A few years ago, talking about Apple products in the professional tax and accounting office might not have drawn a crowd. At this year's AICPA Tech+ conference such a session drew about 125 attendees to hear Gary and Jim Boomer whose discussion included a bit of debate on the subject.

There is a question about how soon large masses of people will start using online accounting. But there is no wait for new products entering the market, according to Randy Johnston, a consultant for K2 Enterprises.

There is a bit of a sense that vendors are marking time on the way to wide acceptance of Internet-based tax software. While there is no mass migration from desktop applications, there is the since that the move is inevitable. That includes Thomson Reuters which is confident that the SaaS version of UltraTax will eventually gain wide acceptance.