Macworld 2005

For technology lovers, the annual Macworld show held in San Francisco in early January is a terrific way to herald the new year. Apple has a reputation for creating cool, stylish, and innovative products, and the company has certainly lived up to this reputation with the product announcements it made at this year's Macworld show, currently being held from January 11 to 15 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. I attended the keynote presentation and toured the exhibit floor on the first day of the conference. The highlights of both, from an AEC technology perspective, are captured in this issue of the AECbytes newsletter. (To compare notes with last year's Macworld, see AECbytes Newsletter #4.)

Compelling and Feature-Packed Keynote Presentation

The keynote address was presented, as always, by Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, in his usual relaxed yet compelling and charismatic style. He held the floor for two hours, and gave most of the demos of the new applications and features himself. For Mac lovers, Jobs is the hero who has succeeded in resurrecting the company from its precipitous fall into oblivion since he returned as CEO seven years ago, and his presentation was repeatedly punctuated by rapturous applause from the audience. The overall atmosphere was more reminiscent of a political convention rather than the conventional technical and professional conferences we are so used to attending.

The most important product announcement from a professional AEC perspective was a new low-cost Mac, dubbed the Mac Mini, which will be available starting January 22. It comes in a small, sleek box measuring 6.5 inches square and 2 inches tall, and weighing only 2.9 pounds (see Figure 1). You plug in any industry-standard display, keyboard, and mouse, and what you have is a full-fledged Mac with a G4 processor, 256 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9200 graphics with 32 MB of dedicated DDR memory, a combo drive for watching DVDs and burning CDs, Firewire and USB ports, built-in speaker, built-in Ethernet and modem, and optional support for wireless communication and networking. Two different models are available: a $499 model with a 1.25 GHz processor and 40 GB hard drive, and a $599 model with a 1.42 GHz processor and 80 GB hard drive. For AEC firms that are looking for an affordable alternative to the Windows platform and who work with cross-platform applications such as ArchiCAD, VectorWorks, formoZ, and SketchUp, the new Mac Minis will be a godsend.

The Mac Minis will also be a great draw for personal use. They come equipped with the current version of the Mac OS X, Panther, Apple's superior operating system, as well as the new version of iLife, Apple's integrated suite of digital lifestyle applications featuring iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand, that collectively allow you to organize, edit, and share digital photos, create digital movies and DVDs, and purchase, manage, and create digital music. This new release, iLife 05, was also unveiled at the keynote presentation. It will be available from January 22, and will come free with all new Macs. For older Macs, it is a very affordable purchase for $79. The individual enhancements in all the five iLife applications are too many to list here, but a brief overview highlighting the most important ones follows.

The new version of iPhoto in iLife 05 has advanced photo editing capabilities, support for RAW photos (a file format produced by high-end digital cameras) and MPEG video, advanced slideshows, a new calendar view with the ability to find photos by date, and new book layouts that can be used to quickly collate a set of photos into a nicely designed book that can then be ordered online without leaving the application (see Figure 2). The big news for iMovie 5 is its ability to capture and edit HDV (high definition video) from the new generation of HDV camcorders. It also includes Magic iMovie, an impressive new feature that automatically imports video into separate clips and adds titles, transitions, and music, all in one step. iDVD 5 includes 15 new themes featuring animated drop zones for creating DVD menus, one-step DVD creation, and support for all major DVD formats including -R, +R, -RW, and +RW. GarageBand, the music making application that stole the show at last year's Macworld (see AECbytes Newsletter #4), now adds 8-track recording allowing users to record an entire band at once, pitch and timing correction, display and editing of musical notation in real time, and independent Jam Packs for creating different genres of music. The Grammy-nominated musician, John Mayer, who helped to demo GarageBand at last year's keynote returned this year to help Jobs demo the new features. While the iLife applications are primarily for personal use, features such as creating books of photos and creating movies and DVDs can also come in handy along the professional front, particularly for design firms.

Another new product announcement at the keynote was iWork 05, geared towards easily creating professional looking documents and presentations. It features a brand new application, Pages, which combines traditional word processing and desktop publishing functionality in one stylish and easy-to-use interface for creating letters, newsletters, reports, brochures, etc (see Figure 3). Pages includes over 40 built-in templates that be used as the starting point of a document, and integrates an iLife media browser that allows quick drag and drop of photos from the iPhoto library. iWork 05 also includes a new version of Keynote, Apple's presentation software that is far superior and way cooler than the ubiquitous Powerpoint in that it allows even novice users to create cinematic-looking presentations, portfolios, interactive slideshows, and storyboards. The key new features here include 20 new themes for quick and easy creation of presentations, real time animated text, powerful slide animations to synchronize the movement of multiple objects, Flash output, and integration with iLife for quick and easy insertion of the photos, movies, and music from their respective libraries. iWork 05 will also be available from January 22, and is priced very affordably at $79.

