There are two kinds of people in the Mac world: those who sometimes need Windows, and those who don't. If you're one of the latter group, feel free to skip the rest of this post.

Parallels 5 for Mac has been released, with Snow Leopard compatibility, Windows 7 support, full support for Aero, including Flip 3D in Windows Vista and 7 & OpenGL 2.1 and a host of other new or improved features. You aren't limited to Windows either; Parallels also adds support for OpenGL 2.1 support for Linux guest operating systems. (Although we're a Mac site, I'm glad to see other OSes getting some development attention too.)

It is a free upgrade for those who purchased version 4 on October 1st, 2009 or later. Others will have to pay $49.99USD to upgrade, or $79.99 for a new license.

Parallels is also offering crossgrade licensing to VMware Fusion 2 users. If you have a license key for Fusion 2, you can get Paralells 5 for the same $49.99 upgrade fee as existing Parallels customers.

If you're new to Parallels, check out their introductory video for an overview of how it works.

If you need Windows to go with your Intel Mac, there are a lot of options: Parallels, VMware Fusion (which also recently released a new version), Boot Camp (although Apple isn't yet supporting Windows 7 in Boot Camp), CrossOver, and if you're willing to do a little more "nerd work" to set it up, you can even set up Windows virtualization for free with Sun's VirtualBox tool (well, "free" plus the cost of Windows).

Parallels and VMware Fusion seem destined to be the dueling "favorite flavors" of Windows virtualization on the Mac like Coke vs. Pepsi or vanilla vs. chocolate. Which is the right one for you? Download a demo and take a look. I own both Parallels and VMware Fusion, and look forward to putting them both through their paces with Windows 7.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore says corporate IT is warming up to the iPhone. In a research note published yesterday das analyst says, "There is growing evidence that the iPhone is making inroads into the Enterprise."

Whitmore thinks Apple will sell 2 million iPhones to big business by the end of the year, some through reimbursements to employees and some through IT department purchases. If those numbers hold, the iPhone will own about 7% of the Enterprise smartphone market in 2009, up from the 2% it controlled in 2008.

What's up with the shift? Whitmore notes four reasons:

• User satisfaction - highlighted by the recent J.D. Power surveys of both consumer and business smartphone users
• Enterprise applications
• The iPhone's level of innovation
• The virtual keyboard - according to Whitmore, the thought that business users have to have a physical keyboard on a smartphone has turned out to be a 'fallacy.'

However, businesspeople might not agree that they don't need a physical keyboard if their first virtual keyboard isn't on an iPhone. UK researcher Canalys has taken a look at touchscreens and future smartphone purchases. The firm finds the ground shifting the touchscreen's way. Of the 3,000 survey respondents in the UK, Germany, and France, 38% say their next phone will have a finger-oriented touchscreen, while 16% say theirs will have a stylus-operated touchscreen.

But a lot of people who have virtual keyboard-only phones miss the physical keys. According to Canalys, 53% of people who own a touchscreen phone say they won't buy another one, though they may have bought the wrong one for them to start. A majority of iPhone and HTC users say they'll keep the virtual keys on their next phones, while less than a third of Sony Ericsson touchscreen phone owners say their next phone won't have buttons.

[via Fortune, The Register]

OK, so it's really just the Snow Leopard Server Multi-City Seminar and not a huge rock band on a world tour, but if you're more interested in servers than following your favorite group, this announcement should get you excited.

Apple's setting up a series of 7 seminars across the country (blissfully ignoring most of the center of the USA except for Chicago) designed to sell IT managers, administrators, server architects, technology coordinators, and anyone else who will listen on the advantages of Snow Leopard Server. The agenda for each seminar includes a hardware and software overview, a discussion of setup, administration, and integration, and information about collaboration and communication with Snow Leopard Server.

For those in the content production world, there will be info about Podcast Producer 2. System Administrators will learn about how scripting can be used to ease their workload, and detailed information about integrating iPhones into the workplace will be presented.

The scheduled stops are:

• Boston, MA / October 27
• New York, NY / October 29
• Seattle, WA / November 17
• Chicago, IL / December 1
• Washington, DC / December 3
• Cupertino, CA / December 8
• Los Angeles, CA / December 10

To reserve a seat for one of the seminar sessions, visit this page on the Apple website.

