Rendezvous enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Also known as zero-configuration networking, Rendezvous uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically find each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers. Rendezvous is an open protocol, which Apple has submitted to the IETF as part of the ongoing standards-creation process. In order to provide a true zero configuration experience, Rendezvous requires that devices implement three essential things. These devices must be able to:
– allocate IP addresses without a DHCP server
– translate between names and IP addresses without a DNS server
– locate or advertise services without using a directory server
Rendezvous technology is now available on Windows 2000 and XP. This preview release includes full link-local support, allowing Windows machines to discover advertised HTTP and FTP servers using Internet Explorer. It also includes a printer setup wizard which allows Windows machines to print to Rendezvous networked printers, including USB shared printers connected to the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Stations. With the included Rendezvous SDK, Windows and Java developers can begin the process of adding Rendezvous service discovery to their applications.
More info and download link here.
Why would apple release this for Windows…?
Is this a sign of OXX on X86 to come? I hope not. Sounds like the Windoze world is going to finally get a taste of true plug and play vs. plug and pray.
Gary
that should have bee “OSX on X86”. Sorry
And the technology world yawned…
“And the technology world yawned…”
I can understand why, working on a PC is about as unexciting as it gets.
It is obvious why Apple is releasing Rendezvous for Windows. This will make it more likely that peripheral hardware vendors will support Rendezvous and everyone, including Mac users, will benefit!
. . . not to mention AirTunes uses it!!
This is really great, itunes, airport and A.P express, ipod, new cinema displays and now rendezvous, all for PC’s. For instance, i am a macaddict, but i still have my old PC, i’m connected to the web via airport basestation, aiport card on my ibook and ethernet port connected to de PC. Before this rendezvous release i cannot print from the PC to my EPSON Stylus C82 connected to the printer port on the basestation, NOW I CAN. Really great. It’s working like a charm!
Why would apple release this for Windows…?
Believe it or not, the Airport Base Station has been a popular wireless router among Windows users. Early reports of widespread use in both RV parks and retirement homes (where techs would set up the ABS using an iBook, but everyone else was on PCs) resulted in Apple’s releasing the Airport Admin utility for Windows.
With iTunes migration to Windows, which will support audio streaming to the new Airport Express, it only makes sense to allow Windows users access to Rendezvous printing, as well.
Regardless of any public statements to the contrary, iTunes and the iPod are a trojan horse with millions of Windows users appreciating Apple Quality. Many of these people will consider the Airport Express as well. The next step is obvious.
Keep in mind Apple’s recent, subtle shift in focus from “Switching” to “Make your next computer a Mac,” and “Macs integrate well into a windows network.”
This seems to be a new strategy from Apple. Give windozers a taste of some of their technology and then hopefully reel them in. Releasing Rendezvous for windows will also allow macs to integrate more easily into a windows environment (I have heard getting your Mac hooked up to a PC can be problematic), eliminating one more area of resistance to getting a Mac in a PC environment. Hope this new strategy works.
Does Apple have Rendezvous patented? Maybe once other companies start using it more Apple can ask for royalties. I do like the idea of simple connections to peripheral devices. My moms Dell computers at her office and home are such a pain to correctly configure, while my mac just finds everything easily.
Windows already has a zero config- its called Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery….its been around since XP came out but wait…Apple must have invented it right? I think the copying is the other way around with Apples OS updates looking more and more like windows…
uh, NoMacForYou, maybe you should read what Rendezvous is before you blab your mouth off.
If it was as simple as you think it is, Mac OS has also had it back in the old days (system 6, 1993!) when printers just showed up in the chooser and computers automatically saw each other on the network.
the notion of automatic discovery did not need to be invented, though it needed implementation to varying degrees of success. Rendezvous is the most mature consumer implementation of this idea, and that’s why it’s coming to Windows. It was too much of a pain for Apple to deal with the intrinsic shortcomings of Windows networking, so they made it better and easier now that they need it for Airport Express.
