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 »

Moving among publication spreads is as simple as leafing through a paper edition on Zinio's iPad app.

Creating content is still months away from the iPad’s capabilities, but consuming information is ready today. While publishers like Time-Warner want you to purchase single issues of their magazines for the iPad (at about $5 each), Zinio has a free app and a better idea: delivery of a paid full year’s subscription, ready to display on that gorgeous mobile screen.

Zinio’s app provides able organization of your subscriptions, although arranging the magazines seems to be left to alphabetical order. Multiple issues get archived on the device, but you can delete them to save space and just re-download them if you need to read from the past.

The response you see on the iPad while you initially access a magazine can be ultra-subtle at first glance. The app uses Apple’s spinning clock icon while it downloads enough issue to get your reading started. If you noticed the word “download” used regularly up to now, that’s because there’s no other way to enjoy the brilliant pages off the Zinio newsstand. The equivalent of magazine streaming doesn’t exist anywhere yet. And so your initial steps into iPad reading are limited by the size of your WiFi bandwidth.

The full range of Zinio’s newsstand is not yet ready for iPad consumption, because some pubs use Flash in their presentation. Zinio makes its sales and delivery services available to all publishers, but the pubs themselves are in charge of de-Flashing their content. Or more accurately, adding a non-Flash version to their issues. It also bears a mention here that Zinio is selling product without being forced to pay Apple a share of what it collects for its publishers. Apple has a fine walled garden going on in the App Store, but Zinio’s app gives you a gateway into a larger world of purchasing.

The clearest beauty of using the Zinio app comes in zooming into a graphic. National Geographic put together a lively interactive version of its April edition that covers water — and a map of “the third pole” in Asia that might span only the space of two NatGeo paper pages gets the zoom-in treatment on the iPad, so you can enjoy the information at a larger scale than paper could provide. On the downside, we couldn’t get a video feature of the NatGeo sample to run on our iPad, even though the bandwidth was wide open. The fault here might lie with NatGeo, Apple or even the app. This month, many things on the iPad feel like a 1.0 experience.

You can shop for extra subscriptions or single issues through Zino’s iPad app, once you set up an account and provide a credit card number. Many of the publications will sell you back issues, though this kind of one-off reading can get pricey. Subs run from about $10 (a year of SmartMoney) to $46 (52 issues of BusinessWeek) up to 52 issues of The Economist at $126.99. This kind of single-touch shopping will remind you of browsing in Apple’s App Store or the iTunes store: a place where a purchase can be as spontaneous and quick as a meeting requires you to be prepared for. If you love magazines as I do, this app can make the experience addictive. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend and marketing analyst sent me his belief that Apple’s campaign against Flash was a mistake and might cripple the company’s empire. Guy Smith of Silicon Strategies Marketing, who consults for software and hardware makers on marketing around the world, looks at CEO Steve Jobs’ anti-Flash campaign as a rare error. Blocking Flash from the iPad and iPhone cuts off content, Guy said, adding in his latest post that “Jobs is trying to string-up Adobe, and in the end might make Apple look like Il Duce on his last day.”

The latest rattling of cyber sabers comes from Apple and Adobe, with Apple’s insistence that Adobe Flash be banished from Jobs’ walled garden of iEverything.  Certain slurs have been sounded, including an odd instance by Jobs proclaiming that Adobe Flash was bug ridden. (Jobs is obviously not a Windows user, for he does not know the true meaning of “buggy.”)

Such bogus blusters are convenient covers for real issues. Flash currently commands a huge share of the Rich Internet Application market by virtual of antediluvian virtualization.  Long ago, Flash did what people wanted, which was to add value to surfing the Web while eliminating cross platform/browser/religious sectarianism.  Want to watch videos of cute kittens or suicidal teenagers on motorcycles, or listen to the latest excuse for music coming out of Nashville on the Web, regardless of  whether you are on a PC, Mac, Linux, minis, odd ducks, occasional mainframes, virtual desktops or smart phone?  Adobe Flash made it happen by bundling [the player] for free into everything. Except iPhones and iPads.

[To be accurate, Flash is only bundled long enough to force you to update it via download, to combat the latest malware and virus attacks. Much of the bundled Flash is already out of date by the time a new Windows or Mac system boots up. But Guy continues on eliminating Flash from Apple's most mobile devices.]

