MacFormat 12 May94

NG YoU GET MORE OUT bbl YOUR APPLE MAc ; You won’t believe you can | e do so much for so little! Discover the world of shareware, where you can explore virtual worlds, design superb graphics and play extraordinary games, all at bargain prices... Storage Solutions If you find that you’re running out of ml disk space, you need to read this! Tag Gave RTS | Colour up! ~ jones Mcp ie pep | How to make the most of colour in your work ®_control the memory-eating ones ve a comple joryoutomatcn © ColorKnit Your GUARANTEE oO OF VALUE ws with, Unmissable! Design yout own jumpers with this complete package. No, rally New game, new courses — but is it still a classic? @ WorkOut lator, notebook eds HyperCard) lity information Our experts solve all your Mac and Performa problems from Apple File Exchange to Z-modem Softline Authorised Dealers Bedford Computers AppleCentre Swanfast MacPoint Logic Computer Solutions Visual World The Macintosh Centre PC World AppleCentre Chiswick PC World AppleCentre Kidderminster Mactine Calthaven Pic Guernsey Computers Ltd Superplate Computer Chwyd Computers Ind Ltd PC World Quodport Limited 0 Manchester 06 AppleCentre Croydon Applecentre Norwich Gordon Harwood Comps AppleCentre Oxtor AppleCentre Edinburgh Absolute Computers ApplePoint Farnborough Mac Collection Tower Record Applecentre Pi Europe Pic cic Software Tomorrows World LCS (North West) Ltd MacGold Five To Twelve ApplePoint Slough PC World Central Studios td Stirling Micro Systems Utd mputer Up To Press Ltd PC World Lakeside Aberdeen,Union St Leicester, High St Birmingham, New St Manchester, Market St Brighton, Western Rd ‘Oxford St, London Croydon, North End Reading, Oxford Rd Edinburgh, Princes st London, Level One: Glasgow, Union St Oxford Circus GAME Aberdeen 0224 211102 Nottingham 0602 50262 Belfast 0232 314733 Northampton 0604 604123 Bournemouth 0202311668 Romford 0708 734803 Coventry 0203 256148 Plymouth 0752 256922 Dublin 010 353 1677 3755 Poole 0202 6662: Kings 1 549 8018 Shettield 0742 569299 Leeds 0832 465320 Stratford 0789 267736 Liverpool 051 709 7205 joking 0483 768376 21922 mreMPo=—— Barking 081 591 0091 New Malden 081 949 3255 Chingford 081 524 7511 London WCt 071 304.4113 Staples Commer 081 450 6100 Stevenage 0438 748583 West Thurrock 0708 866699 duct range differs from store to store. Please check for availabili Latest Releases... 7th Guest. Henry stautss terrify the children started dying. Stauf was a master toymaker, a maker of extraordinary puzzles. Since those six guests stayed on that terrible night it's become haunted, now there are only the eerie lights and the frightening chants of the children, You find yourself in this mansion, moving from room to room in incredible real time 3D. Full motion video of live actors slowly ie untwines a horrifying plot within this virtual mansion has been abandoned ever since environment. Twenty-two devious puzzles to solve before you can uncover the mystery of the seventh guest. An astounding use of mul timedia echnology on two CD-ROMs Requires a minimum of an LCIII with an 040 machine recommended. Double side CD drive (i.e. CD300) also highly recommended. CD ROM SRP £42.54 Deliverance. Finally a real no holds barred arcade action game for the Mac Hack you're way through the lands of Llyn Cerrig to defeat Tnarom who is threat- ening to destroy it. Start in his palace to free the fairies and guide them safely through the pits of fire, enchanted forest and the winged warrior filled skies. The game can be played ona small or large screen in either 16 or 256 colours. The action is relentless and non-stop, including deadly end of level guardians. SRP £34 SignPost/Route 666 is the automated route planner that will quickly and easily generate maps and instructions on how to get from A to B (via C, if neces sary). Irll run on all Macs, including PowerBooks and PowerMacs (in native mode) and can be updated using add-on country modules. It'll let you create a company database, including contact details, and tie entries into a location on the Map Navigation becomes much easier when you plan travel from a company to another SignPost can generate detailed travel itineraries, road by road, including detailir the costs involved in travelling by car or bike. SignPost comes complete with the UK module Additional country modules include: Benelux, Eastern SignPoet E | Europe, Europe, France, Italy = & Portugal, Switzerland & Austria, United Stages. SignPost SRP £99 Countries SRP £59ea. All prices shown are exclusive of VAT Softline Distribution, Mill House, Mill Lane, Carshalton, Surrey SM5 2WZ Tel 081 401 1234 Fax 081 401 1235 AppleLink UK0037 CompuServe 100012,21 The Ultimate Virus Prevention Detection and Treatment i ia | Move over SAM? Virex’is now 25+ times faster! 3S ‘AIPMJOS OL yoddng pue ao1 The problem with anti-virus software is that it For complete peace of mind you can subscribe slows down your Macintosh. Every time you start to our Update Service. This means you'll automatically your computer, run a program or insert a disk, receive protection against new viruses as and when you spend way too much time waiting. After all, you they are discovered. spent a lot of money on a fast Mac, right? Pa Virex 5.0 SRP £69.99. Sn Vi i i H [Ss he rd irex 5.0 solves this problem with new oO New fo a SpeedScan™ technology which enables Virex to scan, r free se in a detect and eliminate viruses with blinding speed. ! = Ollece Vi Shareware, Old angi. a 3 - rex Qualify. Vitus With SpeedScan Virex does in 10 seconds what SAM d Altera Up ki (Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh) needs over 6 r < a Adress Send yo, minutes to do. Yes seconds, not minutes. wa “aSe adg B A With the 'de-in 4 = SBE and p. MPleted f,°CUY to Virex can be set to scan all disks as they are gf oe % nd paym, inserted, scan attached hard discs either at startup fF gM 49," or shutdown or check applications as they are f ad a launched—for the ultimate in protection. t = R : Now with SpeedScan you won't be tempted to tee p, toOdk ! Da ti shut it off temp-orarily or cancel a disk scan f Ochee, Tl because it’s taking too long. t ! Of course along with that you get the 4d ! best anti-virus software, the easiest to Mail io Upgrade install, the simplest to use and the most pal House Mn Se¥Ices vy, 7 : fe Z — effective against viruses. 