Hands-On Report--MacEXPO UK 2001

MacEXPO was held November 22-24 in London's Business Design Centre. With 21,163 attendees it is the largest, most exciting Mac show in the UK but, except for Apple's report which we previously noted, little has found its way to the pages of Mac web sites. Fortunately, Chris Ward sent us his first hand report:

"There was an air of excitement and enthusiasm in the air of MacExpo 2001 and with one of the largest turnouts in terms of visitors and exhibitors in the history of the show there was understandable reason. Perhaps due to Apple exhibiting at a UK show for the first time in 5 years or maybe because Mac users currently having a lot to celebrate. In a time of economic downturn, especially in the computing market, Apple is one of the very few IT companies currently running at a profit, a major upgrade to an amazing new OS has been released, developers are flocking back to the Mac in droves, machines are increasing in power but decreasing in price and now Apple has once again starting manufacturing non-Mac products. To top all that you can’t move without seeing Macs featured in adverts, TV programmes or films, there really is a lot to celebrate. The major product releases aside, trade shows like MacExpo are an excellent place for smaller companies to flaunt their wares and it was encouraging to see lesser known companies’ equally competent software and hardware. It’s nigh impossible to detail every single product and manufacturer but following are the products that appealed most to me, be it due to merit or the presentation of their stands.

"Apple had two major products to promote on the day, firstly iPod, which had it’s official launch on Thurs 22nd, the first day of the Expo. iPod is Apple’s first non-PC or monitor product for a few years and whilst I was disappointed to see something rather unoriginal like an MP3 player, it has the company's usual panache and flair. Primarily designed to complement Macs and iTunes--though a Wintel version will ship shortly--iPod has a 1,000 CD quality song capacity, 10 hour battery life, crisp LCD screen and only weighs 6.5 ounces. It will sell for approximately £350 including VAT and specially designed headphones, although some would say the price puts iPod out of the reach of a large portion of the consumer public. [The supply of iPods for the show sold out--ed.] Apple’s software releases include OS X.1, which along with an increasing amount of applications and games for the new OS shows OS X finally becoming a viable option for many Mac users. Other, less publicised, releases included iTunes 2 and the second generation of Airport, Apple’s wireless networking standard.

"Stalwarts of computer shows, Macromedia, whilst having no major new products to promote and a slightly unimpressive stand were demonstrating their software through a series of seminars. Items of note to Mac users from Macromedia are of a support bent and include the launch of a certification program for Dreamweaver, Flash and Coldfusion, creating a recognised qualification for proficient users of the applications. The release of a series of online video tutorials for Director 8.5, a new volume licensing programme and the launch of a worldwide-authorised training centre network were among other announcements from Macromedia.

"Adobe, possibly Macromedia’s largest rival were one again out in force launching the latest version of their layout and design software, InDesign 2.0. Available in early 2002 it will be compatible with OS X.1 and include a host of new features never seen in similar programs from its competitors one being a transparency feature. With Quark being increasingly slow and unreliable when it comes to delivering what users want and when they want it, Indesign could easily become the layout package of choice within a few years. Illustrator 10 is out now, again with support for OS X.1 and adding many new features like data driven graphics, symbol libraries and web export. However still no news on Photoshop for OSX which I’m sure was the most popular question to stand staff throughout the show.

"Perhaps one of the most anticipated software releases of the year, and indeed the most pleasantly surprising, was the launch of Maya for OSX. Maya has been the 3D graphics’ industries most successful and powerful applications, its port to OS X marks a welcome return of powerful 3D applications to the Mac platform. Maya is out now and features include QuickTime, OpenGL and full carbon support.

"First from the smaller developers is a release from Perforce software, who specialise in Software Configuration Management solutions (SCM). SCMs help development teams manage large programming projects by providing a graphical representation of what stages programmers are up to in projects. The application is available exclusively for OS X and is another sign of life getting easier for Mac OS developers, who lets face it, haven’t had an easy time in the past years (www.perforce.com). The launch of OS X and the relative ease of developing for the OS had opened up a gateway for a wealth of new developers, one such being P&L software, better known as developers for Apple’s web objects. Their first venture into application programming is Mesa, an Excel-like spreadsheet for Mac OS X, including full compatibility with Excel databases. Finally Toon Boom Technologies were out in force plugging their new 2D vector animation studio, Toon Boom Studio. The package includes all a budding animator requires to make web based animations, with features including SWF export and LipSync, although I do feel that the flash file format is sometimes rather limiting, making all animations look startlingly similar, however in the meantime it’s the best around. One glaring omission from my software roundup is Microsoft Office V.X, however I’m sure that Microsoft won’t let you ignore the product over the next few months, and quite frankly their stand at the show was pathetic, being a long, thin table with several bored looking staff seated behind it, make an effort and I will.

"For those users looking to accessorise their Mac, there were plenty of hardware releases to peruse as well. Ammicro specialises in distributing hardware accessories for the Mac and new to it’s rosters include Keyspans’ 1cm thick 4–port USB hub and USB 2.0 PCMCIA card, iRez’s Firewire Kritter and StealthFire web cams, Digicom’s USB GSM adaptor and PowerLogix’ G4 upgrade for Rev A, B, C & D iMacs. Also on a hardware note Hermstedt announced the latest version of their popular ISDN adapter, Webshuttle, it allows connection speeds of 128kbps, does not require a power adaptor and is available for OS 9.x and OS X.

"There were obviously many more exhibitors at the show including new product releases from HP, Minolta, Canon, Arbiter, Dantz, Iomega, Macally, Corel, Filemaker and many, many more. MacExpo has always been one of the best (UK) Mac shows and this year was no exception, with so many high profile exhibitors attending the show it was an encouraging and exciting show, reflecting well the current shape of the Mac market."

-- Chris Ward