Hackers choose Windows machines because they are the low hanging fruit on the tree. There are ample ripe unprotected windows machines to spread viruses and they are the dominant machine by numbers in the market. This is the main reason that Macs are fairly safe. I would bet a talented hacker could write a virus to infect a Mac however the time and energy exerted would be far greater than writing them for Windows. Hackers, just like business people, will chase after the greatest reward for the least cost and effort. With the Mac base growing rapidly and Windows becoming more secure with Vista and Windows 7, some attention will likely be shifted towards the Mac in the coming years. Whether that equates to a successful virus will be determined in time.

There have been worms released in the Mac community. Months ago a worm was embedded in the latest iWork software that was shared through torrents. Anyone that downloads software illegally deserves to be infected in my opinion. There is also virus protection software available, however it’s hotly debated as to whether one needs to run it at this time. Some consider it a good protector for what could happen. My personal belief is that wise user behavior is the biggest deterrent for viruses. There are vulnerabilities in web browsers and operating systems that are patched all the time. To my knowledge the vulnerabilities still require the user to type in the administer password to allow the nasty virus entrance to the warm cozy confines of the mac hard drive.

This series is about my experience with the Mac at work and we chose at my work not to run virus protection on the Mac. For the companies windows machines we use an enterprise version from Symantec endpoint protection. That is controlled from a server that manages the virus definition files and will notify IT if a computer has issues or hasn’t been scanned for a while. I received a call from IT asking me to start up my Dell Laptop and run the virus protection scan so that it would be up to date recently. Its quite costly for a company to defend against viruses and I’m happy that I don’t need to participate in that process any longer, for now…

I would caution any Mac user to be very cautious about how you boast that macs are immune to viruses because once the target on the apple becomes big enough then viruses will be aimed at the target. Hopefully the recent and future advances in OS and browser security will continue to advance and make those attacks fail. So please make sure that your OS and all other programs are up to date, stay off the torrents, and clicking through sites wisely will reduce the likelihood of infection. Mac security and viruses is a story that is still being written and will never be complete.

I think the program compatibility issue will be mostly resolved within a few years. Software companies will begin developing Mac compatible software for most windows only programs in order to grow their companies. This will only happen when there is a large enough customer base available to invest into porting the application over to the Mac. It doesn’t make good business sense until there is enough of a demand for the product to recoup their costs and generate profit. With the exploding popularity of the Mac and the iPhone finding it’s way into business their market share will only grow from here. The iPhone is a gateway gadget leading to the Macintosh computer. Many people using the iPhone that had not tried a Mac are being intrigued that there may be a better user experience on a computer for them. Visiting the Apple stores for their iPhone is generating more interest in the Computers which will drive growth. In addition, many of the applications that are installed on computers are being put into the cloud and accessed through the web browser. Google is leading the charge with their google docs push, and others are following. Faster broadband speeds, more sophisticated web development software and better browsers will push computer based applications to the web. This makes sense in a lot of ways where the application doesn’t need a lot of resources to complete the designed tasks.

The next big disadvantage is the lack of business support. I had issues with connecting my Mac to the windows domain. I called 1800-myapple and although they tried to help, they didn’t have the knowledge to solve my problem. Apple needs to alleviate some of the fear from users and IT staff by having better instructions and more knowledge available when we run into an issue. In their effort to help me they directed me to a document created by someone not related to Apple. Microsoft has a pay per incident team that will assist in solving a microsoft related problem until the issue is resolved regardless of how long it takes. From what I recall it was around $250 per incident which seems expensive, however there is no time limit to resolve the problem. In the upcoming Snow Leopard release Apple is integrating Exchange into the OS. Windows doesn’t have exchange integrated so it is quite obvious Apple is aiming for the business user. Apple needs to create a call center focused on the business user that is capable of solving business related computer/software issues.

Email is one of my biggest disappointments in making the switch. Microsoft doesn’t make an Outlook version for the Mac. There is a history where Outlook stopped development for the Mac and Entourage was left to pick up the slack in a relatively short period of time. They had to integrate exchange support into their existing program rather quickly with limited resources and have done a decent job with the latest version. That being said Entourage is well behind Outlook as far as a business class email client is concerned. They have similar concepts in grouping contacts, mail, tasks, and calendar into one program which I prefer, however It’s obvious where the development money is spend at Microsoft, on Outlook and not Entourage. When Snow Leopard is released I can move to the packaged apps in Mac OS X but then Contacts, Mail and Calendar will be three different programs rather than combined into one. I’m not excited about having to work between three different programs for my calendar and communications. Hopefully they will surprise us and allow us a single user interface that blends them all together into one user interface.