52 For = only appii Lane, arsed, > Uropean Sit the alton s t 0 sy) Uk. ? Surrey ers pi SM5 2; *Virex was measured against SAM 3,5 scanning 79MB fg “Se cay ke (1571 files) on a Mac Ici with a 230MB hard drive. a OF detain, sek . oe —— The Finder MACEORMA elcome to another issue of the magazine dedicated W to helping you get more out of your Macintosh. Whatever you use your Mac for, whether you're a novice or a veteran, you'll find helpful tips and techniques, news and reviews of interesting and affordable products — and we'll never forget that using your Mac is fun! Editorial enquiries: MacrorMar, Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BAl 2BW Tel: 0225 442244, Fax: 0225 446019 Appetite MacFormat macformat@cix.compulink.co.uk pasadeg een Mike Hawkins, Tel: 0225 442244 ‘Subscription enquiries: Future Publishing, Freepost (BS4900), Somerton, Somerset TA11 6BR Tel 0225 442244, Fax 0458 274378 Aword on prices Wo ry to ensure tha al prices quoted in eto pages in Macroras ae accurate the time of going to press, ‘san bern ee an Ta 3 However, this may not necessarily be the case with prices appearing in advertisements, ‘So we recommend that you always contact advertisers betore ordering to confirm prices ad avasably Se age 101 for some hep buying advice Entire contents Copyright © 1994 Future Publishing Lid. All rights reserved. HOW TO DO IT Editing: the words 50 Whatever publication you're producing with your Mac, here's some invaluable advice on how to structure your articles and write better HyperCard commands 60 How you can use HyperCard’s built-in HyperTalk commands ~ the friendliest Mac ‘programming language’ there is Using ResEdit 82 How to get into the workings of TeachText and customise it as you want it, using the powerful program we gave you last month Using Excel as adatabase 98 No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you! Microsoft Excel, the leading spreadsheet, is not designed to be a database, but it has functions you can use as if it were. Here’s how! REGULARS News 13 All the latest information on the powerful new PowerBooks which are virtually portable Quadras; QuickTime updated; what’s coming in the next big System revision; Apple's colour StyleWriter and new improved Newton; a fax modem for under £100, and much more Apple Talk 20 Your letters on everything Mac-related, from virtual memory to running old software on new Macs... Special offers Your chance for a bargain on top Mac products, lovingly picked at the peak of their freshness byMACFORMAT Subscribe! Get Macrormat for a year plus a special free software offer Mac Answers More of your real-life Mac problems solved by our experts = from Adobe Type Manager to Welsh accents... Gamebusters How to cheat and beat your favourite games, with tips and tactics sent in by MAcForMAT readers Back issues Hurry! Back issues of Macrormat are in short supply... Free reader ads 100 Buy a Mac or a modem, advertise your unwanted software completely free of charge, or just contact a local user group Buying advice 101 Whether you're buying by mail or in a shop, here’s some helpful advice about your rights and how to protect them Next month 105 What's in the next issue of Macrormat? Here's a clue: how would you like more RAM without adding a single chip... Win The Aldus Collection 106 It’s what it says ~ a collection of four top Aldus programs: PageMaker, FreeHand, Persuasion and Fetch. It’s worth £1,200, and you could win it! MACFoRMAT + IssUE 12+ May 1994 CONTENTS LsReviews > oreaTumes al What’s new? 24 What's Andy been up to this month? He's found a way to Open Sesame! ae : Premiere 3 oe” QuickTime 2 oe Ready, Set, Go! 32 Can it be? A fully-featured DTP package, complete with a ‘scripting’ function to automate everything, all for £250? Give these a whirl! 43 What's new on CD, including Peter Gabriel's big release... Ly. Berlitz tor Business Japanese We we Forever Growing Garden Isaac Asimov's The Ultimate Robot — “ FoxPro A new, ‘industrial strength’ relational database steps up to the mark. How will it fare in the Macintosh hurdles? Painter X2 53 Add some image-processing power to Painter 2... Paint Alchemy 54 ... and plug some paint-type brush styles into Photoshop! Shareware 73 Over two dozen low-cost and no-cost programs reviewed, including a free Virtual Reality program that’s just unreal No kidding ~ this DIY ‘jam kit’ has a Song-A-Lizer and a Bop-A-Rama. There’s more, but after that, you won't believe me Games reviews The latest Mac games, from the hottest to the not-so-hot. Firefall Leisure Suit Larry 6 Lunicus PGA Tour Golf Il U-Boat QuicKeys 3 Advanced features that can just about automate your Mac — all you do is sit back and watch it do all the work! INITPicker 3 Having trouble with Extensions conflicts? Mac crashing on startup? Here’s something that promises to sort it all out avoid ever having to write another letter, for starters yw? Phe INCREDIBLE Ja 27 Graphics, spreadsheets, utilities, comms ~ just about all you could want, for a tenth of the cost you'd expect! Storage Solutions 36 What can you get when you need more disk space? We explain your options, from external hard drives to removables and up to optical drives Colour up! 56 Practical advice and tips on how to make the best use of colour in your work ~ and how to avoid some common problems Computer Generation 58 Learn how a new government-funded project will bring state-of-the-art CD-ROM technology into primary schools ~ a special report An exclusive playable level of the gorgeous Prince of Persia 2. A better Scrapbook. An Extensions manager. A pullover designer. All yours on this month’s packed MACFORMAT cover disk! For details and installation instructions, just turn the page. MACFORMAT COVER DISK In our never-ending quest to find the best software in the known universe, MAcrormat brings you a complete level of Prince of Persia 2, a better scrapbook than Scrapbook and a pullover- designing program. START HERE ‘Macrormar’s cover disk is