Although it’s diminished from its heyday of crowding both North and South Moscone Center exhibit halls — the whole thing has been in the more cozy Moscone West for two years — Macworld hovers near the 20,000 mark in attendance these days. A few hundred vendors make up the show floor this week, even though it’s thick with vendors of covers for any Apple product you can carry — which if you take a moment to consider it, becomes the bulk of the Apple line: ultra-slim laptops like the Macbook Air, beefier models like the Pro and the iPads and iPhones. All accomplished solutions, but there’s a growing number of companies that want to out-do Windows desktops here, and I’m not talking about Angry Birds on Windows Phone or MS Office. You can look beyond the common-cloth Unix choices if you’re making a migration and plan to buy off the shelf replacement software.

This year a new player entered this market with a software shell that makes Mac management as simple as administering Windows desktops. Mokafive integrates with those Mac systems so an admin with Windows experience — Active Directory, that sort of thing — can manage everything from a single screen. (That screen at left is on a Macbook Air.)  After all, inside the heart of Apple’s products beats Unix, the original “open” system that’s supposed to connect with everything. Mokafive isn’t the only way to convince your IT staff that Macs won’t be any extra burden. There are other products aimed at creating a homongenous workplace for computers which tap corporate data.

Okay, full disclosure here: The companies I’ve worked for and founded since 1987 have been Apple shops. It used to be the domain of pariahs and the source of derisive snorts, but the Mac world has gone corporate on us all. The pro-sumer movement, where iPhones and iPads get carried into an enterprise by C-level officers, has brought along Macs as a sticky complement. In a report on the $46 billion quarter, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said nearly all of the Fortune 500 is using Apple’s products, including most companies adopting Macs. It used to be that a localized in-house datacenter kept Apple out. Now there’s cloud computing to take the place of vendor-specialized databases. For companies leaving the world of classic IT, this cloudy future is helping to make Apple’s business outlook brighter.

Padmanaban is clear-eyed about the hurdles the Mac faces in IT strategy. “Corporations have trouble adopting Macs because while Macs are beautiful and sleek, but Windows applications don’t run on them, and it’s very hard to secure a Mac,” she said. “What we do is take your standard corporate Windows environment and make it a secure managed app on a Mac.” Using a concept that Intel calls Intelligent Desktop virtualization, it means that the Mac takes an equal but familiar place on the console for corporate computing, with Windows losing none of its compatibility with the likes of SQL Server or even a 3000-savvy database like Eloquence for Windows. Mokafive provisions corporate Windows environments for the Mac desktops. You free your users to bring in that Macbook Air they want to use on the job.

Another way to embrace Windows work on Apple’s products is through virtualization. While this doesn’t provide much of a single-pane administration benefit, the likes of VMWare’s Fusion or Parallels have advanced the cause of emulation. That’s the vehicle that’s carrying MPE into the future. Parallels can either present a Mac-like workspace on the desktop that’s completely outfitted with Windows as well. Or it can give a user the Windows experience by day and let them revert to Mac OS X off the job. There’s a lively competition between Fusion and Parallels that keeps each product improving at a constant rate. Both have gotten three major improvements in the last two years, and at $79 a desktop it’s too inexpensive to trigger even 3000-grade budget shock.

Managing virtualization requires some learning, but it’s a good skill set to acquire going into 2012. On the other hand, Padmanaban claimed that IT managers need “zero additional skills” to deploy and administer Mokafive’s Player, “an app that is running my standard Windows desktops.” She also says that deployment is possible in as little as 90 minutes. The software installation comes on a USB key.

