The canvas of the Filemaker database is wide and rich for Mac business users, an enduring data capture resource that looks even more vivid in the newest release of this tool. Filemaker 11 rolls out today with a big palette of charting and graphics shortcuts, the kind of built-in prowess that makes a great case [...]

We wanted to love the new Quicken Essentials for the Mac, truly we did. Bites of Apple and several other small businesses here are run on Intuit products, from the business-worthy QuickBooks 2010 to the pocket-sized Quicken 2005. There was never much reason here to upgrade to Quicken 2007 for Mac. By then, the Mac [...]

Apple’s Snow Leopard OS has been out for community use about six weeks. The drumbeat of praise and promises about it runs high by now. You may be wondering if it’s time to spend $29 and upgrade to get new features and some speed increase.
It depends. Support for your programs is the most important factor [...]

Most small businesses and creative enterprises know they need a database. But the learning curve may seem steep for anything but Excel, but Filemaker has a solution that leaves that spreadsheet in the dust: Bento. The latest release of this compact and muscular tool links iPhoto libraries to the $49 database.
Bento arrived in the Filemaker [...]

Earlier this week, InfoWorld reported that “Apple lied” about the secure mail functions of its original and 3G iPhones. While that claim could be argued, you’d be going too far to agree with the article that says the iPhone has now betrayed business users.
Encryption of e-mail is the issue here. Microsoft Exchange mail servers, used [...]

Any company using Macs in a world full of Windows users needs a virtualization program. You get Windows running on your Mac, so you can make sense of that fussy Web site that won’t behave well enough to run correctly on a Mac, for example. Parallels launched this kind of product, but the much-larger VMWare [...]

Retrospect is so aged and unresponsive, after using it for more than 11 years here, that I’m moving away from it for our backups. In 2008 the EMC rep at Macworld said a new version would be out by the fall of ‘08. EMC missed that date, not a good sign for its commitment to [...]

An article in yesterday’s Computerworld highlights the push for more Macs in corporate workplaces. Laura DiDio’s analyst report from Information Technology Intelligence Corp. says that Apple hasn’t done much to double the demand for Macs in enterprise settings. Instead, satisfied consumers bring their need for Apple’s systems to the IT department.
I’m not going to proclaim [...]

Business Week has posted a brief item about the success of the Mac in the corporate world. A lot of older IT mangers still put the Mac in the ghetto when it comes to desktop systems and enterprise servers. But an independent study shows it’s the rare corporation that doesn’t have a Mac working somewhere.
Four [...]

EMC started a good service in Mozy Home last year, offering offsite storage for Macs and PCs for only $4.95 per system per month. EMC bought Mozy Inc. and PI Corp. in 2007 to bring out the service, the classic tale of a large corporation buying novel assets. All this was rolled out with unlimited [...]