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Apple Remote Desktop admin tool is updated for the first time in forever

First major update since October of 2013 adds Yosemite support and more.

Apple Remote Desktop admin tool is updated for the first time in forever
Andrew Cunningham

There was one other Apple software update that came out yesterday, though it got lost in the shuffle between OS X and iOS system updates and record-breaking financial results. The venerable Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) application has been bumped from version 3.7.2 to version 3.8. Version 3.7.2 was a relatively minor update issued in March of 2014, and version 3.7 goes all the way back to October of 2013.

ARD is pretty far off the beaten path, but the short version is that it's an administrative tool used primarily by IT people to manage large numbers of Macs. It can do standard remote desktop stuff—viewing and taking control of remote Macs' screens to perform maintenance or help out end users—but it also has a bunch of other handy capabilities. Among other things, administrators can use ARD to push out updates or other software packages to a bunch of Macs at once, run scheduled maintenance, show user and application usage histories, and view hardware and software information for each computer.

The biggest addition to version 3.8 is official support for OS X Yosemite, and the update redesigns the app's icon and UI to mesh better with Yosemite's new aesthetic. Older versions of ARD supported Yosemite, but performance was quite a bit slower and image quality was visibly poorer than it was for officially supported versions. Improvements to file copying, Full Screen mode, and viewing multiple client desktops at once round out the update.

As of version 3.8, versions of Apple Remote Desktop installed from a disc will be registered with your Apple ID and will begin pulling down updates from there rather than the Software Update mechanism. Apple did something similar for users of iLife and iWork when it updated those applications and began giving them away to new customers.

Of course, for home users Apple Remote Desktop is definitely overkill—it costs $79.99, which isn't as high as some of Apple's pro apps but is still pretty far outside the impulse-buy range. OS X has included the Screen Sharing feature for free since version 10.5, and iCloud's Back to My Mac feature can provide easy access to any Macs signed into the same Apple ID even if you're on another network. If you only have a few Macs in your life, save yourself the cash.

Channel Ars Technica