a high-density floppy, so it can bring you more for your money. Almost all Macs made in the last four years (anything since the ‘SE/30, including Classics and Performas) have a ‘SuperDrive’ which can read high-density disks, but older models don’t and can’t (that’s Pluses, old SEs and original Mac IIs). If your Mac is chronologically challenged, don’t worry: you can get the same programs ‘on two ordinary (double-density) disks. Just send your original cover disk with a self- addressed returnenvelope to: Macrormat Disk Swap, DisCopy Labs, PO Box 21, Daventry NN11 5BU. Make sure the envelope is sturdy and big enough to hold two disks. If you don’t want the hassle of doing this every month, you can subscribe and choose to get your copy with two ordinary disks delivered for no extra cost. See page 66 for details; when you subscribe you also get the choice of the following software: Lemmings, SimEarth or Adobe Type Manager! BACK IT UP Before you do anything else, you should make a backup of the MACFORMAT cover disk and work only with the backup, just in case anything goes wrong. Make sure the original cover disk is write-protected (move the tab so that you can see through the hole) - now nothing can be written to the disk. Then follow these simple steps: 1. Insert the Macrormat cover disk. 2. Highlight the disk icon (but don’t double- click on it) and drag it over your hard disk’s icon. The contents of the cover disk will be copied into a new folder on your hard disk called “MacrorMAT May disk’ (but not decompressed, so you still can’t run anything directly). 3. When the copying finishes, drag the cover disk icon into the Wastebasket to eject it 4. Insert a blank high-density disk. Check it’s not write-protected, and, if need be, format it, naming it ‘MAcrormaT May backup’. 5. Drag the ‘MACroRMAT May disk’ folder from your hard disk on to the new floppy disk’s icon. When it has finished copying, your backup is complete. 6. You can now delete the ‘MAcrorMaT May disk’ folder from your hard disk by dragging it to the Wastebasket. COMPATIBILITY We spend long, dedicated hours checking all the programs on the MACFORMAT cover disk with as many different machines as possible, but we can’t check every combi- nation and we can’t guarantee that the pro- grams will work with your system. The in- formation on compatibility in these pages is intended as a guide only, and we cannot warrant the programs or be in any way re- sponsible for any problems arising from their use or inability to use them. Check the ‘Get Going’ box for common-se1 guidelines on installing any software. This month’s goodies Yours on this month’s Macrormat disk: 1 Prince of Persia 2 - a complete level of what some people are already calling the se- quel to the most sumptuous Mac game ever. i Scrapz — a better Scrapbook: store items, view them all simultaneously, export them as stand-alone files, open several scrapbooks at once, and more! For more details, see Shareware, page 73. ™ Symbionts — a sophisticated Extensions manager; even tells you how much memory each is taking up. For more details, see Shareware, page 73. & ColorKnit - a complete knitwear designer, with variable knitting gauges and stitch pre- views; as easy to use as a paint program. Ml WorkOut ~ a HyperCard stack that com- bines a calculator, notebook and sketchpad, which can even interact with each other. See also HyperCard, page 60. GET GOING Before you install any new software on your Mac you should ensure that you have a full backup of your hard disk, in case anything goes wrong, and that applies equally to our cover disk. Once you have backed up your hard disk, make sure you have no applications running, only the Finder, and insert the cover disk in your floppy drive. Double-click on the disk’s icon to open it; there will be two files. Read Me contains information about the programs on the disk ~ double-click on it to read it. The other icon is the compressed file containing the cover disk programs. We compress the programs into a single file so we can fit more on the disk, but before you can use them you must decom- press the files. Double-click on the icon, and a dialogue box will appear which looks similar to the normal Save dialogue. Select the place on your hard disk where you want the expanded programs to reside, and click Save. After a few moments, the software will be installed on to your hard disk. You do not need to copy the files on the disk on to your hard disk before doing this. Some programs may need further installation; check the Read Me files which come with the programs for details. MACFoRMAT 12+May 1994 tenner in my dressing gown pocket. Hmm, what's that noise? Prince of Pe ia 2 demo x. Jordan Mechner, the designer of Prince of Persia, won dozens of awards for the classic swash- buckling arcade adventure game. The game has been converted onto virtually every computer and game console format, and been a smash hit each time, thanks to its fiendish puzzles, su- perbly smooth and realistic animation and non- stop action. Now Jordan has come up with the sequel, Prince of Persia 2: the Shadow and the Flame — and it's even better! The graphics have been made even more sumptuous, there is a bigger variety of enemies and the action seems even faster and smoother. But you don’t have to take our word for it - we've got all of the first level in our demo on this month’s disk. Getting Prince of Persia 2 going is simple - having decompacted the disk (see page 6), sim- ply double-click on the icon. However, the con- trols are not so simple, so it’s worth going through them. To move the hero use the keys as indicated in the diagram on the right. Holding the [shift] Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: minimum 4Mb RAM System: System 6.0.7 or better Display: 256 colours What a wonderful morning this is, lovely weather, not a baddie in sight, ooh and | found a EE MACFORMAT COVER DISK Magnificent architecture in these parts, don't you think? Shame that every time | try to admire it, you know, take some snaps, some loon with a sword tries to kill me. key makes the movements smaller and more careful. To take a running jump, run and with the running key still depressed, hit [8]. To grab and hang on to ledges, press and hold the [shift] or [control] key. To let go, re- lease the key. Sword fighting is an important skill in the game, as you spend a lot of time battling bad- dies. To draw the sword, use the [control] key. To advance or retreat, use [4] or [6]. To block an opponent's strike, use [8]. To turn around, use [4] or [6] while holding down the [shift] MOVING THE HERO JUMP LEFT ———f RUN LEFT + Shift key = careful ——ey step left CLIMB DOWN / CROUCH ————4 key. To put away the sword, press [5]. [Command] [A] restarts play from the be- ginning of the level, and [command] [R] takes you back to the opening screen. The [escape] key pauses the game. It sounds complex, and it'll take a few min- utes to get the hang of it, but it’s worth the ef- fort. Why oh why isn’t there an affordable Mac joystick? The complete version of Prince of Persia 2 will be available “real soon now” from Electronic Arts - call for more details on 0753 549442. RUN RIGHT + shift key = careful Step right He flies through the air with the greatest of... oh dear. MACFORMAT + ISSUE 12+ May 1994 MACFORMAT COVER DISK ColorKnit 3.0 Shareware fee: $15 Compatibility e345 System: any Display: 256 colours or BEW WH Macs aren’t just good at computery things like spreadsheets and databases, as this interesting piece of shareware shows. ColorKnit, as its name suggests, enables you to design pieces of knitwear and preview how they will look. In operation it’s like a paint program, except you won't find a paint program with variable knitting gauges and stitch previews! There are also tools to help create interesting patterns. Shareware fee: $20 Compatibility [ Mac: any System: any Display: any Symbionts is a combination of an Extension and a Control Panel which enables you to keep control over the Extensions in your sys- tem and the amount of memory they use. When you run the Symbionts Control Panel, it shows you a list of every Extension you have installed, and how much memory it’s gobbling up. Just click on it to turn it off and reclaim the memory. The Symbionts Ex- tension shows how much memory each Ex- tension uses on startup. If you hold the [shift] key down when you start your Mac, the Control Panel will appear, enabling you to change the configu- ration. You can save sets of Extensions so you can quickly alter setups. [aia rar tae ws Foto v4 Tone) Trash (Be we weravt entrain supa rat new te nto nave bw a @ treat ond O Trento mie sew te ets nove ma br ep Toy se tetas Wat ada sary (cot a hanes re mote) ope 7 [sige Rts ene 8 a high Raored [aah es Harn 5 2m A igh Just click on an icon to turn the Extension off (a red cross My 23 Extensions use over a megabyte of RAM — better marks disabled ones). trim them down. Become a knitwear designer with ColorKnit 3.0 Scrapz 1.3.2 workOut ee Shareware fee: none Shareware fee: none oa Compatibility Compatibility = ‘Mac: any a ‘Mac: any nse System: any System: needs HyperCard 2 or fa] Display: any better Display: any Scrapz is a replacement for the Scrapbook that everyone has on their Macs. It adds a number of features that Apple really should have in- cluded in the original. For one thing you can directly import and export files, rather than having to use the Clip- board. With Scrapz, you can have more than one scrapbook file open at a time, and you can resize the window. It’s also possible to select just part of a scrapbook item, and a gallery view allows the whole scrapbook to be viewed at a glance. Once you've used Scrapz, you won't want to go back to using Apple’s Scrapbook for love nor money! ‘Scrapz's a real step up from Apple's Scrapbook. This handy HyperCard stack is a combined cal- culator, notebook and sketchpad, with the full range of features you'd expect from all three - the calculator has more functions than I know the meaning of, and the sketchpad has a handy tear-off tool palette with the full range of draw- ing tools. To save screen space, you can show only the calculator, or calculator plus notebook, or all three, and the real beauty of it is that the functions are interactive - you can, for exam- ple, insert the result of a calculation directly into a notebook note. You need HyperCard 2 or higher installed to use it. For more on Hyper- Card, turn to this month's tutorial on page 60. When you duplicate as many thousands of disks as MacrorMar does each month, unfortunately a few duds are bound to slip through the net. If you think you have one such lemon, read through the installation procedure on page 6 just to double-check that you're not missing something. If the disk still won't work, then return it Use workOut as a sketchpad, a notebook, or a calculator. ABOUT SHAREWARE Some of the software on the MACFoRMAT disk is shareware. If after a fair trial period you decide to carry on using it, you are obliged to pay the fee specified in the program’s documentation files. by 20 May with a sturdy self-addressed envelope (a Jiffy bag is ideal) to: MacrorMat May Disk, DisCopy Labs Ltd, PO Box 21, Daventry NN11 SBU. Telephone: 0327 300077. Please do not send your disk to any other address — we have no stocks of disks at our Bath or Somerton offices. We regret we cannot answer disk-related phone queries. MACFoRMAT + IssuE 12+ May 1994 yu a Next month Macrormart becomes the first Macintosh magazine in the world to feature a cover-mounted CD-ROM disc every month! Every issue a strictly limited number of copies of MAcrormat will have our unique CD-ROM instead of the usual HD disk, providing extraordinary value for money. We will feature all the top demos, not just of CD products, but of every type of Macintosh software. Plus with the extra space we'll include megabytes of the very latest shareware every month. At only £4.95, Macrormat CD Edition is unbeatable value for money. Most high street newsagents will carry stocks, but it’s strictly limited in numbers, so to make sure of a copy ask your newsagent to reserve you one, or subscribe and save money into the bargain — see page 66. MACFORMAT CD EDITION HM ON SALE THURSDAY MAY STH MOVE FAST IF YOU WANT YOUR COPY... te CW SPRING SPECIALS