One of the often-touted 300 new features in the new Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is "Back to my Mac." This is a set of software that allows you to access your Macs at home while at work or on the road... or vice versa. Using it, you could copy files to or from that machine, or even remotely control its desktop, as if you were sitting directly in front of the machine, but across the network.

Unfortunately, this feature didn't work well for many people -- myself included. In most cases, third party firewalls or routers (e.g. Linksys, Netgear, etc.) were to blame; however, even when running supposedly 100% compatible equipment, it would still not work for many people.

Apple tried to correct these issues in the first software update, 10.5.1; that fixed it for some people but not everybody. Apple made more fixes with the 10.5.2 release, and apparently that fixed it, at least for me. I can now fully use Back to my Mac.

Now it may still not work in certain conditions; for example, it probably won't work for me at the office, since they have the Firewall of Doom that pretty much blocks everything. However, it at least works for me on my EVDO modem, which is good enough for me.

Anyway, click the link below, and you will see a screen shot of me using my laptop (Navi) to connect to my other Mac (Locutus) back at home, and sharing its desktop across the Internet.

http://tinyurl.com/33bogu

Tags: .mac, apple, back to my mac, leopard, mac os x
Current Mood: jubilant