[zinneken]

Business apps for the mac ...

email (I've never used anything better then Eudora)
address book (the one in OSX ... good for starters but not robust)
calendar (the one in OSX ... good for starters but not robust)
sales (CRM and POS)
group/network file management/share

Have I forgotten any? I con't think of any, but I'm sure there are others. Basically you'll find individual apps for each one of the tasks above that do a brilliant job, but I'm looking for one that does it all in one.

For example: every individual app has its own address book (so you end up writing 10 times the same contact details), its own this, its own that and the input of data becomes just a nightmare (and I'm not even talking about when you need to change something ...) It would just be brilliant if everything could sit in one place and be accessible in one place.

I've been hunting for weeks to try find a solid business software package that would do what I need it to and not what it wants me to. I'm sure you know the feeling when your mac acts PC like - doing what it wants when it wants the way it wants instead of the other way round. I'm turing to you all for help in my quest in finding a good business application on the mac - there are so many on PC I'd almost like the opportunity to cry on Steve's shoulder about it ... Anyway

Has anyone had experience with any application that could help me out? It doesn't need to be cross platform (although it wouldn't hurt). Thank to you all and mac bless you.

Zin.

[clarkgoble]

Outlook in MS Office is what I use to do a lot of that at work. I've not played around with Entourage too much. I know it does the shared calendars and so forth, much like Outlook, but I believe it lacks some features. For instance I wrote some VB scripts for Outlook that did some nice things in Outlook for custom contacts. I don't thin Entourage can do that sort of thing at all.

However I should add that I don't necessarily think the "one size fits all" solution is good. I really like how Apple is following the Unix approach to computing. Smaller apps that interact. In a sense the iApps are the attempt to bring that ethic to the Macintosh. Thus far it is a mixed success, if only because Mail and address are very weak. iCal got upgraded today so I can't comment too much on that. (I don't do heavy calender or time management, so it isn't something I can judge too well) However address is very weak, especially when contrasted with Outlook.

[besson3c]

I completely disagree with your opinion that Eudora is the best email app, in my opinion it's quite possibly the worst. A horrible GUI, and full of bugs.

Could you explain how the OS X Addressbook and iCal fall short? Perhaps we can help suggest something based on where/how you feel these programs fall short?

[besson3c]

Entourage does not do the shared calendar stuff.

[cpac]

Check out Daylite from MarketCircle. It's a cocoa CRM/PIM thing with very responsive developers.

[zinneken]

thanks for all the comments so far. DayLite is indeed one of the better alternatives yet, but it does not have email or file management integrated (as far as I could establish at least).

Entourage and Outlook are just no alternatives for a mac user - only my personal opinion. Also, talking about buggy software, with MS you find it.

The unix interacting applications approach is a good one - although Apple has made limited functionality tools for use by a real business.

mail, ical, address book fall short in that they do not interact with any other software (like a POS for example). I agree that eudora has still an old style interface, but its robustness is unparallelled (to me).

I have archives with more then 10000 messages - try throwing that to mail and see what happens. A real nightmare whereas eudora just doesn't bother how many messages you have. Eudora is always very reliable to me, that's why.

Anyone used anything else? Or did have some apps work successfully together?

[solitere]

Originally posted by zinneken:
Business apps for the mac ...

email (I've never used anything better then Eudora)
address book (the one in OSX ... good for starters but not robust)
calendar (the one in OSX ... good for starters but not robust)
sales (CRM and POS)
group/network file management/share
Zin.

I use Hansa Busieness Solutions software at the office. The Office/2 version are what we are using. And it should cover all your needs (Integrated Accounting Software with Sales Support, Sales Order, Stock, e-Mail and Calendar). It´s one of the better busieness software applications out there for Mac/Windows/Linux! Check it out and it´s possible to download a demoversion! http://www.hansaworld.com

[besson3c]

Entourage and Outlook are just no alternatives for a mac user - only my personal opinion. Also, talking about buggy software, with MS you find it.

You're right that there is no email program that will handle calendaring and GAL for the Mac. However, Outlook for the PC is not perfect either. You're right that the whole Apple vs. MS approach to apps differs. Outlook is a good example - a huge monolithic program that does a whole lot, but when problems arise the entire palace crumbles...

The Apple approach is smaller tools that interact with each other, as you said. It's possible to setup an LDAP server to query ADS/the GAL with a slight modification to the MS server, and hopefully it will be possible to do the shared calendaring with the upcoming rumored version of Entourage which will have this support, or iCal should Apple wish to go this direction (the foundation is already in place with a common and compatible format - vcal). Mail, Entourage, and the OS X Addressbook already support LDAP so with a bit of effort you can get your GAL going. Hopefully someday it is seen as a replacement altogther so that business aren't dependant on MS and their propetary tools in this regard.

mail, ical, address book fall short in that they do not interact with any other software (like a POS for example). I agree that eudora has still an old style interface, but its robustness is unparallelled (to me).

These apps are able to interact with toher software should the programmer wish to do this. Like I said, they are based on standard formats - mbox, vcal, a system wide addressbook based on vcards. Maybe in time we'll see this happen.

As far as Eudora, you are obviously using it as a POP3 client if you have 10000 messages. Eudora is fine as a POP3 client, but POP3 is outdated and likely on its way out. Eudora's IMAP support seems to be an afterthought, and it's SSL support was only recently added to its OS X version, and requires OS 9 for its classic version (whereas Netscape Messager will handle this with 7.6). If you attempt to enable SSL in Mac OS versions prior to 9 (which Eudora claims to support), Eudora will crash and burn. Another clumsy implementation is its Keychain support (at least in hte classic version). These days SSL is a virtual prerequiste for business use, if Eudora only recently acquired SSL support then it sort of shows that it is no longer leading the pack, in my opinion.

[zinneken]

Hansa looks very neat - I'll definitely look into it! Are there other, similar ERP-like systems for the mac?

Besson3c, quite a lesson you've given us! Brilliant info I was a little unaware of. I've heard about vcal, mbox and vcards but did not know they were standards.

So if these standards exist, why aren't there apps that already fully use it for the business environment?

Also, LDAP, ADS, GAL - never heard of those. Are they also standards? What do they do?

And, you're right about my eudora use - only pop3 and no ssl (didn't/don't know about any other way to manage the amount of emails I need to keep track of).

[cpac]

Originally posted by zinneken:
thanks for all the comments so far. DayLite is indeed one of the better alternatives yet, but it does not have email or file management integrated (as far as I could establish at least).

That depends on what you mean by "email" and "file management."

DayLite does allow you to send nice pretty, template based emails to your contacts (using the info stored in DayLite) and even to send bulk emails. They can either be simple text-based emails, or even more elaborate .pdfs. It works well with Apple Mail, and will work with any email client that supports Applescript. Also, it Syncs with Jaguar's Address Book.

As for file management: DayLite allows you to put file links to any file on your hard drive and to associate those files with a Project, Organization, Contact, etc. If this isn't enough (and the finder doesn't serve your needs), I'm curious what more you're looking for...

[gbhgbh]

If you've installed XDarwin, you can try Evolution.
http://www.ximian.com/products/evolution/