Macworld NYC 2002--Show Floor, Day 2

The second day's crowd was similar to the first. There were large crowds at many of the popular exhibits and lectures so attendance may be similar to last year's in the end as IDG forecast.

First, we went back to Apple's area and found the one (yes one?) new 17" iMac on display that was demonstrating Inkwell, the new handwriting recognition feature of Mac OS X 10.2. The iMac demoing Inkwell had a Wacom tablet attached and was manned by an able Apple representative who knew all about it.

Inkwell has its own notepad and set of preferences to adjust its performance to one's handwriting characteristics. With our bad handwriting, Inkwell did very well indeed. If it missed a word, double-tapping on the word highlights it and brings down a menu of optional words for selection. While highlighted, the word may be rewritten. Scribbling over text causes Inkwell to erase it--very neat!

Inkwell can write to any application in the foreground that accepts text from a keyboard, from an AppleWorks document to the URL field in Internet Explorer. When writing to another application a strip of translucent yellow legal pad pops up to show your handwriting and then the text is transferred to the application. Writing to AppleWorks, Inkwell was not as good as to its notepad, with our handwriting and lack of practice anyway.

Any tablet will work with Inkwell but Apple will only guarantee compatibility with Wacoms. It will be included as a feature with 10.2 when it ships August 24.

A few of the other gems that we found on the show floor in the North Hall are: