Joselow Consulting Engineers: Well-built with Macs
The firm’s server is a unique piece of engineering in its own right. Joselow needed a compact, inexpensive and scalable server solution, so he did what any good engineer would do: he built his own. “We got a Mac mini and put Mac OS X Server on it,” he says. Joselow constructed a tower using three 500 GB FireWire hard drives and capped it with a Mac mini. “I installed the software and set it up and it’s been flawless. My Mac server does everything. We use it for backup and it stores the central library of past projects. Everyone in the office has access to it, no problem.”
Accessing and searching project files — either on the server or locally on each computer’s drive — has become effortless, thanks to Spotlight. “With the Mac, there’s no special database program to keep track of files and projects,” says Joselow. “You name your files logically and use Spotlight to search for them. The machine does the rest.” Spotlight is a powerful search tool that scours every bit of information on your hard drive (and local servers) to find the file you’re looking for. It searches filenames and content for keywords almost instantly and it comes standard with every Mac. To make Spotlight even more powerful, Joselow employs eDrawings from SolidWorks. The application allows Spotlight to search the contents of DWG files, giving his engineers easy access to data inside drawing files of past and current projects.
Staying Organized
Joselow’s firm employs several standard Mac apps to stay organized and in constant communication with clients, including iCal, iChat and Address Book. “We have address book running all the time so we can keep in touch with all our clients,” he says. “And iCal allows us to keep track of our appointments and due dates very quickly. iChat is great, too. A lot of the people we work with have figured out that they don’t have to use the telephone. If they have a quick question, they can just catch one of us on iChat.”
Communication is key in any firm, but a business isn’t a business without proper accounting. Joselow uses MYOB for Mac to keep track of expenses, log time and run invoices. “Everybody thinks that you need PCs to do accounting,” he says. “I’ve been using MYOB on my Macs for years. I use the program for all my double-entry bookkeeping. I don’t have an accountant or bookkeeper coming in here, I can do it all myself.” Joselow takes care of all of his own in-house bookkeeping functions, apart from payroll, which is managed by an outside firm.
Homework
It may seem like Joselow’s intense work ethic eclipses his home life. On the contrary, the engineer has managed to mesh his hectic work schedule with his family life — using Macs. Joselow is often able to catch up with his daughter, a freshman at Harvard, using iChat. He uses iPhoto to sort, edit, and manage the family photos, and he publishes those photos and a site about the family on the Web using .Mac.
Joselow’s wife, Alice, uses her Mac to run a full-fledged nonprofit, The Ossining Food Pantry, out of their home. Alice is also a member of the public school board, a member of the library board, a founding member of the local school education fund and a founding member of Communities That Care, a group that brings community leaders and youth together. To manage it all, she wields an iMac running the full suite of iLife and iWork apps — iCal to manage appointments and plan meetings, iPhoto to organize snapshots from events and Address Book to store and manage contacts.
Even Joselow’s children have inherited the engineer’s affinity for Apple. “My daughter has won numerous awards for her science research using her PowerBook to design presentations using Keynote,” says Joselow. “My older son, with his MacBook, is studying the effects of diagonal tennis racquet stringing versus horizontal/vertical stringing on reduction of tennis elbow. My youngest son has become the IT guy and he is now converting old LP’s into MP3 format using an Ion turntable and SoundSoap. My parents, who are now in their ‘80s, are using an iMac. Apple is really part of our everyday lives.”
For Joselow, the Mac is an efficient engineering machine, an invaluable organizing tool in the office and a creative powerhouse at home. “The Mac has made my business and it’s a vital part of life at home,” he says. “It makes everything easier, more reliable and just better.”
