Organizations today are likely to include both Macs and Windows PCs in their environments, and getting them to work together has become much easier. That wasn’t always the case. In 1995, I started working at a small ISP and service bureau in Raleigh, North Carolina, where most employees used Macs though a few of us ran Windows. Only just before I left in 1996 did we actually achieve any nominal amount of interoperability.

For networking, Macs relied on AppleTalk while Windows used TCP/IP as its default protocol (Apple was just beginning to dabble with TCP/IP). Further, Macs had a proprietary file-sharing mechanism, while Windows was using what would come to be called the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. The two were so incompatible that we had them isolated on separate networks, due primarily to the chattiness of AppleTalk.

Times have changed—today, not only can you bring Macs into your Windows network infrastructure, you can also integrate some of the operating system services. Don Jones’s article in this issue covers networking Macs and Windows. I will focus on getting the two types of systems to actually interoperate.

Interoperability between Macs and Windows machines involves working with the software and operating system services that enable the functionality enterprises require. And it presumes a base level of hardware so that the interoperability can actually occur, with virtualization often serving as the bridge between the two platforms. The Mac’s move from AppleTalk to TCP/IP was hugely important to interoperability with Windows. And as you’ll see, the move to an Intel-based architecture was equally, if not more, important.

Active Directory
Yes—that’s right. Look at Figure 1, and you’ll see a test Active Directory domain that I have installed at my house—with my iMac as a member.

Figure 1 An Active Directory domain containing a Mac (Click the image for a larger view)

Since OS X first shipped, ISVs have built tools that will, to some degree, integrate Macs into Active Directory (or, conversely, even allow you to push out Group Policy to a Mac client). OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”), which shipped in 2007, integrates some support directly, allowing you to join a Mac to a Windows Active Directory domain easily.

Macs, in their own environment, use Apple’s LDAP directory, Open Directory. Though Open Directory and Active Directory use different schemas, the fact that Macs can join a directory at all means you can begin centrally managing them. Odds are you’ve invested in an Active Directory infrastructure, and without much work, you can integrate Macs into your Active Directory.

To integrate a Mac into Active Directory without third-party tools, you must have an Intel- or PowerPC-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 or later. Once you have booted up the system and logged on, open the Applications folder and browse to the Utilities folder. There you will find a utility named, logically enough, Directory Utility; go ahead and start it up. If your Mac has an associated Open Directory relationship already, it will be visible here. Otherwise, you will see something similar to Figure 2.

Figure 2 The Mac’s Directory Utility (Click the image for a larger view)

Begin by unlocking the lock in the lowerleft corner and providing your administrative credentials. Then click the + sign to add a directory. When that dialog opens, select Active Directory and you will see the dialog in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Adding an Active Directory directory (Click the image for a larger view)

The experience isn’t much different from joining a Windows system to Active Directory, except that it’s all on one page and doesn’t seem to accept legacy-style credentials (domain\user). Credentials must be provided in the newer user@domain.tld form. Once joined, you will see the directory listed in the Directory Utility (see Figure 4). Note that if you are just joining a few computers or want to use the GUI, Directory Utility is a fast way to do it. If you want to join several computers from a script or you’re more comfortable with Terminal (the Mac command shell), you can also run dsconfigad, as follows (type it all on one line):

dsconfigad –f –a computername –domain yourforest
.yourdomain.tld –u domainaccount –p domainpassword –lu
localadminaccount –lp localadminpassword

Figure 4 Active Directory on the Mac (Click the image for a larger view)

Note that if you ever intend to join a Mac to both Active Directory and Open Directory, the recommendation is to always join it to Active Directory first, then Open Directory.

Now that you have joined the system to Active Directory, what can you do? The only Mac e-mail client that provides native mail and calendar access to Exchange, Microsoft Entourage, isn’t quite as rich when it comes to enumerating directory attributes as Microsoft Outlook is. So in addition to providing management capabilities, the Directory Utility (also available in the /Applications/Utilities folder) allows you to see directory attributes of users, groups, and more (see Figure 5).

Figure 5 Directory Utility lets you view attributes of users and groups (Click the image for a larger view)

As I noted, there are several applications available that will help you manage Mac systems from Active Directory, and even from Group Policy itself—practically treating Macs as Windows systems when it comes to management. Take a look at applications such as ADmitMac or Centrify DirectControl, just to name a couple.

Exchange
For years, connecting a Mac to Exchange meant requiring Mac users to use POP3/SMTP or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) access to Exchange, or to simply use Outlook Web Access. All of these are, however, subpar compared to the full Exchange/Outlook experience.

Both the 2004 and 2008 versions of Microsoft Office for the Mac provide full Exchange support via Entourage (as does Mac OS X Mail, but it lacks native calendaring). Though you don’t get the richness of a full Active Directory integration with the address book, what you do get is a much more robust push e-mail experience (as well as meeting requests, contacts, and calendar) than you would have using Internet-protocol access to Exchange. Entourage supports all recent versions of Microsoft Exchange.

An important note—Safari, Apple’s default Web browser, only supports Outlook Web Access Light when connecting to Exchange via the Web. (Internet Explorer is the only browser that supports full Outlook Web Access functionality.)

Network Access Protection
If you are using Windows Server 2008 and are deploying network access protection (NAP), you may want to take note that Microsoft has licensed its NAP architecture to two vendors, UNet and Avenda, to build clients for the Mac (as well as for Linux).

