Thursday, August 28, 2008

MacJournal

One little app that I find indispensable is MacJournal from Mariner Software. Mariner is an old timer in the software biz--if you are old enough to remember pre-Windows or even Windows 2.0, you may recall that there were other spreadsheets and word processors before MS came to dominate. A very good one was Pascal and Pascal Write, which was a Mariner product.

MacJournal is touted as a journaling and blog software package. It does do that stuff--I can do a post in MacJournal and have it post here, if I want. For me, though I could do that stuff in a lot of different ways. The value in MacJournal, as I see it, is a catch all for all the stuff you need to keep--at least for a while, but don't know where to put. It is like the little corner of my desk where stuff that is important enough to keep but not important enough or long lived enough to file sits.

Say you are doing research on a project. You get stuff from newspapers, emails web searches, whatever. You know you are going to need this stuff, but it isn't worth bookmarking in your browser. Or, perhaps you just want it all in one place under the project name. MacJournal is perfect for organizing all that stuff. You can put whatever you want into it (at least so far I have not found anything that would not work), organize it the way you want and have it all at your fingertips if you need it.

It is one of the few software packages that I really am glad I have--a real convenience rather than a boring necessity.

Hopefully soon they will come out with an iPhone version to sync with the desktop version. Even if they don't, it is a great package.

Accounting Software

The one major difficulty in running a business entirely on Macs is the availability of decent accounting software. Basically, you have two options: Quickbooks and MYOB. Quickbooks is easy to use and works fine for a sole proprietor, but it falls flat as things get a little more complicated. MYOB Accountedge, though it has a strange interface, can take a small business much farther.

It has a good chart of accounts functionality, good controls built in and is generally superior to Quickbooks in almost every way. However, it has limitations which our SmallBiz is starting to run up against. We need something a little more robust, that can handle consolidation and other things that are tougher to do in entry level packages. I would love to use Peachtree, but unless you are running Windows, that is not an option. I have tried almost everything I can find for the Mac, but nothing seems to be close.

We have looked at online stuff, like NetSuite, but we don't like that option very much. Perhaps we are a little old fashioned about having our financial information on teh interwebs, but the real issue is speed. We have a pretty speedy T-1 connection here, but these things are still very slow to run. Too slow.

So, the search goes on. Feel free to post any suggestions and I will definitely check them out.

OmniFocus and OmniFocus for the iPhone

Once I got the iPhone, I started looking for some cool apps. Since one of the weak spots in Exchange for Mac and the horrible iCal is task lists, that was want I really wanted. I wanted to be able to find something where I could enter a task on my iPhone when it popped into my head and have it sync with my computer at some point. My old method of emailing it to myself, worked okay with the Treo, but it was inefficient, particularly since it takes longer to send an email with the iPhone.

I finally settled on OmniFocus. One reason I selected this is that it is made by the Omni Group, which also makes the very excellent OmniGraffle, which we have on all of our machines, and OmniOutliner and OmniPlan, which we have on several. OmniFocus is not supposed to be a run of the mill task manager. It is based on David Allen's "Getting Things Done". GTD is an interesting and useful system. I have read the book and agree with much of what he says, so I thought this would work well.

Unfortunately, OmniFocus is not ready for prime time. To get the system to work you have to buy both OmniFocus and OmniFocus for the iPhone. In addition you need a MobileMe (nee .Mac) account or another webDav server, so the whole setup is quite pricey. The worst part, is that to sync the iPhone version and the desktop version, you have to pay full price for what is essentially an alpha version of the software. They send updates every day, but it is a long way from being done. Getting the daily update is like playing roulette. You spins the wheel and you takes your chances. Is the update going to fix things? Or is it going to send the whole thing crashing down. Lately, crashing has come up more often than not.

I can't sync anything since an update last week. Even more unfortunate, support, which is typically very good with Omni Group products, is nonexistent. If you try to get help, you get a notice that they are very busy writing the software and may get back to you within three weeks. If you go to the forums on their site, you get dogpiled by GTD true believers who will usually say something to the effect that "working software is not GTD canonical".

I hope they get things worked out, because this has potential to be an excellent app, but it is crazy to charge full price for alpha software. I can guarantee that we will not be rolling out OmniFocus throughout the company for a while and we will start thinking hard about using less Omni Group software in the future. After all, even Microsoft waits until it has a beta version before selling it to the masses.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Testing the iPhone 3G

So I bought an iPhone 3G. It is a test to see if it is good enough to replace the Treos and BlackBerrys we use. That the iPhone was way cool was obvious from the start, but we did not consider it until the latest generation for a couple of reasons.

