Apple Eliminating Back to My Mac Service in All Versions of macOS in July
Apple today announced in an updated support document that the Back to My Mac service is being eliminated from all versions of macOS on July 1, 2019.
Apple previously warned that Back to My Mac support would be eliminated in macOS Mojave, but the updated wording seems to suggest the feature will be removed from all versions of macOS rather than just macOS Mojave.
As of July 1, 2019, Back to My Mac service is not available in any other version of macOS. You can use these alternatives for file access, screen sharing, and remote desktop access.
macOS Mojave has not had the Back to My Mac feature since the first developer beta launched, and Apple confirmed plans to end support for the feature in August 2018.
Back to My Mac is designed to let Mac owners connect to one Mac from another Mac for file transfers and screen sharing purposes. It lets users create a network of Mac computers with two or more Macs, but it can be complicated to set up and use, which is perhaps why Apple has decided to discontinue it.
In the support document, Apple suggests customers can access their files across all of their devices - including new machines - from iCloud Drive. Other Macs can be operated through screen sharing functionality, and Macs can be managed remotely with Apple Remote Desktop, software available from the Mac App Store for $80.
Some Back to My Mac users are sure to be unhappy with Apple's decision to sunset the feature entirely and the suggestion that users transition to Apple Remote Desktop for remote management purposes given its high price tag, but there are third-party options like TeamViewer and LogMeIn.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Top Rated Comments
As for the people that are complaining that it never worked for them, I have nothing to say to that. Maybe it was because I always used Airport routers and all Apple devices but it has never given me problems. I use this feature daily and it will be sorely missed when it's gone.
It was the ultimate tool that allowed me to keep my server upstairs while working on it through my other devices downstairs ... or even when I wasn't even in the house. On top of all that it was free and baked right into the OS! I remember one trip when I was in Europe, had a great internet connection, and worked on my MacPro for hours doing computations that my laptop couldn't.
For all of those people who never used Back to My Mac, I feel sad that you will never know how awesome this feature was. Almost as awesome as the vaporwear that would have allowed iDevices to transfer desktops between computers and keep them synchronized and no I don't mean in a doesn't-work-like-it-should iCloud Drive sort of way.
Another hard earned bonus for Tim