Connecting to windows servers is a little touchy. Many times I dont have issues connecting to the servers in the office, however there are times where they will not allow my Mac to connect. Usually waiting a short time and trying again will allow me in however this is an issue that should be fixed.

In Oracle on a windows machine the function keys are used to begin searches and or clear them as well. On the Mac the function keys dont seem to work the same. I have them setup in preferences to only be function keys when I press “fn” on the keyboard. This doesn’t work in Oracle. I’m forced to use the menu’s to start and clear searches and it does take extra time. Perhaps this is a simple fix but the answer has eluded me to this point. I am not able to get Safari to work with Oracle. I had to download Firefox which works very well.

This may be an isolated problem that I am having, but when I export files from Oracle they are exported as a .tsv file. In windows I associated the .tsv file extension with MS Excel and when I double clicked the file it opened with Excel. I’ve tried to associate .tsv with Excel on Mac but it wont allow me to select MS Excel as an option for the default program. If I open Excel and then choose to open the file from within excel it works fine. If I rename the extension .xls it will also open just by double clicking the file. As a work around, I created an automator script where I drag the .tsv file onto the automator program icon, it converts the extension to .xls and opens the file in excel. This isn’t a big hassle now that I figured out the work around, but it would be nice to just click on the file and have it open.

The software updates and patches are very big. For some reason Apples updates are quite large. Sometimes in the hundreds of megabytes and end up taking up too much bandwidth from our T-1 for others to continue working. Much of our work is done through the intranet and Oracle which are both hosted 2500 miles away. Now when there is an update to be completed I start the download when we head home for the day and complete it in the morning.

The cost of Macs are higher than a windows machine, but when one compares equal systems and benefit I think the cost is pretty close. The programs that come with the Mac as well as the superior build quality put the two much closer than many people think. I purchased the 24″ iMac for $1,500 which is likely 30% higher than a comparable Dell system, however averaged over the four year life cycle I’m willing to spend an extra $112 per year in order to have the superior build quality and beauty of the Mac on my desk. Besides I make up the extra cost in additional up time and productivity only found on a Mac.

The last issue that I deal with is from the web browser when navigating through our company intranet that was built in visual studio. First let me say that I created our company intranet a few years back so I’m intimately familiar with how it works. There are times when I’m not allowed to view the intranet from the inside of our firewall. I click on my shortcut link and it brings up a dead page. The windows machine next to me has no issues accessing the site. This has happened in the past with windows machines and the fix was to hardcode the ip address of the server hosting the intranet in the host file on the local computer. With the Mac I’m told there are command line adjustments I can make to the host file however I’m not comfortable with making those changes. My work around is to access the intranet by going outside of the VPN to corporate and back in. If anyone has any good ideas for me to fix this issue please leave a comment. This is an intermittent problem and I do have a work around.

So to recap there are areas for the Mac to improve. Most of the issues I have are from 3rd party software developers and not OSX or the Mac specifically. The exploding popularity of the iPhone and the apple experience will drive more people to the Apple stores and to Mac computers. Apple has responded with some price cuts and have Snow Leopard nearing its ship date. 3rd party software developers are taking notice and will respond in hopes getting in at the early stages and growing their companies. The next few years should be exciting to say the least.

I was going to cover security in the next post but would the readers like to discuss a different topic? Sound off and let me know.

First I show off Finder. Finder is the file manager and equivalent to Explorer for windows. I use finder in columns view so that it is easy to drill down through folders and see the hierarchy in detail as I drill down to a file several folders deep. This alone is a huge improvement over explorer. Explorer can drill down by expanding folders in a vertical fashion, but its a bit difficult to navigate. Finder expands in columns from left to right and will continue to add columns as you continue to drill down. I drill down a bit and find a group of files that are mixed in file type such as movie, pictures, documents and Highlight them as a group. Moving into my next demo I hit spacebar to show them spotlight. Of course I pause before hitting the space bar to build suspense and tell them to Watch this, BAM!. For some reason I cant resist the color commentary when demoing. A split second later a preview pops to the center of the screen. Arrow right down through the list from .pdf to .jpg to .mov and each file show as fast as I can push the arrow. I explain to them that OS X doesnt need to open a program to view the file. If I would have done this in Windows it would have had to open each program associated with the file, loaded the program, opened the file then I would have had to close them all when it was done. On a Mac just hit spacebar for a quicklook.

Next I show off Spotlight. ?-Space Boom! More colorful vernacular of course. I explain how that set of keystrokes gives you a search field full of power. I start out by typing in simple calculations which responds dynamically with answers. Then I pick a random item to search for such as quote. The search results adjust with each keystroke and categorize my search for me based on resulting file type. I take it a step further and show them how to search for specific items. I type kind:folder and only folders show up, then I type my search term to narrow to folders with that search term in the name. To be fully honest I use textexpander so I only type ,sf which converts to kind:folder. Textexpander constantly watches my keystrokes and when I type a specific set of predetermined characters in order, it will be replace with anything Ive setup saving me many keystrokes. Next search, ?-Space Numbers and the application is highlighted for me to press enter to launch the program and go onto my next demo. At this point Ive definitely got their attention.

Numbers is one of my favorite things to demo. As a long time MS Excel power user Im use to being restricted to working within the grid of cells. One has to leave blank rows between groups of data, lay pictures over the top of cells that will need to be left unused, etc. Numbers is setup as a blank canvas and tables, shapes, pictures and charts are considered independent of one another and can be dragged around on the canvas and put in position where you want them. To keep the demo moving I insert a table, choose a style, convert the column and row to headers, type some numbers and labels in. I highlight the numbers and show introduce them to the drag and drop friendliness of OS X by dragging the sum balloon onto the table, I go back and grab avg and drop it in as well. I open up a web page and search for an image. I click and drag the image from the web page and drop it on my numbers sheet. I drag the picture around to show them the assistance I get with alignment in the form of blue snap lines. I drag another table out to show how easy it is to arrange the components. Numbers is important enough that Ill spend a whole post on it in the future.

Screen capture is something I use every day. In an effort to communicate with people through email I often will capture a piece of a web site, email, picture, drawing, etc.. With windows it is a difficult multistep process to put a screen shot into a .jpg format. I would usually paste it into Word then create a .pdf which took several steps and was not nearly as clean for the recipient to view. Or I would paste it into an email and crop the picture to eliminate unwanted components which took a bit of time. With OS X ?-Shift-4 and the mouse pointer turns to cross hairs. I pick something and drag a box around it Poof!, Yes more color commentary, and it drops a .jpg image on the desktop. I highlight the file and hit spacebar using quickview to show them the results. At this point they are usually engaged in the demo and asking questions.

Having touched on the drag and drop friendliness of OS X I explain my perception as to why the menu menu bar is stuck to the top of the screen, and the program windows dont fill the screen as they do on a PC. I believe its to allow multiple windows to easilly be visible at one time so the user can drag items from one program to another. Having said that I drag the image file from my screen capture and drop it on the Entourage icon in the dock. A new email message is created with the file as an attachment. I drag the image into the Numbers document I still have open. I drag it down and drop it on the iPhoto icon in the dock and iPhoto opens and imports the image. Finally I have a printer alias setup on my desktop so I drag it over and drop it on top of the printer icon and drop it. Nothing happens, and they ask What did that do? A second later we hear the bizhub fire up and start printing the picture. Although this is a little gimmicky I think it shows just how drag and drop friendly OS X is.

Expose is another benefit that I share. I have my expose setup using hot corners. Each of the four corners of the screen can be setup so when the mouse is pushed to the extreme corner it activates a function. I have the bottom left corner setup with expose, and the bottom right corner setup for screen saver with password protection. So I whip the mouse down the bottom left corner and all the open windows spread and show themselves in full view. Move the cursor over the one I want and click to activate and bring to full size. Now I start getting questions such as How much does a Mac cost? and Why arent Macs more popular since they are so cool?

