Apple’s new Airport Extremes, announced a few days ago, have several features that make them very useful for small business environments.

Foremost is the guest network. As well as your main Wireless LAN, you can set up a secondary wLAN which can be restricted to internet access only – preventing access to your internal network. the Airport Extreme can be configured to allow devices on this guest network to communicate with each other, if you wish.

Security options are interesting here – none, WPA or WPA/WPA2. This is because the 802.11n spec does not allow WEP security.

The new Airport Extreme also has two radios built in – one operating on the 5Ghz band and one on the 2.4Ghz. This allows useful network traffic separation – 802.11n-only on 5Gz for all new network equipment, and 802.11n/g/b on 2.4Ghz for older equipment. Each frequency can have a separate SSID – useful in some circumstances, but will break the seamless roaming Apple brought out in the Airport update earlier this week.

As before, holding down Option when selecting radio mode gives full access to the radio choices. However, the defaults of 802.11/a/n and 802.11b/g seem perfectly reasonable.

In summary, this device is useful for separating out older devices onto their own network, allowing newer computers with 5Gz-capable network adapters their own clear space without the need for two wireless access points.

However, if you still need WEP access for old devices on the 2.4Ghz side, then you will still need a second access point. If that’s the case, and you already have one on 5Ghz and one on 2.4GHz, then there’s nothing really to recommend rushing out and buying a new Airport Extreme just yet.

Their final new feature is MobileMe integration. If you have a MobileMe account, USB hard drives attached to the access point are shared via the Back to My Mac. Useful for getting access to data from wherever you are – if you can get Back to My Mac working properly. I never have!

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under Comment, Review.
Comments: none

Head-to-Head: Parallels Desktop for Mac vs. VMware Fusion:

In the majority of overall averages of our tests, Parallels Desktop is the clear winner running 14-20% faster than VMware Fusion. The one exception is for those that need to run Windows XP, 32-bit on 2 virtual processors, VMware Fusion runs about 10% faster than Parallels Desktop.

My question is, do users notice 14-20% in real life use? My guess is that they don’t.

(Via MacTech.com.)

Posted: March 6th, 2009 under Comment, Review.
Comments: none

Google announced yesterday that Google Sync is now available for the iPhone, adding it to a list including the Blackberry, Windows Mobile devices, some Sony Ericcson and some Nokia phones. The iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices will synchronise calendars as well as contacts in the address book. Is this enough to replace Mobile Me if you have a Mac as well as an iPhone?

Mobile Me is a paid-for service (£69, $99 per annum) that enables the near real-time synchronisation of calendars, contact information and a number of @me.com email addresses. It’s built into OSX and the iPhone and (after initial teething problems) has proven to be a reliable way to keep the information on your Mac in synch with your phone. But even with its other perks – 20Gb of internet storage, email addresses – it’s expensive. Can Google Sync now be used instead?

The answer is yes, but there are compromises here. Firstly, you lose those perks. Secondly, if you’re using Activesync on your iPhone already it simply can’t be done – Google Sync requires Activesync and there can only be one Activesync configuration. Thirdly, it’s nothing like seamless. You need to set up Address Book, create new calendars, move data around and back up regularly – this is a beta after all.

However, if you wish to replace Mobile Me, or if you use one of the other Smartphones that work with Google Sync, this is an interesting opportunity. At the very least, I hope it will cause Apple to revisit the pricing of Mobile Me. I’ll pay for simplicity of configuration, but I don’t think I’ll be the only one who will think “is this worth it any more?” when my Mobile Me subscription rolls around again.

Posted: February 10th, 2009 under Comment, News.
Comments: 1

You would think that the ability to access your information anywhere by the simple expedient of moving it away from one physical location, out onto the internet, would be compelling. And it is for a lot of people – Cloud Computing is the tech bubble of 2008-2010. But we are already starting to see the problems with the model. Hopefully this should go some way to bursting the bubble and let cloud computing assume its proper place – a useful tool, not a universal panacea.

The major problem is that all you’re actually doing is moving your data from one physical location to a different one. A different one where you have less control – you have no say how your data is being maintained. How, or even if, it’s being backed up. What it’s being used for. How you can get it back. How it can be deleted. Your company’s data is the very essence of its existence. Surely you must do everything to preserve it?

A few days ago I wrote about people being locked out of their Google Apps accounts. Commonly used services, for example Google Notebook, cease development. And a couple of days ago, Ma.gnolia, a major social bookmarking service provider, suffered major data loss and has gone offline. The people fighting with Google Apps finally got access to their documents again. Ma.gnolia users may not be so lucky – at over 48 hours’ downtime, it could well be the site is gone for good – along with all its users’ bookmarks.

So how can a balance be struck between the convenience of data being stored in the cloud, universally accessible, and remaining in your control? A few simple rules should cover it.

Read more »

Posted: February 1st, 2009 under Comment, News.
Comments: 2

The Business of Software – Don’t ever use Google Apps for anything important:

I’ve posted before on why I don’t think you should use Google Apps for your business. Here’s another reason. Should it go wrong, you can expect no help from Google whatsoever.

