The exhibition area of Moscone Center’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco is a madhouse. During four long days on the showroom floor taking photos, meeting with companies, and posting articles to MyMac.com, I observed important trends emerging from the chaos.
Other web sites, including Macworld Magazine, TidBITS and Small Dog’s Kibbles & Bytes publish their “best of†from the Expo. Here at MyMac.com we took a different approach, focusing on products and companies that offer more than meets the eye with regard to innovation.
So here are our six “MyMacworld.compliments — Honorary MWSF 2005 Expo awards, for companies and products that demonstrated exceptional innovation at this year’s show. Congratulations to all of them from your friends and readers at MyMac.com. Photos of these and other products are available in our picture albums from the 2005 Expo.
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USEFUL UTILITIES is our first major trend. Fewer people than ever are relying on Norton Disk Doctor or Tech Tool Pro on their OS X computers, for several different reasons. In Panther (OS X v10.3), system software is very reliable. Serious troubleshooting and disk maintenance are infrequent. How are the software utility developers responding?
Prosoft Engineering adds Drive Genius to its expanding family of OS X utilities. Developed by a New Zealander named Marko, Drive Genius claims to do everything that the big name disk repair and recovery applications do, and more. Its $99 US single-user price is affordable IF the results are half as good as the ambitious promotional material claims it to be. I have an unopened package, and David Weeks and I will start to work with it in February. Let’s give Prosoft our provisional “Giant Killer†award.
Micromat introduced DiskStudio during the Expo, and I predict it will be a huge success. Why didn’t somebody develop this application before now? It configures any hard drive into any number of partitions in any direction, with a few clicks. I will use this every week in my private computer tutoring business, and very often for my personal computers. Partitions have been a nightmare before now, and all of a sudden the bad dreams will become joyrides if this $50 US utility works as advertised. When I train users, being able effortlessly to manage partitions will improve my efficiency and productivity by magnitudes. Micromat receives our “Most Useful Utility†award.
SecuriKey from Griffin Technologies plans to change computer security forever with a combo SecuriKey software-hardware solution. Install their encryption software, then insert or remove a special USB key from your computer for access acceptance or denial via a password. It works on both Mac and Windows, costs $130, and additional keys are available for $50 when the dog eats your originals. Unplug your tiny USB SecuriKey and walk away from your desktop or laptop with full assurance that nobody can harass your system, period. Every member of our MyMac.com MWSF 2005 team wants to try out the product, so watch our Features column for a review. SecuriKey gets our “Best Cross-Platform Utility†award.
TRUE BELIEVERS is our second major trend. Individual innovators become successful by creating unusual products that find an immediate audience throughout the Macintosh community. Here are three:
From England comes Solio a solar-powered battery charger for iPods and cellular phones, with more product compatibility expected soon. As David Weeks posted previously at MyMac.com, using Solio you open its three-winged hand-sized solar collector, stick a pencil through its center hole, charge its battery, and use the custom cables to provide power for your iPod or cellular phone. What will be next? Perhaps laptop charging capability. Environmentalism and computer use are not usually compatible, and Solio hopes to make the breakthrough. We’re delighted to recognize Christopher Hornor from BetterEnergySystems Ltd. with our first “Solar Solutions†award.
LQGraphics brings us Photo To Movie, a dynamic slide show application that goes w-a-y beyond iPhoto’s Ken Burns Effect. Jason Snell from Macworld Magazine and Jeff Carlson from TidBITS joined me at the booth for a lengthy conversation with developer Chris Meyer. The demo was simple, and the results were stunning. Complete control over every aspect of a superior photo slide show is now possible for both Mac and Windows. You can see a couple of examples on the web site. Keep an ear to the wind, because this developer will be one to watch. For $50, users receive much more in slide show creativity than they ever could previously. Let’s call this software award “Beyond the Burns,†for Photo To Movie’s ability to go past the Ken Burns Effect for slide show video, audio, and titles.
Optical character recognition (OCR) scanning software never really performed well, until now, with the latest application from I.R.I.S. Instead of being a P.A.I.N in the N.E.C.K. (and elsewhere), OCR scans now provide an almost unlimited array of creative enhancements for document text and images. I lost track of time during the demo, and even then I wished I had another hour with each of this company’s products. In the past, optical character recognition software was mediocre and unpredictable. I.R.I.S.’s new products offer a giant improvement in accuracy and versatility, being able to include or exclude graphics with precision. This company sticks to its mission, and we need to give their products a thorough examination. How about an “Outasite OCR†award for the visionary developers at I.R.I.S.
WiebeTech makes a monster G5JamPlus add-on for your G5 tower that turns a single computer into a Soft Raid multi-SATA-drive unit. The specs are a bit geeky, and you can read all about it here. A jumbo custom baffle/cooling plate mounts inside the G5 enclosure, and up to four external drives can be affixed to it. With prices from $600 – $2900 US, heavy-demand users can obtain speedy, high-capacity storage with an in-stock box as foundation. My new G5 is scheduled to arrive soon, giving me an opportunity to take this demon around the block on two-wheels. Fasten your SATA-belts, and put on your “Ready To Wear RAID†outfit, which is the award we give to WiebeTech.
That’s the wrap on our favorite new technologies from Macworld SF 2005. Please use the Article discussion area below to offer suggestions of additional products to consider between now and MWSF 2006.
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