What is the Mac story on OCS?

This was a question from a Northeastern school district:

Mac Messenger 7.0

Mac Messenger 7.0 is available for a Mac user to login into either Windows Live (MSN) or OCS 2007:

                   Login to either Windows Live or OCS 2007

Messenger 7.0 client is similar to OC client on PC with presence, groups, etc.

You can grab Mac Messenger 7.0.1 here.

Features of the Mac Messenger 7.0 client:

• Presence
• 1-1 & Multi-party IM
• 1-1 & Multi-party Voice and video support with other OCS users
• Exchange Global Address List Search
• Enhanced Presence
• Bonjour support
• Office for Mac Integration
• Support for OCS Public IM Connectivity (connect to OCS off campus)
• NTLM & Kerberos Authentication
• Emoticons
• Secure IM - - encrypted. Same protocol as OC
• Spell check – This is a nice Mac only feature
• Multiple Points of Presence – MPOP implantation similar to OC – the ability to sign in with the same account on multiple devices
• Integration with Office for the Mac – display presence information for people that are in your Messenger contact list, start IM, add user as Messenger contacts, Integration in Entourage, Word, and Project Center…
• Conversation History Archive – saving Instant Messages and reviewing them in the Conversation History view.
• Selectable sign-in status – the ability to sign in with a specific status set (Busy, Away, Available…)
• File Transfer

  

Mac Messenger 7.0 OS requirements:

Mac OS X version 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of Mac OS

Communicator Web Access (CWA) with Macs:

We support Firefox and Safari browsers on the Mac connecting to OCS 2007. With the upcoming OCS 2007 R2 CWA, you can take it a step further on the Mac or Linux browsers where you can join a PC desktop sharing session and view and collaborate with their desktops. There may be plans to allow for Mac to host at some point in the future (always subject to change of course).

What about On-Prem OCS Live Meeting support?

Currently, there is no Mac support at this point but the alternative solution to this is to use the Communicator Web Access coming in R2 to join a shared desktop session.  The other alternative option would be to leverage the Live Meeting Web Access, via a Mac browser, for the LM service in the cloud vs. with OCS. See my other blog here about the Live Meeting differences.

What are some of the differences with from the PC Office Communicator client, Communicator Web Access and the Mac Messenger 7.0 client? Here is a useful matrix: