An Apple content sales agenda — sell more movies! — was the only reason my pal could figure his girlfriend’s iPad was Flash-less. He was right about one thing: the iPad is a lot 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 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.

“In a warehouse, your travel time to pick orders is 50 percent of an employee’s time,” says Tim Markley, president of Elkhart (Ind.)-based Markley Enterprise, a 75-person firm that designs marketing displays for stores and trade shows. “We put pedometers on our people and we actually saw steps decrease by 30 percent with the iPad,” he says.

The BusinessWeek site also has confirmation that much larger companies, such as Wells Fargo, are adopting Apple’s large-format business tool.

TARMAC is billed as the first professional provisioning tool tailored specifically for the Apple platform. Medium to large enterprises can use it to securely set up and manage their iPhones and iPads over-the-air.

“TARMAC is a milestone for the use of the iPhone and iPad in businesses,”said equinux CEO Till Schadde. “We’ve tailored TARMAC specifically to [Apple's iOS mobile] platform rather than for a myriad of other devices. TARMAC is the only dedicated solution for the iPhone and iPad, making no technical compromises.”

Businesses can use TARMAC to remotely set up their iPhones and iPads without needing to manually connect them to a machine. TARMAC Server operates within a company’s network and using an existing directory service to automatically create personalized user profiles.

TARMAC is installed as middleware on a company’s network, and supports directory services in Active Directory, Open Directory, Open LDAP and MySQL databases. The configuration settings available in TARMAC guarantee safety in provisioning iPhones and iPads.

To install a profile on their iPhone or iPad themselves, users simply log in to the TARMAC web interface via the company’s intranet or over a secure internet connection and follow a few simple steps. Installation requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 or newer (Client and Server). TARMAC is being moved into reseller channels now, as well as via Apple consultants. For more information via a whitepaper, visit the equinux website.

As a portable office, the iPhone/Touch version of these apps were a marvel, but something only the most stranded of business users would rely upon. The software’s reach just didn’t fit in the tiny iPhone screen. If you were stubborn enough, you could use the spreadsheet for taking down figures.

On the iPad’s spacious geography, the software opens up and gives you a great alternative to $30 worth of Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote for the iPad. Everything that Quickoffice creates can be used in Microsoft’s Office applications on the Mac.

Quickoffice has designed a unique interface to take advantage of the iPad’s multitouch abilities. The developer says the app also includes

Power Edit Mode – Easily make edits across your entire document or spreadsheet with our Multi-Edit Toolbox. Quickly format text, numbers, paragraphs, backgrounds, and cells without opening and closing multiple menus. Great for power users and beginners alike.

Single Screen Viewing – Experience the easiest and most intuitive way to navigate horizontally and vertically through your folders and files, and conveniently review file information within a single-screen view.

Advanced Touch Control – Enjoy managing your files with our simple-to-use touch, tap, and drag controls in our advanced Connected File Manager. Scroll in any direction and drag and drop to e-mail, move, copy, and delete files on your iPad or in your remote storage account.

Smooth Page Scrolling – Amazingly cool, single-touch navigation lets you preview page thumbnails and jump to any page in any size document.

Although the iPhone was roundly hooted at when Apple introduced its first enterprise features — such as the ability to handle Microsoft Exchange mail on the iPhone’s Mail client — the phones have become a staple of business users around the world. IT managers have learned they can’t keep iPhones out of company networks, so they’re resigned to admitting them and are now employing them as IT tools.

Absolute Manage has a single feature that can sell it to any company using Apple’s mobile products. An administrator can wipe a computer or phone’s data off the device if it’s been stolen or lost. iOS 4 devices (which could be any 4G or 3GS phone) can also be locked with a remote command in an emergency, or have their passcode cleared for data protection.

These iOS 4 devices can also be used, with the Absolute Manage software, by IT managers to

• Manage user profiles
• Manage provisioning profiles
• Inventory installed third-party applications (custom developed, or from the AppStore)
• Gather device lifecycle management information from the devices

“We are extending our long-standing focus on lifecycle management for Apple products to include robust management for iPhone,” said the company’s CEO John Livingston. “With our forthcoming solution, IT will be able to address brand-new challenges such as managing in-house applications and managing iOS device configuration.”

