randomness

Testing Performancing

Testing the new Performancing plug-in for Firefox that let's me edit directly from the browser in a split-plane manner. Very cool product. Strange name, though. Seems to work well.

Change of address

I've moved my blog here.

Apple - please follow Microsoft on this one

Apple has so many things going for it: great hardware, exceptionally good software, including numerous superb consumer-oriented tools and, of course, a fabulously loyal base of enthusiastic users (of which I'm happy to now be part of).

Every now and then, though, there are examples of where Microsoft has produced things that, well, are simply better. You might recall that when Panther was released, last year, Apple included an application switcher remarkably like Windows' Alt-Tab switching model. In fact, Jobs made mention of it when Panther was previewed and credited Microsoft for the interface model. Apple then produced something as good or better and then went on to introduce Exposé, which proved to be as useful as it was fun to watch and use.

Anyone that knows me and happened to have watched me use my 12" Powerbook over the last 21 months will know that, at times, it must have looked awefully like Windows. There's a reason. No, it's not Virtual PC. I'm often running Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client. So the desktop you've seen on my Powerbook is, well, the desktop on my office XP computer, or another computer in our office.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop works so amazingly well that it's remarkable more Windows users don't know more about it and use it more often. Why bother trying to sync remote applications and distribute information across different systems when, in many cases, you can simply access that information at the source. This is especially true for email. Wouldn't it be easier if you could simply be at your office desktop PC to check email, review documents and manipulate files on your office servers? With Microsoft's remote desktop, you can. XP Professional has the server necessary for this work built-in. So does Windows 2000 and 2003 Server.

If you've already thought about solving this problem with VNC, LapLink, PC Anywhere or GoToMyPC you're doing the right thing - just with the wrong tool. VNC and these other tools, while decent, in no way compare with the integrated nature and speed of Microsoft's remote desktop services. Microsoft's solution is so good and so fast they even have bandwidth left over to stream audio through the session.

The speed and fluidity exposed through the Remote Desktop system is so good that, at times, it's hard to tell you're not "there." Microsoft, with a foundation built on technology developed by Citrix years ago, built a tool set that's fast and easy to use. And, thankfully, they created a client for the Mac. So, if you need to access your remote XP or Windows server system using a laptop XP system or Mac, you can. From home. From Starbucks. From anywhere. If you've thought about buying Virtual PC to operate Windows on your Mac, perhaps you should consider using that old PC you ditched when you bought your Mac. With Remote Desktop you'll have access to it and can continue to use all your old apps - remotely (forgot about games, though - RDC isn't that fast!).

Unfortunately, if you want to do something similar in the Mac world you're out of luck. Here's why. Although a remote desktop client exists for the Mac, there's no good counterpart to the server side. Apple offers us Remote Desktop version 2.0, but it can't compare to Microsoft's solution. Here's why: while Microsoft essentially extends a virtualized desktop session through their interface and plugs in at the GDI level, Apple's Remote Desktop is based around VNC and works on a screen scraping model that doesn't virtualize the display. Speed doesn't compare to Microsoft's solution and the desktop session isn't resized to fit the client's window size.

I switched my office PC from an Intel/XP platform to a dual 2 Ghz G5 Mac tower a few months ago. I outfitted it with Apple's superb 23" cinema display. Computing has been a delight. The system is fast, extremely reliable and quite flexible. And the display is, well, fabulous. I've never had a monitor so big and so nice. Imagine what it's like accessing my office G5 from home through my 12" PowerBook. Hmmm... let's look at resolutions. The 12" PowerBook is running at 1024x768. The office G5 at a whopping 1920x1200.

If I happened to have had a Windows XP or Server desktop that was running that big a screen, Microsoft's solution would create a new, virtual screen for my session with their remote desktop. This would allow the 12" PowerBook client to operate quickly and efficiently. At full screen, the remote Windows system would appear to have a screen resolution matched with my client - 1024x768. The screen-shot just above and to the right shows a remote desktop session at 800x600. The image is clear and highly readable. Working remotely, in the manner, is easy and efficient.

The Mac-to-Mac solution is quite different. With Apple's Remote Desktop solution, which utilizes VNC, you have two choices that I can tell: run at 1:1 or scale the remote desktop's screen to fit the client's viewing screen. At 1:1, the experience is fair. While the display comes up quickly enough, scrolling around and editing is poor across my broadband cable connection (3Mb/sec down, 128Kb/sec up). The same experiment in our office, on our 100Mb/s LAN improved things - but only slightly.

The other display option is to have Apple's Remote Desktop scale the image to fit the client's screen. OK - sounds good. In practice, though, it can produce a poor experience, especially if the source screen being scaled is 1920x1200.

Remarkably, Apple's solution works when scaled in this manner. Mouse tracking is accurate and speedy. Something I can't say for all my previous experiences with VNC. I've even gotten in and done a few things - but it hurt my eyes terribly. Why isn't there a mode whereby Apple resizes the target system? Why should it, in my case, continue to operate a desktop that's 1920x1200 when I'd do much better, working remotely, at 1024x768?

