Mac and PC Interoperability
My fiancé is a Mac person. She’s a web designer (and a damn good one), so I cut her some slack on that one. This weekend she upgraded her Mac to Panther (OS 10.3). On a lark, I decided to check if the new version supported Windows-based VPNs (PPTP, I guess not strictly Windows-based, but I believe it came out of the Windows world). Lo and behold, it did! I configured it to connect to my company’s VPN (a process that was harder than it should have been – sometimes I think Mac’s reputation for ease of use is overblown). Once configured correctly, it worked like a charm. I installed Microsoft’s remote desktop client for the Mac, and connected to my box at work. Bing, bang, boom, I was seamlessly controlling my XP machine from my fiancé’s Mac.
Very cool. Interoperability is a beautiful thing.
On a side note, when she was shopping for the upgrade, I was initially surprised by the fact that there was no “upgrade license vs new license” pricing. Coming from the PC world, that struck me as odd. Of course, after I thought about it for two seconds I clued in to the fact that all Macs come from Apple, with an Apple OS, so all OS purchases are inherently upgrades. Just like McDonald’s in France – “They got the same stuff over there that they got here, it’s just a little different”.