Apple’s quiet march into the enterprise continues

Apple and IBM: A match made in enterprise heaven

Apple has long been known as an almost peerless consumer products company. But its deal with IBM is already changing IT at the enterprise level, and it all seems to be happening right under the noses of Apple’s competitors.

Jonny Evans reports for Computerworld:

It confounds me so few are taking notice. In most cases some of the biggest in enterprise IT are joining in: Salesforce for Apple Watch? It’s coming. Microsoft apps for iOS? Yep. This stuff really matters. It’s a sea change in enterprise IT, and, this morning, Apple and IBM introduced eight new apps including solutions for healthcare and manufacturing.

This is meaningful in so many ways: not only does it show the rapidity with which the partners continue to introduce tools under the MobileFirst for iOS scheme, but it also underlines just how tangibly necessary mobile solutions are becoming across multiple industries.

Competing firms seem blind to what’s going on as they aim to emulate what matters less. Yet the ability to weave digital technology within enterprise business processes isn’t just good for Apple and IBM, but good for the economy.

More at Computerworld

Buster Hein at Cult of Mac has more on the eight new enterprise apps from Apple and IBM:

Apple’s partnership with IBM has birthed eight new enterprise apps that the companies announced today on Apple’s Business apps page. The new MobileFirst apps focus mostly on healthcare by providing hospital techs and nurses new methods to access patients records, log data and track progress.

Along with the four new healthcare apps, IBM and Apple also created apps for insurance agents, flight attendants, retailers and industrial production.

Take a quick tour of the new apps below.

Rapid Handover

Ancillary Sale

Order Commit

Risk Inspect

Hospital RN

Hospital Lead

Hospital Tech

Home RN

More at Cult of Mac

You can also get more information on IBM’s MobileFirst for iOS site and Apple’s mobile enterprise apps page.

Office 2016 for Mac review

Mac users have had to suffer for a while without an update to the OS X version of Microsoft Office. But that’s about to change with the upcoming release of Office 2016 Mac. The new version of Office for the Mac includes updated versions of PowerPoint, OneNote, Excel and Word. The interface has been updated, and you’ll also find new themes and styles.

Preston Gralla reviewed Office 2016 Mac for Computerworld:

With this version of Office, the Mac is no longer the poor stepchild in the Office world. All versions of Office, whether on a Windows PC or a Mac, will look and work alike, and also resemble the Office you’ll experience on the Web and on tablets.

This is good news for Mac users, because the new interface and features, as well as the improved performance of Outlook, make it a considerably better suite. And it should also mean that Office on the Mac will no longer trail behind its Windows counterpart, but be updated on a similar schedule.

It remains to be seen whether some of the rough edges of the suite will be improved, such as with a variety of missing features on Outlook. But based on this first look, Office 2016 for the Mac is a winner.

More at Computerworld

You can download the Office 2016 Mac preview right now. Note that the file size is around 2.66 GB, so it might take a while on slower connections.

You can also get more information about Office 2016 for Mac on the Office Blogs site:

Office 2016 for Mac shares an unmistakably Office experience–but it is also thoughtfully designed to take advantage of the unique features of the Mac. The new apps offer full retina display support with thousands of retina-optimized graphics, full screen view for native immersive experiences, and even little Mac affordances like scroll bounce. While there are too many new features to cover in a single blog post, here’s a quick overview of a few of the highlights.

The new Office 2016 for Mac includes updated versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook–and the moment you open any one of the apps, you’ll immediately feel the difference. We’ve modernized the user experience and made it easier to get things done. The redesigned ribbon intuitively organizes features so you can find what you need quickly. A refreshed task pane interface makes positioning, resizing, or rotating graphics easy so you can create exactly the layout you want. And new themes and styles help you pull it all together to produce stunning, professional documents.

More at Office Blogs

Here’s a video tour of the Office 2016 Mac preview:

10 Mac games worth playing

Gaming on the Mac has gotten better and better over the years. There are tons of games available for the Mac now, but sometimes it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Macworld has a helpful roundup of 10 games worth playing that were released in March.

Andrew Hayward reports for Macworld:

March’s selection of intriguing new releases serves as a testament to how strong Mac gaming has become. It’s a wide selection of experiences—large and small—spanning a nice array of genres: City building, role-playing, strategy, simulation, action, puzzle, and more. And what’s especially great is that almost every game on this list launched at the same time as on other platforms—waiting for ports is much less of a concern on Mac these days.

Eager to dig into something new and exciting? Here are the 10 games released in March that we’ve been playing and/or hearing good things about, and if you missed our earlier lists, January and February weren’t so shabby themselves.

Cities: Skyline

Pillars of Eternity

Out of the Park Baseball 16

Dyscourse

Sid Meier’s Starships

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Ironcast

Shelter 2

The Sims 4: Get to Work

More at Macworld

Did you miss a roundup? Check the Eye On Apple home page to get caught up with the latest news about Apple.