Apple Mac Support in OCS 2007 R2 and Lync 2010

For the longest time, Apple Mac users have been 2nd class citizens in a Microsoft network and application world. With the new "2010" release of products, Apple Macs are finally reaching parity in terms of features / functions / support! Take for example Exchange 2010, Mac users get the same Outlook Web Access capabilities when they use Apple Safari browser as Windows users running Internet Explorer (drag, drop, etc), and same for Sharepoint 2010 Mac users get the same functionality in document libraries, lists, etc as Windows users do.

With the recent (Sept/2010) release of the Communicator 2011 for Mac client and with the upcoming release of Lync 2010 (that replaces OCS 2007 for instant messaging, web conferencing, and VoIP), Apple Mac users will now be at feature parity as Windows users. However, I've had a heck of a time trying to find "real" information on what works and what doesn't work, so with my new MacBook Air arriving this week (256m solid state drives and razor thin and super light!), I loaded up Office 2011 for the Mac as well as the Communicator 2011 for Mac software and wrote up this real world experience article. So here you go...

So hopefully this clarifies... Lots of mis-information on the Internet on this topic, so I figured I'd net it all out based on the actual experience of a real Mac user...