Macworld Expo Floor Report 2--The Gems

Wednesday we walked the whole floor looking for things that the Mac user might find interesting and that are new, at least to us. We reported on two yesterday, the p5 gaming glove (Essential Reality; Early 2002; $129) and the PowerBook E-2000 portable hood (Hoodman; Now; $39.95 [$35 show special]). We bought the hood to be able to use our new TiBook outdoors from time to time.

Yesterday we returned to the floor and hit the other booths where on Wednesday we spied new products to check out before taking an afternoon train back to Macs Only!'s global headquarters in Vienna, VA. Of course, we do not mean to disparage the many other fine products being shown at Macworld by not covering them, it's just that we only had limited time to make our rounds. There were many updates to terrific products that we reported on last year such as Mimio, the automatic whiteboard. Here's what we thought you, our readers, would be most interested in:

Drive 10 v1.0.1 from Micromat is the first drive maintenance utility released in final for Mac OS X. We have been using Mac OS X since it was released March 24th with a bit of concern about disk errors that might render the partition with Mac OS X unusable. That concern is one reason why we have kept our data on a separate Mac OS 9.1 partition. We purchased a copy of Drive 10 at the show special price of $52.29 plus tax. We loaded it on our TiBook from the CD and checked the Mac OS X partition. All the tests whipped by in seconds until the critical volume structures test which took a couple of minutes to complete. Sure enough, Drive 10 found volume structure errors so we rebooted from the CD (it has a Mac OS X system folder). Drive 10 repaired the damage in a couple of minutes and rebooted back from our hard drive's Mac OS X partition. The whole process took just under 10 minutes with most of the time consumed by the two boots into Mac OS X. Micromat, maker of TechTool and TechTool Pro, is one of our all time favorite software companies--great products, great attitude and great customer service. (Micromat; Now; $69.95 [$52.29 show special]).

Virtual PC for OS X from Connectix is available for download as a free test drive beta for owners of Virtual PC 4. The test drive is good through January 2002 and that will be extended according to Connectix if the final product gets delayed. The final Virtual PC for Mac OS X will require one additional update beyond Mac OS X version 10.1 that will be released by Apple in September. Virtual PC 1.0 saved our bacon several years ago when our day-job enterprise began implementing proprietary administrative software built to run exclusively on Windows. Virtual PC allowed us to keep our Macs. We erred in our previous comment that the only reason we need to boot into Mac OS 9.1 was to configure our AirPort Base Station. We still need Virtual PC for some proprietary Windows-only administrative applications although many have been moved to the internet and are no longer a problem. We downloaded the test drive and set it up on our Mac OS X partition. When we figured out that we needed an alias of the preference folder from the same partition where Virtual PC 4 is located and not from the partition where we usually run it from, the Mac OS X test drive version worked perfectly. We launched the Windows ME image and confirmed that our Windows-only applications now work in OS X--wonderful! VPCX Test Drive also works with Windows XP RC1 but the smooth interface between Windows XP and Mac OS X (free cursor movement [hold down the apple key] and drag and drop) is not implemented yet. Connectix is another of our favorite software companies--great products (including an update of DoubleTalk to v1.1); great attitude (we can migrate to Mac OS X on a FREE transitional Virtual PC) and great customer service. (Connectix; Now; Free)

Twin View from NVIDIA, Apple's new default graphics "card" company, was announced during the keynote as being available on the new Dual 800 MHz Power Mac G4 when it ships in August. Technically, TwinView is an Apple product since NVIDIA only supplies the chip sets and reference design and not the boards themselves. Apple takes the chip sets and reference design to a third party and has the boards built as OEM products exclusively for Apple. TwinView is the first dual head OEM graphics board to be offered by Apple on the Power Mac G4. Two monitors can be connected to the same board, one using the proprietary digital ADC connector and one using the standard VGA connector. The monitors can be used as an extended desktop horizontally and vertically and as mirrors. The TwinView is based on the GeForce2 MX chip set. No one but Apple knows for sure but it is expected that the TwinView card will be available on other Power Macs as a BTO and perhaps as a retro fit kit--we hope so. We saw it working at the NVIDIA booth and it seems to be an excellent solution, an alternative to ProMax's DH-Max card based on the Matrox Millennium. NVIDIA could not comment on future Apple applications of their technology but they are pursuing chip set integration with their nForce GPU for the PC Windows environment and Microsoft's Xbox game machine plus mobile GPUs for laptops. Hopefully, we will see one or both of these on the Mac platforms. Is there a successor in the works to their recent fabulous GeForce3 GPU, a BTO option from Apple? NVIDIA's not talking right now. (NVIDIA/Apple; August; Dual 800 Power Mac G4)