computer rm warehouse “Why pay more in ‘94? “Swen rasor @ Authorised Reseller Macintosh LC 475 cw PRODUCT CHECKLIST POWERMODEM 1 Inteal Fax/Moder or your PowerBook 2400098 Modem 9800008 FAK nnn ae DDO POWERMODEM 4 144 420 tral PowerBook Faximedem 14,400 tend and ret ABD.O0 ‘And all at the UK's LOWEST prices. COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 2 COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 1 Complete the coupon 708A The Tudor Estate. Abbey Road 9 Hatton Street. NOW or phone London NW10 7UW London. NW8 8PR 074 724 41041! Tel: 081 838 5553. Fax: 081 963 0624 Tel: 071 724 4104. FAX: 071 724 3775 MAIL THIS FORM TO RECEIVE FREE CATALOGUE { Prease ene me the UK's Biggest ana Best = 071 724 41 046 081 rereremain No 9 HATTON STREET. LONDON NW8 SPR FAX: 071 724 3775 708A TUDOR ESTATE. ABBEY RD. LONDON NW10 FAX: 081 963 0624 1950 + POWER MAC UPGRADE ® Authorised Reseller computer warehouse COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 2 COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 1 708A The Tudor Estate, Abbey Rd 9 Hatton Street, London London, Tel: 081 838 5553 NW8 BPR Tel: 071 724 4104 POWER MAC 6100/60 ‘= PomerPO8O1 RISC @ “iiShcoprocieesr sue ib RAM pencabieto 72ND + On07" Pee cle POWERBOOKS!! (ae Fast 1 Dove The Wor lr your few! ‘Wow A 200 dp abt colour scanner wth Adobe Photoahop LE ANO FREE SCANMAKER Il + PHOTOSHOP LE ‘ua. sean at ‘NuBus POS. ‘ora "ayer S.No we IN| ANJEA yeaIH ayy uise UPGRADE YOU MAC TO POWER PC WITH CW! Want to increase your productivity & speed? Love a Power Macintosh? ‘Well CW can give you both with a Power Macintosh upgrade option to suite your needs and meet your budget. Depending on the Macintosh you own CW ‘can offer a simple PDS card or full logic board swap upgrade path. Just check ‘out the compatibility chart and the incredible CW prices! If you choose an Upgrade Card then the PowerPC 601 will run at twice the ‘clock speed of your existing Macintosh. . UPGRADE TO POWER MAC Hi DAHA Ee TOURMACHD) PowerPe, Es {LOGIC BOARD UPGRADE, dng yso} Apple Personal LaserWriter 300 GENUINE APPLE 260p! COLOUR AS PRINTER S$310}S19 i LOWEST PRICES CW's HUGE buying powor means he can offer the absolute LOWEST UK prices. 708A TUDOR ESTATE. 4081 838 5553 8071 724 4104 ABBEY RD. LONDON NW10 FAX: 081 963.0624 No.9 HATTON STREET. LONDON NW8 SPR FAX: 071 7: \ | o/h ff LL. Z, ie ket oO tom | 14"PP [st 030] 25] 46"Coll LcPps | sews |-| 2099] MW = .ca7s | 14° PP | st| 4/0 | 040| 25|21*Coll Lcpos | seme | -| 2799 a) ica7s_| 14° PP | st| e160 | 040] 25] 21" Coll LcPDs | s6me| -| 2999) ‘@ em Lea7sco| 14" PP | st| 8/160 | 040] 25|21" Coll LoPDs | some | -| 21149 “= PP = Performa Plus Monitor RGB = High Res Colour Monitor CD = CD-ROM 300 St * Standard Keyb LCPDS = LC Processor Direct Slot a) 610 __|14" AGB] st] 4/160] 040] 25] 21" Col]o40 Pos] eave | -| £1299 = etocp _|14-AGB| st| 4/160 | 040] 25| 217 Coll o40 PDs| 6eme | -| 21499 feroco [14 RGB| st| 8/230 | 040] 25] 21" Col|o40 PDs| same | -| 21799 esoavcn| - | - | 8/230| 040) 254/21" Collo40 Pos| 6aue | -| 21749 ORESTFE esoavco| - | - | 8/500 | 040] 25+|21" Collo40 PDS| 6aue | -| £2049 WA ANTY (Deine CAN Se RCE High Reson Color Moun = Sad Kebard 1 = ps Sh DP cp 650 [14° AGB] st| 4/160] 040]/83) 21° Col] NuBus| 1360] «| £1049 Ed ( esoco _|14" AGB| st| 4/160 | 040] 3321" Col|3 NuBus| 136ma| «| £1749 MAILORDER e50co_|14" AGB| st| 8290 | 040] 33] 21° Coll NuBus| 136ue| «| ©2049 HOTLINE (Dee DAM dive RGB = High Racon Calor Monier" = Sand Keyboard ne saoaven| - | - | 8/500 |0404| 404)21 Col] lots! |126me| -| £2999 VG saoaven| - | - [16100010404 40s|21"Coll tots! |12we| -| £3599 995 950 - | - | e230 | o40p| 33] 21" coils NuBus| 256me| «| ©1999 41279 in pole Monitors | 14"PP_| 147AGB | 14AV |15°Ponrait| 16° RGB | 21" AGB 08 229 | 2269 | 2469 | 2465 | £729 | 22009 o Extended [Adjustable 992! 2155 | 2180 | 7424 TRGB = High Res Colour Monitor AV = High Bes Audio Visual Col Porta monitor is rok colour 120 Chiswick High Road, London W4 Fax: 081-742 1455 ccounts + Networks « Busine eA 9.00 am - 5.30 pm Ci /Ly Ls As ae a/ — 10" 16 g/sst} * 30 | 33 | 16" Col - 21099 071 10" 16st + | 4/160 [030133 | 16° Col| Modem| 14a | -| £1199) 602 10°169sam| + | 4/120 |030|33 | 16" Col| Modem| tae |-| £1799 9444 10'16gsam| + |4/120|030|33 | 16"Col| - | 14me |-| £2049 ak os: : 290 Kensington High 8° 256c am | + |4/160 |030|33 | 16° Cot| Modem | taue | «| £1949 Street, London Wi4 Fax: 071-371 6203 8° 256c a'm | + |4/160 [03033 |16"col]| - | 14me |-| £2199) 09.30 am - 5.30 pm MF 160M inc Express Modem —g/s = Levels of gey #4 = Supestwit am Aaivemautx Modems are opional unless specified 10.00 am - §.00 pm Sat 230 | 9°16q/ss+| - | 4/80 |030| 33 | w Dock | Modem | 24m | - | £799 10 yrs Macintosh S 230 | & 16954] - [4/120 |090|33 | wDock| Modem| 2ama|-| 2939 & 250 | 9'16gsam| - |4/200 |030| 33 | w Dock| Modem| 24MB | - 21599 a Stoport eaeseemus, [2700 9° 32Kc am| - | 4/240 |030| 38 | w Dock | Modem | 32MB | - | a —_—_—_— ServiceCentre at Sieger cnGins sickpeek sas icheaar wiet-Dokegeal Notes . : ~~ Chiswick Branch IIVETAIAD EM Stylewriter it] 8/J | 360 dpi |1-2 ppm|100 shts [39 TT | As2s2 |-| 2239 Delivery - £10 4 ‘A3/A4Colour| Bi) | 360 dpi |12 ppm|100 shts |e tT | scsi |-| 2599 —Srkemaloeell 1 writer 300 | LW |300 dpi | 4 ppm |100 shts |39 TT | Rs4z2|-| 2499 Software Training Select 320 | PSLW|300 dpi | 4 ppm |100shts |ases| tt |-| 2099 All goods have a Pro610 | PSLW| 800dpi |20 ppm|750 shis 64 Ps|LTaem | -| ©3999] tw mennierers = Bobbieet PSL = PostScript LaserWeter pp = pages per min shis» paper tay capacity TT = TrueType PS = PosScript All prices are exclusive of VAT, are subject to change without prior notice and are valid while stocks lst. EROF. Authorised Reseller Macrormat makes a big splash ‘Over the six months July to Decem- ber 1993, Macrormar sold an aver- age of 26,172 copies every issue. The figure, announced by MAcrorMat’s publisher, Future Publishing Ltd, is verified by the independent Audit Bureau of Circulations. MAcroRMAT has also been short-listed for the prestigious award of International ‘Magazine of the Year, in the com- pany of long-established titles such ‘as New Scientist and