Bloomberg BusinessWeek has posted a report that chronicles the methods that businesses are using to adopt iPads. “Businesses including beauty salons and restaurants are experimenting with new tasks for Apple’s tablet computer,” reads the intro to a 650-word overview of how the three-month-old tablet is already taking hold.

“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.

After creating the VPN Tracker client for Virtual Private Networks on the Mac, equinux has released what it calls an “over the air solutions for setting up iPhones and iPads in business.”

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Quickoffice has taken its mobile office productivity suite to the iPad with a $14.99 release. The Quickoffice Connect Mobile suite software provides a spreadsheet, word processor and presentation tool, all connected to Web-based storage sharing services such as MobileMe, Dropbox, Google Docs or Box.net. This connection aspect gets around one of the iPad’s weakest features — its ability to transfer documents.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Absolute Software has announced that it will provide what it calls “enterprise-caliber” management software for the new iOS 4 Apple devices such as the iPhone. The company, which sells a solution for business computer asset management called Absolute Manage, will move core components of that software to the new Apple mobile OS.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

There are millions of users of Intuit’s QuickBooks, and for the smaller business that’s a fine choice for accounting and finance on the Mac. But a larger company, or one with business-specific needs, would do well to look at software like Connected Enterprise from Accountek.

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.

Filemaker has announced a new Business Productivity Kit which works with its new Filemaker 11 database, a collection of charts and reports that are “a fast-track way for small businesses to get instant results and grow their businesses,” according to VP of marketing and services Ryan Rosenberg. The kit is available as a free download from the Filemaker site and includes a 30-day trial copy of Filemaker 11.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

MacPractice has been selling Mac solutions for dentists and doctors for many years. Now the software company reports that “We’ve been overwhelmed with requests from doctors who want to use MacPractice on the iPad.” The developer of practice management and clinical software on Macs and iPhones isn’t writing an iPad app for now. Instead, it’s using one of the more powerful gateways on the new device: VNC.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 community was feeling well and truly overlooked by Intuit.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

O'Reilly has released its Snow Leopard guide

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 to consider when you upgrade, so long as the OS isn’t buggy. Small businesses might have to wait awhile, though, since a key accounting package is dragging a club foot to get ready for Snow Leopard.

Despite the fact that a Missing Manual Book, as well as three Taking Care Of e-books for Snow Leopard are on the market, QuickBooks for Mac 2009 cannot make the leap on the Leopard’s back. Users were never fond of QB Mac 2009, but they use it, mostly because their accountants are often running the program on Windows. QB’s vendor Intuit knows how to take care of QuickBooks Windows users. (That’s the version you see in the Office Depot aisles.) Mac users, not so much. Read the rest of this entry »