Macworld 2006

The start of the New Year is usually an exciting time for Mac lovers, as it kicks off with the annual Macworld show in San Francisco, and both speculation and anticipation are very rife about what Apple will announce at the show. The last few years have been very successful for Apple, in large part due to the tremendous success of its iPod music players, and more recently the iPod video players. Considering that the Mac platform has continued to remain, for the most part, a niche player in the personal computer market, there is always the possibility that Apple will eventually divert its focus and energies away from the Mac and towards its iPod business, a scenario Mac users must be dreading. So did Macworld 2006, held last week from January 10 to 13, allay these fears and reassure Mac users of Apple's commitment to their beloved platform? Or did it indeed give them some cause for concern? Read this article to find out.

To compare notes with previous Macworld shows, see AECbytes Newsletter #17 and AECbytes Newsletter #4.

What's New from Apple?

"What's an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it's ever done in a PC."

This was Apple's provocative slogan for Macworld this year, posted all over the conference venue and forming the mainstay of Steve Job's keynote presentation. It comes from Apple's recent partnership with Intel, which was only announced last summer but has already resulted in two new Macs that were unveiled at Macworld. The first is a new iMac featuring Mac OS X running on the new Intel Core Duo processor, delivering performance that is up to twice that of its predecessor. The second is a new MacBook Pro notebook computer, also featuring the new Intel Core Duo processor, which delivers up to four times the performance of the PowerBook G4, the product it replaces. Both computers also feature a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing out-of-the-box, and a new media experience using the Apple Remote with the Front Row application that turns the computer into a portable theatre, allowing users to enjoy their content from across the room. Also exceptional about the MacBook Pro is that it comes in an aluminum enclosure that is just one inch thin and weighs only 5.6 pounds.

On the software front, Apple showed new releases of iLife, its integrated suite of digital lifestyle applications, and iWork, geared towards easily creating professional looking documents and presentations. iLife 06 features new and improved versions of 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 and podcasts. In addition, iLife 06 introduces a new application called iWeb, designed to let users quickly and easily create professional-looking web pages, online photo albums, blogs and Podcasts (see Figure 1). It includes numerous Apple-designed templates to help create attractive websites and a media browser for dragging and dropping photos, movies, music or playlists, all without knowing HTML. The content created with iWeb can be published to Apple's online .Mac service with one click.

iWork 06 features many enhancements to 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., as shown in Figure 2) and Keynote (which is used to create cinematic-looking presentations, portfolios, interactive slideshows, and storyboards). These include tables with spreadsheet-like calculations that can be inserted within any document or presentation giving users the ability to add, multiply or average numbers in rows or columns; the ability to create three-dimensional charts featuring realistic wood grain, metal and marble textures with full control of the viewing angle; iPhoto-like advanced image editing tools for making adjustments to photos directly within documents and presentations; the ability to easily create freeform shapes and curves, including Bézier curves and shapes with perfectly smooth edges, and use them to mask images; and the ability to include reviewer's comments to slides and documents without affecting the layout.

Apple had some other iPod-related announcements that are beyond the scope of this article.

Building Design and Visualization Software

While the announcements made at the keynote presentation certainly reaffirmed Apple's commitment to the Macintosh platform, a tour of the Exhibit Hall presented a slightly different picture. Much more so than in previous shows, the Exhibit Hall seemed to be dominated by gadgets and gizmos, many of which were various kinds of accessories for the iPod. The software vendors were there, of course, but their presence was somewhat diluted in the midst of all the gadgets. It is possible that this trend will continue and be even more pronounced in the Macworld shows to come.

With regard to AEC-related software, the prognosis was mixed. Graphisoft, whose ArchiCAD application is cross-platform, continued to stay away from the show for the second successive year, indicating that the Mac platform is no longer as compelling to its business. On the other hand, SketchUp was a big presence at Macworld this year, and its booth continued to be packed as usual. Other Macworld regulars, form•Z and VectorWorks, maintained their presence and used the opportunity to show new versions of their products. It was heartening to see two smaller CAD applications, VersaCAD and TurboCAD, exhibit at the show for the first time. Last but not the least, Adobe was one of the biggest exhibitors at the show, showing its illustration, imaging, and publishing software along with the recently acquired Macromedia line of products for Web design.

auto•des•sys Inc. gave a sneak preview of the next release of its modeling, rendering, and animation application, form•Z 6.0, currently in beta testing and due out later towards the summer. The biggest new feature in this release is the introduction of object animation, which allows objects and lights to be animated directly in form•Z. The animation can be used for traditional design visualization or as a way of generating new 3D forms that cannot be created with traditional methods. A hierarchical track-based animation model is used, which allows for the sharing of common motion parameters and construction of complex motion scenes. Tracks are parameters of an entity that can be animated, allowing control of the position, rotation, and scale of an object, light, or camera. In addition to object animation, form•Z 6.0 also features controlled deformations, where the parameters of deformations are retained as controlled objects allowing deformation operations to be retained in a sequential format and reordered and edited; support of the ZPR file format for 3D printing, including full textures for color printing; a new skinned loft tool which constructs objects by fitting a surface through a series of source shapes, with the optional use of paths and guides to further define the shape of the object; a new morph tool that creates new forms by combining existing objects, and can be animated with the new animation features to create dynamic transitions between objects; and a new transform tool that facilitates making multiple changes to the position, rotation, and scale of an object without needing to change tools. Many of these features, especially object animation and morphing, were demonstrated at Macworld in a very slick animation (see Figure 3) that had attendees riveted to their seats during the presentations.

