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InfoWorld - It's the OS that won't go away, despite many enterprises' avowed distaste and Apple's own public disinclination to support enterprise usage. And yet, the newest Mac operating system -- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due to be released later this summer -- has two major changes aimed directly at business users and the IT staff that supports them.

Despite that mutual disinterest, metrics from both IDC and Gartner show that the Mac OS has held steady in U.S. market share, hovering between 7% and 8% (with a share of about 4% in business). And, according to a Technology Intelligence survey, nearly a quarter of businesses have at least 30 Macs. As for Mac OS's showing among those connected to the Internet, NetApplications has Mac OS X at 9.8%. Even if IT doesn't like the Mac's presence, and even if Apple doesn't care to commit to enterprise support, Macs are now better business clients than ever.

[ Get the full details on the new Mac OS in the Mac OS X Snow Leopard Bible by InfoWorld's Galen Gruman and Macworld U.K.'s Mark Hattersley. ]

Native Exchange support on a Mac

You could easily argue that Apple's public lack of interest in business users masks a stealth strategy to worm its way into the enterprise without being held accountable. A year ago, the iPhone added native Exchange support via Microsoft's ActiveSync, including remote kill capabilities and other management features via Exchange. The new iPhone OS 3.0 due out June 17 is said to extend the business-oriented security features even further. And Mac OS X Snow Leopard -- due out in September -- will come with native Exchange support via ActiveSync as well, so you can use Apple's Mail client or Microsoft's Entourage client with Exchange 2007 Server natively -- no longer are you restricted to using IMAP. But note the requirement to use Exchange 2007 for native access, though there's no need for an Exchange client license on the Mac.

In business, using ActiveSync at first appears to be a nonevent. It's simply there, enabling Microsoft's Entourage (2004 or 2008) to keep synced with your Exchange server, updating your folders regardless of whether you open them. Connecting to an Exchange 2003 Server via Apple's Mail is done via IMAP, which Snow Leopard's Mail 4.0 calls IMAP Exchange and Leopard's Mail calls simply Exchange. In other words, ActiveSync doesn't do anything; Mail continues to synchronize based on the schedule you've chosen, and as with the iPhone, folder mail is updated only when the folder is opened. Connected to an Exchange 2007 Server, however, Mail acts like Entourage -- persistently synced.