As for the mobile goodies being displayed here, one software solution treats Windows as if it were running on iPads. Splashtop brings the Windows apps and desktops to the ultra-popular tablets by giving the user a remote control of their PCs. (Yes, that’s the usually-reviled but necessary Explorer browser in the picture, running on an iPad that’s controlling a PC remotely.) If an app can run on the PC, it can be used on an iPad. Because it’s an iOS app, the cost is crazy-cheap. This week Splashtop is $2.99 per iPad, and the regular price is only $19.95. I watched a demo that showed a PC desktop running while the iPad gave cursor control, text entry, clicks on buttons — any aspect of an interface required. It gets even better for remote use, because you can use it over a secured wi-fi environment from across the country. At the moment Google Mail somehow tells your desktop to talk to the remote app, since you sign in with a Gmail account on both iPad and PC. Google is far from perfect, but if its apps can be rolled out to the multi-billion dollar BBVA bank enterprise, it’s probably capable of managing the handshake between an iPad and a Windows PC.

Windows and the PC world never cared much about adopting Apple support in the decades where Microsoft had all the mojo. Coming from a humble position in the business world, the Apple solutions have a “can’t we all get along” approach. There are millions of Windows desktops out there. But there are now millions of Apple’s mobile customers bringing along Macs, a market that showed 26 percent growth over the last year versus zero for the rest of the PC industry. Apple products are going to become a management mission for the IT department, driven along by mobile attachments. Although Apple never aimed at becoming an enterprise darling, the business has arrived anyway. It delivers an user experience that can mimic Windows, or something newer and smoother and yes, popular — integrated with the Windows you already are using elsewhere in your business.

PowerPoint slides in SlideShark

Brainshark will use Macworld to introduce a new workgroup version of its SlideShark app for the iPad. The company says the software has begun to solve the problem of PowerPoint’s incompatibility on the iPad. There’s 30 million PowerPoint decks created every day, according to the company.

SlideShark has been selling since October, and the company says its been downloaded twice a minute since then. A version that will launch in early February adds functionality to support teams and groups within organizations. The current version is geared more toward individuals.

“Prior to SlideShark’s launch last October, millions of iPad users who wanted to view and show PowerPoint slide decks on their device had only spotty, unreliable options,” the company said in a release. The existing software on the iPad market flattens presentations into PDFs at worst. Or the competition’s conversion techniques render animations inactive, sometimes distorting fonts, colors, images and more. We can attest to the last outcome. While we don’t animate with PowerPoint, those slides check into iPad apps of today and don’t check out the same.

FiledRight is being sold this week at a starting special price of $1,999. It employs the popular open source FireBird database for indexing, searching, and management of all types of scanned and desktop office documents. Like a lot of larger-company solutions, an annual support contract is being offered as an extra expense.

Jim Small, Mindwrap’s president, said the Mac’s support for PDF and images makes it a natural platform choice for document management.  FiledRight is an integrated, turnkey solution, a package that’s usually faster to deploy than toolkits that can require extensive development.

Installation and configuration are quick and easy with the included server administration tools, allowing managers to select and deploy application-specific indexing screens and assign role-based permissions to all users. Scanning can be enabled for any FiledRight native Mac workstation with the addition of a scanner driver. Clients can quickly convert paper to multipage PDF and TIFF using Fujitsu scanners. They can also perform page-level editing and redaction of sensitive documents. FiledRight maintains historical versions of all edited documents.

The product fills a gap for the mobile device market. Apple’s AirPrint is available to iOS users, but the list of supported wireless printers is small indeed. At least compared to the 63 pages of printers supplied by Printronix at this month’s announcement. Neither of our office printers are on the list, but they’re fairly antique or not networkable.

The xPrintServer can be connected anywhere on your LAN (on the subnet on which your printers are located). Simply use the RJ45 cable and plug it directly into the LAN, router, etc. Your iOS device users should then connect to your corporate WiFi network – at which point the xPrintServer will auto discover and auto populate your available printer list on the iOS device. It supports any iOS device running version 4.2 or later, including iPad and iPad 2, iPhone (3GS or later), and iPod Touch.

Attaching the xPrintServer to your network won’t impact any existing networked printer settings or printers. Users can continue to use printers as they normally do.

The product will be sold through standard retail channels including Amazon.com, starting early next year. There’s a clever commercial online at YouTube to sell the concept to your IT manager or Computer Guy.

