Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) is an incredible tool for remotely controlling and administering Macs over a network. In a corporate environment, it's a must have. If you have more than 2 or 3 Macs at home, it's even worth a good hard look. There are a lot of benefits to having it. Rather than going into the details for this Mac Tip, I will leave that for another time.

For now, I want to talk about my only disappointment making the transition between my a PowerPC-based Mac and an Intel-based Mac. That disappointment was the moment I found out that ARD would not run on my Intel-based Mac. After spending time with AppleCare, I learned that it had something to do with the new architecture, and that nothing could be done about it until the next release was out... the Universal Binary.

Fortunately, a fix is available.. but not from Apple. In fact, it isn't even a download! It's nothing more than running a few commands in Terminal. In order to qualify for this fix, you need to have the latest version of ARD (version 2.2). If you are running 2.0 or 2.1, be sure to visit the ARD web site to get the latest update.

Once you have installed 2.2, open Terminal, and run each of these commands individually (each one beginning with the sudo command):

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/RemoteDesktop.menu
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/PreferencePanes/ARDPref.prefPane
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/StartupItems/RemoteDesktopAgent/
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent.plist
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement.plist

After you have run the above commands, simply open ARD. It will reinstall certain components, and then close again. The next time you open it, you are good to go!