You may not have heard about the recent loss of data for T-Mobile Sidekick users; after all, this is an Apple-focused site and there probably aren't as many Sidekick owners out there as there are iPhone users. I'll explain the situation, and how it could happen to anyone depending on cloud-based data stores for their mobile devices.

The Sidekick is made and supported by Danger, which since April of 2008 has been owned by Microsoft. As such, all of the personal information on the Sidekicks was stored on servers owned and operated by Microsoft. During the last week, Danger / Microsoft had hired Hitachi to do an upgrade to their Storage Area Network (SAN). That's usually not a problem, as the owner of the data (Microsoft in this case) performs a backup of all the data in case of an issue.

Well, something went wrong, and it appears that Danger / Microsoft did not have a backup in place. The result is a catastrophe for Sidekick users. T-Mobile sent out a statement last week explaining the situation, and placing the blame directly on Microsoft and Danger: "Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device -- such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos -- that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger."

I don't know about you, but when I hear the name "J.D. Power and Associates," I think of customer satisfaction for automobile manufacturers.

The company also does customer satisfaction surveys in a number of other industries, and yesterday they released the 2009 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Satisfaction Survey and the 2009 Wireless Business Smartphone Satisfaction Survey. As you might not expect after all of the commenter griping we see about the iPhone, Apple nabbed the number one spot in customer satisfaction in both the consumer and business surveys.

Out of the box, Apple's Keynote is a gem. The app is intuitive and, like many Apple products, strikes a nice and delicate balance between ease-of-use for novice users and functionality for more advanced power users. While Keynote offers a nice set of built-in themes, there may be times when you want a more customized look -- be it a different resolution, font, background or element or graphic.

To begin, choose an existing theme. Here, I'm choosing to use the default "White" Keynote theme. Then, you'll want to modify the master slides, which is accessible by pulling down the divider adjacent to the "Slides" viewer, or by clicking "View" and selecting "Show Master Slides."

A little over a year ago, I was searching for a way to expand my reach as a Mac consultant. I had heard quite a bit from other Apple Consultants Network members about Mac HelpMate, but really didn't know much about it. After a free test drive, I ended up purchasing Mac HelpMate and its companion software for standalone Macs, Auto HelpMate. Since then, supporting users anywhere within or outside of the Denver area without having to hop into my car and drive to a client's house has become a reality.

Mac HelpMate works by creating a secure, user-initiated connection between a support professional and the user through a gateway server run by the brains behind the application, Apple Certified System Administrator Dean Shavit, who invented the Mac HelpMate service three and a half years ago.

The application is easy for my clients to set up, since there's a ZIRO (zero-interaction roll out) tool that I have on my company web site. One click, and my clients are sharing their screens with me, without having to install software or enter a password or code. The standalone application is used both by the support client and the support professional, and it runs on any Mac OS between 10.3 (Panther) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

I celebrated my first year of Mac HelpMate usage by re-subscribing to the service ($600 annually with a $100 discount to members of the Apple Consultants Network) and by upgrading to the new Mac HelpMate 3.0. The new version provides full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, as well as a number of powerful new features.

Even though the iPhone, in its several iterations, is most likely the smartphone of choice for the discerning Mac user, that doesn't mean Mac users choose the iPhone exclusively. In fact, RIM's BlackBerry device still commands a sizable share of the smartphone market. So, if you happen to be one of those people who use a Mac and a BlackBerry, wouldn't it be nice if both of your devices could work together by synchronizing files, music, video and more seamlessly via an application supplied by RIM themselves to maximize compatibility?

Well, that dream may become a reality according to a tipster who gave the scoop to the folks at the Boy Genius Report. According the the Boy himself, RIM is poised to give Mac and BlackBerry users something they've sorely needed: a brand new, updated and super cool BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac on September 25th.

This information isn't 100% confirmed, but Boy Genius does let it slip that he's using a previous build of the software and that it is "running beautifully." So, I guess that's a good sign this is probably one dream that will, in fact, come true -- and very soon.