Radeon VE Mac Edition for dual monitor capability from ATI, Apple's former default graphics card supplier. ATI announced that this formerly Windows-only graphics board will be available in September for Macs for a reasonable $129. It supports full OpenGL, QuickTime, DVD playback, TV out and analog video output for composite and S-video. The Radeon VE speedwise falls between the Rage 128 Pro and Radeon chips. As such, the VE is more for graphics professionals and those needing dual monitor support than diehard gamers. But the VE is no slouch. It has 32 MB of DDR video RAM and supports extended desktop and mirror modes as well as multiple tasks on different monitors. Dual monitors run off the DVI and VGA ports on the card and a DVI to VGA adapter is included for running two VGA monitors. It will run on Mac OS 9 or X in a PCI slot only. No AGP slot model is expected. ATI's attitude remains positive despite their terrific Radeon card being delisted as a BTO option on Apple's Store--it remains an accessory, however. ATI welcomes the competition from NVIDIA saying it will make better products available for Mac users than ever before. When asked about what's in the cards to respond to NVIDIA's GeForce3, ATI officials responded with a "...just wait until September!" When asked about OS X support, ATI responded that they are trying to decide where the line will fall. They may even include the XClaim Rage Pro series which is currently not supported in Mac OS X. (ATI; September; $129).

Mini USB Hub for PowerBooks from Keyspan. The new mini USB hub from Keyspan has four USB ports and an AC adapter but is only the size of a credit card and about 1 cm thick, i.e. less than half an inch. The USB connector has a short cable that is kept in a little chamber at one end of the hub. A top flips open to use the connector. The AC adapter is also small and light weight. The mini hub is a terrific design for travelers being as thin as it possibly can be. It will come in dual tone silver or black. (Keyspan; August; $49)

OmniWeb 4.0.2 is available for download from OmniGroup's web site according to the people manning the OmniGroup booth. While this is actually just an upgrade to an existing product, we think OmniWeb implemented in Mac OS X's highest level graphics environment, Cocoa, is truly superb. A few issues remain before v4.0.2 which we haven't had a chance to download and check, i.e. certain java actions don't work like logging in to our Netscape Messenger Express server and the table captions created by Adobe GoLive are not properly located (lower right rather than on top). But OmniWeb is gorgeous and looks every bit as integrated in Mac OS X as the Mail application. It renders text beautifully. We use it. [Note: As of publication time only v4.0.1 was available from OmniWeb's web site] (OmniGroup; Now; Free/$29.95)

HARMONi, Piccolo and Tempo ATA100 from Sonnet, the only manufacturer of CPU upgrade cards for the Mac at Macworld. Neither XLR8 nor site sponsor PowerLogix exhibited this year. Sonnet demoed three new products at the show.

- HARMONi is a 500 MHz G3 upgrade CPU card for the early iMacs Rev. A-D (or 233-333 MHz) which also includes a FireWire port. It converts the older iMacs into a fast DV machine for an estimated price of $299.95. HARMONi is projected to be available in early Q4 (Oct-Dec).

- Piccolo is a tiny USB flash memory "drive". Connect it to a USB port on a Mac or PC and it mounts just like a hard drive. It is crossplatform compatible. The Piccolo will come in 32, 64, 128 and 256 MB versions that will cost $100, $190, $350 and $600. The 32-128 MB models will be out in August and the 256 MB later in the year. The 32 MB model we saw was about 1-1/2" long and 1/2" on a side. One can forget floppy disks forever with these "drives".

- Tempo ATA100 is a 100 MHz PCI slot controller card for ATA100 hard drives. Sonnet introduced the 66 MHz model at last year's Macworld Expo in NYC. The new model supports the faster interface of the most recent ATA/IDE hard drives. It will ship in September for $119.95.

Mac OS X 10.1 Boot Time: In our comparo with Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.0.4 on our Power Mac G4 533 DP took 102 seconds from startup to login and another 19 seconds from login to the complete desktop without loading Classic mode--just over 2 minutes. Windows XP took 47 seconds. While watching demos of the new 10.1 version of Mac OS X we got lucky and witnessed a reboot and timed it approximately with out trusty wrist watch. It took about 60 seconds to get to the login window and only a couple of seconds more to a complete the desktop without Classic mode. Of course, this was on a new Power Mac G4 800 DP but this is still a substantial improvement in speed. The update is not due out until September so there is plenty of time to tweak it a little more.

This completes our special on-scene reports from Macworld Expo NYC 2001. Macworld ends today and we think it was a pretty good one in spite of the flagging tech sector economy.