“All the alternatives are either unreliable and slow (bonjour/mDNS)”
I’ll agree with you on that, in certain cases. In my experience, OS X-to-OS X always works seamlessly, but Windows-to-OS X is much more annoying. It works around 70% of the time.
Say the hostname of the Mac on the local network is lorems-mac-mini.local. Then say I want to connect to this Mac over various services from my Windows computer (file sharing via Windows Explorer, vnc via TightVNC, nx via NoMachine, etc.). 70% of the time, providing lorems-mac-mini.local as the hostname works. The other 30% of the time, the same programs which worked just fine with the hostname as lorems-mac-mini.local all of a sudden won’t be able to find it on the network anymore unless the same hostname is entered without the .local part. Then, sometimes, neither solution works and the Windows computer can’t find the Mac at all unless I enter its IP address, which magically works.
Frankly, it became annoying enough that I now just enter the IP addresses of devices on my local network that I want to connect to now instead of their hostnames, since I know it’ll always work.
…in that sense, I guess I have to agree with your overall sentiment.
I’ll agree with you on that, in certain cases. In my experience, OS X-to-OS X always works seamlessly, but Windows-to-OS X is much more annoying. It works around 70% of the time.
Say the hostname of the Mac on the local network is lorems-mac-mini.local. Then say I want to connect to this Mac over various services from my Windows computer (file sharing via Windows Explorer, vnc via TightVNC, nx via NoMachine, etc.). 70% of the time, providing lorems-mac-mini.local as the hostname works. The other 30% of the time, the same programs which worked just fine with the hostname as lorems-mac-mini.local all of a sudden won’t be able to find it on the network anymore unless the same hostname is entered without the .local part. Then, sometimes, neither solution works and the Windows computer can’t find the Mac at all unless I enter its IP address, which magically works.
Frankly, it became annoying enough that I now just enter the IP addresses of devices on my local network that I want to connect to now instead of their hostnames, since I know it’ll always work.
…in that sense, I guess I have to agree with your overall sentiment.