If I have my laptop with me at work Ill pull it out and set it on the desk. The beauty alone is breath taking. When possible Ill stack it on top of their Dell computers to show the contrast in beauty. The Dell is plastic, bulky, and cheap looking compared to the MacBook Pro. I always leave my laptop in sleep mode so Ill ask them how long it takes their Dells to wake up when they open it. The usual answer is several minutes and from my experience thats an accurate answer. I open up the lid and start counting. By the time I get to 4 the computer is ready to use and by the time I count to 8 it has connected to the network and is ready to surf the web. That is the last demo that needs to be done to a business laptop user. One coworker sarcastically said So I wont have to turn it on when I wake up in the morning so it will be ready by the time Im done with my shower and breakfast? It takes 15 minutes to boot from the off position and 5-10 minutes to wake up from sleep. At this point my face muscles dont have the strength to hold back my huge smirk. They almost seem to get upset that Windows is so far behind and that OS X isnt more mainstream. A few rants about viruses, virus scans, bloatware, frozen programs, reboots and they wrap it up with My next computer is a Mac.

Im not even done showing them all the cool things about OS X so I share a few other tidbits of information that I find fascinating. I leave the laptop open and open up iPhoto to show how the trackpad and multi touch works. In the interest of brevity the touch pad will do different things with different strokes and gestures depending on the number of fingers on the pad at one time. One example would be rotating a picture in iPhoto by using two fingers and spinning in a circular motion. Another is two fingers pushed up and down to scroll and so on.

I get copied on all the quotes from our company. I have a rule setup in Entourage that identifies the email as a quote, moves it to a quote folder in Entourage and saves the attachment to a folder on the hard drive. With the speed of spotlight when a customer calls and gives me the quote number I can have it up and in front of me in 5 seconds. Ill demonstrate the speed at which I can arrive at the quote. They are amazed and without question new Mac fans. If the company will let them get Macs as well, they will be sure to do so for their next computer. I move the mouse courser to the bottom right corner to activate the screen saver, demo over.

I realize that this post is a bit longer than I had hoped but its hard to not include some of the special functions of OS X that a windows coworker doesnt know about. I have a passion for OS X and Macs and when I get going its hard to stop.

Although I love OS X it does have its flaws. Next post Ill share some of the difficulties and incompatibilities Ive ran into at work.

Now with the iMac unpackaged and beautifully poised on my desk it was time to get it connected on the network. Before getting into the connection Id like to comment that the iMac draws quite a bit attention from people in the office. The windows users are surprised that everything is all in the monitor and there is only one cord coming out. one person asked why it doesnt have a jet engine sounding fan blowing out the back like their windows box. They question why there are no windows machines that are that well crafted and beautiful. The brushed aluminum and slim keyboard definitely are quite aesthetically pleasing. Id have to say there may be a bit of envy floating through the air. Wait until you hear their reaction in a later post regarding the actual functionality of OS X from my coworkers, its quite entertaining.

Connecting to the windows domain was something I figured out during my short trial with the macbook pro, but decided to explain it now for better continuity. I searched the web for instructions without any luck. I drove down to speak to the genius at the apple store and they couldnt help. They suggested I call 1-800-myapple and ask them, and they didnt have an answer however pointed me to an article they found on a non apple website that they thought might help. They were all very willing to help but they didnt have the answers. I finally found a snippet on a website that led me in the right direction. There is a utility in the applications folder called Directory Utility. Once that is running you can type in your domain and credentials to add your computer to the domain. During the process it will require an administrator on the Domain to enter the network administrator password. This is different from the computer administrator password. Our IT department is in the home office so they had to connect through logmein to type in the password.

Now that the iMac was on the domain I wanted to make sure that I had access to the other computers and servers on the network. By default no one could see my computer, but I could see theirs. While browsing through the computers on the network in cover flow OS X shows a preview of the computer. If it were an iMac it would look like an iMac. MacBook Pros look like MacBook Pros and so on. Well since we only had windows computers on our network all the computers were depicted as tan CRT monitors with the blue screen of death (pictured above). That gave myself and our IT staff quite a chuckle. To give my iMac visibility on the network I had to enable file sharing in the preference screen. After enabling file sharing you can type in a name you want your computer to have on the network. It was quite easy.

Next up, Printers. I was dreading this part of the setup. Printers have always been a challenge for me. Fortunately for me OS X makes this pretty simple. We have a business hub in our office as well as a high volume HP laser machine. I went to preferences, clicked on printers and clicked the plus sign to add a printer and the HP was available to select. Apparently that printer was on the network using Bonjour which is a zero config protocal. I chose it and OS X installed the drivers and printed a test page. I dont understand how it could be that simple. It just works as Apple says. The business hub is a Xerox which needed a little more user assistance to install. I found the driver on the xerox web page however due to operator error I downloaded the wrong one. Luckily we have a service contract with our copier people and they remote connected to my computer, downloaded the proper driver, and got it working. All the same functionality is there just as it is with a windows machine.

