With the update to OS X 10.2, a number of refinements are immediately evident. What you won’t immediately see, however, is how much the OS has changed behind the scenes. Some of the most interesting new features include powerful enhancements that will make the Mac much more at home on a Windows network.

Windows based PC systems use SMB to share data and communicate over a network. If you copy a file from one PC to another over your network, you are using SMB. To help put things in perspective, SMB is to Windows what AppleTalk, AFP (Apple File Protocol), is to the Mac.

Consider a scenario where a Mac user would need to share files with a Windows based box on a network. Previously that PC would have required third party software to be installed in order to make its share visible to the Mac and capable of communicating via AppleTalk. Alternatively, if the PC were running Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft’s Services for Macintosh could be installed on the server. This allowed the Windows 2000 server to actually communicate using AppleTalk protocols. Both situations were simply problematic. Involving special services or third party solutions typically added additional layers of complexity to an already complicated network environment. As a result, these options were often frowned upon.

Finally we can do away with all of that. Native support for SMB has been added to the Mac and that means no further need for aftermarket solutions. In the example below, we will take a look at allowing a Mac native access to a normal Windows file share. This example uses Windows 2000, but if you are familiar with setting up a file share on another version of Windows, the procedure will only differ in the way that you create the share. This inconsistency between versions of the Microsoft operating systems is yet another reason why I prefer my Macs.

Creating the Windows Share:
Start by creating a share on the Windows box. Simply find the directory on your hard drive that you would like to share and right-click on it. Choose Properties from the contextual menu and then click on the Sharing tab.

Click the Share This Folder radio button and give the share a distinctive name. You can set the user limit as you see fit.

Click the permissions button to configure a list of the users who will have access to the shared volume. When you open the Permissions window, you will likely see one user/group already listed. This user is called Everyone.

As a Mac user, you would expect this to indicate that anyone on the network will have access to your data. Oddly, this is not the case. If you leave only the user of Everyone assigned as it is by default, no one on a Mac or PC will have access to the share. From the Mac, you will only see an error message like the one below.

Only the users that you have specified in the OS’s Users & Groups area will have access to the file share. If you are part of a workgroup, you will need to add the users manually on each server. If you are part of a Windows Domain, you may add users from the Domain Controller allowing for a central way to manage the user access lists. Unless you are on a large office network it is best just to create a user account for each person who will need access to the file share.

Now that the file share is complete, all we have to do is connect to it from the Mac.

Connecting to the Windows Share:
In the Finder of OS X 10.2.x, choose Connect to Server from the Go menu, or type Apple+K. You will see a window like the one below. It may take some time for other computers to pop into the window. This is because the Mac is looking for AppleTalk shares, SMB shares, and Rendezvous shares located over any number of network adapter attached to your computer (Ethernet, Airport, Bluetooth).

Alternatively, if you don’t want to wait and you know the IP address of the Windows box you want to access, you can enter the address in the Address line at the bottom of the window. Use the format of smb://IPAddress.

As you can see above, my PC is aptly named ARCANE and has appeared in the list of computers on my network. When you double click on the computer, you will be prompted for your login as seen below.

Since the PC is in a workgroup called Workgroup, that is the Domain that is specified.

After entering the login information you will see a screen like the following that will let you select from a list of shares that you have access to on that machine. Just select the share you want and click OK.

That’s it! The Windows share has mounted on your desktop just like it was a hard drive attached to your computer, or a share on another Mac.

There are a few things to watch out for. If you mount the drive and find out that you cannot see its contents, or cannot copy to or delete files from the share, you are looking at a permissions problem on the Windows box. Sorting those out is beyond the scope of this article.

Reset assured, if you follow the steps described here, you will have a minimum of permission issues. As we all know, that is why we chose a Mac in the first place.

Allow a PC to Access Your Mac Files:
If you are interested in letting Windows users access your hard drive, Apple has made that even easier. Go to the System Preferences and click on Sharing. There you will check the box for the option called Windows File Sharing. Check the box and watch for a message to appear at the bottom of your screen. It will give you the information needed to access your Mac from a PC.

Be sure to check System Preferences --> Accounts and confirm that the box is checked for "Allow user to login from Windows." Without checking that box, you can't access your Mac from a PC. Even though you have activate the sharing feature in the Sharing Preferences, you still have to select this option for any user account that is to be allowed access.

In addition to the Windows file sharing support, OS X 10.2.x adds additional printer support that it gains from its UNIX under-pinnings. Look for more info on those capabilities in upcoming issues of the OWC newsletter.