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I am using an Apple PowerBook G4 on the road and I would like to access my Mac computers seamlessly through the .mac technology “Back to My Mac” offered in Mac OS X Leopard. This provides easy access to file services and remote control through window sharing from desktop in Finder. The window sharing is similar to the Window Sharing service offered in iChat and that of Apple Remote Access.

The idea and promise from is no less than wonderful. For me this was a main reason reason to buy Mac OS X Leopard from Apple. From now on you do not have to think of domain names, dynamic domain names, bonjour identities, ip numbers, firewalls, security, passwords or even bother to start the service - it is just there under your fingertips. Or so I thought! Most of the time Back to My Mac works like a charm when on a local network, but as it turns out Back to My Mac only works sometimes on the Internet. If the moon and your lucky star is in conjunction.

I think Apple is very well aware of this fact and is working to solve issues related to Apple technologies. Some issues also involves Apple Remote Desktop. But there are unfortunately also other factors to be considered. There has been a lot of heated discussion about this topic in the the Apple Support Discussion Forums. Recently I have experienced that some of the threads oddly has disappeared from the forums.

Even with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2 I experience the following persistent problems:

1) Macs are unable to see each other over the Internet through Back to My Mac.
2) Back to My Mac Window Sharing asks unnecessarily for another password in mid session and will not accept the correct password.
3) Back to My Mac Service seems disappear and appear randomly.
4) Back to My Mac sometimes seem to break or interrupt access with Apple Remote Access.

What to do?

Links:
Using Back to My Mac in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard apple.com
Back to My Mac: Supported router devices (Mac OS X 10.5) apple.com