ARD 3.9 impressions?

Based on your previous post, we are avoiding it currently. ARD isn't my favorite to start with, but bugs like this makes it more painful.

Generally speaking, I love what ARD can do. I've loved it ever since it was originally called Network Assistant (showing my ASIP colors). All my Windows administrator friends are jealous there isn't anything in their world as nice and functional as ARD. Yeah, there's various tools built on VNC technology, but they are cumbersome and limited when doing tasks to multiple machines at once. One major pain point, however, is upgrading to newer versions. There are almost always pretty severe problems when going from one version to another. I remember upgrading to 3.7 was a catastrophe because I had to rebuild all the computer lists/groups from scratch because it couldn't work with the previous version of the settings.

I just found an additional annoyance with 3.9: All my Toolbar settings are gone. I have to setup my buttons again. Because of the infrequency of how often ARD is updated and how big the bugs are that persist, I think the ARD team in Cupertino is just one guy... who works part time.

Yea, my toolbar settings were reset too. Minor thing really, considering I think this is the first update is quite some time. Looks like maybe there are a few new buttons available now for the toolbar, which may have made preserving old setups from 3.8 hard to support.

You are so right. ARD is one of my all-time favorite apps. I could not tolerate life without it. When I saw that a good number of clients had already upgraded to 3.9 before I even knew it was out, made for an interesting morning. Am surprised why the menu item to upgrade clients was removed.

I'm only a few minutes in, but I am seeing that I can now see the spinning beachball on remote Macs (finally).

One bug that really clobbered me that is fixed: I found that with my Macbook Pro Retina running ARD and has FileVault enabled, remote controlling systems with motion on the screen utterly bogs down. For example, opening a window on a system with the screen saver running would utterly bog down ARD so much that the mouse clicks etc. that should turn off the screen saver on the remote system would take minutes to finally hit the system.

I am seeing odd behavior with scanning the network. It still says systems that have been upgraded need upgrading. But they open anyway. Seems to be taking longer too.

@millersc What tools do you use instead of ARD?

@peter.caldwell I use ARD if I have to push something in mass on the fly. Most times I'm in a computer with SSH or Screen Sharing. Both of which are much more reliable and stable from my perspective.

Have battled the ARD 3.9 Client vs. ARD 3.8 Admin issue. Already had call with Applecare Enterprise guys about it.

I have now found that with ARD 3.9 and machines that have 3.9 Client, still having issues with machines showing greyed out, and will fail if I try to perform a task, yet they can be screen shared. I've battled this issue with older 3.8, so no fix for this weirdness. If I try to delete the machine, and re-add it from the scanner, it will tell me it can't verify, until magically sometimes it does verify and adds the machine.

3.9 is an absolute train wreck. Every client (after getting updated to 3.9 Client) is getting prompted for a password for a PrivateKeyStore keychain. No password will work. Not the user's password. Not the local admin account's password. Not the master password for ARD on my admin machine. Nothing. Takes at least a half-dozen "cancels" to go away but it just comes back in a few minutes. It will keeping coming back as long as I have ARD Admin running.

@dwhoughton take a look at this thread that may help, but it is interesting that you say it only happens while you have ARD Admin running on your Mac.

Setting the package installation context to system (from Apple's logged-in user) is key to getting the keychain popup to go away.

Not seeing it any longer here on lots of 3.9 upgrades since I changed that.

For those of you experiencing the Keychain pop-ups: How are you installing the ARD 3.9 client?

-Via the ARD Admin 3.9 app ("Upgrade Client Software...")?

-Via a Jamf Policy or Casper Remote task?

-Via "softwareupdate -i xxx" command on the client (or SSH)?

-Via running the Apple 3.9 client installer.pkg from the GUI locally?

I found another annoying bug that is now gone. At least I think it was a bug. I was starting to wonder if it was a security thing put there on purpose somewhere along the way.

