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Former Member
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This blog series has focused on the native usage of SAP in combination with Mac's. The question was if Mac's - or if you prefer the OS X operating system - are SAP ready? Let's summarise.

An Apple Macintosh is a perfect machine for systems management tasks. All kinds of remote connectivity (X11, Remote Desktop and SSH) have been properly implemented in the default configuration or can easily be added afterwards.

Native SAP systems management programs like the SAP Management Console, SAP Visual Administrator and SAP Download Manager run remarkably well. The advantage of the Mac OS X platform is its native support for Java. Jar and JNLP files can be executed directly. The SAPGui for Java offers basic SAPGui support. Under normal circumstances this is sufficient enough for a sys-admin or and end-user; a developer will be confronted with serious lack of functionality, e.g. the missing Screenpainter. Do not consider a tight integration between the SAPGui and office suites. AppleScript support is currently not available.

Web based development tools like the Visual Composer are not supported on Safari. Safari itself is supported but with limitations. If one is prepared to tweak out difficulties with style sheets etc. Safari is a good platform for end-users. There are web browsers available like Firefox, or Chrome (in the future) who can be a real alternative.

Eclipse based development can be used but will require a lot of experiments to port the NetWeaver Developer Studio functionality to the Mac. Native support from SAP is not available and don't even think to use special tooling for Adobe Interactive forms etc..

In general terms the Mac with OS X works well with SAP but there are still quite a number of issues to be solved before 100% compatibility is guaranteed. If you have limited functionalities for the end-users, a pure Mac implementation might be achievable. Developers still need the Windows operating system. Therefore a large scale implementation of SAP on OS X is possible but there will be limitations in functionality, specially for developers.

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