OCS and Messenger
With its latest release (an update to the version that originally shipped with Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac), the Messenger for Mac 7 application provides support to other MSN Messenger/Live Messenger users. Equally important in a Windows organization, it now supports access to corporate implementations of Office Communication Server (OCS). The screenshot in Figure 6 shows the Corporate area of the Messenger Accounts where you can specify the information for connecting to OCS.

Figure 6 You can specify the information for connecting Messenger to OCS (Click the image for a larger view)

Connecting Back to Windows
For some time, Microsoft has provided a version of the Remote Desktop client for the Macintosh. Last year, Microsoft released a great new version, Remote Desktop Connection Client 2 (which was updated this year), that allows Macs to connect back to Windows—even to Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 systems. Figure 7 shows Remote Desktop for the Mac. This version supports drive, printer, and audio redirection, but lacks other device redirection. It also adds the ability to establish multiple simultaneous connections.

Figure 7 Connecting a Mac to Windows (Click the image for a larger view)

Information Rights Management
As I noted in my November 2008 The Desktop Files column, Microsoft doesn’t support access to documents protected with Information Rights Management (IRM) from within Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 or 2008 today (see “You cannot open documents protected with IRM on Office for Macintosh”). These versions can open Office Open XML documents—the latter natively, the former natively with the latest updates and the format convertor installed. But neither is capable of opening IRM-protected documents directly, and Macs have no native way to interact with IRM-protected e-mail either.

If a Mac user needs to be able to access IRM-protected content, the most expedient way is to use one of the virtualization technologies for the Mac and to run a domain-joined instance of Windows, which allows for management and easier integration with IRM. The Windows system would be equipped with your enterprise-licensed copy of Office 2003 or Office 2007, configured to work with IRM.
The only complexity created by this solution is that you now have another Windows system to manage (in addition to the Mac). But that, of course, is one of the double-edged swords of virtualization—that Windows installations can propagate if not managed carefully. There is also the potential challenge of having to learn to work with Office on Windows, as well as on the Mac.

The only alternative besides virtualization also involves a second Windows installation and is harder on the end user. You could use a Boot Camp volume with Windows installed on it, configured as I’ve described above, but running in a Boot Camp volume on the Mac, directly (we’ll discuss Boot Camp in more detail later). Let’s briefly overview Boot Camp and virtualization on the Mac. The discussion of Boot Camp and virtualization is predicated on the use of an Intel-based Macintosh. Legacy PowerPC-based Macs can only provide emulation through software emulation products, such as Microsoft Virtual PC, rather than true virtualization.

A Platform in Common
Several years ago, Apple moved from a PowerPC-based architecture to Intel x86, allowing commodity hardware to bring the platform costs down while increasing performance. Just as important for some, Macs now had a platform in common with Windows, though Macs used the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) instead of BIOS. And they used the GUID Partitioning Table (GPT) partition type instead of the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition type used by 32- and 64-bit Windows.

The first systems sold by Apple were all single core and x86 only. All Mac systems sold today are x64-capable and have dual-core processors—allowing for a very satisfactory experience when using virtualization software, and even providing a great experience running Windows XP or Windows Vista with Aero, natively via Boot Camp.

By using EFI and GPT (incidentally, these were both designed largely by Intel and are used by the Intel Itanium 64-bit processor architecture), Apple avoided much of the legacy complexity of the BIOS architecture and allowed for much more flexible disk partitioning scenarios than Windows. MBR disks have numerous limitations on how many volumes can be created, what types, and size limits. GPT was designed specifically to overcome these limitations.

As a result of the move to an x86 architecture, a hacking community evolved around getting the Mac OS to run Windows XP. The complexities here are pretty significant, as 32-bit Windows supports neither EFI or GPT. Apple created a simple utility called Boot Camp that was originally available as a beta download and is now included exclusively in Mac OS X 10.5. By providing BIOS emulation and a rather creative “overlay” partition format where the disk is partitioned using matched MBR and GPT partition entries, Windows can boot from its own volume while the Mac continues on its volume.

Boot Camp is very easy to use; it repartitions the disk on the fly and helps install Windows. The only downside of Boot Camp is that in order to switch operating system environments, you must reboot the Mac into Windows, then reboot again to get back to the Mac. In short, it works—especially for technophiles like TechNet Magazine readers (but I have to say I don’t like how inconvenient the actual process is).

If the user has an application that requires access to the actual hardware of the computer (such as a graphics-intensive application or a FireWire-attached peripheral), then Boot Camp may be just what is needed. But virtualization can provide much the same experience, though with some limitations. The largest problem with Boot Camp is probably the fact that in their native configurations, Windows can’t access Mac HFS+ formatted volumes, and Macs can’t write (though they can read) NTFS-formatted volumes.

I’d like to take a minute to describe two free utilities and one commercial product that make Boot Camp even easier to use. The free rEFIt utility allows you to take a Mac and create more flexible boot configurations than the BootCamp single-volume scenario allows for (only one instance of Windows can be installed via Boot Camp). Using rEFIt, I have a Macintosh that will triple boot between Mac OS X (installed first), Windows XP (installed using Boot Camp), and Windows Vista Ultimate (installed using rEFIt). You should use rEFIt carefully (read the documentation)—it is a very powerful tool that can potentially harm your system if not used properly.

Also free, the NTFS-3G utility allows Mac OS X not only to read but also write to NTFS-formatted volumes. Finally, MacDrive 7 ($49.95/system) is, to my knowledge, the only way to give a Boot Camp-booted Windows volume the ability to read and write to a Mac OS X HFS+ formatted volume.