We use exchange at work so I had to install Entourage and set it up. We contract through a company that hosts our email so downloading Entourage was free and rather painless. They had a series of setup instructions to follow and although I needed a little help from our IT staff to know what to type into the different fields it was rather painless. I would much prefer a Mac version of Outlook however with Snow Leopard integrating exchange into the operating system I may switch to the built in mail, calendar and contacts when it comes out in September. Entourage is functional, however miles behind outlook. Ill explain the differences in a later post. For now it works well enough to not slow my productivity, but for a Mac application I expect much more.

I was sure to download and install all the operating system updates that were available. I installed Microsoft office because iWork is not fully compatible with office files. Ill explain why when I compare MS Office to iWork in a later post. I installed iStat menu, growl, xmarks, and setup time machine. I had to install VM Ware Fusion as well as a windows XP client. This is straight forward and rather easy. With XP running and fully up to date I installed my windows only programs. VM Ware Fusion allows you to hand the DVD drive over to windows so I clicked the icon to give control to windows then installed the programs.

In summary connecting the iMac to the windows domain was rather easy, however information was hard to find when I ran into a problem. The Apple tech support people arent versed in Windows Domains and active directory. I believe Apple is on the verge of exploding into the workplace and this is one area where they need to improve their support. Its evident with the recent announcement of integrating exchange into the Snow Leopard OS that they are pointing their sites on business. They are poised to capture a very large piece of the windows world if they are able to support it. It only takes one Mac in a company to show everyone the benefits and Macs@Work will multiply exponentially.

Note: In Part 1 I mentioned David Allisons blog however I omitted the link.

In Part-3 Ill talk about some of the immediate advantages I found with using the Mac at work. I found some new workflows that made me more efficient using automator and spotlight. Ill also share some of the comments and reactions from my co workers while I gave them a tour of OS X and what it can do.

I have been a windows power user for a decade or more. I work for a medium sized company and am tasked with sales and manufacturing responsibilities. I have always looked for ways to allow technology to improve my efficiency and help move our business forward. I have built databases with MS access that see thousands of transactions in a year by many people, created our company intranet using .net that is accessed from all over the world, and was a Microsoft enthusiast.

When the first iPhone was released it caught my attention and I was very impressed, however I used Microsoft exchange for my work email and it was not compatible. iPhone 3G was announced and exchange would be built in. I started paying weekly visits to the local apple store to investigate and play with the old iPhone while I was waiting for the 3G to be released. While in the apple store I noticed these beautiful computers all around and remember thinking to myself I wish that someone would build a windows machine that pretty. During that time I started hearing people I follow on podcasts and on the web discuss their preference for the Macintosh over PCs. I remember thinking to myself that all these people couldnt be wrong so I started researching making the switch to a Mac myself. I found a blog from a David Allison that documented his switch from PC to Mac. I read it from top to bottom and it was the final piece of information that convinced me to make the switch to Mac.

Nearly a year after making the switch to Mac Ive purchased for myself or family a 24 iMac, two iPhone 3Gs, two iPod touch 2nd generation, 15 Unibody Macbook Pro, 17 Unibody Macbook Pro, Apple TV, Airport extreme and a fair amount of accessories. Its safe to say Im an official ? fanboy. I can now understand the enthusiasm for the apple products and the mac way of life. Those of you who use a Mac at home and a PC at work will understand the sadness and frustration with having to log into windows every morning. No spotlight, no quick look, no iLife, no iWork, and no automator, to name a few. Add the windows deficiencies to the list of normal windows frustrations and I was missing my mac every day.

