Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/ I know the Adobeites will flame me for this one, but hey, it’s not the first time I’ve been flamed. Or the last.

Macworld uses terms like “innovative” when describing requirements for its Best of Show awards. And most of the winners are innovative. But what exactly is innovative about a watered down version of a photo editor? Was Adobe really clever about how they chose which features to lock us out of using? Photoshop Elements is a good product for people that need a budget photo editor with more features than iPhoto. But, there’s precious little innovative about the 6th version of watered down software, or as I like to call it, waterware. This product did not deserve the award.

Apple MacBook Air: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/ I’ve criticized Apple as well when appropriate, but this week, it would not have been appropriate. Apple put on an excellent show.

The MacBook Air is pretty close to the textbook definition of “innovative”. My only criticism here is that I would have picked Time Capsule instead of the Macbook Air, for two reasons: (1) reliable backup is something that people need, while the MacBook Air is a luxury item, and (2) priced at $299 and $499, Time Capsule is affordable, but priced at $1,799 and $3,098, the MacBook Air won’t exactly be something you buy because you need a new laptop for work or school. Both products deserve the award, but with room for only one winner from Apple, Time Capsule is the better choice.

Aspyr Guitar Hero III: http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/85 This is certainly one of the more innovative games to debut recently, and it’s nice to see it available on the Mac. And with no weapons, what will Jack Thompson do with his time?

BusyMac BusySync: http://www.busymac.com/ BusySync enables you to share and synchronize your iCal calendar with others, on your home or work LAN or over the internet. The program sits quietly in the Apple Menu’s System Preferences, running in the background as needed.

Eye-Fi Eye-Fi Card: http://www.eye.fi You’ve gotta love a wireless memory card, we felt it deserved its own article http://www.tomsguide.com/us/wireless-memory-card,news-396.html.

GridIron Flow: http://gridironsoftware.com/Flow Flow is essentially a visual database, it tracks the relationships between your files, stores data on how much time you’ve spent working on projects, stores multiple versions of files with thumbnail previews, compiles project archives, and prepares graphical reports. The final version won’t be released until this summer. It’s clearly innovative, along with many Macworld products, but I feel that the jury is out on Flow until we know its cost, both in terms of price, and on system resources.

MacSpeech Dictate http://www.macspeech.com/ You’ve also gotta love high quality speech recognition for the Mac, which is why we devoted an article to Dictate: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/macworld-macspeech-dictate,news-400.html

NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi http://www.necdisplay.com/ I’d like to be able to link you to a product page here, but NEC doesn’t have one available yet. Still, NEC’s newest MultiSync is impressive, with a 30 inch screen, 4 megapixel 2560 x 1600 resolution, wide color gamut (102 percent vs. NTSC, and 97.8 percent vs. Adobe RGB), AmbiBright (which adjusts the display’s backlight based on ambient lighting), Black Level Adjustment (which creates truer black than normally available on an LCD display), Standalone calibration/matching (no computer required) and... a $2,200 price tag.

Omni Group OmniFocus: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/ This is an organizer that integrates tightly with OS X. It syncs with iCal, enables adding tasks via email, and you can search for task information via the convenience of Spotlight.

SWsoft Parallels Parallels Server http://www.parallels.com/en/ This is another product so new that there’s no product web page yet, beta testing for Parallels Server just started a few weeks ago. But as you probably guessed, Parallels Server will enable running Windows and Linux servers on Intel Macs running OS X Server. The software is even expected to support running Windows, Linux, and OS X Servers on an OS X Client machine, all features that will be appreciated by cross platform developers.

TweakerSoft VectorDesigner http://www.tweakersoft.com/vectordesigner VectorDesigner is an affordable alternative to Adobe Illustrator, it also support filters powered by Apple’s Core Image and Quartz Composer technologies. This is the type of application that I like to see win an award, a competitor to a mega corporation’s product, not a waterware version of a mega corporation’s product. I have a slight preference for a similar product with more emphasis on technical drawing tools, Dekorra Optics’ EazyDraw: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/dekorra-optics-eazydraw,news-390.html.

Although, like me, you may not be in complete agreement with the Best of Show Award choices, there’s no question that there’s quite