Therein lay Apple’s finest error (aside from the Newton).  As any performer will attest, you give the audience what they want. Putting Snoop Dogg on stage at a cotillion is an error.  So is creating an information/media device that does not deliver information/media.  Since so much of the world’s content is and will for the foreseeable future remain in Flash, and since Adobe is not sitting still in extending Flash for ever better uses, banning it from hardware is inane.  It goes directly against what the audience (market) wants and thus gives them the motivation to consider alternate venues.

First, the Apple devices deliver information and media. Plenty, just not that written to run on Flash Player. To the resulting consideration of alternate venues, I say, “So what? Assume that happens — then what?” So then I’m buying an HP Slate to run Flash? “So much of the world’s content is and will for the foreseeable future remain in Flash,” that’s a real longshot. The key to track the Flash future is the phrase from above, “Long ago, Flash did what people wanted.” Long ago, people watched cable TV for the latest news, too. And Seinfeld. And modems that winked up when you got connected to the Internet.

I disagree with Guy about the iPad’s need for Flash, in part because between the two of us only I own an iPad, and so and have the same 10 days of experience as every other owner. (Perhaps not exactly the same experience; I didn’t buy the $49.95 OmniGraffle app for it [think Windows' Visio planning]. On the other hand, I wrote most of my reply to Guy off an Apple Keyboard Dock, and plenty of people are still waiting for that marvel.) I haven’t missed Flash more than a handful of times out of hundreds of media and content deliveries.

I told Guy he simply needed to see the iPad in action to observe how a Flash-less experience means less than you’d think to business content today — and perhaps little to nothing once content providers adapt to millions of iPads joining the 85 million iPhones and iPod Touches out there. The only difference is that Apple has decided to make a stand against Flash now, after selling 85 million devices that don’t use it.
Read the rest of this entry »

The newest tool in Apple’s business arsenal is starting to see its accessories arrive in customer hands and on hooks at the local Apple retail store. But many more providers are waiting until the end of this month to roll out the business suits that iPads will wear on client visits: covers and cases.

One significant accessory that arrived in our offices yesterday was the iPad Keyboard Dock. At $69 it’s priced at about 10 percent of the cost of a top-end WiFi iPad, and it is a slim offering indeed. Think of Apple’s standard mini-keyboard, then slap on a plastic extender with a mini-USB port and external headphone outlet, and you’ve got the total feature set of the Keyboard Dock.

The Keyboard Dock only extends the keyboard width about a total of 3 inches from the on-screen keyboard in the iPad’s landscape mode. But since the iPad has no dock on its longer side, you can only use the Keyboard Dock in portrait mode. If you’re still looking for a dock for your iPad, in these early days of the tablet’s life you could do worse than getting a Keyboard Dock. Apple’s standard iPad dock sells for $29, and its wireless keyboard, sans dock but able to talk to the iPad, sells for the same price as a Keyboard Dock. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s addictive, using it. One of the first things I realized this morning was that I’ll have to put the iPad up for awhile to let it recharge, after 12 hours of use. Those four Dexter episodes Abby and I streamed in a row over Netflix last night never would’ve been possible on the Macbook’s battery life, and the Sony Netflix streaming DVD player is just a bafflement to set up. I think the reviewer at BoingBoing got it right when she said that this thing, like the “Pre or the iPhone before it, scratches an itch we didn’t know we had.”

The OLPC -- how 2007!

But I knew I needed a better reach to scrape up creations, on the move. Two years ago I bought a One Laptop Per Child mobile PC, hoping to have something light and slim and agile enough to take anyplace to do my writing and research via the Web. When the computer showed up at the door — a twin of it had been donated to the the OLPC charity — the mini-laptop was a bust. Yes, it was brute simple and built to be rugged as a tank. Yes, it could touch the Internet and came packed with software. The computer was really the first netbook, but the comparison goes right to the woes that the netbooks will fight. Its keyboard was a plastic sheathed toy, its screen a shuddering reminder of the 1980s portables’ ghostly gray, the software cobbled from open source and freeware that made it easy to understand how it had arrived at its price. The battery was in regular need of charging, especially after any Web use.

This mini computer suffered from the same curse the tech wizards claimed for the iPad’s fate: it did many things, none of them very well. It was a snazzy green and white concept car of a computer with lots of good ideas assembled by committee. It never made it out of my office, so immobile its charms proved to be. Recently the OLPC group asked us all if we’d donate our minis back to the foundation. They might have heard nobody was getting much use from them.