Vogue. What can ‘we say but thanks to all our readers {all 26,000-plus of yout) for all your support ~ and keep your comments and suggestions coming, to help us make MAcForMar the Mac magazine you want to read! Apri’ issue sold out in places. Thanks for helping make MacrorusaT such a success! = n a little over two weeks’ time, Apple will launch four new PowerBooks based on the 68LC040 processor, the chip at the heart of the LC475. The 500 series, codenamed Blackbird, will all feature redesigned casings which offer wristpads and a touch- pad instead of a trackball, and two will offer 9.5-inch colour screens. The four PowerBooks, the 520, 520¢, 540 and 540¢, also boast im- pressive AV facilities, providing 16- bit stereo input and output as well as a built-in microphone and 8-bit video Out for connecting up to 16- inch monitors. Along with new batteries based on _nickel-metal hydride technolo- gy, which Apple claims will give the machines a four-hour life be- tween re-charges, they also come with Ethernet net working built-in. Perhaps the most ‘The new PowerBooks: near Quadra power, with an easy-to-use touchpad. interesting innovation, though, is the use of a touchpad rather than a trackball to monitor a user’s input. To move the cursor across the screen, this involves you doing nothing more than moving a finger across the touchpad surface ~ liter- ally point and click! While the 520s are based on a 25MHz version of the 040, the 540s will offer 33MHz power; otherwise the other main differ- ence between the 520s and the 540s is that the latter will have ac- tive matrix screens rather than pas- sive matrix ones — which basically means crisper resolution in low light and less cursor ‘ghosting’. Both models will be expand- able up to 36Mb of RAM, with the 540 coming with 12Mb fitted as standard as well as a 14.4 bps modem. All this makes any of the new machines an attractive op- tion for anyone who needs both comput- ing power on the move and the built-in ability to keep in touch wherever they may be. Also of note is the provision of a dual battery bay which acts as an optional PDS slot. This can be used for future upgrades, or - and this is another radical move — it can be employed as a dock for the same kind of PCMCIA expansion cards found in Newton MessagePads. These cards can be used to hold more RAM, hard disk space, fax modems and cellular technologies. While UK pricing is yet to be set, prices are expected to start at $2,500 (about £1,725) for the 520 and $3,750 (£2,586) for the 540. Apple is further expected to an- nounce PowerPC upgrades for the machines later this year based on its forthcoming low-cost PowerPC 603 chip. Macrormat has also learned of two new Duos in the pipeline, set for release on April 25: the 280 and 280c. These will both sport 33MHz 030 processors, feature active ma- trix screens and weigh in at only four pounds. Again pricing details are not yet available. ™ For further information phone Apple on 0800 127753. Product Developer ArchiCAD Graphisoft Inc Claris Impact Claris ClarisWorks Claris DeltaGraph Pro DeltaPoint formeZ autodessys Inc FrameMaker Frame Technology Corp Infini-D Specular Int Ltd MacTools Central Point Software Mathematica Wolfram Research Minicad Diehl Graphsoft Painter Fractal Design Corp Painter X2 Fractal Design Corp PhotoFlash Apple Presenter Pro. Visual Info. Devel’mt Profiles Dayna Communications QuickFLIX! VideoFusion Inc Ray Dream Designer Ray Dream Inc SoftWindows Insignia Solutions Studio Pro Strata Inc VideoFusion VideoFusion Inc Virtus VR Virtus Corp WordPerfect WordPerfect programs The success of Apple's impressive new PowerMac range (detailed in MAcrorMar last issue) depends largely on developers producing ‘native’ applications optimised to take advantage of the machines’ im- proved performance. On the entry-level PowerMac 6100, native applications are expected to run some two to four times as fast as on a 33MHz Quadra; on the top-of-the-range 8100, the figure could be eight times the power of a Quadra 950. As we go to press, more native PowerPC applications are continually being announced. The box at left lists native applica- tions very likely to appear in the next month or so. This PowerMac isn't the Quadra it resembles; it's more, and the ‘Growing list of ‘native’ applications will prove just how much more... MacGhettoBlaster If even an AV Mac isn’t enough for you, take a look at these new high- performance audio systems designed to get the best from your Mac and CDs. Each of the new ‘Pro-Media’ systems from Concept Peripherals of Middlesbrough incorporates a built- in 30 watt amplifier and 30 watt stereo speakers, to help you get more oomph from your CDs, music tracks and computer game effects. The Pro-Media CD includes a double-spin-speed multisession CD- ROM reader with 300K per second data transfer rate, double dust doors, auto lens cleaning and a sealed mechanism for long life, offering CD-digital audio for £527. The Pro- Media CD Plus is a triple spin speed CD-ROM reader with LCD display, 450Kps data transfer and full-func- tion audio controls, so you can play music CDs without a Mac connect- ed, all for £762. The Pro-Media SyQuest is an SQ5110C 88Mb SyQuest removable disk drive com- plete with the Pro-Media systems’ audio functions at £645. Concept Peripherals is on 0642 240000. MACForRMaT + IssuE 12+ May 1994 13 — QuickTime goes big-time pple’s million-selling mul- timedia system extension, QuickTime, will be signifi- cantly overhauled this summer with the release of a new Mac version that offers full-screen playback, MPEG and MIDI support and built-in capability for future developments in interactive televi- sion, writes Andy Storer. QuickTime 2.0 will improve full- motion playback approximately twofold without hardware acceler- ation, enabling low-cost Macs like the LC475 to play quarter-screen movies (320 x 240 pixels) at full- motion speed or full-screen 640 x 480 pixel movies at a credible 15 frames per second. There will also be support for professional video editing with SMPTE timecode capability built-in (enabling video synchronisation) and a higher data throughput rep- resenting a 300 per