No, not why does it work? But what bother looking at the files on your Mac when you’re not at home? Isn’t this really a solution looking for a problem?

FarFinder lets you sit at a computer, anywhere on the internet, fire up a browser, and if the sun and moon and stars are all aligned just right, and you have an overriding need to check your Mac’s files, you can. Remotely.

Since the iPhone has a cool browser in Safari, use your iPhone to check your Mac’s files while your Mac sits at home waiting for your digital caress.

Once you’ve set up FarFinder, then leave home without your Mac, all you need is to connect back to your Mac using a FarFinder web site. The URL is findeme.flyingmac.com/joebloggs (but only if your name is “joebloggs”).

There are some benefits to being able to see the files on your Mac when you’re not at home.

For example, if you left an important spreadsheet, document, or presentation on your Mac and you’re just minutes away from the big meeting.

It would be great to be able to remotely access your Mac and grab those files right from a browser window at work. That’s what FarFinder does.

It will install on all your Macs at home, then let you access each or any Mac from a remote location using the HTTPS protocol for added security.

Select a file or folder, click download, and it copies from your Mac to wherever you are. The reverse holds true, too. Send files to your Mac from wherever you are.

There is a middleman. It’s the people who create FarFinder, FlyingMac. They’re the middlemen and women who charge you to use FarFinder, and you login to their server to have your browser redirected back to your Mac at home, or wherever it is.

FarFinder works on both OS X Tiger and Leopard and costs a mere $35. Depending on how you use FarFinder, that gets paid back quickly.

Is this an interim solution to ultimate and constant access to our files, wherever they may be? Sure, the iPhone has only 16GB of storage now, but how long before it has hundreds of gigs? Then you carry everything you need with you, right?

Not quite. But I don’t see FarFinder as a common utility for the average Mac user.

First of all, over half of all Macs sold these days are notebooks, which, ostensibly, would already be carrying most files a user would need.

Second, how many times in the past year or two have you had to go looking for a Mac file only to remember that you left it at home on your Mac? There are times when I was somewhere else and wished I had a certain file, photo, document, utility, or whatever, but it was never a day deal breaker.

Still, FarFinder has merit for some Mac users and works reasonably well considering the complexity of dealing with various networks, protocols, and firewall issues. The browser window is truly a window to anywhere. Even your Mac sitting back home.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

Off Topic #23 & #18 - Want to speed up your Mac? Try Kate MacKenzie’s approach to the $7.99 speed increase. Do you have a back up system for your Mac? Kate’s PixoBebo shows you how to use Time Machine with SuperDuper! for the ultimate Mac back up. And she doesn’t even charge Mac360 readers to visit her site.

Off Topic #6 - The MacHeist is back. In case you missed it a few months ago, MacHeist is a great way for Mac users to get 12 top Mac applications and utilities for $49. Many of these have been reviewed on Mac360, so we highly recommend that you take a look. The value, what you get for what you pay, is remarkable. Click Here to look, buy, download.

• Article by Jeffrey Mincey • Published on Thursday, May 1, 2008
• Category: What's New • 9 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now

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Readers Talk Back:

makemineamac says:

Kevin:
On my machine at least, encryption for passwords & keystrokes is on by default, with the option to encrypt everything if you so choose. They indicate the password and keystroke encryption only makes it faster.

On your second question, it does appear that you can in fact print “back” to your local machine which is a great feature. Printers show up as “printer @ yourlocal computer”. Pretty great.

Can’t test the multi-user piece right now or app-sharing as I only have the two....

— Posted on Sat May 03 at 4:34 am by makemineamac

Kevin says:

Looks like I have to eat a couple bites of crow, but not the whole plate : ) I am still using Tiger, so I have not experimented with Leopard Screen Sharing. I did some research and I found that apparently, there is a check box to choose encryption, which is great. It should be on by default, and I don’t know if it is. Is it possible to print from an application on the remote computer back to your local computer? Also, is the data transfer encrypted as well as the screen data? Both of these are true for Windows remote desktop and I would hope that Apple would have implemented it. One last thing, can multiple remote users concurrently log in to a Leopard machine? Are there any app sharing issues?

— Posted on Fri May 02 at 5:39 pm by Kevin

makemineamac says:

I have the .mac subscription and, as someone mentioned above, the service is consistently unreliable and is documented everywhere as being that way.

So what more would I want? I would like to see the same functionality that Far Finder gives me become a core part of the OS as BTMM was intended to be.

As far as worrying about my files going through someone else’s server, this Mac Mini is a video media hub only, so I’m not too worried about someone seeing what television shows I’m copying…

— Posted on Fri May 02 at 11:48 am by makemineamac

iggy pence says:

With OS X Leopard you can log in to any Mac using screen sharing. It’s the basic version of Apple Remote Desktop. It’s built-in to all new Macs. It’s also free. It’s stable. It’s fast. It’s secure.

What else do you want?

— Posted on Fri May 02 at 11:16 am by iggy pence

Kevin says:

I did forget to mention Back to My Mac, which appears to be the equivalent of Windows Remote Desktop. Unlike WRD, B2MM appears to be very unreliable. Also, unlike WRD, B2MM requires a separate paid service, ie. .mac to operate. When it becomes a more reliable product, and when I don’t have to use .mac for it to function, I’m sure I will make use of it. However, it still only allows one user to access the mac. This is why I think Spaces, along with B2MM, is important. It allows Apple to start piecing together a multi-user remote access solution.

— Posted on Fri May 02 at 11:06 am by Kevin

Kevin says:

OK, I should have explained the differences. With Terminal Services or unix remote access multiple users can access a single server and use it concurrently as if they were sitting in front of it (pretty much). Apple Remote Desktop will allow a person to remotely access a computer, or allow one person to remotely access multiple computers to manage or observe them, but their is no Mac product (at least from Apple) that allows multiple people to remotely log in to a single mac and use it as if they were a local user. Apple Remote Desktop = one user, many computers. Windows Terminal Services, unix remote access = many users, one computer. See the difference? Also, ARD is expensive, especially for a single user. Remote Desktop is free and built in to Windows, it uses an encrypted data stream, unlike your average VNC client, and it is way faster than VNC, and easier to configure. Sorry, but Apple loses big time on this one.

— Posted on Fri May 02 at 10:53 am by Kevin

Brian says:

Uh, Kevin, you obviously are very unfamiliar with Macintosh. Apple has had Apple Remote Desktop for many years.

Why is this sort of thing relevant? Well, all your movies and music are on your iTunes libray at home. The next iPhone software (June) will allow you to do this with your iPhone.

Back to Mac is the current feature that allows this, without some unknown 3rd party site involved. There is no way I am going through some unknown site to access my files, that is just stupid. You might as well be running Windows software.

— Posted on Fri May 02 at 8:05 am by Brian

Kevin says:

This is a poor man’s version of Remote Desktop for Windows, and remote access for unix x11 systems. Nextstep and Openstep had very robust remote access features which are conspicuously absent in OS X. I have never been able to figure out why macs lag so badly in remote access. For all of OS X’s alleged unix underpinnings, it can’t touch unix or windows terminal services. I’m thinking that Back to Your Mac and Spaces are the beginnings of a new attempt to add real remote capabilities to the mac.

— Posted on Thu May 01 at 11:50 pm by Kevin

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