Faster access for Mac OS X - 1A First Alternative

There is a considerable increase of Mac OS X usage. We have also noticed this in the support requests. Therefore, it was about time to thoroughly investigate why Macs responded much more slowly in a Microsoft-compliant network. Eventually we found a good solution with the result that Mac OS X now is able to communicate much better and faster with the shares.

The origin of the problem lay in the method Macs utilize to handle shares. They use a particular technology in a different way than Windows PCs do. Samba, the software which provides the shares, previously could not handle that particularly well. Because of this the contents of a share were shown on a Mac with a considerable delay. The Samba team has been working closely with Apple for a while now to properly align their technologies. The result of this collaboration is a recent expansion for Samba which offers support for the way Macs access shares.

After extensive testing we have included this expansion in the 1A-server and rolled it out to all customers. Showing the contents of a share now is 7 to 10 times faster! In terms of speed, working on a Mac now is just as fast as when using a Windows PC.