Bringing the Mac into your network.

The Mac supports a wide variety of networking protocols, from SMB to NFS and FTP, making it easy to connect the Mac into mixed-platform infrastructures. So, connecting a Mac to existing workgroups, computers, and peripherals is easy. You can implement basic connectivity such as sharing files and printers, or enable sophisticated cross-platform communications like video and audio conferencing among Mac and PC users.

Simple file sharing.

The Mac can instantly work with .doc, .xls, .pdf, .jpg, and many other common file types, even if the file was created on a Windows system. Microsoft Office documents created on a PC work seamlessly in Office applications on the Mac, and vice versa. Microsoft Office, Intuit applications, Adobe Creative Suite, and numerous other applications are available for both Mac and PC systems and are all cross-platform compatible.

Apple goes one step further by providing applications like Preview, the software included in Mac OS X for displaying and editing images and PDF files. Preview supports standard graphics formats such as JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, and many more. In addition, PDF support is built into the core of Mac OS X, allowing users to create, view, annotate, and recreate PDFs, without the need for additional software.

With Quick Look, a feature of Mac OS X, users can view the contents of a file without opening the documents. Quick Look works with nearly every file on users’ systems, including images, Microsoft Office documents, movies, presentations, and more.

Mac and PC users also can exchange photos, video, and music files. In situations when a proprietary player is needed—for RealMedia or Windows Media files, for instance—free players can be downloaded for the Mac. Even relatively rare files, such as Quattro Pro spreadsheets, can be converted using third-party tools like MacLinkPlus.

Sharing large files, volumes, and printers.

Native support for Windows SMB protocol allows your Mac to connect to a Windows file server, or you can configure a Mac or Xserve as a file server for Windows and other clients. With out-of-the-box support for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and Linux clients, Mac OS X Server is an easy way to provide powerful, safe network and Internet services such as file and print sharing, web hosting, instant messaging, wiki serving, calendaring for multiplatform workgroups.

Using the built-in network interface of any Mac, you can connect your Mac to exchange files back and forth between Mac and Windows systems using SMB/CIFS, WebDAV, FTP and other protocols. Both Mac and PC computers that are shared show up in the Mac OS X Finder—there’s no need for users to know IP addresses to find the files on the network. Conversely, PC users also can access files or volumes shared by Mac users.

In a mixed environment, there are multiple options for exchanging large files back and forth between Mac and PC systems. USB or Firewire storage devices and Flash-memory devices with Mac- or PC-generated files can connect directly to either a Mac or PC for two-way exchange. With an optical drive, your Mac can burn discs for use on Mac systems, Windows-based PCs, and other types of computers. Other simple ways to transfer files include iPod and iDisk¹—both are Mac- and PC-compatible. You can also use corporate intranets, network storage devices, iChat, or FTP sites to easily exchange large files—all seamless to do on the Mac.

Mac systems also let you connect and share devices such as printers and external storage devices. Support for TCP/IP in Mac OS X enables you to share devices with other users on the network, whether they are on a Mac or a PC. To access shared printers over a wired or wireless connection, Mac and PC users simply need to activate printer sharing on their machines.

Another powerful way to share documents is to publish it to the iWork.com Public Beta.⁴ iWork.com lets Mac users share Pages documents, Numbers spreadsheets, and Keynote presentations online. There’s no need to know whether a colleague is using a Mac or PC, or if they have iWork or Office. Because iWork.com is web-based, anyone using a current browser can view or download your iWork projects online.

Exchange Server environments.

The Mac can be easily configured to access services provided by Microsoft Exchange Server, once an administrator has started the IMAP service in Exchange and ensured that the relevant certificates are set up for Exchange to allow SSL access.

Mac users on Microsoft Entourage 2008 tapping into services provided by Microsoft Exchange Server also benefit from Kerberos integration, which allows Entourage to work with Active Directory’s Single Sign-on infrastructure. Mac systems that are bound to Active Directory via Directory Services can log into the Exchange Server when they log into their Mac systems with their Active Directory username and password. When you change a user’s Active Directory password, Entourage 2008’s Exchange password changes, too, simplifying IT maintenance.