Now with the foundation in place we can explore, at least in my case, if a mac belongs at my work. I would think the process would be the same for anyone thinking about bringing a mac into their workplace. The first step in the process is to go through all the programs that one uses in the course of their job. Many of the functions I did in a day were done in Microsofts office suite or in a web browser which would work well on a mac. The programs I use at work that I found are only compatible with windows are the following: Autocad, Microsoft Visual Studio, our companies home built company quoting program, and Quick expense. I also use Oracle which could be ran on a mac, however I had no idea how well it would work. I would definitely need to run windows in a virtual machine such as Fusion or Parallels in order to run those four programs. I figure that I only spent 10-20% of my day using those windows only programs and the rest would be in OS X. Among those four programs Autocad is looking at building a mac version of their software, our quoting program has plans to be ported over to a web interface, and the quick expense program is scheduled to be replaced with an Oracle version.

Luckily I work for a company that has a very open minded IT group and they were more than willing to let me explore using a mac in our windows workplace. In fact one of the IT staff owns an iMac herself. I planned to use my macbook Pro 15 in a two month trial which lasted about a week. With our IT group on board I purchased a 24 iMac and Fusion for work. I felt that the small percentage of time I needed to use windows and the inevitable move away from the programs that only work on windows was a key factor in deciding to switch to Mac at work.

Now I have the 24 iMac unpacked and on my desk at work. In part 2 Ill go through my process of setting it up and connecting to the company domain.

The user interface is what separates TwitterFon from the rest of the class. When new tweets are downloaded it will auto scroll to the beginning of the new tweets and shade all new tweets in blue. I prefer the visual difference between old tweets and new tweets. Many of the other applications auto scroll down to the last read tweet but dont identify the new ones visually. If you follow many people, as i do, you see many tweets per day. Occasionally I’d like to go back to one that referenced a link to a web page. TwitterFon has the ability to mark a tweet as a favorite with a gold star which will allow you to quickly find it from the favorites screen at a later time.

Another feature that I use and find fascinating is the search screen. Of course one can search for words but by using the GPS in the iPhone you can search in a defined radius from your current location. This is a great way to find people and activities in your local area. There is a trends feed within search that will show you what is most talked about on twitter at that moment. The search screen could use some refining and is a little confusing. The trends button toggles to the profile button when clicking in the search field and using the GPS for a search could be a little clearer. Perhaps the developer is trying to pack too much into one screen. I would prefer a little more real estate to input the search and hide the search criteria when the search results appear. Overall the app is very solid and doesn’t crash, the user interface is attractive, and the application is free with a small banner ad. Its worth a try.

When first released (mid 2008) I purchased shopper and immediately found it to be lacking some basic functionality.  I emailed the developer (Mark Krenek) with a few suggestions to improve the user experience and he responded promptly by email to assure me that my suggestions were in the plans for future versions.  Within a couple minor updates he had fixed the one issue i found and added the features that I recommended.  Having the developer listen and respond to suggestions and recommendations has helped this application evolve into a very refined shopping item/list application.

The settings screen, as with most applications, is where one can define global settings for the application.  Sort by Aisle is one of the more recent additions to the application where each store can be arranged by aisles matching the stores physical layout.  Before the addition of this feature I logged many miles tracking back through the store looking for an item.  Each store can have a different aisle order and the aisles can be added and removed as desired.

The application works best with all of your items on one big list regardless of which store you choose to purchase them from.  With the stores and aisles properly setup, choosing the store at the top will reorder the list based on the aisles.  If the aisles dont exist in that particular store the items in that aisle will not be visible.

With the stores and aisles setup, there are a couple different ways to add items to the list.  One can click the plus at the bottom of the list which brings up a text search window.  As you type, It will filter the results.   When you see the item youre looking for select it to add it to the list.  If the desired item is not on the list, type the full text and click create to add it.  From there you can choose which aisle it belongs on to keep your list organized.  At this point you can also change the quantity as well.  The other method to add items is to browse through the list of aisles and items.  This method is great when a little help is needed to remember all the possible items to choose from.   If youre interested in keeping track of more details shopper will allow you to keep track of costs, UOM, price, notes and also if you have a coupon or not.  Thats a bit more detail than I need, however there were many people that like that level of control.  If you fill in the prices it will keep a running total in the cart and include taxes if you so desire.

As you put the items in your cart at the store, click the box on the left of the item and shopper will drop the item into the cart icon at the bottom of the screen with a nice animation.  The items in the cart collect and stay in the cart until you empty it.

If you need to get the list to someone else that has offered to do your shopping for you simply email the list to them through the built in functionality.  The emailed list is a very simple text based list and is lacking visual appeal, however its functional. This application is a good addition to your library of productivity apps.