Bento stays in sync between mobile devices like the iPad or the iPhone and your Mac

Over the last three years Filemaker, the division of Apple that builds database software, has created a database for the rest of us: people who run businesses instead of computer departments. With the latest release of Bento, it looks like the product is maturing enough to meet many common and unique needs to manage data.

Today Filemaker begins to sell Bento 4 for Mac, now available on the Mac App Store, as well as Bento 1.1 for iPhone, and Bento 1.1 for iPad. With many new features including the ability to print labels, export libraries with data, automatically add geographical locations to records and lock down forms, Bento 4 is a major next step for the popular personal database family.

“People just love the way Bento helps them organize their lives – especially their work tasks like managing contacts and tracking projects,” said Ryan Rosenberg, vice president of marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc. “We’ve enhanced the entire product line: Bento for Mac, Bento for iPad, and Bento for iPhone to provide you with a major productivity boost at your desk and when you’re on the go.”

Early customers have praised the product. (We’ll have our own review here soon.) “With Bento 4, I’ll be able to print address labels directly from records and synch my iCal to-do items using Bento 1.1 for iPad and iPhone,” says Robert Terry, educational journal editor, Richmond, Virginia. “It really feels like Bento can do everything.”
“I looked at multiple database applications for the Mac and the PC, and even considered web-based solutions, John Shin, independent insurance agent, Dallas, Texas. “None of them offer the flexibility, power, and convenience of Bento 4.”

In Bento 4, you can create custom labels or choose from more than 250 ready-to-use Avery and Dymo label formats for mailing labels, inventory tags, name badges, file folders and many other uses. Labels can be customized with information from your database and with images.

“With built-in support for a wide array of the most popular Avery labels, Bento makes it easy to print labels for business or home use,” said Brenda Dillon, Group Product Manager for Avery Dennison Office Products.

Sharing databases is simpler than ever using Bento 4. For the first time, you can export Bento libraries populated with data and share these with other users. Now sending a complete library to another Bento user is as easy as emailing a file. You can also share your great ideas with the world by sending your custom Bento templates directly to the popular Bento Template Exchange from within Bento 4. The Bento Template Exchange features over 800 free downloadable templates that bring to life the huge variety of uses for Bento.

Bento 4 is faster and easier to use. With faster launch times, the new version allows you to lock forms to prevent unwanted changes to a layout, easily switch from Table view to Form view, search by date ranges, and automatically create media fields.

While many software products allow you map an address, Bento goes one step further by automatically capturing the locations where your activities occur. With the addition of a new location field type, Bento 4 will automatically log your exact location using WiFi, GPS, or cell tower triangulation, depending on which Mac or iOS device you may be using when you enter or modify a record.  With automatic location fields, you can record the location of site inspections, log customer visits, track travel sites, or capture survey locations.

Mobile 1.1 versions also out now

Bento for iPhone and Bento for iPad have both received significant updates.  You can now record voice memos into media fields on your mobile devices and tie them to your records, perfect for capturing events, logging meetings for later review, and just capturing notes without typing.  Voice memos can be synched with Bento 4 for the Mac.

Bento for Mac users can make more use of their information on the Bento for iPhone and Bento for iPad.  Now you can sync iCal tasks from the Mac, edit simple list data on your iPhone, and use related records to link libraries.

The Cropmark LMP Bluetooth Keypad for Apple wireless keyboard users is cable/driver free. OWC is aiming the product at “anyone that works with numbers, from small business owners, accountants, restaurateurs, financial analysts, stock brokers, bookkeepers, and spreadsheet users.  These people that work with numbers prefer using a numeric keypad than the number keys across the keyboard, since the numeric keypad is similar to a calculator, featuring the ability to enter numbers with one hand for increased speed and accuracy.”