The Absolute product suite goes beyond the management of Apple’s desktop and mobile products; companies can also use the software to manage PC Windows devices. Absolute said the iOS 4 support is scheduled to arrive in Q3 of 2010.

At the latest MacWorld Expo, the company was displaying a new inventory lot control solution for Mac-based businesses. A modest little kiosk, one developer/representative, and a lot of functionality in demonstrations on the floor. In a release for Accountek 6, company officials explained

Lot control is necessary in many industries and where detailed part identification information must be tracked in the event of a product recall.  Having a lot control system allows a company to completely track all parts received and shipped by their lot numbers.  The changes in Connected make it very easy to track and pick specific parts throughout purchasing and sales process.

Connected’s lot control allows a business to:

• Simplify the process of tracking parts throughout production.
• Meet the needs of your industry when lot tracking is a requirement for product recalls.
• Identify specific lots received by purchase order and pick and ship specific lots on customer orders.
• Build products and create your own lot number and expiration dates.

If you’ve got no idea what a lot is, as it relates to inventory, you can move on. But Accountek understands financials in a way that corporations use to communicate with each other. It’s assuring to know that even if the solution starts at around $5,000, there’s business-class accounting available that lets you soar above the muddied plains of QuickBooks.

While Filemaker has also made a run at small business with its $39 basic-level Bento database, Filemaker 11 is worth the extra $140. The Productivity Kit includes templates — ready-made database reports — to serve companies dealing in either goods or services. The Standard Edition Kit is aimed at sellers of goods, while the Service Edition includes templates for, well, services companies.

Filemaker 11 does ship with a raft of templates already, many suitable for the business user. But the company promises that the new kit’s free templates are “an integrated set of business tools and each module ties to the other, eliminating any need for duplicate fields, tables and data re-entry.”

The biggest advance in Filemaker 11 may well be its charting, and the Kit proposes to make that power ready to use, along with what the company calls “on-the-fly” reporting.

After a few days building and experimenting with the Bento database, it’s plain that the Filemaker advantages of customization are well worth its lift in cost. Starting with a set of templates that you can customize gives a small business room to grow and expand to new opportunities. Filemaker even includes a guide to database basics and one for working with Microsoft Office in the Productivity Kit.

Reports are the most obvious element missing from Bento, although that product does provide an Excel-like listing of the records in each database. Ready-made reports are the kind of solution a company would pay a consultant to create; it’s possible, with a good training resource like Lynda.com, to make these reporting templates go much further.

Filemaker says that its two editions of the Productivity Kit break out along these lines of business tasks:

Standard Edition (for companies selling goods):

• Manage contacts and suppliers
• Organize products and inventory
• Process sales orders
• Track projects and production
• Send targeted e-mails

Service Edition (for companies providing services):

• Track clients and vendor contacts
• Process service orders
• Organize information about service offerings
• Manage invoices and other key business data
• Send targeted e-mail campaigns

The kit also comes with a bonus e-mail marketing guide, one that Filemakers says included “valuable tips and tricks on creating customized email campaigns to market goods and services.” For that mission you need a means of delivery, and we’d recommend Constant Contact for your outreach.

Virtual Network Computing allows any user to send keyboard and mouse input across a wireless network, or even through secure Internet connections, to a Mac application like MacPractice. VNC has been built into the Mac since the 10.4 Tiger release. But a multitouch mobile device like the iPad, with its larger screen, is pushing VNC into service at medical practices with the speed of an unchecked infection.

MacPractice has set up a guide on the interaction between its Mac and iPhone apps and the iPad. The link is made possible through Aqua Connect, which has integrated its remote access software with the MacPractice products. There are plenty of VNC clients available for Apple’s mobile devices, all aimed at letting a business use an iPhone or iPad connect with Mac-based software.

MacPractice president Mark Hollis says the link is enabling tablet access to EMR, prescriptions and e-Prescribe.

“The interface solutions we have tested allow doctors to use this incredible device in a patient encounter, enter the visit data into MacPractice EMR,” Hollis said, “and have access to medical and dental images, prescription history, all literally at their fingertips at the point of care.”

