I’ve been a fan boy since my friend Bill purchased me an Apple TV. Before you knew it, I had a home full of Macs and my business is now all Macs. Coming from the PC world, there have been some challenges. A couple examples off the top of my head… no macros in Office, no Microsoft Access. That’s a pretty tiny list, though. The advantages of a Mac are turning out to be far greater than the disadvantages of being a Mac in a PC world.
With the latest hardware and software, Apple has been driving home some incredible features that are fantastic for any business.
The first is AirPlay. With an Apple TV for $99 and any widescreen TV, your office now has a place to seamlessly present what’s on your laptop. With the latest version of OSX, Mountain Lion adds an AirPlay button on the menu bar. Click it and your screen is displayed. You can even play video and sound!
AirDrop is next… part of Mountain Lion’s Built-In Sharing. Our client, Tinderbox, came by to edit some files. Rather than emailing or placing in a shared cloud folder… AirDrop simply allowed him to send the file directly to my Mac. AirDrop lists all the Macs in your vicinity and allows you to send and receive files (with permission). Awesome feature!
Time Machine is the easiest backup system ever. Put a Time Capsule on your network or just share a drive somewhere… and you’ve got a backup location for Time Machine which effortlessly backs up your Mac.
Apple has always had great tools to help you migrate from one Mac to the next, but Migration Assistant is simple and amazing! I recently bought a new MacBook Pro and needed to get al my apps and files over to it. Boot up with the Option button pressed and a simple wizard asks you if you want to restore from a Time Machine, re-install Mountain Lion fresh, or copy your files and apps from another Mac. Within an hour I was up and running!
Keep in mind that none of these network features actually require a network administrator and difficult configurations. As with most everything that Apple produces, they just work.
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