The accessory has the same cylindrical base and brushed aluminum finish as the Apple keyboard, and includes a custom linking connector that snaps in, integrating the keypad with the Apple Wireless Keyboard.  OWC says it’s moved down the price of the product from $45.99 to $39.99 for tax season. It has a full set of number keys, including forward delete, page up, page down and five additional function buttons. The Cropmark uses “scissor-type membrane keys” which OWC says reduces typing fatigue.  The keypad can also be used as a standalone device with a USB-connected Apple keyboard, as well as with MacBook and MacBook Pro Bluetooth-enabled computers. There’s no word yet if it will work with iPads via Bluetooth.

Other World takes orders online at the macsales.com website.

“SAINT Corporation is very proud to provide Apple support to the growing community of security and compliance professionals using the Mac,” said Billy Austin, SAINT’s Chief Security Officer. Security pros, or businesses which need security tools, can now take full advantage of SAINT’s compliance checklists including templates for the following:

• Payment Card Industry (PCI)
• FISMA
• HIPAA
• USGCB
• FDCC

In addition to the native Apple installer as a .DMG file, the 7.6 product release features penetration testing coverage for Cisco network devices, SAP, and a new web application exploit for SQL Authentication bypass. The social engineering e-mail forgery template was enhanced to automatically determine the mail server of the targeted e-mail address. New vulnerability scanning features also now include authentication support for SSH public keys and SMB signing. A non-Windows Admin authentication field was added to identify what shares are open to a user or user group versus a domain admin account that can see everything.

SAINT customers now have the option of Apple’s Mac OS X platform in addition to SAINT’s other supported platforms, which include –

• SaaS cloud models
• Pre-configured appliances
• Linux/Unix
• Mac OS X

Exhibit A: A column from new contributor John Gruber on the back page of MacWorld. He seems to wonder if Apple is as typical as HP, because “At typical companies, ‘legacy’ technology is something you figure out how to carry forward. At Apple, legacy technology is something you figure out how to get rid of.”

There’s some problems with this take on how vendors work. First, legacy only gets carried forward at a big customer’s insistence. At typical companies like HP, legacy technology is something you figure out how to marginalize and push into the boutique shadows. Much of the decade before HP’s announced departure in 2001 from the HP 3000 enterprise world — just four weeks from being complete — was spent pushing MPE aside to trumpet Unix. (How’s that choice working for you now, HP? Those footsteps you hear are Linux, not WebOS.)

It’s always easier to sit in a developer’s chair and say the future lies in the newest design, especially if it’s growing more popular by the quarter. But customers — millions of them using Macs today, even in business — sit in different chairs and see investments they want a vendor to protect. A great company learns to balance protection with the innovation. Disney didn’t stop making cartoons just because it discovered live-action movies and amusement parks.

At MacWorld’s back page, Gruber chronicles the demise of the non-Intel Mac OS. “The 64-bit Carbon application programming interface died. It’s not that these technologies were no longer useful. It’s that continuing to support them would have slowed the company down. Time spent supporting the old is time not spent building the new.”

In a strident tone straight off his sharp, iOS-cheering blog Daring Fireball, Gruber seems to forsee how Apple might want to pave over the past to save its future.

Apple’s cultural aversion to legacy technology isn’t about a lack of seriousness, or a short companywide attention span. It’s not about being attracted only to the new and shiny. It’s about fear—the fear of being weighed down by excess baggage. Fear that old stuff will slow them down in their pursuit of creating brand-new stuff.

The question isn’t whether iOS has a brighter future than the Mac. There is no doubt: it does. The question is whether the Mac has become “legacy.”

The underlying question is whether Apple is about to become as typical as HP. Because HP has been getting rid of the “excess baggage” of legacy technology for the last 15 years.

Ever since 1984, I have reported on plenty of sound technology re-indexed as Legacy. While the vendors are usually keen to tear this stuff away from their product futures, the customers part with it much more slowly, if at all. HP hasn’t even built an HP 3000 since 2003, but Fortune 100 companies still use the server, even as they plan to migrate. HP dumped on the 3000′s OS futures in favor of Unix, which somehow was tagged as “brand-new stuff” at enterprises in the advent of Open Systems. (Remember those systems? The computers that ran on environments all the same? Turns out we all had a hard time finding those snipes of computing.)

Legacy is an epithet to a customer who’s invested in it, and a millstone around the neck of a company that wants to move onward. The future of the new, if it’s well-built, always looks brighter to a vendor who thrives on churn. I’ve used Macs to run businesses and bought an iPad (tres useful) on Day One. But I hope Apple hasn’t become that kind of scuttle-happy supplier.

If anyone should be careful of wishing for something, it’s the cheering iOS developers and blogging friends. The Mac has become a stable choice of both high-tech developers in their 40s and 50s in the 3000 community, as well as the choice of millions of common users buying Macbook Airs. iOS maturity today is at about the 1993 level of the Mac’s OS, even allowing for a a new-gen rate of evolution. It’s madness to consider that Mac OS is going to the grave, or even whistling past a graveyard, by even 2020. HP figured you’d all be migrated by five years ago. Um, not so much.

At HP, the Unix enterprise business never would have taken hold without the track record of the HP 3000 success. Let’s hope that Apple won’t listen too hard to the iOS cheering and scuttle what made the company a serious force in computing — all because mobile is sexy. The iPad outsells the Macs now, but you can’t accomplish some serious productivity tasks on a 10-inch screen. Try creating something of great scope, or even of modest size.

Back in the days of those mid-80s, I worked at a publishing company where we produced tabloid-size trade newsletter layouts on 9-inch Mac Plus screens. Such torture is no way to grow a market. Apple needs both OS choices; let the HPs of the world cast off good technology. And Gruber gets to this, eventually, in his column.

Long term—say, 10 years out—well, all good things must come to an end. But in the short term, Mac OS X has an essential role in an iOS world: serving as the platform for complex, resource-intensive tasks.

And then the 10 years becomes 15, just like those customers are taking more than a decade to drift away from the 3000. Welcome to the world of computer success, Mr. Jobs. You gotta feed your ancestors, not set them adrift on ice floes.

Outlook's message gathering in Conversations

Conversations, calendaring: These are some of the new core features that Microsoft brings to the Mac community in late October with the Business Edition of Office for Mac 2011. These features show up in Outlook for the Mac, a version of the popular Windows mail client that’s making its debut on Apple products.

Outlook is included in two versions of the Office for Mac release: a Home and Business Edition priced at $199 and an Academic release at $99. Outlook has a mixed reputation among the Windows community, in part because it was wired into the PC environments so closely that hackers exploited its integration.

Microsoft doesn’t expect that to be an issue with Outlook for the Mac; the computer’s environment doesn’t offer the same sort of back doors for malware to muck up your business files. The Business Edition also includes familiar apps reworked for improved productivity: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and even Messenger. Buying a copy of Office 2008 until November 30 will earn you a free upgrade to the new release.

A promo video on Microsoft’s Office 2011 web page includes a comment from developer Amy Wang that they’ve “done UI (user interface) touch-ups that make these programs feel a lot more Mac-like.” Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit has been a real earner for the company that hovers right around Apple in Fortune 500 revenues. It’s easy to understand why these programs have a dedicated team at the company responsible for the widest choice for businesses, Windows.

The table below explains the pricing differences, but it’s Outlook that generates the $80 lift in the Business Edition.

Conversation takes all messages with the same topic and puts them together, a feature that you might notice if you click on a message in Apple’s Mail. But the Office method looks more intuitive and efficient, two advantages Microsoft is pushing with this release. There’s also integration with the Mac’s Spotlight searching, so you might be able to find a message faster than in Apple’s Mail. Spotlight, after all, has a dozen ways to dice up a search, while Mail’s only got a half-dozen.

Microsoft has details on how to qualify for a free 2008 to 2011 upgrade, as well as the new online upgrade functionality from the $119 entry-level Home and Student Edition, at the Officeformac.com web site.

