Apple Virgin.....(and noob)

JackKelly

Ok, ill be honest, i know very little about apples so excuse the ignorance. What i want to know is if a PC and a Mac are compatible in any way? I have a small network, with two PC's connected, and was wondering , could i introduce an apple into it, and use it as a sort of server.Or is this just madness?

(reason i ask, is a might be getting an old apple off a friend)

Fenster

Well before last week, your question would've been laughed at, but for the revelations that OSX will be posted to x86, and more to the point-it already has, and has been leaked besides-I'm waiting on a good torrent. Heh.

But, eh, for the moment, for the average user, OSX and Windows (lets leave out Linux for the moment) aren't really that compatible. You can't just take Tiger and install it onto any machine-their machines are PPC based, which is to say their entire hardware makeup is utterly different that Intel machines, which are what you would've used up until now. I also believe its against the OSX lisence agreement to install it on non-Apple hardware. And people bitch about Microsoft lock-in?

Anyways, if you have an Apple machine, you can set it up as a Samba server, providing shares to the other two machines. However, this basically requires buying a Mac of some shape or form. If you're not adverse to tinkering with your machine, Linux might be much better suited to your needs.

Hugh_C

TimAy wrote:

Ok, ill be honest, i know very little about apples so excuse the ignorance. What i want to know is if a PC and a Mac are compatible in any way? I have a small network, with two PC's connected, and was wondering , could i introduce an apple into it, and use it as a sort of server.Or is this just madness?

(reason i ask, is a might be getting an old apple off a friend)

networking is no problem if you're using any version of OS X. If it's an OS 9 box then it's more difficult.

If you're new to Apple and OS X, it may be a little beyond sensible though.

RE*AC*TOR

Fenster wrote:

Well before last week, your question would've been laughed at, but for the revelations that OSX will be posted to x86, and more to the point-it already has, and has been leaked besides-I'm waiting on a good torrent. Heh.

i you're referring ot the Anandtech story - its false - there is no leak AFAIK.

Fenster

RE*AC*TOR wrote:

i you're referring ot the Anandtech story - its false - there is no leak AFAIK.

Heh, as I discovered later.

I don't think the ultimate changeover would be too hard, considering its all built on OpenBSD, which runs on oh so many x86 machines.

And I did see this on Slashdot...

jofus

I have a PC and a Mac networked. The Mac is running 10.2 and the PC, XP. They see each other fine. The difference being that the Mac wont run .exe's. This is fine as most virus payloads are .exe. Where networking them works is for documents like Word etc, where both machines have Word. Other files like .jpg etc are also fine. If the Mac has 10.2 or newer, open System preferences and select " Windows File Sharing". Make sure that the Mac has a compatible IP and subnet for the network. The Mac will see the network and should see the PC(s). There are solutions for older Mac OS's but I have never tried them.

Urban Weigl

I've got PC's and Mac's on the same network, and there defintely isn't a problem. If you want to use your Mac for file sharing, you must enable "Windows Sharing" under Sharing in the System Preferences.

It says "Click Start to let selected Windows users access shared folders on this computer using SMB/CIFS. This will also let Windows users print to shared printers".

And your Mac can already connect to Windows PC's that are set up to share files, without needing to change any settings.

David Stewart

Depends what you mean by compatible. If you mean, "can I run my windows software on a Mac?" then, no, they are not compatible. But if you mean "Can a Mac cohabit with Windows machines on network?" then the answee is Yes.

JackKelly

cool, thanks for the replies. We'll see what happens