VNC services in the products enable multiple users to simultaneously access MacPractice on a single computer from numerous iPads. Doctors, dentists and practice managers can:

Access MacPractice from anywhere within the office with the iPad and get complete access to MacPractice untethered from the computer, as well as all the native iPad functionality. Doctors and nurses can carry all patient information from one exam room to another and use their finger or a stylus, plus an on-screen keyboard, to access the MacPractice database and add new patient data. If desired, data can also be entered by attaching a keyboard to the iPad or using the keyboard and mouse at the computer. Data is entered directly into MacPractice, eliminating the need to synchronize the iPad with the computer.

Access MacPractice from outside the office on an iPad. Full access to the complete MacPractice system from anywhere with an internet connection makes it possible to view and update patient charts from home, the hospital or satellite offices.

Enable multiple users to simultaneously access MacPractice on a single computer from numerous iPads. Multiple doctors access the MacPractice system on a single machine at the same time, with local sound and audio support and built-in encryption that satisfies HIPAA guidelines.

Use an iPad for patient registration. Patients can register on an iPad and complete HIPAA forms either in the office or from a remote location, such as the hospital or home. This not only streamlines the registration process, saves paper and time, but also helps reduce the risk of data-entry errors due to illegible handwriting or typing errors.

Complete medical EMR questionnaires on an iPad. Office staff using MacPractice can create a customized kiosk for each individual patient with all of the forms required for the visit and hand the patient an iPad on which to complete Health History, Social History, etc. Upon completion, the forms become part of the patient’s record in MacPractice EMR.

“Write” eyeglass prescriptions on an iPad, via integration with MacPractice 20/20, to allow ophthalmologists and optometrists to create eyeglass or lens prescriptions.

Chart restorative and periodontal conditions and treatment on an iPad and review x-rays with patients. Dentists, dental assistants and hygienists who use MacPractice DDS may use the iPad’s multi-touch screen to chart existing conditions and treatment, and review x-rays and photos with patients. They can even provide patient education material and entertainment for the patient during procedures using native iPad applications.

Filemaker 11 makes it easier than ever to take business data and create a snapshot of your information to help plan. It's also got dynamic links to auto-update such graphics

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 for using the $299 solution instead of an Excel spreadsheet.

If it feels crude  to substitute a spreadsheet for a database, Filemaker’s Product Group Manager Rick Kalman says research shows otherwise. About 40 percent of the 15 million copies of Filemaker have been used by small business or small groups within larger companies. Already familar with Microsoft’s iconic spreadsheet, they press Excel into record-keeping of business inventory, sales or contacts. In doing so they limit the power of seeing their business portraits from every aspect.

The primary competition for us is Excel spreadsheets and paper, frankly,” Kalman said, “and that’s a pretty good target.” The features run well beyond the Excel hints and assistants that suggest you might be managing a list. And Filemaker 11 adds a feature that’s fast-becoming a Mac software standard: the Quick Search window in the top right of many programs, such as nearly every browser.

There's nothing like this in Excel, and the new Filemaker includes templates to go to work immediately with a professional-class database

Graphics stood out in the one-hour demo that Kalman led us through about a week ago. The wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple is among the best of Apple’s captive partners at creating tools ready for businesses, and the Filemaker 11 is ready to show off a company’s products, people in client databases or internal staff and contractors, even a new feature that interacts with Twitter to push in-progress photo updates for custom designs like guitars or Web sites or illustrations. But the concept of pictures extends beyond the fresh graphics tools in Filemaker 11. A new Snapshot link “flags a specific set of records at a point in time, preserving the same layout, view and sort order. Any changes made to the file are automatically updated in the database. This Snapshot Link file can be emailed to anyone who has FileMaker Pro 11 for easy collaboration.” That means that changes to you data can automatically be updated in a collegue or client’s office if they have Filemaker Pro 11 at hand.

Filemaker 11 arrives at the latest stop in a 26-year line of development for the software that started in 1984 as Nutshell, created for the PC DOS marketplace. Before long the software was shaped into the Mac’s premier database tool and delivered to both PC and Mac users. Microsoft’s Access is a worthy competitor on the Windows side, but some small businesses don’t consider their information repositories to be the most valuable asset that doesn’t clock in or report on a time sheet. It’s short sighted, and Filemaker 11 goes an impressive step to meet these customers more than halfway.

The software has a starter-marriage cousin, Bento 3, which has gotten rave reviews and even enjoys an iPhone app to bring its data into the mobile world. But while Bento data moves into Filemaker easily, the transfer of Excel spreadsheets to get started in Filemaker 11 is a new feature.

