Macworld Expo NY 1998: Walking the floor

Here are some impressions and highlights of what I saw while roaming the Exhibit floor yesterday:

Conflict Catcher 8 It gets my instant award for the best new utility at the show (I just heard that it also won a "Best of Show" award from Macworld magazine). It has a slew on neat new features, including the ability to intelligently merge the files from an old System Folder with a newly installed Folder.

ACTION Files 1.1 Coming in a close second is a significant update to this already superb utility. In addition to the default folder capability (that I previously mentioned on MacFixIt), it can also assign a command key shortcut to any file in its menus. Action Utilities is rumored to be working on a Now Menus-type of product, but they would not officially confirm this.

RAM Doubler 8has an improved interface and MS Office compatibility. Connectix' Surf Express Deluxe has a new search feature that appears to be similar to what comes built in to Mac OS 8.5 (as described above).

3Com was previewing the Claris Organizer-based MacPac for the Palm organizers. It should ship in August and will be a free download for any current MacPac Palm user.

However, also look out for Consultant. It is a combination contact database and scheduler that appears to do just about everything Now Contact and Now Up-to-Date could do - and more. One neat feature is a Translator, where you enter a sentence in plain English (such as "I need to meet with John at noon tomorrow") and it translates it into an appointment entry. And expect to soon see a conduit that will let Consultant HotSync with the Palm products!

I had a quick look at MacLinkPlus 10(not yet shipping). It has a redesigned interface with several new features, including new contextual menu and drag-and-drop support and a new ability to automatically decode and decompress email attachments.

FAXstf Pro 5.0 was on display. It is a major rewrite that appears to finally integrate its features into one central FaxBrowser.

Bare Bones Software was showing Mailsmith. It looked as impressive as the beta version I had seen at the last Expo.

Font Reserve 2.0, "a major update," was announced (it's faster and has a few new features including the ability to add Fonts Temporarily to the database).

The new version of GoLive's CyberStudio 3 Professional was being sold (or you could pick up a free competitive upgrade to CyberStudio Personal).

There was obviously much of interest to do and see. Still, in the roller-coaster ride of recent Expos, this one seemed to be taking a slight turn downward. Maybe it's the new location. But the event seemed to be smaller (less exhibitors and smaller exhibits) and to have less new products on display. The biggest star of the show was clearly the iMac. There were dozens of them about the floor and a big poster ("I think therefore iMac) hung over the Apple booth. My hope is that, by the next Expo, the success of the the iMac will have led to a resurgence in new and exciting "insanely great" products.

More Expo news coming next time.