Back to My Mac is one of those 'wow' features of Leopard. It lets you connect, securely, to a remote Mac (running Leopard) and access files and control it from any other internet-connected Mac (which also has to be running Leopard). At least, that's what it is supposed to do. Many people, including scores of TUAW readers, are finding that Back to My Mac is fickle at best. It seems flummoxed by most router setups, and some people without complicated home networks are finding Back to My Mac performance spotty at best.
TidBits reports that Apple is aware of the problem (we should hope so!) and is working on it. Apple even responded to someone who reported a problem to assure them that a fix is in the works and should be available in the coming weeks.
As Glenn Fleishman points out, Apple usually doesn't admit to this kind of thing. Is this the dawn of a new, open era in Apple's dealings with customers? I doubt it, but I sure hope so. Either way, Back To My Mac users, or people who would like to use Back To My Mac, should expect a more pleasant experience in a few weeks.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-05-2007 @ 11:04PM
Pete said...
I have an Airport Extreme at both ends and it still doesn't work for me.
I take that back. It didn't work for weeks, worked for one day, and then hasn't worked again since then. It'll be nice to have it more reliable.
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12-05-2007 @ 11:10PM
Dan said...
Back to my Mac works fine for me. The "home" computer is connected to an airport extreme running in bridge mode connected to another airport extreme. The other end has either been on my university's wireless network, or my home network (fios and dlink routers). The only thing that doesn't work correctly is copy and paste. Not exactly sure how the send/get clipboard commands funciton.
12-05-2007 @ 11:17PM
JFDMit said...
Quite a few Apple's "network" services either don't work or don't work well.
Those of us with AEBSs were disappointed when Time Machine dropped support for wireless backups using our base stations. It makes Time Machine much less useful for laptop users.
iDisk is pretty flakey if you use the .Mac sync feature. It slows the shutdown time of my MacBook and MBP from a few seconds to (often) several minutes.
And, of course, Back to My Mac is a pretty hit or miss affair, with seemingly no rhyme or reason behind why it works (or, more often, doesn't).
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12-05-2007 @ 11:42PM
MUTE MATT said...
I couldn't get back to my mac to work at all with 10.5.0. I was very disappointed considering, I had renewed my .Mac account just for this one feature.
However, 10.5.1 brought with it a fix for whatever was causing it to not work for me. I'm sorry to hear it's still not working for other users. Make sure you're running the latest update.
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12-06-2007 @ 9:59AM
Kevin Ayers said...
I agree with that. 10.5.0 was a no-go, but 10.5.1 has fixed the problem.
I have a MacMini @ home connected to an Airport Extreme Snow and I can connect to that on my MacBook Pro from anywhere, regardless of the network setup that I'm currently in.
The only non-plugandplay about the setup was that I had to enable the UPNP on the airport extreme (which I had previously disabled).
12-06-2007 @ 12:08AM
Kwahnoom said...
I think setting .Mac to sync automatically is important. (I forget whether this is mentioned in Apple docs.) Otherwise, computers waking up from sleep or restarting will most likely not be able to connect to others. Connections going to home machines will likely have a higher success rate, as machines on university/corporate networks might have firewalls that you don't know about.
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12-06-2007 @ 12:15AM
Zach Everson said...
Here's the relevant thread on the Apple discussion board:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1199265&start=0&tstart=0
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12-06-2007 @ 1:42AM
Andrew said...
I read somewhere that the home mac you are connecting to cant be in sleep mode.
I found this odd since I wouldnt want my iMac on all the time but maybe this is part of the reason? anyone care to try it out?
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12-06-2007 @ 3:02AM
kshack said...
Back to my mac works perfect as long as you use an airport only as your router (on the side that your trying to reach). I couldn't get other routers to work with it.
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12-06-2007 @ 11:13AM
Chris Watson said...
Maybe with the newer flat ones but not with the domed models. I have a domed snow base station and I couldn't get it to work at all. Had a PowerBook running 10.5 plugged into, all of the necessary options enabled, and could not access it from my neighbors network (Linksys router at first, then replaced with a newer Airport Extreme for testing purposes).