What would happen was upon closing a screen sharing session the remote system would immediately lock the screen. Now it honors whatever is set in System Preferences/Security & Privacy/General.

There was another similar behavior, but at the moment I can't think of what it was to test it.

@gskibum That always annoyed me when it locked the screen. I don't know if it could be considered a bug or not because when I use VNC Viewer on my iPad at home to control my unmanaged Mac Mini then disconnect, it also locks the screen. If Apple was able to make that behavior stop at all, I'm happy.

Dan -- I upgraded 7 computers using the App Store installation/update (while connected to them remotely with the ARD 3.9 Admin final (most 10.12, but one 10.10 and one 10.11). Only the 10.11 threw up the Keychain dialog -- all the rest updated without issue -- and that was the only one I rebooted to resolve the issue.

Which is what makes it weird as it obviously doesn't affect all computers or all Operating Systems equally...

It was pretty easy for us. About 10 people use ARD to manage various plants and groups. We've got about 1,000 machines eligible for the update. The people using ARD didn't have any issues.

A few people reported the keychain dialog and within a few hours, we had policies and pushed updates to all eligible Macs and scripted a kickstart of the agent. All in all, Apple should have prevented the issue (sloppy QA or no QA) but we had the tools we needed to remedy their error without affecting our peer's workday.

I just remembered & tested the other thing that once drove me nuts, but is now fixed.

Before, when I would close a screen sharing session on a system that was playing media such as iTunes etc, closing the window would cause the media to stop playing. That problem has now gone away.

Today's been a long day of being chained to the desk and used ARD lots.

I just found another old bug that seems to have been fixed.

It used to be when using the shared clipboard with screen sharing I would have to set my destination app & document to the foreground before I copied the text.

For example, let's say I had the goal of copying text from my system into a TextEdit document on the system being screen shared. If I were to send the text to the remote system while Safari were at the foreground, then switch to TextEdit, the text on the Clipboard would be lost when I would try to paste into TextEdit. I would always have to remember to bring TextEdit to the front before I copied the text on my system to the Clipboard.

Now I don't have to remember to bring whatever app to the front before I copy to the Clipboard. I can switch to the desired app and the data on the Clipboard is kept.

Looks like a very old bug has been fixed on the ARD Administrator app:

For years I've had issues rendering my managed client's screens on the secondary monitor of my admin Mac. ARD forced me to move the client's screen/window to my primary monitor before it would connect. This has been a pet peeve of mine for years (I always ran ARD, VNC and RDC sessions on my second screen - just a finicky, personal preference of mine). This issue appears to (finally) be resolved in 3.9.0.

Perhaps my issue is the same as you are discussing. I hadn't used ARD for a day or two, and then this popped up yesterday.

When I hit check for updates, the AppStore is searched with no results. Then I read in a forum that if I update, I'll break the connection to my 200 users and will need to touch each of them. I'm not sure how to proceed.

Suggestions?

I should add that the update does find the app store, and shows ARD and an update option, but when I hit update, it spins and spins and spins.

I think I had the same issue as @bradklein . Im fairly certain it was related to the fact that my admin Mac's client/agent was (accidentally) updated to 3.9 before the actual ARD admin app was updated.

My solution was to remove the current 3.8.5 ARD Admin app (i.e. drag it to the Trash) and relaunch the App Store. Then I could install 3.9 "fresh" from my purchase history. It didnt afffect any of my existing preferences or computer lists.

Anyone getting black screens when remote controlling monitor-less servers?

@tnielsen We Don't get black screens but get a screen where the right hand side gets cut off and shows up on the left hand of the screen. kind of like a dual monitor setup all wrong.
I some times get weird re-sizing issues.

never found a solution other than plugging a cheap 17" crap monitor into the back of the Mac Pro.

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't live without this app, however, This version SUCKS!! BUGS BUGS BUGS
Quits often, One minute I can control macs, then all of a sudden I cant!
There is no client updater anymore , WTF!

Mostly unhappy with this, cmon Apple , get a grip!