I have no question - just wanted to share my amazement:

I recently bought a new iMac mainly for my wife to use. It replaced an old Windows XP system. I run Debian on an old laptop and use a wireless router to connect to our Internet connection. The old WinXP machine had our HP printer connected to it. I was able, eventually, to print to it from my Linux laptop using SAMBA, but it was somewhat complicated to set up.

I plugged the printer into the iMac - instantly recognized on the iMac and worked fine. So I decided to go upstairs and see about trying to configure my laptop to use this printer. But I didn't have to do ANYTHING. The printer was already found, listed and ready to go. I guess OS X must be using CUPS in the background somehow.

Anyway, I was amazed at how simple it was. Very cool.

Yes, OS X uses CUPS. It also implements Rendezvous/Bonjour which interacts with avahi on Linux for automatic service discovery. Windows is the only remaining OS that doesn't provide user-friendly interoperability, and many people unfortunately blame Linux for this in a Windows/Linux environment.

My brother-in-law uses a Mac, and when he comes to visit he connects to our wireless network and immediately has access to our printer and streaming media server (ushare).

I have a Windows XP partition that I keep around for the occasional firmware update - some hardware manufacturers still only support Windows for firmware updates. When I have to boot it up, it's like stepping back in time. If only people could see how much Windows is holding them back from really simple interoperability.