Mac user's survival tools in a Windows environment

As a creative individual (or team) using a Mac in a Windows dominated environment such as a large corporation setting can be very daunting. Using a Mac as a creative tool is such a great privilege despite your IT's smirk whenever the “M” word is mentioned (nope, I'm not going to touch the perennial mac-windows debate). So it's best to keep ourselves under the radar as possible, move from network neighborhood to network neighborhood right-neighborly as possible to avoid any problems with the IT folks. With each OS X update, mac-windows networking becomes more and more compatible, however it's still not perfect. Below are a couple of freeware tools to help your Mac run smoothly as possible in a Windows environment.

CleanUp SMB mess. Just like the morning after for most young rock bands in a five star hotel, Macs tend to leave a whole lot of mess after you use and save files in a Windows network. These files (“._*” files, .DS_Store files and .Trashes) are used as a way for the Mac OS to remember the icon and file settings, etc. It's invisible to Macs but a big mess in Windows. You can use this small utility to drag and drop a network folder and it will clean up all those junk files. It's best to use this once you are done with that folder. You can go high up the root level to clean the folders (and sub folders), the more files/folder the longer it takes of course.

WInShortcutter. Simply put, this utility makes the Windows' “Shortcut” files executable on Macs. It will even mount a network drive if the shortcut points to it. This is great tool since the less time you spend clicking folders around and use the shortcut links, the less mess (junk files) you have to clean up.

I'll add some more in the future. If you have any recommendations please swing me an email and share your tip.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, network