An Apple content sales agenda — sell more movies! — was the only reason my pal could see that his girlfriend’s iPad was Flash-less. He was right about one thing: the iPad is much better at letting you consume information than producing it. It’s a weakness that might be firmed up in the second 100 days of the product’s life. When there’s about 7 million of them in the marketplace.

But Flash? It’s sort of a hot topic if you have to view it on Apple’s business products — or anybody else’s. Hot as in spin your fan, heat your laptop bottom, slow your user experience down. It’s not the content, it’s the compromise. That’s what drove Flash off mobile devices iPhones and the iPad. Apple doesn’t want us to get burned by the power demands of Flash.

Want to view the future of a Web without Flash? It’s coming, and it’s arrived first on your iPad screen.

My friend Guy, who runs a bang-up marketing strategy company, said Apple wants nothing to do with technology that will weaken its content sales; thus, no Flash. And yet, there’s a Flash-free Netflix app, producing thousands and thousands of hours of content, approved by Apple for the iPad. Same for ABC TV. BBC. NPR. YouTube. All iPad apps. If Apple was barring the door to content-tech, how’d they let Netflix et al get past ‘em?

Maybe Herr Jobs was washing his turtlenecks that day. (Bah-dump-bump! “Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress. Try the veal.”)

I don’t miss Flash on my iPad. If I must simply must view it, I curse the laggard content provider and fire up my MacBook Pro. And then keep it off my bare legs. And plug it in after 45 minutes.

You don’t need to be an engineer to know Flash is a performance bog. Flash-happy Farmville starts up on my iMac (Intel Core 2 Duo) and then pegs my CPU at plus-100%. So the Mac starts swapping out to 4GB of memory. Same effect on my battery-powered laptop (Intel Core Duo). Battery life there about 30 percent less, I’d estimate, than with non-Flash use. Farmville has a theme song you can’t turn off — the music of fan RPM.

These days I sigh when I bump into Flash at the front of a website. “Not clever enough to compel me with anything more fundamental and less invasive,” I think. For those hiring Flash developers, I hope it’s at the insistence of their clients. Web design ought to strive for as simple a level of tech as possible. Simpler, more secure tech=more eyeballs, I believe. (To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “Stupid marketers. Be more clever!)

So in contrast, Guy believes the world is so much better on the alternative to iPad/iPhone, Planet Android. There’s plenty of people who claim to understand why Google just killed off its latest Android experiment, the Nexus One unlocked phone.

I love it when anyone outside of Google (myself too!) pretends to know what course that Death Star will take. The world is littered with experiments, flung onto your disk drives and theirs, that Google hopes will stick. Wave. Buzz. Voice. Blogger blogs with FTP posting (my personal gripe; Google is so advanced that FTP blog support has dropped outside its ken.) On and on the brilliant catalog of shooting stars goes — and tracking them is like trying to ascertain the political and economic principles of China. Inscrutable, they both are.

And so there’s Android to admire — but not trust just yet for smartphone mail. According to a writer at InfoWorld, it still won’t support enterprise business-level Exchange: “The newest Android OS’s claims over Exchange support obscure a key fact: It’s not really there.” Froyo is still waiting on support for *secured* Exchange accounts, says Galen Gruman:

“If you’re looking for a smartphone to use at work, forget the advertising and marketing claims. The truth is that you have three viable options: a BlackBerry, an iPhone (though not for highest-level security needs), and a Windows Mobile device. Although Google and its Android allies talk up Exchange support, the truth is that Android is a couple years behind Apple and a decade behind Microsoft and RIM in corporate Exchange support. That means Android is fine for personal use — and for personal use only.”

Gadzooks! Forget advertising and marketing marketing claims? How will we ever decide what to buy, or love, or despise? Oh yeah, there’s that Internet thingy with all those long threads, relating personal experience with products and technology.

Me, I’m satisfied being an iPad owner who doesn’t endure Flash. If only the file transfers were well-designed for this 100-day-old product. I’d put that one at a higher consumer satisfaction priority than Flash support.