If all this makes you want to go out and buy a Mac right away—I know I certainly did!—it might be better to wait until Apple releases the next version of its operating system, Mac OS X Tiger, promised in the first half of the year. I am not a stranger to cool technology, but the demo of this at the keynote was simply mind-blowing. It features Spotlight, a new desktop search feature built into the operating system and integrated into the applications so that it can search for a word or phrase even inside the content of a file (see Figure 4). The Spotlight technology is also integrated into the System Finder and Preferences, allowing, for instance, all presentations to be automatically associated with a "Presentations" smart folder. It allows instantaneous search of all the content on the desktop, and the search results instantly update as changes are made. Search is a very hot technology these days, with the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all offering desktop search solutions, and it will be interesting to see how Spotlight holds up against these competitors.

Other new features in Mac OS X Tiger include a major upgrade to Mail, Apple'e e-mail application. Spotlight has been integrated into Mail, allow e-mails to be searched instantly. If an e-mail includes multiple image attachments, they can be played consecutively in a slideshow or displayed together in one window, from which any picture can be saved directly to iPhoto. Mac OS X Tiger will also include a major upgrade to Quick Time 7, which features live resizing of the movie window, complete MPEG 4 compliance, and a new compression technology (H26.4) that allows even full screen video to be displayed with no drop in resolution quality. A new Dashboard feature will provide a variety of super-cool widgets developed by Apple and third-party vendors, including a calendar, calculator, stickies for reminder notes, a converter for every kind of conversion possible, dictionary and thesaurus, a translator with many built-in languages for quickly translating a phrase from one language to another, and many other real-time functions such as yellow pages, weather and traffic reports, even stock trackers. Imagine having all these utilities literally at your fingertips! The final feature of Mac OS X Tiger that was demonstrated at the keynote was iChat, which extends audio conferencing to 10 people and allows video conferencing of multiple users in a round-table like format (see Figure 4). Jobs demonstrated this live by having three other users located in different parts of the world conference in with himself at the show.

In addition to computers and software, the other main highlights of the keynote were related to Apple's growing business in the digital music world. Its iTunes music library has 70% market share, and the sales of its popular music players, iPod and iPod mini, crossed 10 million, of which 8 million were sold in 2004 alone. Apple is now going after the low-end digital music player market by introducing the iPod shuffle, which is smaller and lighter than a pack of gum and is available in two models: 512 MB holding up to 120 songs for $99, and I GB holding up to 240 songs for $149. The iPod shuffle can also double up as a portable USB storage device.

Building Design and Visualization Software

The exciting, buoyant, and feature-packed keynote presentation at Macworld was, for a Mac-inclined AEC professional, in sharp contrast to the minimal display of AEC-related software on the Expo floor. Graphisoft, a major vendor in this field whose ArchiCAD product is cross-platform, was notable in its absence from the show. However, the other two veterans of Macworld, form•Z and VectorWorks, were present, and so was the relatively new entrant to the Mac platform, SketchUp.

auto•des•sys Inc. formally announced the next release of its modeling, rendering, and animation application, form•Z 5.0, at this Macworld. The new version includes numerous improvements such as direct data transfer from one window to another, custom defined attributes for creating and managing object information, ruled parametric surface primitives, frame structures derived from the edges of objects, formula curves and a multitude of formula surfaces, smooth parametric objects, cloned objects where transforming one transforms all, doodle renderings that look like hand-drawn sketches, improved interactive OpenGL that allows shadows to be animated, and environment lights for more accurate lighting effects. form•Z 5.0 also includes a full-fledged SDK (Software Development Kit) that allows users to customize the application and extend its functionality by writing plugins and scripts. Watch for a detailed review of form•Z 5.0 in AECbytes next month.

Nemetschek North America demonstrated the current release of its VectorWorks 11 family of products, built on top of its base 2D drafting and 3D modeling application, VectorWorks. The lineup includes ARCHITECT for building design, LANDMARK for landscape and site design, MECHANICAL for designers, machine shops, and fabricators, SPOTLIGHT for entertainment and lighting design, and finally RENDERWORKS, a dedicated rendering and presentation tool for all VectorWorks products. Improvements to the version 11 suite include enhanced tools for making drawing production more efficient, new page layout capabilities, reduced file sizes, faster and more robust modeling, new and faster rendering modes including artistic styles, real-time texture mapping and editing, and support for QuickTime VR as well as for AutoCAD 2004 and ACIS solids.

While @Last Software didn't have a new release of SketchUp to showcase, it did use the conference to announce the availability of a collection of 1500 new pre-modeled objects grouped together in component libraries for different fields: Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Film and Stage, and Mechanical Design. These can be downloaded for free from the SketchUp website. Modeling in SketchUp should get even easier and quicker with the introduction of this collection.

The only other CAD and modeling software I found at Macworld was a suite of low-cost Mac-only applications by a company called Microspot. The suite includes: Microspot MacDraft for $349, a 2D design and drafting application that can integrate with the industry workflow using DWG/DXF; a scaled down version of MacDraft called MacDraft PE (Personal Edition); Microspot Interiors for $129, a 3D application for interior design; and Microspot Modeling for $129, a simple 3D modeling application that includes textures and lighting. Also available are a set of five Microspot Symbol Libraries for $129, contained pre-drawn elements to speed up the drafting process.

That rounds up Macworld 2005 from the AEC perspective. I hope the exciting developments along the Mac front will spur a renewed interest in this innovative platform from AEC industry professionals, and in turn, from the developers who support it with technology. I look forward to the time when I am compelled to buy a Mac to test and review AEC software applications rather than for personal use alone.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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