{"id":1164,"date":"2015-10-16T15:08:17","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T15:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.RiptideHosting.com\/blog\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2020-11-04T13:19:47","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T20:19:47","slug":"remoteapp-and-options-for-mac-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.RiptideHosting.com\/blog\/remoteapp-and-options-for-mac-users\/","title":{"rendered":"RemoteApp and options for MAC users"},"content":{"rendered":"

REMOTEAPP<\/strong><\/p>\n

For remote desktop (terminal server) application hosting where the user is logging into a full desktop session, MAC users should have a good experience and there are Remote Desktop Connection Clients that can be downloaded for MACs, iphone, and ipad. (The Remote Desktop Connection Client is preloaded on all Windows machines and doesn\u2019t require a download to use it).\u00a0 The Clients for MACs\/Apple can be found here:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.RiptideHosting.com\/blog\/remote-desktop-connection-client-for-macs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

RemoteApp is an optional feature of Remote Desktop Services where users are not provided a desktop session but rather can only open a specified application.\u00a0 This feature doesn\u2019t work well with MAC users in Windows 2008R2 due to the limitations below.\u00a0 It should work better in Windows 2012R2 for MAC users but only if using the RDweb login option.\u00a0\u00a0 We have many MAC users using our Remote Desktop hosting although most are using full desktop sessions instead of RemoteApp.\u00a0 There are other options instead of RemoteApp as described toward the end of this post.<\/p>\n

With RemoteApp, you can distribute a RDP file to a user (Windows 2008R2 only \u2013 \u201cRDP distributable file\u201d \u2013 this option is not available in Windows 2012R2) or you can set it up for users to access the specified program\u00a0 via a URL.\u00a0 The user can open the specified application but does not get a full desktop session to save\/share files, etc.<\/p>\n

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  1. RD Web URL \u2013 When enabled, you can access the RD\u00a0Web Access Web site at https:\/\/IPaddress\/rdweb\u00a0.\u00a0 In 2008R2, the website requires that the client browser has ActiveX enabled which basically limits usage to Internet Explorer and therefore excludes MAC users.\u00a0 (as noted here — https:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/cc731508.aspx<\/a>).\u00a0 In 2012R2, the RD Web Access website no longer requires ActiveX\u00a0 and is supposed to work with many more browser options.\u00a0 However, Server 2012R2 does require that the Active Directory Domain Controller role be installed to use RemoteApp whereas it is not required in Windows 2008R2.<\/li>\n
  2. Create RDP file via the RemoteApp Wizard to distribute to users.\u00a0 This works easily to create the file and other PC users should be able to open it easily.\u00a0 MAC users generally have issues when they try to open the file where the system doesn\u2019t recognize it.\u00a0 Note: Windows Server 2012R2 no longer has this option to create the RemoteApp distributable file.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you are going to use RemoteApp in 2008R2, contact us for additional instructions and tips that we can provide.<\/p>\n

    OTHER OPTIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n