Backups are tedious, time consuming, and inconvenient to schedules, but they’re critical for all businesses, especially small ones that don’t have IT departments in charge of such things. Mac OS X Leopard’s built-in backup software, Time Machine, backs up documents automatically. Should you accidentally delete your tax return, payroll info, or even if you just destroy part of it, you can easily call up Time Machine and travel backwards in hours, days, or weeks through time—onscreen, of course—until you find the particular file you were looking for.

Because it’s automatic, you don’t need to force your employees to come in on the weekends to babysit the backup. It’s a tradeoff, however: Time Machine stores its backup information on an attached hard drive, a Leopard server, or a Time Capsule wireless storage device (www.apple.com, $299 for 500GB). Time Machine won’t make a copy that you can take off-site in case your office burns down, and it won’t let you keep stuff indefinitely (when the drive fills up, it starts deleting weekly backups). Still, it’s a lot better than no backup at all, and it’s easy to restore individual files quickly, without needing to spelunk through piles of removable media for an earlier version of the file. Think of it as a “Time- and Bacon-saving Machine” when calculating its benefit to your business.

COMPANY: Spruce Body Lab   EMPLOYEES: 12   LOCATION: Vancouver, British Columbia

Customers visiting Spruce Body Lab for services like microdermabrasion or massage will notice the day spa’s calming design: subtle use of color; a logo in shades of green, suggesting new life; and a white iMac G5 at the front counter.

That iMac isn’t just for show: The spa uses Xsilva LightSpeed (from $1098/single user) point-of-sale software to handle invoices, inventory, and a customer database. LightSpeed even integrates with iCal for scheduling appointments.

“The Mac is a user-friendly and high-quality product with attention to detail,” says Kathryn Sawers, the company’s creative director and general manager. “It is a good fit for our business from an aesthetic perspective as well: We are a very modern and polished facility, and the Mac design complements that.”

The company uses Adobe Creative Suite for marketing materials, Adobe Contribute to update its website at sprucebodylab.com, and Microsoft Office for word processing, invoicing, and other business tasks.

iWORK
Apple’s iWork software does a lot for just $79. The Pages word processor, Numbers spreadsheet, and Keynote presentation software let you take advantage of Apple’s army of designers and software engineers to make your company’s documents and presentations stand apart from generic business documents. Naturally, iWork is available exclusively on the Mac. (For Mac|Life reviews of iWork ’08, see Nov/’07, p20, or search for each app’s name at www.maclife.com.)

In addition to great-looking documents, iWork can also open and save Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, letting your business exchange files with Office users in a Microsoft-dominated world. And at just $79, iWork is a lot less expensive than Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac ($299.95, www
.microsoft.com/mac).

You can use Pages to create all kinds of great-looking newsletters, flyers, “take one” sheets, brochures, and other documents. Numbers can keep track of your company’s cash flow, and help you create beautiful 2D and 3D charts to help your employees, associates, and investors visualize what the data really mean. Keynote helps you prepare unforgettable presentations. iWork isn’t for everyone, but it’s a capable software suite.

COMPANY: Sea Shell City   EMPLOYEES: 40   LOCATION: Fenwick Island, Delaware

When it’s raining in the beach resort town of Fenwick Island, Delaware, vacationers head to the shops on Coastal Highway. The staff at Sea Shell City, a longtime landmark of the town, loves rainy days.

They also love the Macintosh, using six iMacs as cash registers, plus more iMacs and a Mac mini for the business office and mail-order operations. The company has only one PC, tucked away in a back office. Though many of the store’s seasonal workers come from countries where Microsoft Windows dominates even more than in the U.S., the store hasn’t received many complaints from workers about the Mac. In fact, the workers catch on quickly.

“The only problem we have noticed sometimes is that the foreign employees like to go online when no one is looking to check mail from home and the news,” says Virginia Davidson, who helps her family run the business. “We hope in the future to have a lounge set up so that during their free time they can connect with home a little easier.”

Sea Shell City uses ShopKeeper ($1395/multiple user) for its point-of-sale software, and MYOB for accounting. Its website, at seashellcity.com, is served from 
an iMac.

