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February 5, 2001

Macintosh
Mac Suits Up For Business

Long ignored as a business option, the Macintosh is achieving interoperability and improved performance through better software from Microsoft and Apple, making the Mac a more viable choice for the desktop than it has ever been

By Jason Levitt (jlevitt@cmp.com)

More on Mac OS X:

TechWeb: Quiet On The Apple Front (1/25/01)

TechWeb: Mac OS X Now Due March 24 (1/9/01)

TechWeb: Exposing The Mac OS X Landscape (1/4/01)

fter years of being either a thorn in the side of IT departments or ignored entirely as a second-class desktop operating system, the Macintosh is finally getting the software support it needs from Microsoft and, ironically, Apple.

Apple has had several false starts with its new operating system, and now has targeted March 24 for the release of Mac OS X. The next-generation desktop operating system will bring much-needed input/output performance to the Mac desktop, along with the memory-management and multitasking benefits of a Unixlike operating system.

For business users, Microsoft's January beta release of Outlook 2001 for Macintosh puts the Mac for the first time at functional parity and interoperability with Outlook for Windows on the corporate desktop. Along with October's release of Office 2001 for Macintosh, the Mac is a more viable business desktop than it's ever been.

IT support departments that have had to struggle with Macintosh and Windows machines running off the same Exchange Server, but not sharing data seamlessly, can rest easy when Outlook for Macintosh ships this summer. Outlook 2001 for Macintosh, unlike Outlook 8.2 for Macintosh and older clients such as Exchange for Macintosh 5.0, can directly share E-mail, contact lists, tasks, and calendar data with Outlook for Windows.

Additionally, Outlook has been given a more Maclike face-lift. The application looks and feels like a real Mac application instead of a bad Windows port.

What's missing from Outlook 2001 for Macintosh is programmability. There's no Visual Basic scripting environment or APIs that give programmers on the Windows platform the ability to integrate Outlook with Microsoft Office applications. While this keeps the Macintosh at a disadvantage from a custom development standpoint, it also keeps the Mac more secure than Windows because it won't suffer from the scripted viruses that plague the Windows version of Outlook.

On the operating system side, Apple is finally heading into the homestretch with Mac OS X, which will be priced at $129. Mac OS X, which is a combination of Carnegie Mellon University's Mach 3.0 kernel, components from the open-source FreeBSD 3.2 operating system, and Apple's new graphical user interface called Aqua, should provide significant I/O performance increases for desktop users. Mac OS has long suffered from its anemic file system and Open Transport networking architecture. These will be replaced by the BSD file system and networking code from the FreeBSD operating system. The improved I/O, along with the ability to easily host Unix server applications, will provide much better enterprise interoperability.

The Network File System, AppleShare, and Common Internet File System support will be included in the operating system, too, allowing interoperability with a cross-section of enterprise file-and print-sharing technologies. Support for CIFS, the native file-sharing protocol of Windows 95/98, is provided by Samba, a bundled open-source software server application that provides file and print services.

Mac OS X will ship with some hard-core Unix goodies, including the Perl programming language and Emacs text editor. Java 2 Standard Edition is included, as is the Java HotSpot client, Sun's fastest and smallest Java virtual machine for client-side applications.

Even with core business productivity software and a modern desktop operating system, it remains to be seen whether developers will port existing Mac applications to run natively on Mac OS X, and whether any new software developers are attracted to the platform. Microsoft has already committed to shipping native Mac OS X versions of Internet Explorer with Mac OS X on March 24 and Office this fall, which is a promising start.

Some Business-Friendly Software For Macintosh
Software	Ship date	Strengths	Weaknesses
Apple Mac OS X client version	Beta shipped final version expected in March	I/O performance boost over previous versions of Mac OS; new Mac GUI; Mac OS 9 classic environment	Unclear system-administration tools; new device drivers needed for most hardware; uncertain application support
Apple Mac OS X Server	Shipped March 1999; updated version's ship date not announced	Centralized Mac-client administration; some Internet server applications included	Confusing administrative interfaces; not enough third-party applications
Lotus Notes 5.0	Shipped third quarter 1999	Full interoperability with Windows version	Slow, bulky, implementation that doesn't make good use of the Mac interface
Microsoft Office 2001	Shipped fourth quarter 2000	Great Maclike GUI; compatible with Windows file formats	No FrontPage or Access applications; no programming features
Microsoft Outlook 2001	Beta shipped; final version expected in summer	Maclike GUI; shares mail, contact, and calendar data with Windows users	Lacks programming features
DATA: INFORMATIONWEEK

Mac OS X also runs many existing Mac applications right out of the box in the Mac OS X "classic" environment, which is essentially a Mac OS 9 emulation environment running on the Mach kernel. But any software that interfaces with PCI cards, PC cards, or other hardware devices (other than stock universal serial bus, FireWire, SCSI, and serial port devices) will have to have new device drivers written and supported; this could be a daunting task for what is likely to be a relatively low-volume platform.

What may not be obvious is that this version of Mac OS X, which was demonstrated and discussed at length during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' MacWorld keynote in January, is the client desktop version of Mac OS X. The server version, Mac OS X Server, shipped in mid-1999 with a list price of $499. Apple has been quiet about the future of Mac OS X Server, but according to sources at the company, Mac OS X Server, with all the GUI and core operating system updates from the client version, will ship sometime soon after March 24.

With the price points on commodity PC hardware close to half of comparable Apple hardware, it would seem that only die-hard Apple shops might consider buying into Mac OS X Server running on PowerPC boxes, which makes one wonder why Apple doesn't revitalize its previous strategy to port Mac OS X to PC hardware.

Mac OS X Server had a confusing array of system-administration tools when I reviewed it back in 1999, but Apple says it has unified most of the system administration under a revitalized version of NextStep's NetInfo administration architecture. NetInfo is in the Mac OS X beta, but it's not fully functional. Apple says NetInfo will be ready when Mac OS X ships. Additionally, the user database, which was previously duplicated and managed for several different system services, will be consolidated under NetInfo.

For IT departments that support AppleTalk or AppleShare servers, or those that want to integrate their Macintosh workstations into a larger enterprise, Mac OS X Server should still prove attractive, though a server solution running on commodity PC hardware would be far more interesting.

The Macintosh remains a popular platform for multimedia and Web designers, and Microsoft's omission of FrontPage, its Web-design tool, from Office 2001 for Macintosh won't affect that popularity. The lack of an Access database in Office 2001 for Macintosh is more regrettable, but at least Microsoft put FileMaker hooks in place.

Overall, the Mac OS X and improved desktop productivity software from Microsoft should make this the easiest Macintosh thus far to assimilate into enterprise LANs.