When you only have a handful of Macs in an office or household to upgrade to a new operating system, it's no great problem to run around with the installation DVD and upgrade one machine at a time. But when you're supporting a large office or school environment, it's impossible to take the time to manually upgrade each machine. That's where tools like Apple Remote Desktop and LANrev come in handy.

LANrev 5.2 has been released today, with full compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard. LANrev uses a proprietary imaging process that saves the home directory and OS settings of each machine during an automated OS deployment, so that the users are back up and running as quickly as possible afterwards.

IT professionals can not only roll out Snow Leopard faster using LANrev, but the application also tracks Snow Leopard machines for asset inventory and provides for remote management of Macs. LANrev has an asset inventory for storing license numbers and purchasing information, which is critical for audits. LANrev can track the location of stolen Macs and provide law enforcement officials with information to locate and recover the machines. For those who are concerned about power usage, LANrev does automated power management of large Mac installations, putting Macs to sleep or shutting them down when they're idle.

Unlike Apple Remote Desktop, LANrev works in cross-platform environments, so it's useful for situations where a small group of Mac users may exist in a Windows world -- or vice versa. No pricing info is available on the LANrev Web site, so be sure to contact one of their distribution partners if you're interested in this professional administration tool.

I'm not a fan of setting up Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). In fact, I've had so many issues with VPNs in the past that I now subcontract that work to a fellow geek who seems to have a knack for understanding the various settings. That's why I have been following Hamachi with great interest for the past several years.

Hamachi is described in the Wikipedia as "a zero-configuration virtual private network (VPN) shareware application capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind NAT firewalls without requiring reconfiguration (in most cases); in other words, it establishes a connection over the Internet that very closely emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network."

LogMeIn, a commercial firm that produces both free and subscription services for controlling other machines, sent out an email to customers on Thursday touting Hamachi², their implementation of Hamachi. LogMeIn has been deeply involved in Hamachi development, so the announcement was expected. What I didn't expect to see was that they've left both Mac and Linux users out in the cold.

I quickly jotted off an email to LogMeIn and received this response: "Mac is not currently supported, we do plan on adding support for other platforms but do not have an ETA at this time." For quite a while, there was an open source project called "Hamachi X," but it's no longer supported. Another developer took on the task of creating a Mac OS X and Linux Hamachi client called Hamachi Sidekick, which is a GUI to a command-line Hamachi tool. Unfortunately, LogMeIn also pulled the Mac OS X command-line interface (CLI) version of Hamachi, so there's no way to even try the CLI tool or Hamachi Sidekick now.

LogMeIn may tout Hamachi² as "a VPN that just works," but for Mac users, it just doesn't work.

The Apple Support forums are a'buzz with reports of several users upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1 and discovering a new "feature" which was not available previously. As mentioned in our comments, after upgrading to 3.1, some original iPhone and iPhone 3G owners with Exchange accounts are having trouble accessing their email. Apparently the server-side encryption policy option for mobile devices (only available as of Exchange 2007 SP1) is now being appropriately enforced.

This is not affecting owners of the iPhone 3GS, due to the newer device's support for Exchange encryption. Prior to iPhone OS 3.1 the encryption policy was ignored for all models. Now that 3.1 is available, users are seeing this policy being correctly enforced and older iPhones without encryption support are left without access to Exchange services.

I have yet to find any reports of issues with the iPod touch, but I suspect that it will also be affected by this software change. We're awaiting confirmation from Apple on whether this will impact the newly announced iPod touch models as well.

While many are reacting to this issue as though it's a bug, and are reporting it as such, the reality is that the Exchange encryption requirement is a feature and the fact that it was not being correctly enforced was actually a security hole. IT administrators with Exchange 2007 SP1 servers and iPhone clients are probably going to be fielding an above-average level of incoming questions, but at least they can rest easy knowing that Exchange encryption is now working correctly. Cold comfort for their users, though.