The first was that it didn't work well with Exchange. Until they got that working, there was no way. The second reason is that AT&T is the only choice. In our experience AT&T and its predecessor, Cingular, simply has lousy coverage compared with Verizon. Also, the slow wireless network made the cooler features of the iPhone not very cool.

I will update as I go along on this test, but I will post some initial reactions. I had a Treo with the Palm OS, which was great for phone and email but weak on anything else. And the Treos with Windows have been just terribly buggy.

The phone part of the iPhone is very good. Better than the BlackBerrys. I haven't had a chance to test the coverage very well, but it works well as a phone where you have coverage.

Email is going to take some getting used to. It was much faster to send and receive emails on my Treo. Part of that is that I have not yet mastered the keyboard, but a good bit of it was design. On the Treo, I can be in the email part with two clicks. It is a minimum of three and often more, depending on what you were last doing, on the iPhone. With the Treo, I could do a lot with one hand, which made clearing out the inbox easy when I had a little downtime. Can't do that with the iPhone. It needs some keyboard shortcuts or something. And, it also needs the ability to delete multiple messages at a time.

Setting the iPhone up to work with our Exchange server was a breeze. Much simpler than configuring a new Treo with Good or a BlackBerry. And everything syncs well, although it doesn't sync all messages.

Battery life has been good. It was horrible when I first got it, but after a few cycles, it is fine without using a lot of the battery saving tips.

So far, I like it and will probably keep it, but I am not entirely convinced. Not enough to roll it out for everyone else yet. I'll keep you posted.

iWork versus MS Office

We use iWork a good bit here.  In fact, I have been messing around with Keynote since it first came out as a stand alone product.  We also use Microsoft Office.  Not the Office 2008, since we have to use Excel and the 2008 version of Excel is completely worthless in a business environment.  However, that is another post.  Here I thought I would give some general impressions of iWork and compare it with Office.

There is a lot to like about iWork, but there is also a tremendous amount that could be improved.  Overall, we probably use Keynote the most.  It is clearly better than Powerpoint in so many ways, almost all of our presentations (and we do a lot) are done in Keynote.  Keynote is simply cleaner and easier to use than Powerpoint.  It takes a while to learn where everything is in the inspector, but for most presentations it is better and quicker than Powerpoint, which is bloated beyond repair.

Pages is a decent word processor.  We use it less than Keynote, but it works well for simply stuff:  letters, fax cover sheets, etc.  Because it is not cross platform and many of the features that are used in business are still rudimentary (like tracking changes) there is a lot we simply cannot do in Pages.

We play with Numbers.  We live and die with spreadsheets, so it will never replace Excel for us, but it has some nice features.  It makes nifty charts, so there is a lot that can be done with Numbers that we previously would have used something like DeltaGraph to finish.  The multiple spreadsheet in one page makes it nice for certain things, like dashboards, but it is a long way from being a real work tool.

The biggest problem iWork is that it simply does not work with most of the business world.  Folks who don't use Macs can't use iWork files.  This is less of a problem with Keynote, since when we send presentations, we almost always .pdf them before sending.

The absolute biggest problem with iWork, which makes the name sort of silly, is that it is almost impossible to email successfully an iWork file to another user--even if they have a Mac.  If I want to solicit comments on a presentation, for example, I can't just send the file around to other folks in the office.  In fact, you can't email it at all unless you have Stuffit installed.  And, the geniuses at Apple decided not to include Stuffit in OS X 10.5.  Even if you have Stuffit, it is still more trouble than it is worth to email an iWork file.  It doesn't send the file, but an archive.  This guarantees that something is always lost in translation.

The verdict? iWork is nice--very nice for some applications--but it is not really useful for business.  It is great for home use if you don't want to shell out for Office, but it is really little more than an updated Appleworks.  Until Apple makes collaboration easier with iWork, they should simply stop pretending that it is something that even a small business will find useful.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Apple Keyboards

First off, let me say that I love the newfangled Apple Keyboards. I think they have given me a few extra WPM by not having to press so far down with each keystroke.