The back to my mac idea is great but I'm sure it's an absolute nightmare at Apple's end.
12-06-2007 @ 11:00PM
kshack said...
Back to My Mac is compatible with AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, or third-party routers which fully support NAT Port Mapping Protocol (NAT-PMP) or Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306803
Link above shows supported devices.
12-06-2007 @ 4:36AM
Klaus T. said...
I believe I've tried every fr***in solution to this problem, and still, it doesn't work.
I can get it to work on the same network, but what fun is that? As soon as I take it outside, nothing. Spent litterally HOURS (and days!) with trial & error, reading trough 20+ threads on Apple Discussions regarding this.
So I give up ... I'm using LogMeIn for now, THAT works without even changing ANYTHING in any of my routers/firewalls.
But I would prefer Back to My Mac, as that was like 50% the reason I bought .Mac in the first place, a month ago.
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12-06-2007 @ 6:29AM
Daiode said...
Funny thing is, if I am sitting in an Airport lounge with my MacBook I don't have a clue how to fire up and start Back To My Mac!
It sounds like a good feature but it has been poorly documented and only after a bit of digging around on the net is the process explained to me.
The idea that you can't use it with Macs that are sleeping is a waste of time.
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12-06-2007 @ 9:34AM
Sam said...
I completely agree - I was so excited for back to my mac and was then surprised to find that apple didn't really tell us how it worked... I think I had to go online to find it, no big deal.
10.5.1 seems to have fixed all my BtmM problems until my iMac became unable to connect to the internet, but I'll spare you that sob story.
12-06-2007 @ 8:15AM
daniel Wahl said...
Another nice "feature" of leopard is, that my usb ports on my macbook are not working anymore.
Sorry for misplacing this in here, but since this thread is about leopard-complaints, i think this is more serious than back to my mac.
does anyone know some hack or workaround?
bugdescription:
usb devices can only be activated during boot.
if they are unplugged and plugged back then they get power but are not recognized.
for all kinds of devices, HDs, mice, keyboards, cardreaders, sticks ...
thx dan
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12-06-2007 @ 8:54AM
Quadrant said...
Daniel,
Whilst it must be frustrating that your usb ports are not working you simply cannot blame Leopard for this saying it is a "feature". If it was a common problem this would be all over the net so I'm afraid it's just you, however, let try to work through this. Have you tried fixing permissions? Have you done a clean install (not an upgrade install) of Leopard? What start-up items/extra preference panes do you have installed if any? Try these first eh mate?!
12-06-2007 @ 9:06AM
daniel Wahl said...
@ Quadrant:
Tried everything.
Archive install, Clean install ... and so forth.
Booting in safe mode, PRam reset, Hard reset, re-running 10.5.1 update ...
Btw, the apple discussion boards are full with leopard connected usb problems from all sorts, mostly usb-powered HDs.
Booting from Tiger brings back my usb ports.
Sorry if the tag behind the "feature" was not clear enough. Still I´m happy for all sorts of hints on this.
dan
12-06-2007 @ 8:46AM
JohnPQ said...
Leopard is our Vista...
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12-06-2007 @ 8:53AM
Alex said...
I'm really not surprised that everyone didn't go "...but what about firewalls and NAT?" the second Mr. Jobs announced this as a Leopard feature in WWDC or wherever it was.
People really should take the time to learn more about the tools they're using, but alas most people will probably disagree because that would take some extra amounts of time on their part.
Truth is though, the problem is not with Back to my Mac, because if you say it is, then you also have to say that FTP is broken, IRC file transfers are broken, AIM direct connections are broken, and essentially even go so far as to say that ANY service that listens on ANY port is broken, because routers and firewalls will, by default, prevent them from working.
I'm interested to see how Apple "dumbs this down" for most people since usually manual configuration of routers/firewalls is necessary for stuff like this to work.
They can possibly auto-correct the configuration of Airport Extremes, but what about non-Apple routers/firewalls?
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12-06-2007 @ 9:05AM
Chuck said...
10.5.1 fixed Back to My Mac for me. For people that this still isn't working for, I'm sorry. Back to My Mac is pretty cool when it works.
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