These are the battles that a mobile computer must win. Its interface must be seamless, intuitive, flexible. Its display must be attractive, enticing you to stay in its playground. It must be responsive in its speed and generous in its possibility to entertain and present. It must stay alive a single charge long enough to use it all day — and have enough left for it to be waiting for you to pop in that last sentence that came to you in the middle of the night. It must connect you to those you know and everything you don’t over the Web. And it has to be mobile enough to carry around as if it were a coffee mug: not something you would ever think of jamming into a pocket, but a thing you don’t even consider when you move from room to room, office to office, sandbox to chalkboard and back.

There are surprises among our iPad’s first day, but nothing to keep it from coming out to play, or work. I haven’t found Flash missing because I didn’t rely on it for anything but games. And this entry? Typed on the built-in keyboard of the iPad. I left the click-sound-effects on, to help me get used to the rhythm. (But that’s not a sound you want your wife to wake to, sleeping next to you while the words come upon you in the dark. You can shut it off.)

It’s addictive, intuitive and inventive, this slender device. It’s a tool that has made the leap from toy, turning mobile into a real option for creating as well as consuming. Pages for the iPad makes it possible to get a good start on my writing, then share it forward to the Web or my Mac. Read the rest of this entry »

The UPS driver was smiling when he delivered my iPad at midday today. “Have fun,” he said while he matched my grin. “I’ve delivered a lot of these today.”

Once the brown truck rumbled around the corner and the brown box was opened, the iPad demanded that it be linked up with iTunes. I’d read ahead enough to have the 9.1 version ready, and even downloaded and bought some iPad apps the night before. (Apple opened the App Store’s iPad wing on Friday. In anticipation of a first-day rush, I downloaded 27, including some fun as well as the requisite work tools.)

That meant that the bill for the download, including a $14.95 Major Legue Baseball app, was $40-plus including tax. One thing to understand about owning an iPad, or an iPhone: it’s a device that carries a cost of ownership bill, because you will want tools and toys to use on it. The App Store bill arrived this morning with a handy list of the initial apps. As you can see, much of the programs useful to small businesses to keep in touch are either free (news service feeds, social networking) or included.

But Pages and Numbers made their way into my budget, because Apple’s got $9.95 versions of the word processor and spreadsheet. More on those a bit later, but this note: the keyboard included in the multi-touch screen will be just fine for short drafts. Apple has moved up its promised date of delivery for the combo keyboard-dock I ordered March 12. Originally set for April 20, now it’s coming on April 8.

One surprise comes in seeing how smooth the device is: I’ve adopted a knees-bent posture on the sofa to type and enter long data. The third party market will do very well in selling cases for these. I’ll be reviewing some from ColaSac and UNIEA as soon as they get them into our hands.

Zinio means to make a big impression by the iPad’s opening weekend. The company has been selling magazines (single-copy and subscriptions) for 10 years online and on computers, admittedly “before the market’s time” according to CEO Jeanniey Mullen. But fast-forward from the time of Windows XP to the Apple touchstone that boots up on a quarter-million laps this weekend, and you can see the numbers rising for publishers and their readers.

Zinio will offer 2,000 issues for purchase (and another 400 back issues) through its free app, something the company designed as soon as Apple released the iPad’s software development kit. The company knew that a digital reader with full motion and interactive hooks would be a lure to readers who expect more from a publication than just words and static pictures. As of Thursday the company wasn’t sure if it would make the initial April 3 iPad app rollout lineup that Apple controls, but the CEO was certain that Zinio was going to deliver business magazines like Smart Money (from the Wall Street Journal) MacWorld, Kiplinger’s, US News & World Report — even Oprah, Yoga Journal and Esquire. All will enjoy the full-screen experience of the new Apple tablet, she said.

The Zinio catalog has been available for reading on iPhone as well as the Mac and PCs, but the Mac version runs on Adobe’s Air platform. Zinio has been working on removing such technology that doesn’t run on the iPad, substituting HTML5 and XML.

“We started to look for opportunities to optimize our iPhone app for the iPad, and have been feverishly de-Flashing our [magazine] files and our reader,” Mullen said. “We’ve been rebuilding our infrastructure to support the non-Flash environment.”

