Ever since I hooked up this spiffy new used iMac I got yesterday, the old Talking Heads tune has been running through my head. Must be the pretty Leopard Fur background.
I haven't owned a Mac since I met my wife. She had a newer PC than my Mac, and I had pretty much gone that way professionally. This was the days before the net was everywhere, so there was no conceivable use for two computers in one household.
Famous last words. The new used iMac makes the 8th more or less useful machine on the LAN and there are a couple others I keep for historical interest.
I have avoided Macs since I became aware of IP. The IP software that came with Macs in the early days of networking was pretty bad. This is over and I find myself sheepishly admitting that it was really easy to connect to the Windows 2000 printers and shares via SMB.
I think this is probably very much related to the BSD we find lurking underneith the hood in OSX, and its prexisting support for open protocols. (Yes, SMB is an open protocol defined by RFC.)
I like Safari web browser, and the email program was easy to setup. A few of my clients from KinetixHosting.com will be happy know that we now have support for setting up Macs with OSX.
And for you Windows LAN adminitrators who just say "No", it's not as hard as you might think.