Users who have extensive databases in Filemaker formats would be well-served to read through the product’s documentation to make a clean transfer that will preserve all your layouts and data fields. Import features for Filemaker databases go right up to Filemaker 11, but you’ll want to have an FP7 format of your database (used by Filemaker 7-11) ready for import. Filemaker is reaching back to the Version 8 and 9 customers with upgrade packages.

There are 31 database Starter Solutions in the new Filemaker 11, many designed for the business user

A starter solution for invoices helps you take advantage of the data-ready layouts and databases included with the software. A quick-start screen is also new, one of the many features Filemaker has added to get a business rolling quickly with an ample array of data tracking solutions. Populating these databases with existing data gets to be a matter of looking over their data fields and managing the match-up of your data with these fields. This data-match process still needs some work for the average user. Excel imports can only be done if they’re the latest XSLX format, so if your Excel is 2004 or older, you’ve got file conversion to consider, or an upgrade to a newer version of the spreadsheet.

Of such details are transitions to Filemaker from spreadsheets made. There’s enough goodness in this new version to justify an upgrade from 8, 9 or 10 (the older software must be upgraded by Sept. 23 to qualify for the discounted price.) If you’ve bought Filemaker 10 since Feb. 7, your Filemaker 11 upgrade will be free.

Quicken Essentials has a chance to change that perception that is not hard to spot in the marketplace. But the release rolled out this week to the Mac community won’t be confused with a business tool soon, even though some people will still be stubborn enough to run a business using it. When we heard that Essentials was based on the new blood from Mint.com, acquired by Intuit last year, Essentials was at least worth a look.

The look of the software is one of the biggest changes from the Quicken Mac 2007 and 2005 releases. Seeing your major expenditures in a cloud presentation is cool, but only useful if there’s a wide range of spending levels. Reporting and planning tools got an update, with a nifty feature to help you plan for savings by tracking your spending. We’d use it as a cash flow estimator, but we’re full of imagination here. That’s not usually something that a finance tool inspires.

Unfortunately, Essentials has stripped away some things that worked well enough to call Quicken for Mac a very small business solution. Rapid data entry is an essential all by itself to keep your books, but Essentials reduced the number of keyboard shortcuts and added clicks. This did not quicken the financial chore for us.

Then there’s the issue of data conversion. Nobody would be caught dead re-entering data to move to a new tool, and there’s a two-step process to bring your old data forward. But in our testing, the existing Quicken for 2005 file got orphaned and unusable during our conversion. It’s a simple save-as, but Intuit hasn’t understood simple, sometimes.

I never want to learn that my original data file has now become a “file that needs a newer version of Quicken” than I had before my conversion. Alas, my 2005 data was tagged as a Quicken for Mac 2007 file. It’s simple enough, I’d think, to simply save my old data in a renamed file.

An interview with the Quicken for Mac product manager Eddy Wu, during a live demo, told a story of a product line in transition. Quicken for Mac 2007 is not being put to pasture, even as Essentials emerges with some very good ideas from Mint.com. Intuit is putting some fresh wood behind the arrow of Mint, a solution some users saw as salvation from an Intuit that had strayed far from acceptable value in Mac users views.

There are people running businesses on Macs who would cringe at the thought of using QuickBooks, even though it’s got invoicing, AP and AR ledgers, all the standard and essential tools for real business financials. (Okay, the payroll solution is miles behind the Windows QuickBooks software, but that’s not as damning for a small enough business to have no payroll, just 1099 contractors.)

Wu said that there will be other versions of Essentials to come, improving on things like investment reporting. The company is listening, having acknowledged the pain of its Mac customers and hoping some Mint ideas might help. Unfortunately the pain isn’t throbbing from the need for smoother interfaces. “I had such high hopes last year,” said a user commenting on Amazon, “when you were promising new good Mac versions, but alas, both Quicken and QuickBooks are missing essential features, which render them unusable.”

Not as unusable as a 2005 file that won’t open anymore, but you get the idea of the rejuvenation task that remains in front of Intuit. At a $69.95 by-over (can’t call it an upgrade), Essentials is still missing enough improvement to spark our new investment in simple business accounting.