Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 27 WORKING WITH MICROSOFT WINDOWS AND OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS
Sharing Files with Windows
With the prevalence of Microsoft Windows computers, unless you work and live in a very
enlightened Mac-only universe, it’s likely that sooner or later you’ll need to share a file or two
with a Windows system.
The file type you choose is fairly straightforward. Microsoft Office formats tend to work
fine on both Macs and Windows computers. Any standard graphics formats such as JPEG, GIF,
PNG, and TIFF files (along with numerous others) will transfer from one system to another just
fine. PDF files are also common among most operating systems. When it comes to audio files,
MP3, ACC, and WAV are all just fine (FLAC and a number of other audio formats are equally
cross-platform but require third-party software to play them). Video is a bit trickier since video
is generally comprised of mixing both audio and video formats. Apple’s QuickTime is the best
option for cross-platform video with a few important considerations. First, QuickTime movies
created on a Mac must be “flattened” to work on the Web or on a Windows computer. This is
done by using the Save As... command in QuickTime Pro or using the Lillipot utility
(www.qtbridge.com/lillipot/lillipot.html). Movies exported from iMovie and most other videoediting
software will be flattened automatically. Second, QuickTime must be installed for them
to play back properly. This isn’t a big issue for most Windows computers, because many computer
manufacturers include QuickTime by default, and it’s a free and easy install for any
Windows computers that don’t already have it. QuickTime, however, isn’t available for Linux or
other alternative operating systems. MPEG4 files (which is the default video format for Quick-
Time movies these days) work just fine too.
NOTE Windows Media files are popular; however, they pose a number of tricky problems.
First, you will likely need a third-party QuickTime plug-in or stand-alone application to play
them on your Mac. Filp4Mac WMV (www.flip4mac.com/) is a third-party QuickTime plug-in that
today is endorsed by Microsoft for playing Windows Media files, and VLC Media Player
(www.videolan.org/vlc/) is an open source stand-alone media player that supports many formats,
including WMV. The bigger problem is that at this time neither of these products will
support Windows Media protected by DRM (which is quite popular).
NOTE A new QuickTime plug-in called Perian (http://perian.org/) will greatly enhance
QuickTime’s abilities to play back a number of media types. QuickTime combined with
Flip4Mac and Perian should enable you to play back the majority of video files you find on the
Internet with the notable exceptions of RealVideo and protected Windows Media files.
Once you have your file, transferring it from one computer to another is the next trick.
Transferring your file over a network circumvents most file system problems. By enabling Windows
sharing on your Mac, you can allow a Windows system to simply browse your shared
directory and copy the file from your Mac to a Windows computer. Also, your Mac can utilize
any Windows file servers or shared directories. If you have .Mac, you can place your file in your
public iDisk folder that is accessible from Windows using Apple’s iDisk Utility for Windows
(www.mac.com/1/idiskutility_download.html), or you can set up our Public iDisk folder to be accessible
from the Web. Also, you can use any standard Internet file-sharing protocol. If, rather than
using the network, you want to use a physical means of file transfer (such as external hard drive,
thumb drive, and so on), then you will likely want to format the drive using the FAT32 file system,
which will work with both Macs and Windows computers.
NOTE Windows computers do not support Apple’s default file system (HFS+) without special
third-party software. Additionally, Macs support NTFS (the Windows default file system) as
read-only only, which makes it a bit limiting for file sharing. The FAT32 file system, however, is
the old Windows default file system and has had good Mac support for many years.