Virtualization
Though Connectix, the company that sold its emulation and virtualization tools to Microsoft, made a Virtual PC product for the Mac, this product was really an emulation, not a virtualization, product. Essentially, it emulated an x86 instruction set on top of PowerPC-based computers. The result was functional, but not exactly speedy enough for everyday use. Today, Microsoft’s Virtual PC product will work only on legacy PowerPC-based Macs. But since Apple’s much-talked-about move to the x86 architecture, at least three distinct virtualization products have been made available for the Mac. Some even offer GPU emulation, allowing more graphically intensive applications (or better yet, games) to run on the Mac—and do so with performance at or near running on physical hardware.

The predominant Mac virtualization products are VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac. Both products allow you to boot the same Boot Camp partitions virtually as well as via Boot Camp (giving you the best of both worlds) and enable a “transparent” mode where applications running in a Windows virtual machine actually look as if they are running on the Mac directly. They also support drag and drop to and from the Mac and Windows virtual machine.

Note that virtualizing an IRM client does potentially circumvent the IRM protection—it’s relatively easy to perform a screen capture of a Windows VM running on a Mac. But, as I noted in my November 2008 The Desktop Files column, IRM works well only until you hit “the analog hole,” which is easier for a nefarious user to do from a virtualized machine—something to be aware of.

Sure, it would be ideal if you could provide Mac (or any other platform) users the same experience as Windows users with the same ease of use. But some tools (such as IRM, SQL Server applications, or Microsoft .NET applications) cannot run natively and must be used from a Windows installation that is either running virtualized or under Boot Camp (or both). And any applications that require a high-end GPU or DirectX 10 must be run via a Windows installation running via Boot Camp. Virtualization provides a great bridge for applications that are Windows-only when you have users who need to use Macs.

Wrap-Up
With the move to an Intel x86-based architecture, numerous applications available natively, and strong virtualization/native-booting solutions available today, Mac/Windows platform interoperability is easier than it has ever been before. For the Mac users in your organization, the need to be isolated on a separate network, with no easy way to share files with Windows machines, is a thing of the past.

source:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.12.interacting.aspx

The Mac family of computers from Apple is becoming increasingly popular on more and more networks. For instance, at the end of 2007, Digital Trends reported that the US Army uses about 20,000 Macs on a regular basis. This is one part of a larger program that is intended to increase diversity in the computing base so that a single attack (such as a virus) would not impact all of its computers.
Macs can become a part of a primarily Windows-based network for a variety of reasons. Someone on the network may simply think Macs are cool, users who own Macs at home may want a similar computing experience at work, or users who have been trained on Macs may opt to work on Macs. Whatever the reason, it happens, and you need to be prepared for the time when, as a Windows network administrator, you have to deal with Macs in your environment.

You may not think so, but this actually creates a fantastic opportunity for you as an IT professional. Instead of being like many administrators who “don’t do Macs,” you can be the IT guy who will do whatever the organization needs—whether it be supporting Macs or Windows. This can greatly increase your value to the organization, broaden your resume (for promotions and future job prospects), and bring a little something different to your daily routine. Fortunately, current Mac client computers aren’t very difficult to support. In fact, you’ll be surprised at how similar they are to Windows computers.
The Internet has played an enormous role in bringing Macs and Windows closer together. Internet technologies were based primarily on technologies found in UNIX operating systems, such as the TCP/IP protocol suite. Over the past decade or so, Windows has adopted many of those protocols for standard operations, such as networking, printing, and even authentication. The current Mac operating system, Mac OS X 10.5, is actually based on the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) UNIX platform, and thus it uses many of the same protocols under the hood. Sure, the Mac UI differs from the Windows UI, but what’s happening underneath those UIs is becoming increasingly similar.

Getting on the Network

The first challenge to integrating Macs in the infrastructure—getting them on the network—has definitely gotten easier. While older Macs support TCP/IP, Macs have always been known to rely primarily on the AppleTalk protocol, a proprietary network protocol known for its chattiness. In fact, the Microsoft Services for Macintosh solution gave Windows Server the ability not only to speak AppleTalk but also to emulate a Mac for file and print sharing.

What many people don’t know is that Apple­Talk has officially been a dead protocol for many years. Apple itself turned off Apple­Talk in the late 1990s, and most infrastructure devices (routers and so forth) stopped supporting it in the 2001 and 2002 timeframe. Today, Macs are almost purely TCP/IP. Click on the omnipresent Apple menu at the top of the screen, select System Preferences (the Mac equivalent of the Windows Control Panel), and double-click Network to configure the network.
Figure 1 shows you that the available networking interfaces—Ethernet, the wireless AirPort, and so forth—are easily configured to use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which is the default. And just as the latest versions of Windows, Mac now even supports IPv6.

Figure 1 Configuring networking interfaces on a Mac

Clicking Advanced will allow you to configure more details on TCP/IP, DNS, and even WINS. (Anyone still using WINS out there?) You can enable AppleTalk if the system needs to communicate with older Macs, and modern 802.1X authentication is available. As shown in Figure 2, you can manually configure various protocol proxies or allow proxy configuration to occur automatically by means of a PAC file.

Figure 2 Configuring proxy settings on a Mac

So much for AppleTalk! You might, however, be interested in a TCP/IP-based advertising and discovery protocol that Macs use. This protocol is called Bonjour, and there’s a version of it available for Windows, too. (It’s important to note that Bonjour was called Rendezvous while under development, and it is still referred to by that name in some older technical documents.)
You can think of Bonjour as a spiritual successor to NetBIOS, although it bears a stronger resemblance to Universal Plug-N-Play (UPnP), another protocol supported by both Mac and Windows. The main purpose of Bonjour is to advertise available services such as file sharing, printers, and remote speakers (used by Apple iTunes and Apple TV).

Bonjour isn’t a broadcast-based protocol, so it isn’t as chatty as you might think—though it does put a noticeable amount of additional traffic on the network. It can be disabled—in a corporate environment where you’re not relying on computers being able to advertise and discover services, disabling Bonjour can remove a bit of overhead from the network. To disable Bonjour, just open a terminal window (the Mac command-line window, which typically runs the UNIX BASH shell) and run:

launchctl unload -w
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Note that disabling Bonjour can make some of the built-in Mac applications, perhaps most notably iChat, behave a bit oddly. If you plan to allow internal apps like iChat (which is compatible with AOL Instant Messenger, which some companies allow internally), you should do some testing first to make sure everything works as expected.
Once on the network, Macs behave in almost exactly the same way as your Windows clients behave. They use DHCP to get an IP configuration, they auto-configure IPv6 if you’re not providing an IPv6 configuration via DHCP, they use your DNS and proxy servers, and so forth.

Troubleshooting the Network

Macs offer two distinct ways to troubleshoot the network. One approach will be more familiar to Windows administrators because it utilizes many of the command-line tools you already use. You start by clicking on the desktop wallpaper of the Mac—this activates Finder, which is the Mac equivalent to Windows Explorer.

You can then press Shift+Command+U to open the Utilities folder. Now double-click Terminal to open the BASH shell. Here you have access to most of the common network troubleshooting tools—Ping, Traceroute (it’s not tracert, but it does work the same way), Nslookup, and more. Figure 3 shows a few of them in action. Note that ipconfig is available, but it is a very different—and more powerful—command than what you get in Windows. You’ll need to take some time to learn how to use Ipconfig on the Mac, though you might find that the Mac UI offers an easier way to access this information.

Figure 3 Using some familiar network troubleshooting tools on the Mac

If you’d rather not use a command line, you can use the Network Utility application, which is an excellent all-in-one tool with a graphical UI (see Figure 4). The Network Utility application can be found in the same Utilities folder where Terminal is located.

Figure 4 The Network Utility app gives a graphical UI to network troubleshooting

Network Utility provides a graphical UI for Netstat, Ping, DNS Lookup, Traceroute, and more. It even has a built-in port scanner! You can perform most of your network troubleshooting right from this tool. The Info tab even displays the configuration information you would get from ipconfig on a Windows computer.

Unsupported Networking?

I’ve had some users bring up the lack of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) support in Macs. Most newer networking switches support STP as a means of reducing network overhead and improving throughput. And there’s a persistent belief that Macs don’t work when STP is enabled.
It is true that the AppleTalk protocol does not work well with STP, and if you must use AppleTalk, you’ll have to disable STP on the switch ports used by Apple computers. But as I already mentioned, AppleTalk is considered a dead protocol and there shouldn’t be much reason to use it.

My suggestion is that you shut off AppleTalk unless you explicitly need to leave it enabled to support older Macs—and I mean Macs running OS 8 or the very earliest versions of OS 9. That’s more than 10 years old! Macs running TCP/IP have no troubles with STP or anything else you may be using to fine-tune your network infrastructure.

File Sharing

You might be surprised to learn that Macs have built-in abilities to connect to Windows-based shared folders. With Finder active, press Command+K (or select Connect to Server from the Go menu). As Figure 5 illustrates, you simply need to enter the protocol prefix smb:// and then the name of the server to which you want to connect. Once that is done, you will be prompted to authenticate, and if you haven’t specified a shared folder, you will be prompted to select one.

Figure 5 Connecting to Windows-based shared folders

Unlike Windows systems, Macs don’t have drive letters, and, therefore, you can’t map a network drive. Instead, connected drives show up in Finder, along with regular, local disks. Connected drives can use FTP, Server Message Block (SMB), or many other protocols. And although Macs don’t technically have logon scripts, you can easily configure them to have drives automatically reconnect each time the user logs on.

To do this, open a Finder window to view a list of connected drives. Then open System Preferences and select Accounts. Select the user’s account and switch to the Login Items tab. Then drag any connected drives from Finder to the list of login items and ensure that each drive is checked to have it automatically reconnect at login.

Likewise, Macs can share local folders with Windows clients. In System Preferences, you need to open the Sharing panel and enable the File Sharing option, as shown in Figure 6. Then add whatever folders you like to the list of Shared Folders. This procedure is different than on Windows. In Windows Explorer, you would right-click the folders you want to share and configure sharing on the folder itself. With a Mac, you centrally control the list of folders to be shared.

Figure 6 Enabling the File Sharing option on a Mac

This is also where you control Mac permissions. But Macs, given their UNIX base, have a simpler system of permissions than Windows has. Essentially, on each folder, you can assign Read, Read & Write, Write Only, or No Access permissions to any user or group. One helpful trick is to click the Options button in the Sharing pane and ensure that files are being shared using SMB, the protocol Windows clients know how to use. The default is to share only via Apple File Protocol (AFP), which is accessible only to other Macs.

