New Gear at Macworld

Sure, Apple's announcements caused a lot of chatter, but there was plenty of other interesting stuff to check out.

Rebecca Freed, PC World

Comments or questions? Drop a line to The Mac Skeptic.

I bought a new Apple G4 PowerBook last month, and I'm thoroughly smitten with it. I'm so enamored that I was a little worried about continuing to call this column The Mac Skeptic--until last week's Macworld Expo.

The major announcements from Apple--about the Mac Mini, ILife '05 and IWork '05, and the IPod Shuffle--have gotten tons of ink, so I won't bother to go through each one. But I found plenty to be skeptical about with Apple's just-announced hardware. You can read reviews of the Mac Mini and the IPod Shuffle now, and we will review ILife in the very near future.

Mainly I'm skeptical about the flash-based IPod Shuffle, which has no screen at all. In his keynote, Steve Jobs slagged on the small LCDs of most flash players and implied that omitting the screen and building the player around shuffle mode is a virtue--but I'm not buying it. Personally, I'd like to see some usability data on how people navigate with various players.

Apple has taken a big gamble with the IPod Shuffle's design, but people will buy it whether it's really usable or not. I'll readily admit that I have a chip on my shoulder about the player's navigation and controls: All the IPod idolatry makes me want to go out and buy a Creative Zen Micro.

I'm interested in trying the revamped ITunes, with its Autofill feature that's designed to help people switch out the songs on their players using rules. But while transferring most of my computing life over to my new Mac has been painless, I've been dragging my feet about moving to ITunes; yes, I have a grudge against it, too. Bringing my music library in from my old PC has been completely unintuitive, and ITunes is just not as flexible for sorting and viewing tracks as Musicmatch. And when I make the switch, I won't have Musicmatch's On Demand service or customizable radio stations anymore--ITunes doesn't have comparable features.

Accessorizing Is Critical

When I hit the Macworld show floor, I was ready to whip out my credit card: I was not only looking for news and trends, I was also on the prowl for stuff to go with my shiny new toy. Here's what caught my eye.

Kensington released a slew of input devices and peripherals, but what I want is its $70 PocketMouse Bluetooth Pilot. It's tiny and nicely styled--and the Mac version doesn't come with a Bluetooth adapter, since many Macs already have Bluetooth built in. When I saw a colleague use a similar model to scroll on his leg, I knew this was the solution for computing on the couch.

Kensington's $45 PocketMouse Convertible Mini has an adapter that turns it into a full-size desktop mouse. Travelers who don't want to waste money on two mice may like this, but I thought the pop-on adapter looked kind of wonky--and why have just one accessory when you can buy two?

Of course, my PowerBook needs a cool-looking and secure travel case, and I had high hopes of finding one at the show. Most of what I saw was pretty uninspiring, but Crumpler Bags held some promise. The Australian company's booth was constructed of oil barrels and chalkboards--and visitors were encouraged to leave chalked graffiti. While I had to leave the booth before claustrophobia did me in, I'll probably spring for a Crumpler messenger bag.

Getting Organized Is Good, Too

Even the small booths at the edges of the show were getting lots of attention from Expo attendees, because companies like Bare Bones Software were there. Bare Bones is the developer of BBEdit, a favorite text editor among expert HTML authors.

Super Get Info extends the handy Open With command in Mac context menus.

Bare Bones was showing version 8 of BBEdit; but since my coding skills are rudimentary at best, I was more interested in the newly upgraded TextWrangler 2.0, a lighter but still powerful text editor that has the distinct advantage of being free. I'm also anxious to try Super Get Info 1.2, a $20 utility that lets you inspect and modify more properties of your files and folders than the Mac OS does with Cmd-I. It extends the "Open with" command in context menus, letting you choose which applications appear. I use this function in Windows a lot; and having a more powerful, flexible version of it on my Mac would definitely be useful.

The filtering and editing tools in Bare Bones' $99 Mailsmith 2.1 mail client also look useful. I don't run my life out of my e-mail box; but if I did, I think I'd need these kinds of customizing tools.

Actually, I try run my life with something a little more sophisticated than e-mail. In both my personal and professional lives, I like to plan by making outlines (lists with sublists and annotations and target dates and attached material... I'm not compulsive about this, really), so I've been working with OmniOutliner. This program comes from the Omni Group, the developers of my favorite Mac browser, OmniWeb 5.

OmniOutliner 3 can make customizable multicolumn lists that are great for tracking projects.

The Omni Group just released OmniOutliner 3, which features great navigation tools and style controls. You can also insert images and objects like audio clips into your outline, and its new multicolumn lists make it great for project planning. I have a feeling I'm going to live in this program--no more fighting with Microsoft Word's fussy outline styles. And sorry, Windows users, it's a Mac-only program; I'll export my elegant outlines to.rtf so you can admire them. The basic version is $40; a Pro version with even more viewing and styling tools, plus the ability to record audio notes in your outline, is $70.