OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Summary

OS X is built to integrate with Windows environments though file exchange, network compatibility, and even the capability to run Windows.

For file exchange, it can read and write to many PC-formatted disks, including CDs, DVDs, flash drives, FAT-formatted hard disks, and ExFAT-formatted solid-state drives. It can read NTFS-formatted disks but not write to them unless you buy extra software to do so. Windows is not so fluent, requiring extra-cost software to read Mac hard disks and older media such as floppy disks.

Because both PCs and Macs use file extensions to identify what type a file is, it's a good idea to have both Windows and Mac OS X display these extensions. That way, you can figure out what the file type is in case you receive a file format that Windows or the Mac does not recognize.

Modern professionally produced fonts are identical on Mac and Windows, so you can be sure they have the same characters and identical output, but older fonts—especially PostScript Type 1 ones—can vary even if their names are the same.

File servers and Internet-based file-exchange methods such as FTP and e-mail make it very easy to exchange files between Mac and Windows users. You also can have Macs and Windows PCs directly share files through a network connection, though significant setup must be done on both ends, and Windows can't always see the Macs' shared folders.

OS X comes with a utility called Boot Camp that lets you reserve (partition) part of your Mac's startup disk so you ...