expect all pros — including people who run a home/small business, photographers, etc. — to know how to configure their router or to want to pay someone $100 to do something they used to be able to do for free?

2. That easy NAT traversal isn't available in ARD anyway.

ARD adds nothing that BTMM provided that isn't still included with free, built in Screen Sharing, and File Sharing. If you want to whine, you really should get your facts straight.

Consider yourself replied to and your points refuted.

So, what is the point again for Apple stopping support for this? It was easy and convenient when it worked. So according to what you say, you have to be tech savvy or pay someone to set up what used to be free and (when it worked) pretty straightfoward. I’m not sure what you think has been refuted...

Why Apple even felt the need to put ARD in there as an "alternative" to BTMM is really the only thing that's wrong here. It provides nothing that BTMM provided.

It sucks that they're removing this feature. The one thing autrefois said above that is right is "Apple — if you can’t get it to work right, hire some damn developers and put them on this. I agree it was unreliable, but that means you make it better."...

But all this whining about $80 ARD...? People need to get their facts straight before spreading all this (false) hate.

Thank you for agreeing partially with my point. You obviously know much more on the topic than most of us do and it was interesting to read. It sounds like Apple has just confused everyone by mentioning ARD. Does whoever at Apple wrote their recommendation for ARD not know what they’re talking about (in which case I think we can excuse average users from not knowing, too) or are they just trying to make a buck off of people who don’t know better? Not sure I like either option...

 

[toke lahti]

So, what is the point again for Apple stopping support for this?

#222

Oh, well,
Maybe this was coming when they axed their routers.
Tech.customer service is the biggest cost in ITC industry and before they could say that they support BtMM only with Apple’s routers and if they would support BtMM now, support should be able to help customers to tweak hundreds of different router models. Financially not possible. At least for Apple.

 

[sdf]

If you buy a computer, you already get the windows license. No $80 fee on top of that, like a mac....

Yes. You get Windows 10 Home. Windows 10 Pro is extra. Unless the company you're buying it from is building the extra into the price. Either way, you're paying that extra $80 (or less if the OEM gets a discount on it… but still extra $ passed on to you).

 

[enigma2118]

That’s a new service of iCloud Drive soon enough. My post 2-4 earlier in another thread surmised about this. It’s actually long overdue.

Would be nice to Time Machine backup and access files completely remotely and securely away from home or anywhere else.
Service revenue spike!!

Can you point me to some more information about this? Man I hope so!

 

[dark_skies]

I continue to believe Tim Cook is getting bad advice. Once upon a time, Apple/Mac products "just worked" and if you needed some capability more sophisticated than what you were currently doing, Apple or a handful of private companies had probably already implemented it. So there are ways around BTMM - great. The point Used to be that Apple made things easy for users to be productive. That's it. Fewer (to almost no) viruses, Linux (ok Mach kernel) underneath, consumer apps with very powerful pro apps available. That's the idea. Someone is bean counting when they are a trillion dollar company. At the very least, their email to users or post on Apple support should directly link complementary products by private companies that could take them to the Apple Mac store, or some such. They need a Mac OS user development group refresh, and I suspect some short-sighted people need to be reassigned or fired. Dumping all the ports but USB-C on the MBP is similarly short-sighted and disadvantageous to users. As someone who is also an investor in Apple, I think more attention to the user is called for even if, God forbid, it doesn't directly benefit shareholders. Take the long view, Apple.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Can you point me to some more information about this? Man I hope so!

Sorry nothing concrete. My hypothesis based inn iOS Files, iCloud, and good hunch in the rise in services ... i think this is just the next step.