Hope you enjoyed the beautiful Easter weekend - I did! And so did these folks=) Last week, Joel Oleson had a great post about organizations upgrading to SharePoint 2010 for Mac Users. It reminded me of Michael Gannotti's video blog post Mac Integration with SharePoint.
Since I've been an active member of the "SharePoint + Macbook Pro Happy Together Club" (you know who you are fellow brethren) in the last 3 years, I'd like to carry on the SharePoint-on-a-Mac conversation and show you what you can do with SharePoint 2010 on a Mac, iPhone or iPod and iPad.
SharePoint 2010 on a Mac
We can't deny the fact that there is a steady growth of Mac (desktop or laptops) adoption in the last few years. For example, an interesting Morgan Stanley study back in 2008 found that 40% college students plan to buy Mac.
Along the same lines, there has been a tremendous growth and adoption of SharePoint as well. In fact, during Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2008, Bill Gates touted SharePoint adoption in the education sector is equipping the next generation workforce:
Twynham School is a a great testament of how SharePoint is being leveraged in education as a learning gateway (here's a great FREE ebook of how they did it).
This sounds all good but the problem is, SharePoint 2007 and prior versions is quite limiting on a Mac. A lot of out of the box features relies on ActiveX components found in Internet Explorer which obviously is not compatible with other browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Chrome. Because of this, Mac users find it limiting and frustrating. In addition, there isn't a seamless SharePoint - Office integration experience with a Mac; the closest thing to this is by installing Document Connection Center (DCC).
With SharePoint 2010, the Mac rules have been rewritten! Almost all of the things you can do with SharePoint 2010 using Internet Explorer can be done with other browsers thanks to JavaScript and AJAX. Check out the screencast on how you can maximize SharePoint 2010 on a Mac:
I'm looking forward to what's coming up on the horizon from the Mactopiafolks at Microsoft.
SharePoint 2010 on an iPhone or iPod
With the iPhone or iPod (Touch), SharePoint 2010 can be leveraged from the Safari browser. Once connected, SharePoint automatically displays the site in a mobile optimized format.
In SharePoint 2010, the mobile site capability has been greatly upgraded. You have better control over which SharePoint site list or library you want to
make available on SharePoint mobile. Second, customizing the look and feel of SharePoint mobile is easier compared to the prior version.
From a user perspective, being able to access a SharePoint 2010 site from an iPhone or iPod allows the capability to look up information or documents while mobile. In addition, simple updates to lists can be achieved as well. Check out this screencast on how you can maximize SharePoint 2010 on an iPhone or iPod:
As I demonstrated in the video, you can also use iPhone Apps with SharePoint. I use RDP lite to remotely connect and manage the SharePoint server. And there's also iShare, but I'm not sure if it's compatible with SharePoint 2010 yet.
SharePoint 2010 on an iPad
Just to make sure I've got most of the Apple products covered (I am working on using SharePoint 2010 on the Apple TV), I've played around with SharePoint 2010 on an iPad and biy, it's slick and sweet. Now if you're questioning who would want to do this, did you here about PA University students to get iPads?
Apart from the education sector, I can see it being used in hospitals (doctors/nurses use an iPad with SharePoint 2010 instead of paper-based patient medical charts) or the construction industry (inspectors working with compliance checklists as they do a walkthrough). Check out this screencast on how you can maximize SharePoint 2010 on an iPad:
I got excited today after I saw that there's a SharePoint app for the iPad that supports SharePoint 2010 called SharePlus. I'll let you know what I think of it once I get the chance to test it.
So what do you think? If you ask me, the future looks awesome for SharePoint 2010 whether you're a Mac or a PC.
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