Comments on: The Biggest Opportunity Apple is Missing

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:30:35 +0000

@cris:

Unfortunately, no. I’m not aware of any timekeeping program for Mac that I really want to use.

By: cris emmons

cris emmons — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 22:41:16 +0000

I’ve been using Timeslips on the Mac for 15 years, and I’m finally thinking I need to change to a new billing program. I dread it. I have very basic needs - input time and expenses, ability to track timekeepers’ hours, run aging and transaction reports….basically, that’s all. Many of the functions I leave alone.

Can you tell me a program supported by Mac that is closest to timeslips, and easy to use?

Thanks.

By: Jeff Auxier

Jeff Auxier — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:07:23 +0000

I have been clinging to an old Apple version of TimeSlips for the last 11 years since it is simply the best billing program I’ve found for my law office, and I’ve found a reasonably easy way to make it work in a multi-user environment. It requires OS 9 to run, though, and OS 9 is getting harder and harder to maintain.

I echo the sentiments of this article. A really good and easy to use billing software program for attorneys using Mac would be a blessing.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 02:57:06 +0000

Certainly in a multi-user organization like a law firm, billing data does typically reside on a server. The real issue is the client-side interface.

Lawyers bill time in six-minute increments, and the interface needs to be as seamless and as pain-free as possible. A big billing problem for lawyers - especially young lawyers - is failing to capture time worked, usually resulting in quota shortfalls and creating the temptation to pad the billing records elsewhere.

I don’t think a web-based interface cuts it just yet. Even web 2.0, AJAXy and slick, might not be seamless enough to beat a user interface I would expect from the Apple design team.

By: genehack

genehack — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:30:03 +0000

I’m probably just not aware enough of the issues in the problem domain, but it really seems like billing software is something that you’d want running on a server, maybe accessed via a web form or something like that. Easier to back up the data, much easier to analyze the data, etc.