Small business owners won’t see many focused titles that have been optimized for the iPad’s features this weekend other than MacWorld. But Car and Driver, Dwell, National Geographic, Sporting News Daily, Spin and Zinio’s own Viv magazine are coming online first with video features and slide shows that take a reader beyond a magazine’s traditional graphics and text. It’s going to add a new dimension to showing off a publication’s article during a presentation. Publishers will have the chance to create animated, interactive graphics that might bridge the gap towards a need for skills in Keynote, Apple’s presentation app. Read the rest of this entry »

Inventory is among the business uses shown for the Bento iPad version

The new Bento for iPad screenshots are on display this morning, courtesy of media rep Kevin Mallon at Filemaker. In the set on Flickr are several shots that illustrate how this combination of the Apple tablet and Apple-subsidiary’s base-level database can drive a business’s data needs.

Filemaker has always benefited from business interest in its products. There’s only so much cataloging of the garage, the music and film collections, the stacks of books or model trains you can do with a database. Filemaker grew off the backs of small business needs. Bento is a tool robust enough to serve a small business, but with a plucked feature set to get average tasks done.

Databases need data entry devices desperately, so a keyboard has seemed essential to their success. Bento has an iPhone app that has won great reviews. But significant amounts of data entry require a keyboard. This is a lesson learned at commercial IT enterprises, like the sort I cover for the HP market. The mouse-click always fell far behind the productivity of fingers on keys. So this app will be one of the more severe tests of the iPad’s built-in soft keyboard.

Filemaker was being coy about the crossover pricing on iPad and iPhone versions of this app. (Some iPhone apps will be running at no extra charge on the iPad right away.) We’d expect about $9.95 on release, because Apple’s selling the iWork apps at that price.

In a move that looks to be all about boosting first month shipping numbers, Apple has announced it will accept a trade-in of three iPod Touches to get a new iPad.

The trades can only be executed at an Apple Retail Store, the company said in an e-mail to the millions of iPod Touch owners who’ve registered the devices. “Since the tech media has announced that the iPad is simply a large iPod Touch, we’re embracing the comparison,” said marketing VP Phillip Schiller. “We’re Apple and can set the rules for our own products. It’s important for the iPad to succeed.”

The 3:1 ratio is thought to represent the aggregate screen size of three of the Touch devices. Many have begun to experience battery fatigue, according to analyst Rob Enderle. The tech expert lauded Apple on its admission that the iPad batteries might disappoint early adopters, and so would accept three older devices to spread its newest product into the market.

The exchange terms identify a special 8AM to 9AM Swap Hour at the retail outlets in the US. Owners who’ve gathered up three Touches will be admitted to the front of the lines expected to form on Saturday for the first day’s delivery of the iPad.

On a recent trip I picked up a copy of The Atlantic, the aging magazine that used to feature reports from the fine James Fallows on subjects of technology. Fallows is a business writer as much as a technical savant, and he brought a generation of experience to his work. Alas, a replacement editor falls well short of that skill set in assessing the iPad’s chances to change mobile computing. Megan McArdle, the magazine’s business and economics editor, wrote this under-researched assessment of a product she’s never used.

The iPad does a bunch of things, but none of them exceptionally well. You can’t read it in full daylight, and its battery life is much shorter than Kindle’s. With no true built-in keyboard or ability to multitask, it’s not a substitute for a laptop — and unlike my iPhone, it won’t fit in a pocket, take pictures, or make calls. Unless you need it for one of its speciality uses, it doesn’t replace anything you already have; it’s just one more thing to carry.

Pages, from Apple's video demo

It appears McArdle is among the unwashed masses of journalists who didn’t enjoy a few minutes with the real product before writing her April piece on Kindle vs. iPad. I’ve owned the former for a year and expect the latter within the week. But it’s possible that McArdle will want to revise her gradecard about “doing nothing exceptionally well.” All she needs to motivate her corrections are the Apple videos online this week showing off Mail and Pages, the iPad’s e-mail and writing tools. Yes, this might be something else to carry — something more useful to a business than a copy of The Atlantic. Aside from a smartphone like the 3GS iPhone, I can’t see what else she would need to tote. And at just 24 ounces, this new Apple tool is likely to carry a heft to make the 6-ounces of April’s Atlantic seem like dead weight. Read the rest of this entry »