The Apple Trinity

For Outlook replacement(s) I use: Apple mail, iCal and Address Book. I know, “Wow, built in applications for the Mac, how cutting edge.” However, these programs are far superior to any application I have found for the Mac so far. It is strange using three programs that were previously housed under one program on my PC before. It took some getting used to, but they are each independently stable, useful and have more under the hood than what first appears. There is nothing I could do in Outlook that I cannot do with each of these programs. They are cogged together and you can send information from one to the other without a hitch. It is also easy to get information to other programs I use in my day-to-day practice. I am able to sync all the information with my Blackberry via PocketMac Blackberry. I am able to make calls from Address Book using Skype. I am also able to get google directions directly from Address book. I can even have ical email me reminders for business appointements.

I cannot say enough about how well these programs are integrated with each other and how stable the programs are on whole. I have never had any buggy issues with these programs. The final thing I would say is that these programs all seem far more simple than they really are. The more you tinker around, the more things you discover.

  • For a passionate look at what is available in Apple Mail visit Hawk Wings
  • For interesting links to subscrible to on ical, visit icalshare (not really productive but cool)
  • For those of you in love with all things Google there is an interesting calendar solution being developed at Spanning Sync
  • For a look at the integration of Apple’s Address book with other programs see this article in Low End Mac.

I know a number of people have been extremely satisfied with Daylite, Lawstream,Entourage and Filemaker Pro programs, to name a few. Many of these solutions go beyond Outlook and how it would be used as a full case management system. For me, none of these solutions quite worked. I spent roughly 30 days with each of them. It is a taste thing. If you don’t like cilantro, I can’t make you like cilantro. On some programs, like Daylite, I think I could learn to love the program. However, when I transferred my 243 contacts it was going to require quite a bit of reworking to get the tags fixed. This coupled with the inability to transfer over my ical just made the program difficult to embrace. There are a number of attorneys who think Daylite is the software solution for case management and Outlook replacement. I strongly suggest taking advantage of the free trials offered by many software developers in this area and see whether they work for you.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Software for the Law Office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.