jdavis66
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Can you help me understand if ARD is appropriate for my needs?

Excuse the newbie here.  I'm still having trouble understanding if ARD 3 will be able to do the following: I'd like the ability to control/manage my friend's iMac from my MBPro.  However, we will be living in different parts of the country and therefore (as far as I understand) will be using different networks.  If ARD allows me to do this then do I download it on my MBPro or her iMac.  We are both running Mountian Lion if this helps.  Thanks in advance.

Apple Remote Desktop 3, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 21, 2012 5:35 PM

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jdavis66

Q: Can you help me understand if ARD is appropriate for my needs?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Antonio Rocco,

    Antonio Rocco Antonio Rocco Dec 24, 2012 4:58 AM in response to jdavis66
    Level 6 (10,616 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 24, 2012 4:58 AM in response to jdavis66

    Hi

     

    If all you want to do is control one mac from your mac you don't need ARD. VNC (Screen Sharing/Remote Management) is built into every mac. As such all you need do is make sure either of those services have been enabled (Sharing Preference Pane) and you've opened up the relevant ports (5900, 3283) on your friend's router/firewall to forward remote traffic to his assigned private IP address.

     

    From there it gets a bit tricky as two things may happen which could limit how effective this all is as well as potentially confuse you both:

     

    (a) the external IP address (assuming a residential broadband service) assigned to your friend's router may change over time.

     

    (b) the internal IP address assigned by your friend's router may also change over time depending on how many devices are connected at any one time on his/her private network.

     

    If you and/or your friend are farmiliar with some of the basic concepts of IP addressing, routing, port forwarding and router/firewalls you may have a chance. If neither of you have any idea or find it too complicated you could instead try iChat Screen Sharing (free) and/or LogMein (free). It's been a while but I think Skype also offers a screen sharing/control faciliy?

     

    HTH?

     

    Tony

  • by markdgreco,

    markdgreco markdgreco Dec 26, 2012 9:51 AM in response to jdavis66
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 26, 2012 9:51 AM in response to jdavis66

    use Messages screen sharing feature

  • by Andrew Baldwin1,

    Andrew Baldwin1 Andrew Baldwin1 Jan 10, 2013 8:10 AM in response to Antonio Rocco
    Level 3 (595 points)
    Jan 10, 2013 8:10 AM in response to Antonio Rocco

    Tony's correct, but ARD is overkill and unnecessarily complicated for this task.

    Instead, I recommend using free, easy to use software like TeamViewer or LogMeIn.  Neither of these require port forwarding or run in to DHCP issues in normal environments.  I use all three daily.

  • by PJ'sPal,

    PJ'sPal PJ'sPal Apr 2, 2015 5:20 PM in response to markdgreco
    Level 1 (59 points)
    iWork
    Apr 2, 2015 5:20 PM in response to markdgreco

    Apple's Messaging application has Screen Sharing capability.  You can readily share control of the same computer screen which most other screen sharing programs cannot do.

     

    Skype for the mac also now has screen sharing capability but it is limited to one person control 

    Despite the lack of sharing control, it works very well particularly between Macs and PCs.

    Kudos to Microsoft for that.