We spent most of 2009 listen to an unceasing stream of information about the world ’s financial crisis . But not all the news was bad for Mac businesses . Here are some of the highlights :
Snow Leopard Server
Is Apple serious about the business community ? This twelvemonth , the party cut the price of its server package in one-half and added numerous features pitch to turn IT administrator ’ head .
Snow Leopard Server ( $ 499 ;) now includes Address Book Server and Mobile Access Server as well as Push services for e - mail and calendaring . Instead of a confusing mash of licensing options , now there is just one — inexhaustible access . Most of the server computer software ’s subsist features saw improvements in speed and ease of use .
The Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server
As a follow up , Apple release the $ 999 Mac miniskirt with Snow Leopard Server ( ) . The miniskirt has a dual - gist 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo processor , 4 GB of RAM , a Gbit ethernet larboard , FireWire 800 , and five USB 2.0 ports . It also has a second interior Serial ATA hard drive in place of an ocular drive , which brings it up to 1 terabyte of internal storage . Combined with Snow Leopard Server ’s workgroup shaft , this compact , lowly - toll server is a great new selection for modest business organisation , small workgroups , and schools .
iWork ‘09
Introduced in January , Apple ’s iWork ‘ 09 improved Apple ’s $ 79 office suite with a innkeeper of raw features . Keynote ‘ 09 ( ) got new animation power . Pages ‘ 09 ( ) gained the ability to post mix with Numbers spreadsheets and go supportingMathTypeandEndNote X2 — a big help for scientists and faculty member in especial . Numbers ‘ 09 ( ) beefed up with dear charts and formulas . Apple also found the genus Beta of iWork.com , a young online service for partake document .
Social networking
Even though the likely loss of employee productiveness give some pause , this class line of work embraced social networking land site such asTwitterandFacebookto push their businesses . One view depict business role of Twitter jumped more than 250 percent from last spring . ( you may follow Macworld ’s Business Center at @macworldbiz or Macworld ’s general Twitter story at @macworld . )
The cloud
Dell may have tried to trademark the term right smart back in 2007 , but it was 2009 when“the cloud”came into its own as a buzz idiom . “ Cloud computer science ” loosely pertain to Web - base political program that rely on aloof data point centers . One select example is theGoogle Apps . Those programs keep on to make inroads into businesses , luring some high - visibility groups , such as the metropolis employees ofLos Angeles , away from Microsoft Office and other desktop platform . But several misadventure this year , include information loss by T - Mobile Sidekick users and some notable service outage , also drew aid to some of the problems with the swarm computing model .
Onward to 2010
Next year , we count forward to the newfangled variant of Microsoft Office for Mac . This update will put back Microsoft ’s venerable Mac tocopherol - mail programme , Entourage , with Outlook for Mac . Microsoft has also say the update will bring back Visual Basic for Applications ( VBA ) , the programming spoken communication that many clientele relied on extensively for macros and have bitterly grieved for since it was take away from Office 2008 .
