Objective Development has released Sharity 3.3, an update to its software to connect Unix-based computers, including Mac OS X, to any Windows, Samba or other SMB/CIFS server. A free update for registered users, Sharity is priced from $29 (free student licenses and a demo version are available).
Apple already includes SMB/CIFS connectivity support in Mac OS X, but Sharity 3 differs in significant ways, according to Objective Development. Sharity offers more reliable workgroup and server browsing, for example, and doesn’t disconnect network drives after an extended sleep. It’s also compatible with Windows 2003 volumes because it implements SMB signing, implements NTLM, NTLMv2, NTLMSSP and Kerberos authentication, and supports DFS and ACLs.
New to this release of Sharity are a slew of bug fixes, along with new features like implementation of automatic mounts in /CIFS; new implementation of Distributed File System (DFS), the ability to edit inheritance flags in Access Control Lists (ACLs) and more. A complete list of changes is available online.
System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.3 or later.