Other than the pain in the butt described here What is your impression of the ARD 3.9 update? I'm finding it painfully slow to scan the network or "authenticate" to Macs on the network. It also takes longer to actually connect to control or observe a screen than before the update. I really hope it fixes some really annoying screen redraws and wild window resizing problems I've seen with 3.8.
Question
ARD 3.9 impressions?
+13I was just about to come here and whine about how interacting with client systems had become painfully slow and unreliable, but by chance I stumbled into this thread beforehand.
In there it was suggested by rcorbin to check the “Allow communications with older clients” box in Remote Desktop's preferences. This was to do away with that annoying "Needs Upgrade" status of the clients. For me it did away with the "Needs Upgrade" status, as well as sped things up tremendously and increased reliability of interactions with clients.
+19ARD 3.9.2 (Client) is out now.
http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/51/41/091-00404/yf2kt4gajz3qh788grqeg366vuglw5l3hw/RemoteDesktopClient.pkg
+12I'm seeing the ARD 3.9.2 client update too. Is it not going to require a matching admin update? I'm not showing that it needs it.
+21So far it looks like the 3.9.2 client update does help some with connections, but I haven't gone all in and done full testing of all the things I complained about previously. I am also not seeing an ARD Admin update for this. Historically, the clients can be at a newer version than the admin with no issues. It's when the admin is at a higher version that tends to cause problems.
+12Thanks...
My testing only found that the "Curtain Mode" doesn't seem to work...it may have been broken for a while, since I rarely use/need it.
+2I couldn't live without ARD! I worry every day that Apple will stop supporting it! I too remember Network Assistant and fought like crazy to get them to make an OS X version which became ARD! Buggy, but nothing else does what it can do and like AVmcclint mentioned, all of my PC guys are pretty jealous what I can do with ARD. Makes life very easy in the Mac Admin world with a few things!
But everything was working fine here with 3.9.0 and I upgraded to 3.9.2 and thought everything was fine. Came in today and a lab was on for an event and I noticed I can't get into two machines out of 33. The lab is all on 3.9.2 as I enabled it to be updated on Reposado. But two machines will not work. Either Authenticating, Access Denied, or Offline. What is interesting is that I can Observe or Control the screen on them! But nothing else works. Put in a bug report and video showing the issue. Hopefully we will see another update coming!
Also have the other two issues lately with trying to Observe a client it takes longer to connect to the client and when doing a network scan to add clients it is a lot more slower than it used to be. Really on both parts, it's very much slower than it used to be.
UPDATED:
Noticed my admin computer didn't have 3.9.2 Client and wasn't showing up in software update so didn't think I needed it. Got the package and manually tried to install it and it installed and fixed those two clients for whatever reason. Not sure why only two clients mattered?....odd!
+13So, Where the F is the Custom Client Installer gone???
I'm sure it was under File > Create Client Installer??
Not at all happy with this update!
I hate to unbury an old thread... But I can no longer handle the terribly slow session authentication of 3.9. While on the phone trying to support a teacher, the 15-20 seconds it takes to connect is far too long when they are in front of a classroom full of kids. Has anyone found a fix for this? Is Apple aware of the issue?
+23I think that ARD is another enterprise product that they're allowing to languish. They update it only occasionally. When it works, it works really well. It's better than most screen sharing and remote control apps that I have used, but I hate how long it takes for ARD to authenticate and make a connection. I'm very sure that Apple is aware of this, but they obviously don't care. They charge nearly $80 for the app on the Mac app store, but considering the issues it has, it should be made free.
+5I agree that ARD can be irritating when it misbehaves. Currently two of us are experiencing daily appearance of a dialog that exclaims:
A critical error has occurred It is recommended that you exit and relaunch Apple Remote Desktop.
If you don't quit and relaunch ARD, Macs start dropping off the All Computers list and the Current Status column stalls at Authenticating. This might happen twice a day. I have no idea what precipitated this behavior, but it wasn't always doing that.
However much angst ARD creates, I love this app. It's worth far more than the $80 they charge. It used to cost $500 for unlimited clients years ago. There is no other app like it and I use it to quickly validate that JAMF Pro is successfully patching. ARD is way faster to push specific commands or packages than Casper Remote.
You all probably know this already but, if not, please report issues to Apple as you encounter them at:
[https://www.apple.com/feedback/remotedesktop.html
](link URL)
Hopefully this will give them some sort of metric to keep ARD alive, even if it is on a part-time basis.
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