Who in their right mind could sensibly recommend businesses use this? Let alone the pain and complication suffered when, for whatever reason, it stops working, there are corporate legal issues here. Putting all your data where someone else determines whether you can get to it or not is so far away from corporate responsibility it’s unreal.

(Via Joel on Software.)

Posted: January 29th, 2009 under Comment, Links.
Comments: 1

The new Macbook Pros announced today from Apple are, in the main, evolutionary rather than revolutionary in terms of the business environment – slightly faster CPUs, larger hard disks, multitouch trackpad technology from the Macbook Air, better casing – none of these are going to require across-the-board upgrades. However, two things in particular stand out.

Technorati Tags:
Macbook, Macbook Pro, Cinema Display

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Posted: October 14th, 2008 under Comment.
Comments: none

Getting there eventually is not an experience I usually associate with Apple. Famously, their stuff Just Works. The launch of the iPhone 3G in the UK has been a clear and frustrating exception this week. OK, demand peaks like this are always terrible things to manage, but did Apple compound the issue by trying to do too much at once?

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Posted: July 13th, 2008 under Comment.
Comments: none

Around six weeks ago we wrote about why we thought using Google Apps Team Edition was no real substitute to having the same apps provided by in-house IT. The reasoning was, it has to be said, more gut-feeling than anything else – that it was a bad idea to have your corporate data anywhere other than on your corporate servers.

Now, it turns out that there is a very good reason indeed for keeping data in house only. The US PATRIOT act, allows data at Google – including your data – to be spied upon by the US Government with only the most limited of legal oversight. This is a clear conflict with any requirement your business for keeping its data confidential – that may be as simple as matters of competition.

Where it really strikes home though if you’re using data that can identify others. That could be for Marketing, information on clients, or even worse, processing information supplied to you by clients. Anything that you do that requires your use registered with the Information Commissioner? It’s pretty safe to say you must not use Google Apps to do it.

(Oh, and that’s whether you’ve actually registered or not!)

Be careful now. This is the article where the problem first emerged.

Posted: March 26th, 2008 under Comment, News.
Comments: none

We have to admit that the Macbook Air is a beautiful machine. It makes holding a laptop as little effort as holding an iPhone. Pricewise, it’s pretty good – £1199 for the 1.6GHz version. Battery life at five hours isn’t shabby either. The construction is simply beautifully clever. But it’s all show and no go.

Firstly, you can’t upgrade the memory. The solid-state hard disk adds a lot of cost – £639, and there’s no telling how long it will last. Solid state memory has a finite read-write cycle.

(incidentally, that means the secondhand value of machines with solid-state memory will be poor. How long can you predict it will last?)

But my main issue with them is that they’re not robust. Strength has definitely been compromised in favour of lightness. The body clearly flexes when you press on it even gently. (The Apple demonstrator watching me do this had a look of undisguised horror on her face.)

Sure, you can wrap it in a robust case of plastic or metal. Which will add the weight back and leave you with a poor performance to weight ratio. If you do that, you may as well have bought a Macbook Pro.

If style over substance matters – buy the Macbook Air. It is beautiful. It will sit perfectly on paper-free desks in gorgeously minimalist offices. If you need a machine on which to get your work done, get a Macbook Pro instead.

The Time Capsule is fairly useful in very small businesses. The combination of wireless router and Time Machine backup disk is good. I hope a software update to existing Airport Expresses will allow USB disks to be used as easily – there’s no reason why that shouldn’t happen. It was the one update that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the Keynote though. We’ll see.

Technorati Tags:
Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, Apple, MacWorld

Posted: January 15th, 2008 under Comment.
Comments: 1

For most users of RSS readers, the news that NetNewsWire has gone free is either good or, if you’ve already bought the software, not really relevant. And don’t get me wrong – it’s a good newsreader. It’s fast, intuitive, clean and clear. It also, however, synchronises with the Newsgator online feed reading and aggregation service.

Now that is usually seen to be a good thing. It allows you to read your feeds online if you’re away from your computer. It keeps what you’ve read synchronised. It allows Newsgator to pull only one copy of message from a server, and redistribute it to everyone using Newsgator or NetNewsWire. This is a good thing for those running RSS feeds. Less load.

It also has a downside. It means that Newsgator knows about all that you’re reading. It knows about the private feeds internal to your company. It might not be able to access them all, but it means that the fact that they exist is out in the hands of another company, and leakage of this sort of information is not good and should be actively prevented where possible.

Luckily, there are more free newsreaders out there. My pesonal favourite is Vienna – an open source newsreader, built especially for OSX. It’s just as functional (no synchronisation of course) and is close enough in look and feel to be an easy switch. We think if you have concerns about information leakage, you should give it a try.

Technorati Tags:
software, vienna, netnewswire, newsgator

Posted: January 10th, 2008 under Comment.
Comments: 1