Potential clients occasionally want to know if Worldox supports Macs. The short answer is: no. The longer answer is that there are a variety of ways in which this can be done, some of which can be a bit pricy.
The first option is to use Parallels or Boot Camp for the Mac, which lets you run Windows on top of the Mac. You would then use that Windows to access the server and Worldox. People who have tried this report that you can sometimes have timeout issues. And of course there is the issue of why would you want a Mac if one of your main functions is to use it to run Windows.
A second option is to use Worldox Web/Mobile, and use the Mac to access Worldox through the Internet. This will work, but involves an download/edit/upload scenario. So this would not be appropriate heavy use. The Web/Mobile client also allows for access via an iPad. Again, this can be very useful but is not designed for heavy duty use. One of my clients who is doing this tells me that it can be fairly slow and it is frequently preferable to download files to a hard drive the iPad has access to and work from there.
A third option is to set up a Citrix-based terminal server. Microsoft makes an RDP client for the Mac that allows it to access your Citrix box. From there, you would access Worldox normally. This will work the best of all the solutions outlined above, but of course involves the additional expense of setting up a Citrix server.
The more general question for legal specific products is “will there be a Mac version for...” I think the answer to this is generally “no.” There are two reasons for this: First, smaller independent firms (like Amicus, Tabs or Worldox) do not have the resources to develop a Mac version, even if they wanted to. The behemoths (Lexis, Westlaw) would not find a profit in it and thus have little interest. The second reason is the growth of Cloud products. Mac support in the future will, I think, go through the cloud products, not through workstation-based software.
So what is the option for a firm looking to move to Mac and needing Tabs3 and Worldox?
Posted by: Rebbeka | January 14, 2013 at 01:53 PM