Services for Macintosh, End of Lifed? What’s that?

“Services for Macintosh” is Microsoft name for their 3rd party implementation of the Apple File Protocol (AFP), and Printer Access Protocol (PAP). This was first utilized in Windows NT Server 4, and has been supported up to Windows 2003 Server…

The Services for Macintosh allowed Macintosh computers to access File Shares & use printers hosted on the Windows Server via AFP or PAP, which was native to Mac OS 7/8/9 (classic Mac OS). Mac OS X does not need AFP or PAP for File or Printer Sharing, but it is the default in the “Connect to Server” dialog.

For example:

AFP://my.fileserver.com would connect to my.fileserver.com via Apple file Protocol
SMB://my.fileserver.com would connect to my.fileserver.com via Samba (Windows native)

Overall, the only change that might need to be performed is that in the connect dialogs is to put “SMB” before the sharename in the connection dialog window. Overall, Apple has been slowly phasing out AppleTalk only features, and encorporating those features into newer protocols. For example, Bonjour gives TCP/IP many of the same features that Appletalk offered for Autodiscovery and Zero Configuration.