Print Sharing

Printing from a Mac can be tricky—not because printing is difficult to set up, but rather because there are so many options from which to choose. The first step, obviously, is to find out the type of printer to which you’re printing and then to obtain a Mac-compatible device driver for it. Note that this step can be difficult for older printers, but here is a short list of rules that can help you find the right driver:

* Newer inkjet printers, especially those from Canon, Epson, and HP, typically have Mac drivers. Check the vendor’s Web site.
* Apple is notorious for making sweeping changes to the printing subsystem in minor version releases. So it’s important to always match printer drivers to the major and minor version number of the Mac OS. A printer driver written for OS 10.2 might not work with 10.5.
* Laser printers are the toughest to find specific drivers for, but you can usually use either a generic HP PCL driver or a generic PostScript driver, depending on which of the following two printer control languages your laser printer supports. Adobe publishes a free, generic PostScript driver for Macs and a free open-source PCL driver for Macs is available at sourceforge.net.

Newer versions of the Mac OS, on the other hand, use a licensed version of the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS), which makes it much easier for vendors to write drivers. It’s important for you to understand that Macs don’t work with the Windows Point and Print system, which means you cannot simply store the Mac printer driver on a Windows print server, as you can for different versions of Windows. And Macs aren’t able to utilize the print server’s printer driver, either.

Instead, Macs need to have their own locally installed printer driver. The printer driver is responsible for accepting print data from an application and then generating the print spool file. How the spool file gets to the printer depends on what type of printer you’re using.

With the right driver installed, you can then set the printer up in System Preferences, under the Print & Fax panel. You’ll see that Macs support a variety of methods for connecting to printers:

* Line Printer Daemon (LPD) is supported by UNIX print servers, by Windows servers running Microsoft Services for UNIX, and by most printers attaching directly to the network or attaching by means of a network print server device.
* HP JetDirect connections are supported directly.
* Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), which is based on HTTP and used within CUPS, is supported by many remote-printing services offered at hotels and other venues.
* Windows printers shared by a Windows server or client computer (see Figure 7) are supported, as Macs have the ability to browse Windows workgroups (which they detect by using the network browse master) or domains.
* Bluetooth printers aren’t typically used in an enterprise situation, but if you have a user who needs a personal printer, this provides an easy way to connect to one.
* AppleTalk, which of course requires that the AppleTalk protocol be turned on, is useful for connecting to older printers that support AppleTalk.
* Vendor-specific connectivity, such as Canon IJ Network, Epson FireWire, Epson TCP/IP, HP All-in-One faxes, and HP IP Printing.
* Bonjour is supported by many newer network printers designed for small office and workgroup use (such as many of the newer networked all-in-one devices), allowing printers to advertise their presence and making it possible for Macs to quickly locate them.

Figure 7 Accessing shared Windows printers

From a Windows perspective, the ability for Macs to connect directly to Windows printers, and to connect to LPD printers, will be the most useful option for you. Keep in mind that Windows print servers often use either LPD or JetDirect to connect to physical print devices.

While a Mac can indeed connect directly to the physical printer using the same protocol, remember that you won’t be able to use the Windows server computer to manage the print jobs submitted by the Mac. As an alternative, having the Mac submit print jobs to the Windows server, rather than directly to the printer, allows the Mac print jobs to be prioritized and managed along with the print jobs being submitted by your Windows client users.

Embrace Your Macs
As you can see, getting Macs running on your network and providing them with basic infrastructure services such as networking, file sharing, and printing isn’t all that different from providing those same services to Windows client computers. In fact, Macs are becoming increasingly capable as full-fledged clients on a Windows network—so much so that I’ve started running a regular series of Mac interop articles on my blog.

The mission of striving for an entirely homogeneous network is fading fast, as businesses recognize that different platforms offer different strengths that can be exploited to increase productivity. The use of open and well-understood protocols in Windows makes it easy to incorporate other client platforms. And, of course, the fact that Macs use the same protocols makes it easier to integrate and support Mac systems in your Windows environment.

source:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.12.mac.aspx

Without an operating system – Mac OS X, say, or Windows XP – a computer is just a dumb box of chips, and even the most exciting application will have no environment in which to run. And, it’s easy to forget that you have a choice of which OS you run.

In fact, as a Mac user, you’re uniquely positioned because an Intel Mac is the only computer in the world that can legally run all three major operating systems, Mac OS, Windows and Linux. Indeed, you can, if you like, load all three on the same computer and pick which one you want to load when you switch your Mac on.

Even given that you have the choice, though, why would you ever want to install a different OS? Mac OS X, after all, is phenomenally good, and is, we think, the best OS for most people.

There are a few reasons, and it depends on what alternative OS you’re thinking of installing. Stick a copy of Windows XP, Vista or (though its support is currently limited) Windows 7 onto an Intel Mac using the Boot Camp utility included with Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, and, boom, you’ve got a PC. It’s a very nice PC, and you can always scurry back to Mac OS X if it all gets too much.

But there’s essentially zero difference between a Mac running Windows and a Dell running Windows. If you are forced to use Windows-only apps or services as part of your work, for example, add a copy of Windows to your Mac, and you’ve transformed it into a PC for 100% compatibility with your colleagues.

Remember too that, with Snow Leopard, you can read from the Mac partition of your hard disk too.

Opting for Linux

But what about Linux? Why would you want to install that OS, (unfairly) perceived as being difficult and nerdy, onto your lovely Mac?

