Macs have traditionally been known mainly as graphics computers and home computers, seldom thought of as business computers outside of the graphics industry. Now, two companies are looking to change that, by combining a touchscreen Mac with a user friendly OS X point of sale (POS) solution, both of which were on display this week at Macworld 2008.

The touchscreen Macs are manufactured by Valencia, California company Troll Touch, which can convert just about any Mac, including 20 and 24 inch iMacs, 20, 23, and 30 inch Apple Cinema Displays, 13 inch MacBooks, and even Cross Platform LCDs and G4 eMacs, into a touchscreen Mac. It is, of course, a somewhat costly conversion, but given the added functionality, particularly in a business environment, the cost does not seem overwhelming. For example, the 20 inch, 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac, which retails for $1200, costs $2300 when converted for touchscreen accessibility; the 24 inch, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, which retails for $1800, costs $3400 when converted for touchscreen.

You can also supply you own Mac and pay just the conversion fee. A complete list of products is available at http://www.trolltouch.com/products.html, click on the product for pricing details. You can also watch a video of a touchscreen iMac in action at http://www.trolltouch.com/demo.html. The touch screen appears very responsive as the user changes backgrounds on his iMac, and them plays a game of Bejeweled, all without a keyboard or mouse.

The POS sales solution is provided by Xsilva’s LightSpeed 2.5. LightSpeed takes the OS X Leopard “Cover Flow” method of searching through files and folders and applies it to a database front end, using Cover Flow to assist in searching for products and customers.

Browsing the Documents folder in Finder’s Cover Flow mode. Finder serves the same function in OS X as My Computer / Windows Explorer does in Windows.

Everything in LightSpeed is displayed in an attractive and efficient environment that will be familiar to Mac users, and is a pleasant change from the mostly gray, white, and black environment of many Windows database front ends.

Searching for products or customers is made easier in LightSpeed by using Cover Flow. For an even more convenient workflow, you can flip through database files by touch, using a touchscreen Mac.

Xsilva LightSpeed’s other features include built in credit card processing, sales, service, tracking, and purchasing tools, an optional integrated web store (customizable with PHP and CSS), the ability to track sales stats via your iPhone, and multi-user and multi-store configurations. LightSpeed uses the popular OpenBase SQL as its back end relational database server.

LightSpeed with OpenBase SQL sells for $749 for a single user license, multiple user licenses are higher, and a 30 day demo version is available. You can read more about LightSpeed at http://www.xsilva.com, and find out more about the OpenBase SQL server at http://www.openbase.com.