Nemetschek North America demonstrated the recent release, Version 12, of its product family built on top of the base 2D drafting and 3D modeling application, VectorWorks Fundamentals. This includes Architect for building design; Landmark for landscape and site design; Machine Design for designers, machine shops, and metal fabricators; Spotlight for entertainment lighting and scene and set design; Designer, which combines all of the above into one comprehensive program for designers who need it all; and Renderworks, a dedicated rendering and presentation tool for all VectorWorks products. The key new features in version 12 of the VectorWorks family include a dramatically simplified interface that provides quicker access to tools; easier to select object handles for editing; interactive zoom and pan with the mouse wheel for faster navigation; an enhanced flyover tool for manipulating 3D views; the ability to drag and drop textures on the faces of 3D objects; improvements in workgroup referencing for teams to collaborate on different parts of a design more easily; and support for 3ds files and improved DXF/DWG translation. In addition, VectorWorks Architect has several improvements of its own, including new wall styles and easier creation of component walls; improved editing and managing of walls; a new custom stair object that supports an unlimited number of configurations to create complex staircases; enhanced door and window tools with more shapes and options and double-click editing, a new tool for dynamically reshaping 3D roofs; new roof accessories such as attics, soffits, and fascia; and several new object libraries including the KnollStudio collection of classic modern furniture that can be dragged and dropped into a scene.

While there was no new release of SketchUp on display at Macworld (version 5.0 was released last August and was reviewed in AECbytes shortly afterwards), the big draw at the SketchUp booth was the debut of the SketchUp Google Earth plug-in for the Mac OS X. Recall from my article on the first SketchUp user conference in October, where the Google Earth plug-in for the Windows platform was unveiled, that this new capability allows site data from Google Earth to be brought into SketchUp, with the correct terrain heights and geo-referencing information. The design can then be conceptualized in SketchUp in the context of the actual site. And finally, when the design is complete, the SketchUp model can be exported back into Google Earth as a KMZ (compressed XML) file with the correct geo-referencing information, so that it can be viewed on the actual site by anyone using Google Earth who has access to that file. Now this capability is available on the Macintosh platform as well (see Figure 4). In fact, Google itself announced the release of the Google Earth application for Mac OS X at the Macworld show, so the SketchUp team had to work hard to ensure that the SketchUp plugin would be available at the same time.

While I hadn't seen VersaCAD at Macworld prior to this year's show, I did see it at last year's Technology for Construction show, and described it briefly in my article capturing the highlights of the exhibit floor. VersaCAD is a cross-platform design and drafting application used across a range of disciplines such as architecture, interior design, facilities planning, plant design, mechanical design, and so on. Special features include an easy-to-use interface with minimum keystroke and mouse clicks required to perform an operation, parametric doors and windows, automatic cleanup of multi-line corners and joints, automatic cut-in of door and window symbols into walls, and real time coordinate dial for key-less entry of distances and coordinates (see Figure 5). The big news from VersaCAD at Macworld was the announcement that the upcoming release, VersaCAD 2006 for Macintosh, would be fully compatible with the new double core Intel-based Macs. This was achieved by recompiling the application for the Intel based Macs, shortly after Apple announced its partnership with Intel. The doubling of speed provided by the Intel processors would be directly usable in CAD software and would translate to user productivity.

One product making its Mac debut at Macworld this year was TurboCAD. This is available in two versions, one for drafting only and the other for 3D modeling in addition to drafting. TurboCAD 2D is an inexpensive yet fairly comprehensive drafting application that features over 275 design tools and 8,000 symbols and is compatible with AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator. It also include advanced features such as the ability to create 2D line drawings from a 3D model created in the modeling version of TurboCAD, and the ability to automatically generate a Bill of Materials from the attributes assigned to each object in the drawing. TurboCAD 3D includes all the features of the 2D version and additionally includes modeling tools for creating curves, surfaces, and solids. Its modeling repertoire includes 17 different surface types and 9 different 3D primitives, and it includes state of the art modeling operations such as Booleans, extrude, sweep, lathe, and loft.

Adobe had a very wide array of applications to showcase at Macworld, including its recently acquired Macromedia suite. The focus was on all the imaging and visualization applications, and apart from a few scheduled presentations, I didn't see much of Acrobat being shown, in contrast to a show like the AIA where Adobe almost exclusively focused on Acrobat and PDF (see AECbytes Newsletter #22 on the AIA 2005 Convention and Expo). Adobe, however, did have a new product to unveil at Macworld: Lightroom Beta for the Mac OS X, a digital imaging solution for professional photographers that is available as a free online download from the Adobe Labs website. It features a modular, task-based and streamlined environment, with the goal of delivering a complete photography workflow (see Figure 6). It has an interface specifically designed to put the focus back on the main object of photography—the image. With one click, the control panels and tools fade into the background in Lights-Out mode, allowing the image to take center stage. Users also can rapidly scroll through hundreds of images and a quick one-to-one zoom allows instant magnification of the finer points within the image. This could be a useful application for architectural firms that take a lot of site and building photographs.

Conclusions

It is terrific to see Apple's partnership with Intel, which is ushering in a whole new generation of much more powerful Macintosh computers. This partnership could well serve as the tipping point which would make Apple capture a larger share of the personal computer market than the marginal 5% or so it has had for several years now. At the same time, the huge success of its iPod product is like a double-edged sword. It has boosted the fortunes of the company which can give it more resources to continue to develop the Macintosh and forge critical partnerships such as the recent one with Intel. Alternately, it can be so successful that the company finds it far more lucrative to simply concentrate on iPods and similar gadgets rather than keep up the struggle to retain and grow the market share of the Macintosh. The Macworld shows over the next few years should let us know whether the Mac will be boosted by the iPod's success or will be swallowed up by it. If the latter happens, it would be a real tragedy because both Apple's computers and the software it develops are far superior to comparable products and applications developed by any other company today.

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.