YOU CAN RUN MICROSOFT OFFICE
Despite no love lost between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Microsoft continues to improve upon the Office suite for OS X. Office 2008 for Mac includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage (the Mac version of Outlook, if you’ve used it in past work environments) and sports a few Mac-only features to balance out what it lacks.

Word 2008 for Mac offers one big advantage over Word 2007 for Windows: Its Page Layout view makes it easy to create elegant-looking documents. Excel 2008 includes premade ledger sheets, making it easy to keep track of finances without worrying about how to set up a spreadsheet.

If your office already runs a Microsoft Exchange server, you can use Entourage to connect to the server and use most of the features that full-fledged Outlook users can use, including email, calendaring, and contact management. Windows Outlook users have no parallel to Entourage’s My Day feature, which lets you see your schedule at a glance in a single window on your Desktop.

CHEAPER LICENSING FEES FOR SERVERS
If you’ve ever bought a server for a Windows network, you know how they get you. Hint: It’s the licensing fees. Microsoft Windows Small Business Server, for example, has a retail price of $1,089. For that price, five clients can connect to the server. Each additional client costs $77. If you opt instead for a full-fledged copy of Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2007, the pricing structure is even more complex.

Mac OS X server costs $999 and includes an unlimited client license, making the accounting simple. It uses the familiar Mac interface, so you don’t need to go out and get a certification before you set up your network. It’s got the communication and management capabilities you’d expect for a small business, and some you might not have thought about, such as a Wiki Server to make your intranet more collaborative and flexible. And, as your business grows, you don’t have to shell out for more client licenses.

COMPANY: Bottlerocket Wine & Spirit   EMPLOYEES: 12   LOCATION: New York City

Bottlerocket Wine & Spirit was ranked second in Zagat’s New York City Gourmet Shopping and Entertaining 2008 and 2009. It’s no surprise that the shop is doing so well: Its founder, Tom Geniesse, understands that a good shopping experience makes customers happier and keeps them coming back.

Naturally, Geniesse is a Mac user. “I love Apple and always have. The company designs with people in mind. They provide an excellent, intuitive, and beautiful experience. We are trying to do the same thing at Bottlerocket.”

Geniesse is really trying, and customers notice. For customers with kids, for example,  there’s a “children’s nook” with toys and books to keep them busy. Customers can bring dogs in too; the shop provides water and dog treats. Themed display islands, organized by intended use of the wine, make selection easier for novices. Each bottle also has tasting notes posted nearby.

The company chose PayGo ($349/year) as its point-of-sale software, and uses it to offer better service: The tasting notes for each wine are stored in PayGo’s database, so customers receive each bottle’s tasting notes with their receipt. Bottlerocket also uses PayGo to power its website’s shopping cart, running on “a big fat [Apple] Xserve,” at bottlerocketwine.com.

BECAUSE IT'S A MAC
Apple has made the Mac the best computing experience available, so why would you accept anything less for your business? Sure, Macs costs more than low-end PCs initially, but isn’t it worth it in the end to pay a little bit more up front for a computer that works with you, rather than against you? Mac users love their computers, so, if you can, it makes nothing but sense to bring that to your business. The strides Apple has made in offering business solutions over the past decade are making the Mac a more sensible choice, as our profiles of Mac-using businesses throughout this article prove.

COMPANY: Arockalypse    EMPLOYEES: 3   LOCATION: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Photo by Matthew Carden

When Arockalypse founder Jeff Mains was starting his skateboarding, footwear, and clothing shop, he went into it with an open mind: Though he was a Mac user with a degree in graphic design, he would be willing to accept a Windows-based point-of-sale solution for his business, if it were the best choice.

“After researching many other specialty retailers that I know through our industry, I realized so many people were not happy with PC-based POS,” says Mains, who opened the shop after years of working as a marketing representative for some of the clothes he now sells in the store. “I had researched LightSpeed through Apple, and after months of considering, and researching, it was apparent that Mac and Xsilva were appropriate to our needs. It also fits our business ideals, style, and standard.”

Mains says that as the Mac gains mainstream popularity, his customers have started to ask about it when they see one in the store. He responds with the reasons the Mac is better. Mains’ passion for the Mac is much like his passion for skateboarding.

The company also uses the Mac to design apparel, skateboards, and its website, which is packed with action photos and video of local skaters, at arockalypsenow.com.