Filed under: Software, Developer
Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta)
Microsoft promised us some goodies this week, and they just delivered on that promise. The long awaited (at least by me) Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta) is now available for download. This is a beta, but in my limited testing it is much, much faster (as one might expect). New in this Beta, which expires on March 31, 2008 are:- Universal Binary (hurrah!)
- Works with Vista, and used the new Remote Desktop protocol
- Multiple session support (this is a big deal, though I can't actually figure out how to connect to more than one machine at a time)
- Better printer support, better UI
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Michael Rose said 2:11PM on 7-31-2007
Woo-hoo! Downloading it now.
Mind you, I've been happily using CoRD for a while now, and it has most everything I would want from RDC: universal, multisession, supports console mode...
http://cord.sourceforge.net/
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Eric Ranschau said 2:13PM on 7-31-2007
Scott,
I was able to open multiple connections by dragging and dropping multiple saved connection files onto the application icon.
So far, on my Core Duo MBP, RDC seems to run MUCH quicker than it's predecessor.
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Kishen said 2:22PM on 7-31-2007
So, it took them how long to build and release this? What a waste of time. CoRD is still better.
The MacBU should spend it's time doing something useful, like making entourage at least half decent instead of wasting its scarce resources on a needless update to RDC.
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Sebastiaan de With said 2:39PM on 7-31-2007
... and the icon still sucks! ;)
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locobox said 4:46PM on 7-31-2007
Cord is way better than this Beta version of RDC.
- REAL multiple sessions (what's MS thinking trying to get people to drag/drop SAVED sessions????? - wow)
- Console feature
- Connect to Printer/Local Disk
- Full screen and having the dock available
RDC beta crashed twice on me, once to at a login (before getting to login window, and the other one at logoff - never happened to Cord, even though I'm using an final unreleased version.
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iGO said 3:03PM on 7-31-2007
Excuse my ignorance but, In what way is this different then setting "Share this folder(s) on the Network" setting in Windows XP. Once set, I can access all of 'My Documents', on my XP machine, on my local network from my iMac and vice-versa. Thanks for any clarification. I just want to see if I can use this feature/application on my iMac to make that experience better. Thanks !!
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Mo said 3:12PM on 7-31-2007
#1: CoRD is good, but last I looked it didn't support Vista (well, it didn't work for me—though I use it daily to connect to Server 2003).
#5: It comes into its own when you're connecting to a machine for which you *don't* have local network filesharing access (servers on different networks, for example).
Why on EARTH is this a .pkg, though? A quick look shows that it just contains the .app file. I do hope this isn't a trend from the MacBU.
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TMD said 3:19PM on 7-31-2007
I tried CoRD recently and it seemed pretty nice. That is until I tried to work with Java/SWT based applications (ie. Eclipse, IBM ClearQuest, etc.). For some reason, they would lock up when using them with CoRD, but the same Java/SWT apps worked just fine with the RDC from Microsoft. This beta 2 works beautifully too - I'm very pleased. :)
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Mo said 3:17PM on 7-31-2007
Okay MacBU, here's the deal:
1. Moving all of the per-connection options into “Preferences” is just plain dumb.
2. The options for “which display…” should include a “Don't care” option which uses whichever display the window happens to be in
3. There's no option to connect to the console session
4. There's no option to choose a custom resolution
5. Is it possible to have a different login credentials for each connection? If so, the use of “Preferences” to set this isn't just dumb, it's downright confusing. If not… well, that's a pretty major regression.
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Chad said 4:18PM on 7-31-2007
@6 where are you seeing the .app file? It's not anywhere in the package that I can tell.
I'd like to try it, but the application installer quits on me. Same result on 5 different machines
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Mo said 4:27PM on 7-31-2007
@9: You need to open the package with something like Pacifist to extract it.
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Frootis said 11:25AM on 8-13-2007
Please if anyone that has ANYTHING to do with the dev of RDC, PLEASE include authentication. I cannot connect to windows servers that have SSL auth. turned on! Thanks
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bgriggs said 5:03PM on 7-31-2007
I was expecting there to be support for remote apps. Maybe later?
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AZL said 5:47PM on 7-31-2007
Any one else notice that it DOESN'T support Vista Home Basic or Home Premium?
Any one try it on Vista Home Basic or Home Premium? Does it work?
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Mark said 6:03PM on 7-31-2007
Not bad, significantly better than the previous version, but still lacking in speed and options compared to running rdesktop (which beats out CoRD for speed, but requires you have X11 and either compile or use TSclientX.) I do have one big question: why can't I set custom resolutions?
In the end it's still good to see Microsoft making an effort to update RDC for OS X, and it works fine for a quick solution. Though not as fast as CoRD, I'm happy with either if I can't have rdesktop (I hope X11 becomes default on all installs one day.)
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JKT said 6:08PM on 7-31-2007
Kishen: Until CoRD opens .rdp files it is useless for many of us.
As for this new release, it still does not support the time zone setting on the host server--it defaults to GMT. This is the biggest (MS acknowledged) bug in RDP 1.0.3 and it's astounting that it's not fixed yet in Beta 2.0.
2.0 is also not honoring the resolution sizes specified in .rdp files as 1.0.3 did, so this is a step backwards. Multiple sessions is a good step, but I never needed that and there had been 3rd party solution for that under 1.0.3.
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Big Dave said 7:07PM on 7-31-2007
@13: Vista Home Basic and Home Premium don't have an Remote Desktop Server build into them, its only in Business and Ultimate.
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Sam said 9:23PM on 7-31-2007
To extract files from a package using only the Finder, look inside it - in Contents there will be a file called Archive.pax.gz. Copy this file out of the package, then double click on it. You'll end up with two new items - Archive.pax and a folder called Archive, which contains the files that Installer will install.
Note that this method won't preserve file ownership, whereas Pacifist probably will (I have never used it, but since it's shareware I'd imagine it would handle things like that - it'd be a pretty poor deal otherwise).
Sam
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Mo said 4:17AM on 8-01-2007
#17: Oh yes, silly me—I forgot that BOMArchiveHelper can extract pax archives.
Yes, Pacifist can (optionally—it's on by default, though) preserve ownership, though you don't actually need to for RDC. There really isn't any reason for this to be a .pkg—a drag and drop .app distribution would have worked just fine.
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hoberion said 7:47AM on 8-01-2007
get something for free -> wine
just save a new session with no ip/servername, its called then Default.. then run the Default.rdp session to create a new session...
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