If you are running into this issue, the straightforward (though pricey) solution is to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS; or consider bribing your IT guy with Red Bull so he will disable the encryption requirement for mobile devices. But we want to hear from you; are you using an Exchange account? Can you still access it following the upgrade to 3.1? Which device are you using, iPhone or iPod touch; 3G or 3GS? Is this a little thing that means a lot to you from a security perspective or have you been left high and dry without access to critical email?

Update: MacRumors points out that Apple has now covered this situation in a new KB article.

[Via Broadband Reports]

If there's anything that drives Mac users into a frenzy, it's those winmail.dat files that can show up in Apple Mail when they receive email from colleagues or friends using Microsoft Outlook. Winmail.dat files can either files that are attached to the message, or they can contain information such as embedded documents, meeting requests, address card info, notes, or forwarded messages sent as attachments. Regardless of the content, they're just plain annoying on the Mac.

restoroot, a Mac development firm out of Millstatt, Austria, has the solution for you. Letter Opener 3 (€19.99 or €9.99 upgrade for version 2.0 owners) is an Apple Mail plugin that can ease winmail.dat frustrations. Letter Opener has been recently updated for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it can:

• Convert Outlook schedules, appointments, and tasks to iCal
• Convert Outlook contacts to Address Book
• Open nested messages in winmail.dat files
• Translate notes from Outlook
• Let you read delivery status and read receipt messages

Especially for Mac users who are the "lone rangers" in a Windows environment, Letter Opener 3 can make life a little bit smoother. It's great to see that this plugin has been made compatible with Snow Leopard.

Data Robotics delivered their "super-sized" version of the Drobo earlier this year. DroboPro has 8 drive bays into which you can drop 3.5" SATA drives of almost any capacity, from the old 160 GB model you've been using to hold the backup of your iTunes library to that 2 TB Western Digital Caviar drive you just purchased. Using a proprietary storage technology called BeyondRAID, Data Robotics makes it easy to use a DroboPro to give you a big box 'o storage right now, and easily expand in the future.

Data Robotics recently lent me a DroboPro for a detailed review, and I was able to give it a thorough workout. Read on to find out more about the DroboPro and an excellent deal available to readers of TUAW.

One of the largest personal iTunes libraries I've ever seen belongs to a client of mine. This client, who was a DJ in the 50's and 60's, has a huge collection of vinyl albums and singles that he painstakingly digitized, cleaned up, and catalogued in iTunes. Needless to say, opening iTunes on his Mac Pro is an exercise in patience.

Thinking about his music storage needs, and the huge amount of digital photos and video that my wife are accumulating, got me musing about other ways to do mass storage inexpensively. At this point, I'm probably OK with a DroboPro, but what if I needed petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,024 terabytes = 1,048,576 gigabytes) of storage? Most solutions at this point in time are quite expensive.

As of 6 AM PDT this morning, off-site backup vendor BackBlaze has put their solution to mass storage needs, the BackBlaze Storage Pod, out to the world as an open source project. Their solution is a relatively inexpensive box (US$7,867 for 67 TB of storage) made up of off-the-shelf components that can be reproduced and/or improved upon by others who also need huge amounts of cheap storage. See those red boxes in the picture to the right? Each one of those contains 67 TB of RAID 6 storage in a 4U box. For a petabyte of storage, you're going to need to spend about $117,000 on about fifteen of the boxes.

In this morning's rush to figure out what had changed at the Apple Store, one of our readers pointed out that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server (US$499 for an unlimited license) was priced lower than Leopard Server (US$999 for unlimited users). While this is nothing new -- we've known about the price change since June -- it bears repeating.

For businesses with small, single offices to large enterprises with racks full of Xserves, Snow Leopard Server makes a lot of sense. That $499 license provides a lot -- a mail server (not Exchange-compatible, however), CalDAV server for group calendars, group-wide Time Machine backups to a server, a podcast producer, a wiki server, an iChat server, and the new Mobile Access Server, in addition to a plethora of other administrative and client management options.

Along with the Xserve, which I've found to be comparably priced to other enterprise-class servers, and the Mac mini, which makes a great little inexpensive headless server for small offices, Apple has created a set of powerful business tools. Considering that it's now half the price of Leopard Server, Snow Leopard Server is something that more system admins may want to look at, especially in Microsoft-dominated shops.