Difference between remote management and vnc

By VNC I will presume you mean 'Screen Sharing'.

Screen Sharing in System Preferences - Sharing is purely for remote control and is based on the VNC protocol with a few extra features added by Apple.

Remote Management in System Preferences does everything Screen Sharing does and is fully compatible with another Mac doing just Screen Sharing, i.e. it allows remote control. However it can also do additional things. It is intended for use with Apple's Remote Desktop Administration software which can use this to send files to a Mac, send (Unix) commands to a Mac and ask for a report from the Mac (e.g. how much RAM it has).

If you don't have Apple Remote Desktop there is no real point enabling Remote Management instead of Screen Sharing.

Both Screen Sharing and Remote Management can also be configured to allow 100% standard VNC connectivity from say a PC, as standard they only accept connections from Macs.

John,

I've managed to get my MacBookAir (OSX10.9.1) to access the desktop on a local iMac (OSX10.8.5) using 'Screen Sharing.'

The 'Screen Sharing' helpfully appears as an application on my MBA and works very well.

Now I'd like to access a friend's computer at a remote location (i.e. not on local network).

Can you advise on best way to do this?

thanks,

PS - I suppose I could use Teamviewer, but I would prefer to use built-in Mac capability.

PPS - the remote Mac is not under my iCloud account, hence Back to my Mac would not work.

ScreenSharing and standard VNC by themselves do not cope well with making a connection between users who are almost certainly on NAT connections and with Dynamic IP addresses.

If you want a built-in Mac tool that does make it easier then you can use Messages as long as both of you have it (it was not part of older OS X versions) and Apple IDs.

Other than that TeamViewer and similar solutions are the best approach.

John, many thanks. Friend's mac is an older osx vintage, hence messages won't work.

I guess it's over to Teamviewer.

Thanks,