We asked Paul Hudson, the editor of our sister title Linux Format. “The most common reason for people running Linux on their Mac,” he said “is simply because they can get a bang up-to-date operating system running just fine on 400MHz PowerPC chips. Linux supports every major computer architecture in the world, you can even use a G3 if you really want to, but make sure you have at least 256MB of RAM.

“Other folks use it because they want a bit more power on their desktop: it’s straightforward to set up, comes with tens of thousands of programs that are completely free to use, and is pretty much bulletproof in terms of security. But my favourite reason is simply for the fun of dabbling around – I like to break things and fix them again, and, while Linux does make it hard to shoot yourself in the foot, when you do you’ll take your whole leg off.”

As Hudson says, these days Linux is fairly easy to use as your primary operating system. It’s not quite as robust as OS X when it comes to certain Mac hardware, but to be fair it’s almost impossible for any operating system designed to run on more than a small range of computers to be as stable.

Breathe new life into an old machine

Otherwise, Linux is excellent. Don’t discount, either, its astonishing abilities to breathe new life into old hardware. If your old G4 is still chugging along with Mac OS 9, wiping the slate clean and installing a nice friendly, modern version of Linux will introduce you to a whole new world, with free, powerful software that’s regularly updated.

Even simply being able to use a standards-compliant browser such as Firefox 3 rather than Internet Explorer for Mac is a boon when, today, so much of our lives are or can be carried out online.

Of course, you could put Linux on a brand-new Mac Pro if you like, and indeed, as apart from doing it just for the fun of it, many people run Linux as their primary OS because they applaud the ethos behind the open source movement.

It’s not just a whimsical delight in getting software that’s free and which has been built by thousands of volunteers all over the world, but a passionate dedication to the idea that data ought not to be locked away in proprietary formats or hamstrung by DRM.

There are, however, many versions of Linux. They’re known as ‘distros’, short for distributions, and you have to decide which to install. We asked Hudson for advice.

“This really depends on what you consider an ‘old’ Mac to be,” he said. “Let me put it like this: if the words ‘old world’ mean nothing to you, go for Ubuntu; it runs on G3, G4 and G5 (or Intel) CPUs. Ubuntu is by far the most popular Linux distribution, and with good reason: it’s easy to use, well polished, and has an active community offering help at ubuntuforums.org.

“Long-term Mac users who have hardware better suited to museums should look at Debian. If you’re an advanced user with an Intel Mac, give OpenSUSE a try: it’s a ‘full-fat’ distro, which comes on a DVD and installs pretty much all of it to your hard drive. If you want to try lots of text editors to find one that suits, OpenSUSE is a good place to start.”

A learning curve

Even with the simplest of distros there will be a learning curve, though it’s much shallower than it was a few years ago. For example, warns Hudson:

“Mac users are quite familiar with downloading .dmg files from the web then dropping programs into their Applications directory. Linux doesn’t do things like that, because we have a natural distrust of getting files from random websites. Instead, you’ll find your distro uses a package manager, which is where you select the software you want and it downloads and installs it for you from a trusted source. To remove the program, use the package manager again.”

Modern Linux distros support common Wi-Fi chipsets, so you may find that Wi-Fi works on your freshly installed Linux box right away. If not, you might have to download some drivers. The good news: distros such as Ubuntu can automatically identify and download appropriate drivers. The bad? They need a network connection to do this.

If you have another Mac, though, remember that you can share a wireless connection over Ethernet from the Sharing pane of System Preferences, so you could connect it to your new Linux-powered Mac to pipe some internet connectivity in over Ethernet just long enough to get Wi-Fi enabled.

In our G4 example , once we’d hooked up the Ethernet lifeline, all we had to do was go to the Hardware Drivers utility from System > Administration for the drivers to be detected.

If, however, you’re merely curious rather than ready to take the plunge, you could install Linux as a virtual machine within VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop.

Ultimately, we’re happiest when using a Mac as Jobs intended: running Mac OS X. But there are good reasons why you might want to try something different, especially if you’ve got an old PowerPC Mac hidden in a cupboard somewhere.

Make your Mac a jack of all trades with OS 9, OS X and Linux

As an example of what you could do to give an old Mac a new lease of life, we’re going to take a Power Mac G4 and make it triple-boot with Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and the Linux distro Ubuntu.

If you want to make Linux your sole operating system, it’s much simpler than the finicky process we’re detailing here; you’d miss steps two and three completely, then when installing Ubuntu you’d tell it to use the entire disk.

This process, of course, wipes the information from the Mac’s hard disk, so make sure you copy off any data you want to keep before beginning.

If you have an existing OS X install, you could clone it off to a FireWire hard disk, then, once the internal hard disk is partitioned, clone it back to the OS X partition. It should come as no surprise to learn that this is advanced stuff, and to fit all the instructions into the space we have, we’ve had to gloss over a few things, and assume a high level of competency.

Go carefully. You might notice, incidentally, that our test machine has a second internal hard disk – ignore it as we’re not using it in this example.

Get to grips with Ubuntu

1. Download Ubuntu

On any Mac or PC, download the ISO file (a virtual disc image) of the Ubuntu live installer from here. We’ve opted for 9.04 as 9.10 has issues with burning.

Step 01

Open Disk Utility, click the Burn icon, select the downloaded ISO then pop in a CD-R and let it burn.

02. Partition the hard disk

Boot your Mac from your Tiger install CD. Launch Disk Utility, select the internal hard disk, then click the Partition tab.

