Walking the Macworld 2007 Expo Show Floor--Part II
Case-Mate makes premium leather cases for iPods, cell phones, the Sony PSP and smart phones as well as Apple's Intel-based 'Books. Their Signature Suits for the MacBook Pro and MacBook are new. They are molded out of a form-fitting hard plastic shell, covered inside with a soft interior lining and covered outside with a rich pebbled leather. The currently available colors are solid black or red for the MacBook Pro and solid white, black or red or with a contrasting stripe for the MacBook. Other colors are under consideration. For the MacBook Pro, we would favor an aluminum silver or a dark brown leather.
The Signature Suit fits the form of the MacBook Pro or MacBook and is held in place by clear plastic straps on the inside cover that stretch in order to put the Signature Suit on and then shrink back to keep it firmly attached. It has a cut-out on the top to show the Apple logo and a larger one on the bottom to allow for heat dissipation. All of the ports are uncovered via side cut-outs as are the rear fan vents. The Signature Suit in premium pebbled leather is a premium $159 for the MacBook Pro and $149 for the MacBook.
Kinemac is a prime example of terrific Mac software, i.e. it does complex and interesting things with a simple and elegant interface. Kinemac is 3D real-time animation and presentation software. With it one can easily create 3D and 2D animations and export them to QuickTime.
We watched Lorenzo Puleo, Kinemac's CEO, in utter amazement as he quickly and easily brought objects to life on his Cinema Display canvas. Granted, he is an expert in his software but we were still impressed with how easy it was to set up and make animations. Here is a gallery of examples.
Kinemac is available at Macworld as a show special $174.
Among the booths drawing big crowds were those showing the three OS emulation applications by Parallels, VMware and CrossOver.
Parallels Desktop for Mac [Macworld 2007 Best of Show Award] lets you run Windows as a virtual machine on a Mac without rebooting and is the most advanced of the three applications in their respective development phases. There is already a stable version 2.0 (Build 1970) and a more advanced Beta 4 (Build 3120) of version 2.5 nearing release. It kind of reminds you of Virtual PC, running in a window or full screen, but it is much faster. Version 2.5 adds USB 2.0 support and implements the really cool coherence mode where Windows applications run on the Mac OS X desktop rather than on the Windows desktop--the Windows desktop is hidden. You can even keep Windows application icons in the dock and launch them from there as if they were regular Mac applications.
We have used Parallels instead of Virtual PC since its early stable version 1.0.
VMware Fusion for Mac is still in beta but it runs x86-based operating systems like Windows, Linux, Netware and Solaris as virtual machines in Mac OS X. It supports USB 2.0, 64-bit hardware and takes advantage of dual core Intel processors with multiple virtual processors.
VMware has downloadable virtual appliances. What are they? VMware writes,
A virtual appliance is a pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-run software application packaged with the operating system inside a virtual machine. Virtual appliances are changing the software distribution paradigm because they allow application builders to choose the best operating system for their application and deliver a turnkey software service to the end user.
We saw Fusion running at VMware's booth and it looked very promising. We have a copy of VMware's beta and will be trying it out.
CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac is the only one of the three that does not require a licensed version of Windows to run certain Windows applications on Mac OS X. CodeWeavers officially supports the following Windows applications using CrossOver Mac:
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Project
Microsoft Visio
Half-Life 2
Quicken
and here is their compatibility list. After launching CrossOver Mac, one simply uses the application's CD or CrossOver Mac's installer to install it as if it were being installed on a Windows machine. Then clicking an application's icon or a document for it launches and runs the application just as if it were a Mac application.
The demo at CodeWeavers' booth worked as advertised. A trial version is available for download so we intend to try it directly.
The Games Pavilion is located in North Moscone Hall. However, the gaming area is reduced in size, function and participation from recent years. There are only two major game houses with booths, Freeverse and Aspyr Media, rather than the usual four or more. Missing are the aisles of iMacs and PowerMacs for trying out the game offerings from many game houses. They are replaced by four, four-sided stands. Also missing are the game competitions with their own aisles of PowerMacs driving large screen monitors. Coupled with the lack of the major graphics chip and card makers, Nvidia and ATI, and a relatively sparser crowd in North Moscone the Gaming Pavilion is a bit disappointing this year.
On the positive side, there is a new aisle of iPod games. And both Freeverse and Aspyr Media have their new games on display--Lego Star Wars II and The Movies from Freeverse and Prey [Macworld 2007 Best of Show Award] from Aspyr. It was easy to try them out and to play for some time without feeling pressured to give way to another Macworld attendee.
In summary
We always enjoy walking the Macworld show floor and talking to people who are actually developing and delivering Mac and Mac-related products and 2007 was no different. Despite the hour or number of demos given, they are always eager to do it enthusiastically once more and again and again.... We talked to a number of people from far away places who attended the concurrent conferences and all were very positive. The keynote, while not presenting new Mac features per se may well have, in fact, shown us the beginning of the coming revolution in mobile computing in the guise of Apple's iPhone.
As for attendance? It looked pretty good to us but not appreciably larger than last year--it's really hard to tell if there is not a huge difference. Talking to vendors yielded mixed opinions.
The weather has been great all week, if a bit cold for those from warmer climes like Florida or even San Diego. Today, we'd ordinarily be on the road early but we're taking off to visit George Lucas' new studio on the grounds of the Presidio while still contemplating the iPhone's possibilities. [Bill Fox]
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