cent increase in data transfers. With support for MPEG, QuickTime 2.0 will also pave the way for interactive TV appli- cations such as Video On Demand (VOD) and home shopping. Since MPEG encoding enables up to 74 minutes of full-screen, full-motion video and synchronised CD-quality audio to be squeezed on to a single CD-ROM, Mac owners can also ex- pect a new world of games and en- tertainment software to be avail- able before the end of the year. Apple’s developers have also opened up QuickTime to include support for MIDI so that Mac users will be able to use their machines to create, edit, play back and syn- chronise music with video. The company claims the new system architecture’s improved com} sion techniques will allow digital audio to be stored as QuickTime tracks — enabling 300Mb files to fit on to a single 800K floppy disk! In addition, the built-in front end for this capability will allow users to emulate more than ten musical in- struments including guitar, bass, drums and piano. You will also be able to import existing MIDI music scores into QuickTime movies. QuickTime 2.0 will run on any colour Mac running System 6.07 or later with at least 2Mb of memory and is expected to be available as an upgrade, but no price has been fixed yet. Further details from Apple on 0800 12775 ‘Aworld of full-screen video, with MIDI music ‘Support, is promised in QuickTime 2.0. Claris has decided to discontinue its spreadsheet program Resolve, but it will continue to provide technical support for registered users until the end of March 1995. To cushion the blow, it is offering Resolve users ClarisWorks Claris reaches the end of 2.1 (normally £195) for just £23.50 until the end of Septem- ber this year. In addition to a spreadsheet, the Works package includes word processing, data- base, paint, draw, outline, com- munications and presentation its Resolve modules. (MacFormar rated it the best ‘Works’ package in issue 10, March.) Despite some clever features and good performance, Resolve had failed to win a large ‘enough slice of the competitive Macintosh spreadsheet market. You've got to admit, the Beatles Compton’s New Media has an- nounced a CD-ROM title featur- ing his life and music, including his home videos and art, CD- quality audio of unreleased music, and text from his writ- ings, both published and un- Compton's New Media is ‘well known for CD-ROM titles such as Compton's Interactive Ency- clopedia and Jazz: A Multimedia Warner Bros, and takes the form of a ‘virtual gallery’ that enables you to explore aspects of his life and works as you like, from his ‘unusual’ childhood onwards. “Lennon was truly a multi- media artist,” Warner Bros says. a John Lennon CD-ROM “CD-ROM is an ideal medium to showcase his music, his art, his words, and his life.” In addition to being able to enjoy hundreds of photographs by prominent rock photogra- phers including Leibowitz, Rus- sell, Freeman and others, you'll be guided through the tour by John Lennon in person, historic and private clips in his usual candour and acerbic wit.” For anyone who has even a passing interest in the man himself, it sounds like an interactive experience not to be missed. The John Lennon tribute CD- ROM is due for release in the summer and will be available in two versions: a standard CD- ROM for US$69.95 and a limit- ed edition collectors set for which no price has yet been an- nounced. lon’s New. Media is on 0101 619 2500. Photoshop gets PowerMac’d-up Adobe has announced a PowerMac version of its leading image-manip- ulation package, Photoshop. The up- grade is a straightforward plug-in for Photoshop 2.5, and it's free. On an ‘entry-level’ PowerMac 6100, Adobe claims, the PowerPC ‘native’ plug-in runs at between 1.5 and 4 times the speed of a Quadra 700. The ‘plug-in’ architecture of Photoshop has meant that the PowerMac upgrade has been re- leased much more quickly than if Adobe had had to write a ‘native’ version of the complex program from scratch. The PowerPC plug-in for Adobe Photoshop will be available free through on-line services including CompuServe and CIX, so if you have a modem you can just down- load it for the price of a phone call. The plug-in is also available direct from Adobe (subject to a shipping charge). Adobe UK 081 813 7900. APPLE BYTES jons Don't let anyone tell you there are no interesting games coming ‘out for your machine. Here’s just a sampling of the excitement scheduled for the next few months... Due next month: Aliens (CD- ROM) from Dark Vision, based ‘on the movie of the same name Dracula Unleashed (CD-ROM) from Viacom, distributed by ‘Mindscape: you travel through the streets of Victorian London, gathering information and ob- jects: your five-day mission, to find and destroy Dracula before he destroys your valuable con- tacts. The game boasts a total of 96 minutes of colour motion video and 135 scenes with mul- tiple endings, so how you fare depends on you! i A-10 Attack, from ParSoft, designed by Eric Parker, the man who designed the award-winning Helleats over the Pacific. This flight sim is so advanced that it is reputedly used by real simulation pilots. Also on the flight theme, FLITA Stealth Fighter from Micro- prose, being converted to the Mac by the same team that brought you Civilization. i Alone in the Dark from MacPlay, a moody horror/action/adventure game (it says here), featuring 3D graphics that offer up to nine different camera angles. So it’s obviously not an adaptation of that movie about a blind woman, then... ll CyberRace (from Cyberdreams) is a revolu- tionary 3D combat and racing sim that uses ultra-fast voxel landscapes (whatever they are), ray-traced racing vehicles that you can customise, and cinemat- ic 256-colour between-race se- quences with digitised actors and dialogue. There’s also an ‘outstanding’ musical score by an Emmy award winning com- poser, which should make a nice change, and “hundreds of plot variations” (in a racing sim? That should be interest- ing)... ll Spectre fans, watch for Spectre VR on CD-ROM from Velocity, an upgrade that pits you against a new generation of ‘enemies (what, they're all chil- dren?!) and also gives you new