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 OS -- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, due to be released in September -- 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 Mac OS has held steady in U.S. market share, hovering between 7 and 8 percent (with a share of about 4 percent 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 percent. 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 this summer is said to extend the business-oriented security features even further. And Mac OS X Snow Leopard 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 -- persistantly synced.

Using Exchange 2007 has subtle implications for Mail. For example, if you set up Mail with an Exchange 2007 account, deleted messages are moved to the server's Trash folder automatically, not kept locally. You can also set up an Exchange root path.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard adds native Exchange 2007 support to more than just Mail. Address Book and iCal can both be set to sync directly with Exchange 2007 -- no more of error-prone synchronization through Mac OS X's Sync Services. As with the iPhone, you can select which services you want Mac OS X Snow Leopard to sync, enabling business users to maintain personal calendars in iCal and/or personal contacts in Address Book, while keeping their business information in Exchange.

iCal has an integrated view of both Exchange calendars and personal calendars, just as Address Book shows an integrated view of Exchange contacts and local contacts. And if you've set up iCal and Address Book to sync with Exchange 2007, dragging an Address Book contact onto iCal sets up an appointment via Exchange. If you use meeting room locations in Exchange, iCal can look for next available time in a meeting room and reschedule meeting automatically.

[ Find out how to manage Mac OS X in your business. | Learn how to bring the iPhone into your enterprise. ]

What this means to IT is that your Mac users now interact with Exchange like Windows users, and the process is more invisible for them -- if you use Exchange 2007.

There are some non-obvious benefits as well. For example, if you equip your business users with BlackBerrys and use the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to sync the mobile devices with Exchange, you can ensure that Entourage (or Mail, iCal, and Address Book) are automatically synced as well, without having to use Sync Services and a third-party tool such as PocketMac SyncManager. Of course, the same advantages apply if your business users have iPhones or other Exchange-compatible devices.

Good riddance to AppleTalk

Beyond adding native ActiveSync support, Mac OS X Snow Leopard kills a technology IT has long hated: AppleTalk. Ever since it introduced Mac OS X nearly a decade ago, Apple has methodically shifted more and more of the Mac's networking to IP. Mac OS X Snow Leopard completes that transition, removing the AppleTalk protocol completely. Mac OS X is now IP-based.

This is another nearly invisible change. The AppleTalk pane goes away in the Network system preference settings for Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections. But it means the chatty AppleTalk protocol simply cannot be used by Macs running Snow Leopard, so you no longer need to support it, nor worry about it clogging your network bandwidth.

What else has changed

In many respects, based on what Apple has shown at WWDC 2009, using Snow Leopard is likely to be a nonevent for users and IT, outside the newfound ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support. The really big changes are under the hood: a sped-up Java processor; a new parallel-processing architecture called Grand Central, to support multicore-enabled applications; the ability to steal processing capability from graphics cards when you're not playing games; and a faster video engine in the revamped QuickTime X engine. Optimized apps will thus run faster on Snow Leopard due to processor optimization, and Web, video, and animation should run faster, period.

The UI is nearly identical to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, so there should be almost no learning curve for either IT or users. (An updated Safari 4 has the most notable UI changes.) But there are a few small changes to be aware of both as a user and as someone supporting users:

In the Dock, if you click and hold on an app's icon, you see images all the windows open for that application (something Windows 7 will also do when it ships in October). The Stacks feature in the Dock now lets you drill into subfolders.

In Icon view in the Finder, there's now a magnificiation slider, and the icons are live previews, so you can play movies, page through PDFs, and so on.

Other Finder changes include the ability to access folder actions in the main contextual menu, rather than in the More submenu. Folder action creation and deletion is also simplified. And you can now set in Finder preferences the default search scope for Spotlight: the entire Mac, the current folder, or the previously used search scope. And when users right-click or Control-click an item in the Trash, the new Put Back option in the contextual menu returns the deleted item to its original location.

Security-oriented changes include a new option to set a delay between when the screen saver begins and a password is required to access the Mac. This change may not be to IT’s liking, as it lets users create a “dead time” in which the Mac is still accessible without a password. The Firewall settings in the Security system preference have been overhauled to be simpler, and you can now shield the Mac from responding to ICMP requests, as well as determine firewall options on a per-application basis.

The Sharing system preference now offers the option to share scanners with other Mac users, much as you already do with printers.

The Keyboard & Mouse system preference has been split into two system preferences: Keyboard and Mouse. Keyboard adds new controls over shortcuts, including controls over which system services are displayed, as well as cleaner controls over user-defined shortcuts. With Snow Leopard, you can also set up Bluetooth keyboards in the Keyboard system preference.

The Date & Time system preference now has an option to autodetect the current time zone, which should be a boon to laptop users.

Taking an iPhone capability, users can enter Chinese characters via gestures on the recent MacBooks' Multi-Touch trackpad. (And Apple has opened its Multi-Touch trackpad for access by developers, so expect more applications to take advantage of it.) The system preference that controls language access has been renamed from International to Languages & Text, and adds new controls over word breaks. And the formerly separate Kana palette for inputting Japanese characters is now part of the Character palette.

There are likely to be a raft of similar-scale enhancements in the final version when it ships later this year (upgrades start at $29 per user).

The latest Mac OS fits that much easier into business IT

Despite its public diffidence about enterprise adoption, Apple has made Snow Leopard an easier fit for the enterprise. ActiveSync support, the death of AppleTalk, and various security enhancements are of little use to the consumer audience that Apple formally targets.

Ironically, the lack of fundamental changes that could break applications or require user retraining should also appeal to enterprises -- especially those whose mixed environments will soon require significant resources to accommodate the coming shift from Windows XP to Windows 7. Either way, organizations that use Macs will be able to ease their Mac management, and those that are considering Mac adoption now have a few more obstacles removed.