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

the difference between Back to My Mac and Apple Remote Desktop, is unless the two Macs are on the same network or VPN you cannot cross over, where BtMM would allow with any iCloud authenticated account. Which was handy if I needed to remote in to find something that may not have been synced or really for whatever purpose. Unless they build that into ARD, which would be fine, then it just seems like they're moving everything to iOS like experience
 
An-apple-a-day said:
"Back to My Mac is a feature that is designed to allow Mac owners to connect to one Mac from another Mac for file transfers and screen sharing purposes. It lets users set up a network of Mac computers with two or more Macs, but it can be complicated to set up and use, which may be why Apple has decided to discontinue it in favor of simpler measures. "

What a ridiculous description of BTMM. I don't think the original article author even knows what it is.... and I don't think but 3 or 4 posters on here even know what it is and ever used it.

Yes, you have your Finder sidebar with your home machine(s) showing for remote file access and screen sharing. You don't need BTMM for that on your LAN. But what was cool with BTMM is that with very little setup (totally easy), you could click on the home machine(s) in the sidebar from anywhere in the world (which I did) and get to the files residing on the remote home machine(s) and share the screen(s)... even if the remote access is behind a firewall that you don't have control over or leverages tethering (without NAT or UPnP it would be slow, though). The problem, however, is that I was successful in connecting maybe 80% of the time on the first usage (first since last reboot of home machine, since last voodoo dance ...who knows what condition...) and then maybe 20% or less of the time on second try (after network connection drops at local location or voluntarily disconnecting). As another poster mentioned, it becomes extremely frustrating because you end up sitting there in the hotel room or bar or whatever, thinking... "how can I reboot from here? maybe I can reboot router using BTMM (another nice BTMM feature when it works), but then that doesn't work either, so... fly home?

So I'm definitely bummed. I'd rather see it fixed (probably issues lie somewhere in MacOS) than dismantled.
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Assuming the router on our Home LAN is not causing the issue, eg, it's not blocking traffic via an ACL or NAT/PAT problem, then often the issue will be with the foreign network that you're on. As it quite simply wont allow the required traffic. That's obviously something out of control by both you and Apple.
So it's not easily something that can be just fixed. And it's more complicated that the foreign network not supporting UPnP etc.

Apple could implement an SSL based VPN service but again, that won't solve the issue entirely. You could be on a network with HTTPS inspection etc.

What "Back to Mac" did was setup a L2TP VPN without the end user knowing, it then attempted to configure the router with UPnP/NAT-PMP.
A VPN connection can be established from a Client device to another Client device.
A Client device to a remote edge device (router etc).
Or a site to site VPN which is router to router based.
What Back to Mac did was establish a VPN from the end user device (MacOS) to Apple's Cloud as a kinda hub and spoke network. All traffic had to pass through apples servers which was slow and clunky. And that's of course if the end point could even establish the connection in the first place.

I can see why Apple would want to kill off this service since the only real thing it offered was File Access. iCloud Drive can "kinda" fill the gap in this. Though of course it isn't a like for like solution.

What Apple could do is allow MacOS to check into an Apple Cloud Service via https, "check in" and register itself to display under Screen Share's UI. It could then setup a connection in the same way that FaceTime can establish a call/link etc, all over HTTPS.

That way at least there is a native builtin solution to remotely connect back to your other MacOS devices. iCloud Drive isn't going to allow you to see those external drives plugged in back at home etc . But at least this would be meeting us in the middle.
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robbyx said:
Why? Were you copying 10s of terabytes via Back to My Mac???
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I'm going to say because the user is confused about SMB shares on a LAN Vs. the data being transferred via BTMM.
 
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This is total BS. I like and use this feature... altho you can use VNC directly, this was better.

Real reason, B2MM requires NAT-PMP and only Airport Routers properly support this. Apple does not want to recode this (they are short engineers) to make it work with Linksys or Netgear routers. And now that Airport routers are going away, why support B2MM when it would require more work.
 
hybrid_x said:
Did BTMM ever work with non-Apple networking hardware? I was never able to connect remotely using it with Linksys, TPLink, or Netgear routers. However, VNC Viewer worked just fine.
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i’ve only used it with non apple routers and it’s always worked fine for me
 
dukebound85 said:
Why do you continually defend Apple for removing a very useful first party means of accomplishing this? I don’t get your mindset
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They have to weigh the usefulness of features. Inclusion of every feature requires time, testing, and resources. There are only so much of each. If a feature is only used by 1% of your users, you need to examine if it's worth the investment to keep it, knowing it will cost you elsewhere. This happens with every single software developer on the planet.