Combine the screen behavior with the performance that's nothing to be proud at and you've got a solution well behind and inferior to what Microsoft is offering. To be fair, Apple might tell you that their Remote Desktop solution does a great many more things than Microsoft's (such as being able to execute remote command, lock screens, transfer files, control several systems, monitor systems without controlling, etc.) - and that's right. But I need something that gives me remote presence for my desktop. Something that lets me operate the Mac in my office as if I were there.

While I'll often remote shell in using SSH (the secure version of telnet), I can't do things that require me to be on my network in my office - like using a browser to control a cluster of systems using our Raritan KV232 IP-based KVM system or manage our CoyotePoint Equalizer or firewall appliance. Sure there's VPN, but that's a story for another entry.

For now, I'd just like a simple remote desktop client like Microsoft's that lets my Mac control another Mac - quickly, efficiently and without scaling. Of course, if someone points out that this is possible and that I should simply RTFM, I'll retract everything I've written. :)

Mac Happiness

It's been a good six months now that I've had my dual 2Ghz G5 and 23" Cinema display. Six months that I've been working almost exclusively on a platform that, for years, I derided as either primitive or inferior. Looking back and trying to reflect upon my past criticisms, I suspect it was all directed at Apple prior to their releasing OS X.

Of course, my adoption of the Mac and OS X six months ago didn't happen randomly. I had previously switched from using XP on various versions of Sony's Vaio notebooks to a 12" G4 Powerbook. It was November 2002, in fact, that I decided upon the PowerBook - just a month before my daughter was born. Although XP had proven decent at collecting and editing video from my Firewire-based cameras, it was never superb. Photo management was fair (this was before Picasa had been released). So, with a daughter on the horizon, there seemed to be a perfect excuse for going out and dropping a wad of cash on a new laptop. Better video and better photo management I told myself.

The PowerBook proved to be stunning at all of its tasks. Beside being really well designed, I learned to really enjoy using OS X. And, with each new version of the OS that I encountered the PowerBook seemed to improve in reliability and performance. Sure, it ran a tad hot. But Apple has notebook sleeping, WiFi and construction quality nailed. And its iLife group of apps (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, etc.) really are quite good for most consumers. They've gotten better over time too. I've created numerous DVDs of and for my daughter and have been pleased every time.

So, some time later, which turned out to be six months ago, I decided to change everything about how I worked on a daily basis. I decided to simply switch to OS X for my main desktop system - the system I'd have to use every day for the bulk of my work. I did this knowing I'd still be somewhat tethered to all my other office PCs thanks to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client (RDC) for the Mac. In fact, since I first started using OS X on my PowerBook I was constantly accessing and using XP and Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 systems using RDC. Microsoft's Mac version of RDC is superb. Without it I may never have switched.

What I've enjoyed most about the Mac and OS X has been speed, stability, performance and, frankly, a lovely UI. XP seems almost cluttered and ineffecient when I use it now and the various desktops under Linux, well, simply don't appear ready for the general public...yet.

Today I had to access a client's site via VPN - using Cisco's VPN client. Well, I didn't have the Mac version and decided to run it under Virtual PC 7 (still in beta). I use VPC every now and then - primarily to test web applications we develop or to access certain things on sites like MSNBC that still seems far too XP/PC centric. Virtual PC-like applications continue to amaze me and the folks at Microsoft have really done an amazing job with the product they bought from Connectix. When it's released I'm sure there will be a bunch of happy people. So, anyhow, back to my VPC experience today. The Cisco stuff worked beautifully. Imagine, I was using VPN on an instance of XP running inside VPC on my G5 Mac. It connected to my client's site - gave the XP instance it's own network space, in the client's network. I then used RDC under XP to access one of our client's systems. Speed was superb - really no different than if I were using RDC natively on a regular PC with XP or the Mac.

This was all happening while I operated four virtual screens (thanks to Rich Wareham's excellent Desktop Manager) on Apple's beautiful but expensive 23" Cinema display. On desktop one I had iChatAV and Proteus running along with an SSH session to some remote Linux box. Desktop two is used for RSS. I happen to run Ranchero Software's NetNewsWire - primarily to keep abreast of what folks like Robert Scoble are saying. Desktop three is for email and blogging. I switch between Entourage (which I really really want to like) and Mail.app. iCal runs sometimes. Desktop four is what pays the bills. Several instances of Jetbrain's IDEA run here. What can I say beside it's the very best development tool I've ever used - on the PC or Mac (yes - runs everywhere...it's Java). Oh, forgot, iTunes is streaming Groove Salad too.

Can the PC do all this. Yes. Is Linux just as good? Well - yes. Are virtual desktops unique to OS X? Of course not. They're more Unix/Linux than anything. How then can I explain my happiness with OS X? Same way I prefer one car over another. One airline over another. One city over another. Steak over fish (most of the time), etc., etc. Lots of little things.

But I will tell you that the G5 platform with OS X is delightfully quiet, remarkably stable and, well, just a darn good computer. So far, the best I've ever used.