But in the WTF are they thinking department, why do they not make a wireless version with a number pad? They did it in the older wireless keyboards, so it can’t be the technology that eludes them. In a business, folks are often called upon to key in numbers, since it is not uncommon that numbers are important in business.

So I had to add another machine yesterday. Just about everything else in the office is wireless and (although it pains me a little to admit it, since I don’t buy into the Apple is waaaay cool thing) I like the clean look of no wires.

Unfortunately, that is no longer an option. I can either drag out one of the extra old school wireless keyboards (which isn’t a good option since there is a reason they are not being used), go with a wired keyboard or go with a wireless keyboard with no number pad. This latter is simply not an option for 99.9% of the folks here.

Come on Apple. Get a clue and make wireless keyboards with number pads.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Apple ProCare

The best thing about running a business on Macs is that you can go a long way without bringing on any IT folks as long as you are a reasonable computer user. Unfortunately, machines break or otherwise mysteriously screw up. When that happens, you have to try to figure it out for yourself. Teh Internets make this fairly simple. Google is your friend. He will typically send you to a post on the ever helpful Apple Support Discussions, Mac OS X Hints or some other support community.

Sometimes, you need professional help. If you are near an Apple Store, the Genius Bar is usually very helpful, especially if you pick up AppleCare with your machines. The problem with the Genius Bar is you head down to the store and have to stand in line with all the other folks with problems. The wait can be hours, which is not a productive way to spend a day.

The best way around this is to purchase an Apple ProCare account. ProCare is a nifty little service that lets you make appointments for service or other help from the comfort of your own office. Then you just arrive at the appointed time and let Geniuses figure it out for you. It costs only $99 per year and is a bargain--especially when there is a new iPhone release out.

Our Software

All of our machines, except the server run on OS X 10.5. I have not gotten around to upgrading the server, but hope to find the time soon.

Like most businesses, the bulk of what we do most days occurs in MS Office. We use Office 2004. I upgraded one machine to 2008 and had to go back. We simply cannot use 2008 because the new version of Excel (which we use probably more than anything) doesn't support macros. Because of this, key functions like XIRR and XNPV do not transfer from Mac to Windows very well. Well, not at all, so we are stuck. Excel 2008 really isn't any better than Numbers. It also lacks a Solver and other pretty important features.

For word processing, we probably use Pages and Word equally, depending on the user's preference. For presentations, we are almost 100% Keynote. Powerpoint used to be a great package, but now it is just a bloated pile of fail.

Our email, contacts and calendar are in Entourage. We don't love it and are always looking for an alternative (more on that later) but there are a couple of things we really like about it, like categories for contacts. We use a hosted Exchange service and love our provider of that for their great customer service. We aren't married to Exchange, but until Apple does something with their absolutely worthless iCal, there really isn't an alternative.

Other stuff we use often: Google Earth Pro, Fastrak Schedule, Omnigraffle, iChat, Safari and Firefox. We have a couple of machines with Parallels so we can run Windows. We basically do this for two reasons: 1) to test models in Excel before sending to Windows folks; and 2) to access certain web sites that only support IE.

Our Hardware

Just a quick note about the hardware we have here. We have a PowerMac G5 that is the server. It has dual 500 GB hard drives and is backed up with Retrospect to a VXA tape drive. We have a Freedom9 hardware firewall. Everything but the server is wireless with an Airport Extreme ("g") network with a couple of Airport Expresses to fill in the holes and tie in the printers. Most folks are on laptops--a mix of MBP CDs and C2Ds and one MacBook Air (a sweet machine--I can't wait until I need a new one so I can get a MBA)--although we do have a couple of iMacs (both Intel and PowerMac). We also have a couple of iBooks that serve as floaters in case someone needs a laptop.

For mobility, most folks have Treos, although we have a couple of Blackberrys and an iPhone 3G on the way for testing. We use Good to link them to our hosted exchange server, which works well.

Why Am I Here?

The Mac is almost the perfect platform for anyone who wants to run a business. You can do things with Macs that would require full time IT folks in a Windows environment. But, it is not without downsides. The biggest is the Apple just doesn't seem to care at all about small business, so there are not many good resources. Second, there are some holes in third party software available for businesses that run on OS X. It is getting better, but it does create problems for the business owner.

This blog will deal with the daily life of someone who runs a small business on the Mac and who is also the company IT department in doing so. Hopefully it will help other folks and hopefully other folks will help me. We will see.