Michael,
You also forgot to point out to NoMacForYou the aggravating problems XP users have XPerienced with dropped WiFi connections because of Windows Zero Configuration. Ars Technica also reported on the problem some time ago. Naturally, Microsoft denied that there was a problem.
I think it’s to help Apple products connect to PC since most windows users are complaining that Apple wireless devices are not working correctly with their machines
To the question: Why do this??
It is a classic piece of misdirection.
Everyone automatically assumes that the only reason AAPL would do this is for client or peripheral reasons. But nobody asks the lateral question, which is “Why have they not issued this toolkit for Windows Server 2003?”.
I think there is more than a slim possibility that this move is actually designed to promote the sales of Xserve, especially once 10.4 Server is shipping (with all of that lovely 64-bit goodness) and Xsan is being ‘worked’ in the marketplace.
Oracle issued a developer release this week, Sybase are there, Peoplesoft and others are certifying Safari as an ASP platform.
It is only a matter of time before ISVs in the client/server world look at Apple’s value proposition against that of Sun Microsystems and decide that OS X and PPC offers a greater future than a Sun’s scattergun approach to platforms, and developing applications that self-configure at both ends whilst running the back-end on the best value solution in the marketplace is going to make Windows Server 2003 look bad until MS is able to inject similar functionality through yet another service pack.
“Windows already has a zero config- its called Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery….its been around since XP came out but wait…Apple must have invented it right? I think the copying is the other way around with Apples OS updates looking more and more like windows…”
Of course, the difference is that the Apple one actually works.
FYI, Rendezvous is Apple’s OS X (and now Windows 2000, XP) implementation of the IETF’s ZeroConf standard:
http://www.zeroconf.org/
Windows already has a zero config- its called Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery….its been around since XP came out but wait…Apple must have invented it right? I think the copying is the other way around with Apples OS updates looking more and more like windows..
Windows already has a zero config- its called Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery….its been around since XP came out but wait…Apple must have invented it right? I think the copying is the other way around with Apples OS updates looking more and more like windows..
Windows already has a zero config- its called Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery….its been around since XP came out but wait…Apple must have invented it right? I think the copying is the other way around with Apples OS updates looking more and more like windows..
Windows already has a zero config- its called Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery….its been around since XP came out but wait…Apple must have invented it right? I think the copying is the other way around with Apples OS updates looking more and more like windows..
And Apple had it a long time ago. It was called AppleTalk.
Apple didn’t invent RendezVous, since that is just an implementation of ZeroConf (like Unassailable Investment Analyst wrote).
The good thing about ZeroConf and RendezVous though, is that they’re built on open protocols like IP, some DNS-protocols and so on.
AppleTalk was Apple proprietary. NetBIOS was also proprietary, and so is Network location awareness using automatic search and discovery.
AppleTalk mainly worked on Macs, although there was an implementation that allowed Macs to communicate with NT-server (the AppleTalk service ran on the NT server machine).
NetBIOS hasn’t been available for anything but Windows.
So now we will soon have a “standard” that will be available for a plethora of platforms. 😀
Mizhou writes: NetBIOS hasn’t been available for anything but Windows.
And let’s just use that as proof that there is a benificent higher power in the Universe that occasionally protects us from pain and misery. Also, let’s give thanks that WINS never became a standard.
MCCFR wrote:
And let’s just use that as proof that there is a benificent higher power in the Universe that occasionally protects us from pain and misery.
Also, let’s give thanks that WINS never became a standard.
I agree!
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I never said they were a good thing. I just wanted to say that Apple actually was doing this, long before M$, with its AppleTalk.
But the main drawbacks with AppleTalk was that it was proprietary and a kludge.
And there were also a lot of other proprietary implementations to accomplish the same thing.
I like ZeroConf and RendezVous. ZeroConf isn’t a working implementation, but specification. RendezVous is the first implementation of ZeroConf.
One can look at ZeroConf as the blueprint, and RendezVous as the product made after that blueprint.
The fact that RendezVous uses standard IP, DHCP, and DNS (as specified in RFCs) makes sure it will seamlessly coexist with ordinary DNS-, and DHCP-servers without one interfering the other.