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I have an iMac and MacMini on my local network. From the Mini the iMac appears as a "mac' icon in the finder window - but the Mini appears as a "generic PC" icon from the iMac. Anyone know why this is and how to fix it ?

I'm starting to get a few weird sharing issues cropping up but thought I'd address this first.

FWIW, I'm running Lion 10.7.4 on both machines and have an airport extreme base station.

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Sounds like you may have enabled file sharing with SMB (Server Message Block, default for Windows, which is why the icon looks like a "generic PC") rather than AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) for the Mac mini. Check to make sure by going to System Preferences > Sharing. Choose File Sharing in the list on the left and click the Options button on the right.

SMB is useful for sharing files with Windows/Linux-based computers, but if you only have Macs, stick with AFP. Things like permsissions, hidden files, etc. work much better if you use the native filesharing protocol.

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  • Yep that did the trick thanks SamE ! Although I was aware that afp is apple protocol and smb windows - and i had afp enabled, I ALSO had SMB checked. Once I unchecked it so afp was the only protocol, all was well again :) That seems like a bug to me but who cares, it's fixed !
    – Visitor82
    Jun 3, 2012 at 7:41

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