It’s always been easy to integrate your Mac into a Mac-centric network. With Mac OS X, you can add Macs to diverse networks that mix Mac OS, UNIX and Windows computers with the same simplicity.

Mac OS X offers wide-ranging support for the network file services you need to work in just about any popular network environment. Mac OS X can talk to the most popular file server protocols on every major server platform in the market today — including AFP, SMB/CIFS, WebDAV and NFS file services running on Mac OS X Server, AppleShare, UNIX, Linux, Novell NetWare and Windows NT, 2000 and XP servers. Tiger also offers Bonjour, a standards-based networking technology that automatically connects electronic devices on a network.

Mac OS X Tiger lets you browse Windows networks right in the Finder. Once you’re connected, servers appear in the Finder giving Mac OS X computers first-class access to Windows file server networks. There’s no need to install additional software on either the server or your Macintosh, so it’s easier to integrate your Mac into a Windows network. Tiger improves compatibility with Windows File Servers with support for NTLMv2 authentication.

With native support for UNIX, Mac OS X can also chat up UNIX NFS servers, making it the perfect network client for universities, research labs and open platform businesses.

Mac OS X also supports SLP, an IP-based protocol used for dynamically discovering network services like file servers. So you can browse available file servers on your network instead of typing in a long, complicated URL.

If you need to connect to your company’s network remotely, Mac OS X has the tools you need right out of the box. Just launch the Internet Connect application and select New VPN (Virtual Private Network) Connection Window from the file menu. Enter your account and server information and you’re connected. With VPN on demand, your connection is reestablished automatically when needed and disconnected when you’re finished. Mac OS X Tiger supports PPTP-based VPN as well as standards-based networks, and Tiger now supports new VPN capabilities such as the option to direct all network traffic through a VPN connection.

Email Services

Does your organization use a Microsoft® Exchange Server 2000 or later? Exchange Server support is already built into Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage 2004.

Mac OS X Mail works seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange mail servers, whether you’re in the office or on the road. Mail supports IMAP so while you’re on the road, you can see all of the mail on your machine at the office. You can read new messages, reply, delete a few items and leave other items for when you’re back in the office. Mac OS X Tiger also uses standard GNU Zip compression and expansion for file attachments so Mac, Windows and Linux users can easily open and read them.

Alternativley, use Microsoft® Entourage® 2004 for Mac to pull it all together. Consolidate your e-mail, contacts, calendar, notes and project details in one easy-to-access place. There are different Mac Office deployment options available for integration with an Exchange environment. These options depend on the version of Mac Office and the Mac OS used in an organization and the functionality requirements of users. Talk to Central IT today about your requirements.

Printer Services

Macs and PCs can also share printers. Shared Windows printers automatically appear in the Mac OS X Printer Setup Utility so they can be added to the Macintosh as a local printer queue. You can create a queue for as many shared Windows (and Macintosh) printers as you like, and any application that can print on the Macintosh can print to the shared printer.

Share Discs

Mac OS X automatically burns CDs that support the cross-platform ISO 9660 standard, which can be read by both Macs and PCs. So you have a simple and cost-effective way to share numerous or extremely large documents. If your Mac has a SuperDrive, you can also burn and share files on a recordable DVD disc. A single DVD-R disc can hold up to 4.7GB of information (almost eight times the capacity of a CD), and a Windows PC with a DVD-ROM drive can read the DVD-R discs.

Active Directory support

If your organization operates a managed network based on Microsoft’s proprietary Active Directory services, no problem. Macintosh computers can be added to an existing Active Directory network without additional software or any changes to the Active Directory server schema. Mac OS X Tiger includes built-in support for Microsoft Kerberos (MSK) authentication and Active Directory authentication policies, such as password changes, expiration and forced password changes, as well as Active Directory replication and failover.

With Mac OS X Tiger, you have everything you need to fit into a Windows world — and stand out.

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