Step 02

Create three partitions; one Mac OS Extended for OS X, another for OS 9, and define the rest as Free Space. Create them as different sizes (this will be useful later) and note the size of each.

03. Install OS 9 and X

Once the partition has completed, restart the Mac and, as it cycles, pop out the Tiger disc and insert the Mac OS 9 install CD.

Step 03

Let it boot, then install OS 9 onto the Mac OS 9 partition you created previously. Complete the OS 9 setup.

Once you’re done, install Mac OS X onto the separate OS X partition.

04. Install Ubuntu

Restart your Mac again, inserting the Ubuntu installer and holding c to boot from it. Allow Ubuntu to load, then double-click the Install icon on the desktop.

Step 04

When you’re asked where you want to install Ubuntu, pick the second option. Use the largest continuous free space; the graphics show you what will happen.

05. Set boot preferences

After the installation has completed, restart the Mac back into Ubuntu, go to the Applications menu, then pick Terminal from the Accessories menu. Type:

sudo mac-fdisk -l

Use your notes of partition sizes to identify which partitions Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 are installed on.

Step 05

The partition name will be something like /dev/hda10 and /dev/hda12.

Now type:

sudo cp /etc/yaboot.conf /etc/yaboot.conf.backup

to make a backup of the file we’re about to edit. Then type:

sudo nano /etc/yaboot.conf

The installer will have identified the Mac OS X installation, so go to a line that says something like macosx=/dev/hda10 and, under that, type:

macos=/dev/hda12

or whatever the number was that you noted. To make Mac OS X default, on a new line under the one you’ve just written, type:

defaultos=macosx

then press CTRL+x to exit and save.

Press Y when asked if you want to save, then return to confirm the file name. In the Terminal, type:

sudo ybin -v

Once the process has completed, you can restart from Ubuntu, and Mac OS X will boot.

source: http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/how-to-run-almost-any-os-on-your-mac-674027

You have probably heard the term FireWire if you have any interest in digital video — or maybe you know it as Sony i.Link or as IEEE 1394, the offical name for the standard. FireWire is a way to connect different pieces of equipment so they can easily and quickly share information.

­Originally created by Apple and standardized in 1995 as the specification IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus, FireWire is very similar to Universal Serial Bus (USB). The designers of FireWire had several particular goals in mind when they created the standard:

* Fast transfer of data
* Ability to put lots of devices on the bus
* Ease of use
* Hot-pluggable ability
* Provision of power through the cable
* Plug-and-play performance
* Low cabling cost
* Low implementation cost

What is FireWire?

FireWire is a method of transferring information between digital devices, especially audio and video equipment. Also known as IEEE 1394, FireWire is fast — the latest version achieves speeds up to 800 Mbps. At some time in the future, that number is expected to jump to an unbelievable 3.2 Gbps when manufacturers overhaul the current FireWire cables.

You can connect up to 63 devices to a FireWire bus. Windows operating systems (98 and later) and Mac OS (8.6 and later) both support it.

Let’s say you have your digital camcorder connected to your home computer. When your computer powers up, it queries all of the devices connected to the bus and assigns each one an address, a process called enumeration. FireWire is plug-and-play, so if you connect a new FireWire device to your computer, the operating system auto-detects it and asks for the driver disc. If you’ve already installed the device, the computer activates it and starts talking to it. FireWire devices are hot pluggable, which means they can be connected and disconnected at any time, even with the power on.

FireWire Cables and Connectors

FireWire devices can be powered or unpowered. FireWire allows devices to draw their power from their connection. Two power conductors in the cable can supply power (8 to 30 volts, 1.5 amps maximum) from the computer to an unpowered device. Two twisted pair sets carry the data in a FireWire 400 cable using a 6-pin configuration.

Some smaller FireWire-enabled devices use 4-pin connectors to save space, omitting the two pins used to supply power.

FireWire 800 cables use a 9-pin configuration. Six of those pins are the same as the six pins in the 1394a connector (shown above). Two of the added pins provide a “grounded shield” to protect the other wires from interference, and the third added pin does nothing at this time.

Because FireWire 800 is backward-compatible with FireWire 400, there are a variety of adapters available to facilitate the combination of both standards on the same bus. There are also two types of FireWire 800 ports available: a “bilingual” port accomodates both FireWire standards, while a b-only port accepts only a FireWire 800 connector.

Sending Data via FireWire

FireWire uses 64-bit fixed addressing, based on the IEEE 1212 standard. There are three parts to each packet of information sent by a device over FireWire:

* A 10-bit bus ID that is used to determine which FireWire bus the data came from
* A 6-bit physical ID that identifies which device on the bus sent the data
* A 48-bit storage area that is capable of addressing 256 terabytes of information for each node

The bus ID and physical ID together comprise the 16-bit node ID, which allows for 64,000 nodes on a system. Data can be sent through up to 16 hops (device to device). Hops occur when devices are daisy-chained together. Look at the example below. The camcorder is connected to the external hard drive connected to Computer A. Computer A is connected to Computer B, which in turn is connected to Computer C. It takes four hops for Computer C to access the camera.

Assuming all of the devices in this setup are equipped with FireWire 800, the camcorder can be up to 400 meters from Computer C.

FireWire and Digital Video

FireWire really shines when it comes to digital video applications. Most digital video cameras or camcorders now have a FireWire plug. When you attach a camcorder to a computer using FireWire, the connection is amazing.