This just happens to be something you use, so you feel more strongly about the removal of it. If they removed a feature you didn't use in order to better support one you did, I'm sure you'd feel differently.
 
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In my opinion, the best alternative is DWService.net

Full VNC + file access right from a browser, without having to install anything on the client side, which means you can remotely access your mac (or Windows, or Linux machine for that matter) from any computer without having to download an app or an extension on the computer which is in your hand. Also, it's free and open source :)
 
macsrcool1234 said:
80 bucks to remote into another machine? meanwhile, windows has microsoft remote desktop included for free, and one of the best out there.
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ARD is not just screen sharing. Apple bundles screen sharing free with their products. ARD is more an administration tool to allow for mass updates to systems. But unfortunately neither of these is Back to My Mac. This is a secure vpn tunnel between two machines that both use the same iCloud account. No configuration, no issues with routers or firewalls. No having to leave your computer more accessible on the internet.
 
This is nuts. I just got a new Time Capsule with the hopes of riding it through the five year support windows, primarily because using Back to My Mac to access my shared drives and Time Capsule is so magical.

Magic is dead at Apple.
 
AlumaMac said:
Which feature will Apple be 'better supporting' by killing BTMM?
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It might not be a matter of supporting another specific feature. It’s more like taking time away from all other features in order to support one that 1) doesn’t work reliably, 2) causes a lot of overhead for Apple, 3) only works on a Mac (ie: no BTMM from my iOS device), 4) is only used by a very small percentage of users, 5) is easily replaced by more reliable third party options and/or Apple’s own screen sharing.
 
amaze1499 said:
This was once possible back in the days of .Mac tools. But cancelled due to obvious revenue reasons.
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As long as there are some in stock. The product line itself has been terminated.
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That's not true. I just accessed my TC right now remotely. Back to My Mac has been built into TCs forever.
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robbyx said:
It might not be a matter of supporting another specific feature. It’s more like taking time away from all other features in order to support one that 1) doesn’t work reliably, 2) causes a lot of overhead for Apple, 3) only works on a Mac (ie: no BTMM from my iOS device), 4) is only used by a very small percentage of users, 5) is easily replaced by more reliable third party options and/or Apple’s own screen sharing.
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Because they have just been killing it with non-buggy releases lately. ^_^
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stevet said:
The machine can't sleep in order to be accessible and you'll have to setup a script of some kind to automatically accept the Sharing Request from a specific user. It may also be that your company is blocking the port that screen sharing uses.
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Which is why Back to My Mac was amazing.
 
the johnmc said:
Wrong. This is configurable in System Preferences.
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Where? That would be wonderful. I've looked through System Preferences, Screen Sharing Preferences, and online articles--so far I haven't found anything that'll automatically accept the request. To clarify, when I connect with Screen Sharing, I use my Apple ID instead of specifying a hostname--this seems to traverse my NAT router without me manually poking holes in it.

the johnmc said:
Go ahead and keep beating the dead horse. Animoji is a really simple skin over a framework that was already developed for Face ID.
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I was late to the horse-flogging party. I just had to get in my two flogs even if rigor mortis had already set in.
 
in all seriousness though

while there may be good reasons to kill btmm, and i’m well aware that apple has no obligation to keep something running just for me,

i keep reading arguments along the lines of

1) no one uses it

2) it doesn’t work anyway

3) there are plenty of alternatives

my response is

1) i use it daily

2) it works flawlessly (for me)

3) please tell me the free alternative that allows me to

a) have remote acces to all of the computers and external drives on my local network through the finder sidebar, even if they are not awake

b) be able to log in to, screen share and move files from and to any of them

c) only set up required is being logged in with apple id and having a box checked in system preferences on each machine
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palebluedot said:
Time Machine is next. :(
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definitely

if i understand correctly time machine relies on hard links which apfs doesn’t do
 
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watkipet said:
Where? That would be wonderful. I've looked through System Preferences, Screen Sharing Preferences, and online articles--so far I haven't found anything that'll automatically accept the request. To clarify, when I connect with Screen Sharing, I use my Apple ID instead of specifying a hostname--this seems to traverse my NAT router without me manually poking holes in it.
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I’m assuming it doesn’t work with an Apple ID. If you’re not specifying the hostname or IP, Apple is making the connection between the two machines for you. So I imagine they aren’t using the actual machine accounts for authentication. If you look at the Sharing system preference, there is an “Allow access for” box. If your user account is in the list of allowed users (or allow all is selected), screen sharing won’t prompt for permission on the machine being accessed. I use it almost daily and it works great. But I also use either the IP or hostname to connect.
 
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