Apple Briefs

A few interesting tidbits from Macworld this week:

1. Time Capsule

Steve Jobs introduced Time Capsule in the keynote speech on Tuesday. Time Capsule is Apple’s new wireless network storage device that is intended to be used with Time Machine. One thing troubles me, though. Before Leopard was released, the developer versions of Leopard allowed Time Machine to be used with USB hard drives connected to an Airport Extreme. That functionality is not present in the release version of Leopard.

At first, many people thought there must be a technical reason – perhaps it required more testing. Now, it seems, that the motivation was purely financial – encouraging people to buy Time Capsule. I bought an Airport Extreme in anticipation of being able to use it to backup the computers in my house. Now it looks like I might have to use something other than Time Machine. Perhaps I’ll buy Chronosync licenses for the rest of my computers.

2. There be Dragon(s) Here!

One of the big names in speech recognition is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Many lawyers use Dragon while drafting letters, pleadings, motions, and other documents. Unfortunately, Dragon hasn’t been available on the Mac … until now.

MacSpeech, makers of iListen, announced a new product at Macworld – MacSpeech Dictate. MacSpeech iListen has received good reviews, but many have reported it being a little slow at times. For Dictate, MacSpeech licensed the Dragon speech recognition engine from Nuance. Simply put, Dragon is fast.

If you have been interested in dictation software but have been disappointed with the options available on the Mac, you may want to take a look at MacSpeech Dictate. You probably won’t be alone, either – Dictate won a Best of Show award at Macworld.

3. Ntractive Elements SBM Nnounced at Macworld

Tuesday at Macworld, Ntractive announced Elements SBM, their entry into the CRM software market (SBM stands for Small Business Management). Elements is a Web 2.0 application, meaning it utilizes advanced web application technologies. Because of this, Elements’ strength seems to lie in the ability to access your data from anywhere. Still, from the information available on the Ntractive website, it appears that some desktop integration is present. Ntractive is currently accepting sign-ups for their public beta. There is no word on when the beta is likely to begin, though. I am not sure that the Web 2.0 thing fits our needs, but I will still be signing up to take a look.

4. Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M

At Macworld, Fujitsu announced the ScanSnap S300M, a portable version of its popular ScanSnap scanners. The two main things you need to know about it are: 1) it runs off USB power; and 2) it doesn’t come with the full version of Adobe Acrobat. The ScanSnap S300M is expected to ship in March.

Edit: How could I forget the ScanSnap?