VNC?

VNC works decently, but in general the Apple or Microsoft remote desktop solutions preform much better, due to being able to know the display, and do certain operations client side, instead of server side and shipping the graphical changes across the network connection. VNC for example does not do well with certain OS X effects, like sheets, or minimizing a window.

Apple Remote Desktop doesn't manage anything particually well. Its performance and painfully slow redraw leave me convinced that it's just VNC underneath. In adddition the client interface is like something out of System 6 and isn't very Mac OS X-like at all.

Windows Remote Desktop seems to work in a completely different way and is the first MS technology I've used where I've actaully been impressed and thought 'this is way better than what Apple have'. I use to connect to my headless XP test box from my Mac and sometimes forget I'm not using a real monitor connection.

I agree, remote desktop/terminal services for windows is awesome. The fact, too that MS makes the remote desktop client for mac is phenominal. It's great to be able to administer my 2k server from my powerbook. And for fun, I like to leave the client running so as to confuse the hell out of my girlfriend when she tries to use my computer. - trs

Of course, Microsoft didn't write most of the terminal services/remote desktop stuff, Citrix did...

Ah ha. I knew it was too good to be true. MS could never build something that actually does what it set out to do and works elegantly, without unnecessary configuration and stress.

MS could never build something that actually does what it set out to do and works elegantly, without unnecessary configuration and stress.

Not quite true, I think Excel and .Net are the two exceptions...

...though of course the marketing department should have been shot for taking a amazing technical product like .Net and confusing the hell out of everyone by adding the .Net name to every product in their range, idiots!

I've just been sitting here trying to think of another MS product that meets your criteria, but I can't. All the ones that are half decent were bought from other people...

Excel and .Net are the two exceptions...

So MS developed Excel in-house originally, unlike Word and Access just for example?

Excel was started in house, yes. It actually started on the Mac rather than the PC. For a long time the Excel team didn't even use Microsoft's own C++ compiler to build their software. They had their own compiler to target both Windows and the Mac.

I know Access was bought in from outside. I'm fairly sure that Word (as in WinWord) was in house though, not that the first version did much.

Even VB was not started in house. Neither were Visio, SQL Server, Flightsim, SourceSafe, DOS etc, etc

They certainly are good at buying up other people's code...

One of my Microsoft books (Code Complete I think?) mentions that originally the Mac and Windows codebases were actually different for Excel. The Mac team would port the majority of the code from the Windows port and add whatever was necessary to get it going.

It then goes on to give a good example of feature creep. The original spec to add colour to a cell stated that the colour tag should be at the start only and was invalid everywhere else. The colour parser however happened to allow the colour tag to be anywhere. They then extended the spec as it was "free feature". This turned out to be a bad thing as the formula parser didn't expect colour tags in the middle of a formula and crapped out in subtle ways.

The author of book ported the feature from the Windows branch of the code over to the Mac branch. When testing he came across these bugs and assumed that something was broken in his port. He went back to the Windows port and found the same bugs so in the end they had to insert a bunch of kludges to handle it as it was now part of the spec.

The Mac version definitely came first, in fact it was there before Windows existed:

http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html