An important element of FireWire is the support of isochronous devices. In isochronous mode, data streams between the device and the host in real-time with guaranteed bandwidth and no error correction. Essentially, this means that a device like a digital camcorder can request that the host computer allocate enough bandwidth for the camcorder to send uncompressed video in real-time to the computer. When the computer-to-camera FireWire connection enters isochronous mode, the camera can send the video in a steady flow to the computer without anything disrupting the process.

You can easily edit and create custom video projects using fast hard drives, a digital camcorder and a computer. With the right software, the computer and the camera communicate, and the computer can download all of the video automatically and with perfect digital clarity. Since the content is digital from start to finish, there is no loss of quality as you work on successive generations.

source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/firewire.htm

How would you feel if someone pulled the power cable out of your Mac (or PC) right now, without warning? If there was a power failure this is effectively what would happen, and you could lose data or your entire computer as a result. Guard yourself against such an event with a UPS device.

The facts

An uninterruptible power supply, or UPS for short, is, in a nutshell, a heavy-duty mains-charged battery unit that sits between your Mac and the regular power sockets. These devices are designed to provide enough electricity during a power cut to keep connected equipment going for a little while, normally providing five or ten minutes of power for a few devices; long enough to save work in progress and shut down gracefully.

Most people think of these as something you’d need only if you lived where power cuts were a common occurrence. However, even in the middle of a busy city your power could fail for any number of reasons, from a simple blown fuse to roadworks problems, lightning strikes (they do happen), and so on. If the power fails your Mac will go down without warning. Not only will you not have a chance to save your work, the OS won’t have performed a graceful shutdown; you may need to run disk repair tools as a result. If you’re unlucky your computer could suffer expensive hardware damage as well. Wherever you live, if you use computers, a UPS is well worth considering.

Another benefit you’ll get from a UPS device are ‘line conditioning’ features. Generally referred to as automatic voltage regulation, these tame fluctuations in your mains power. Although you would expect your incoming electricity supply to give you an unvarying 240v current (or whatever is standard for your part of the world), it will actually fluctuate from time to time. You may have noticed your lights dim for half a second once in a while; that’s a crude visual symptom of the effects of ‘dirty’, unregulated power. This can cause stress to sensitive electronic equipment. Although it is generally soaked up by the poswer supply units within your IT equipment, it will still take its toll on those components at least, and can lead to crashes and freezes. Automatic voltage regulation curcuits are designed to take such spikes and troughs in their stride and pass a tamed result on to connected equipment.

When choosing a UPS device, make sure that you pick one which will be able to handle the demands of everything you want protected. UPS suppliers will normally help you work out what level of device you need, but if not you can work it out yourself with some simple maths. Next to the power socket on Macs, PCs and virtually all other IT equipment you’ll find the item’s amps rating. Multiply that by the mains voltage and you’ve got the VA rating; volts x amps = VA. (VA is also commonly called watts, although an electrician will point out that there’s a difference between the two.) If necessary, divide the VA figure by the UPS device’s capacity and you’ll have the length of time its battery can maintain those items on its own; VA / capacity = uptime. If you prefer, a UPS capacity calculator can be found at CSGNetwork.com.

When looking through catalogues don’t go by a manufacturer’s quoted maximum battery running time; that will be calculated with the minimum load rather than a realistic one of the device under full load. Make sure you get a unit which has 25% or more VA capacity than your existing needs. This will ensure you get a bit more than the minimum amount of time when running from the battery, and it also gives you scope for using slightly higher-rated equipment in the future without risking the UPS failing to keep you running in a crisis.

Remember, having a UPS doesn’t mean you can keep working even if the mains power fails. These devices are meant to provide enough time to sort things out, not to let you carry on with your work as if nothing’s happened. Only use a UPS for items which really must be kept alive for a short time if the power fails. Anything which pulls a lot of power shouldn’t be connected via one of these unless absolutely necessary. Your monitor is a logical choice, as are any external hard drives. Other devices are less necessary; for example, scanners don’t need the UPS treatment. Laser printers will stress a UPS’s throughput quite heavily, especially when first turned on. Remember, if there’s a power failure your main concern should be in saving your work and shutting down gracefully, not in making a few prints. If you’d like to have your laser printer protected from fluctuations in mains power then by all means connect it to the surge-protection sockets. These flatten out power spikes, causing less stress to the electronics and providing protection against lighting strike pulses. Just don’t hook it up to the battery-backed sockets or you’ll shorten the life of the UPS itself.

When there’s a power failure your UPS device will start beeping to let you know that it, or rather your computer, is running on battery power. Most units will offer extra connections to your Mac or PC via USB or Ethernet, and can, in conjunction with bundled software, automate the process of shutting it down. This is ideal for unattended servers, but it can also be useful if you happen to be away from your Mac when the power fails. Some UPS devices come with Windows-only software and PC-specific serial connections, but there are utilities for OS X that can work with these, even if a USB-to-serial adaptor is used. Aside from this, any UPS hardware will work with Macs as well as PCs, as it simply provides temporary power when needed.

Maintenance

The battery in a UPS device will last for some years, but you should test it out every now and then, say once every year or so, to ensure it is still up to the task. If in doubt, contact the manufacturer and see whether they recommend a replacement battery. You should also test out your setup once you’ve installed everything – either with your Mac and no important work open or with something more immune to outages, such as a lamp – to make sure that it will actually do the job when asked.

source: http://www.thesmallest.com/lessonettes/ups-indepth.html