weapon systems and the ability to fly. This version will also in- clude the new VRchitect, which enables you to customise Spectre matrices or create new ones yourself. IB Us, we can’t wait for Virtual Valerie 2 on CD-ROM, or the in- triguingly-titled Return to Zork (return? I’m sure I’d remember if ’d ever been to anywhere called Zork)... MAGFORMAT + ISSUE 12+ May 1994 14 System 7 goes even more personal The big two merg ‘Mac software, Adobe Systems its graphics and design software ‘such as Illustrator, Dimensions and Photoshop, and was the inventor ‘of PostScript, the page descrip- tion language that is the de facto port for owners of existing (and recently-discontinued) software will continue without change for the foreseeable future. A better desktop PrairieSoft has just released a comments that don’t disappear when you rebuild the desktop: ‘search by a range of criteria in- cluding creation date and size, ‘$0 you could find, for example, ‘every file created between 1 January and 1 April which is between 2K and 200K in size and has a name which contains the word ‘fact’; plus customis- able views, easy mounting and unmounting of other drives, and ‘much more. The price for all this wonderfulness is US$99.95 from PrairieSoft, 0101 515 225 0134. Hell of a type Linotype-Hell has announced a typeface design competition open to students, type and graphic designers from all over the world. The winners will share £8,000 prize money and attend a design workshop with type guru Adrian Frutiger at Linotype-Hell’s German HQ. There are three categories: ex- perimental headline font; text face family; and Pi font with 40-80 characters which can be ‘and competition guidelines are available from Sarah Reeder at Linotype-Hell on 0242 222333. pple is to introduce a major rewrite of System 7 this autumn which will include built-in intelligent assistants and a completely user configurable interface. Ata US press briefing held at the end of March, AppleSoft’s general manager, David Nagel, outlined plans for Apple Guide, an intelli- gent, assisted help system. This will replace Apple Help, which will only just have been launched this spring with System 7.5. Perhaps the biggest changes will take place in the Finder, with pre-designed selections of new window, button and scroll-bar appearances, and co- ordinated sets of fonts, styles and colours known as ‘schemes’. Icons will be variable in size, and a new file-management utility will greatly speed up file handling. All cosmetic changes will be controlled by a new utility, Appear- ance Manager. Different people log- ging on to a machine will be able to see radically different views of its operating system and contents. Users will be able to lock indi- vidual folders away from prying eyes, and spring-loaded folders will automatically open when icons are dragged over them. But Mac own- ers hoping for proper, pre-emptive, multitasking will have to wait until mid-1996 for the next generation ‘of system software, thought to mark the debut of System 8, Cur- rently, the multitasking OS is code- named ‘Gershwin’. The announcement follows con- 3D for me, see State-of-the-art 3D animation has come one step closer to everybody's desktop with the release of StrataVision 3d for under US$700 (about £400). The new version of Strata Inc’s award-winning 3D pro- gram boasts impressive features: | Modelling: a new vertex- based 3D sculptor system en- ables you to work the surface of an object like ‘virtual clay’, with real-time smooth-shaded feed- back. Or, if you prefer, you can reshape any outline or profile using a 2D tool instead. MAL the rendering stage, the program offers a module that simulates the appearance of tra- ditional hand-rendering, with brush strokes that follow the surface of each object and finish- es ranging from chalk to dry brush and watercolour. 1 For that final animation, you can make use of StrataVision 3d’s Event-based Animation System which enables objects and cam- eras to follow visible spline paths, which you can edit direct- ly by dragging. There’s even a hierarchical motion path struc- ture which means that the pro- peller on your aircraft can spin convincingly while the plane flies along its own path. StrataVision 3d is US$695 (re- duced from $995) from Strata Inc in the US. Upgrades from earlier versions are $99, or $149 for a deluxe upgrade including the ‘Power Extensions’ skin/un- skin and sweep modellers plus a CD-ROM disk “loaded with goodies”, Strata Inc is on 0101 801 628 5218. ‘More solid than the hippos in Fantasia, and ‘much easier to create than Aladdin's rug... with Strata's new, affordable 30 modelling, tendering and animation package. Soon the ability to customise your Mac lke this wil be bull-in, And some useful features. fusion over the future of System 7 Pro and System 7.5. Both will now be shipped in one box in both PowerMac and native Macintosh versions with installation software automatically detecting which plat- form the software is to be copied to and loading resources as required. Maps in Minutes In Macrormar 10 in March, our ‘clip media’ feature mentioned ‘the range of Maps in features and political boundaries to regional ‘names, railway networks and major cities, ‘major rivers and lakes, towns and airports, ‘and so on. The maps are also fully editable. The Aldus FreeHand 3.0 version, tor ‘example, uses the full range of layers, colours and styles to enable you to customise the maps for your own needs, with different text layers for country names, ‘town names, regional information and so on. ‘You can use Styles and Colours to customise use. You can add or edit details as required to create a map to suit. There are also versions of the maps specially designed for ‘use in Adobe illustrator 3.0 or Canvas 3.0. ‘Maps in Minutes Set 1 includes maps of the UK and Eire, Europe and the World, and costs £199.75 including postage and packing. Set 2 at the same price includes ‘North America, Europe and the World. Or you can buy single maps for £99. RH Publications is on 0840 212135. Fax modem for under £100 US Robotics has slashed the price of its Sportster 2400 fax modem by £50 to just £99, making it, accord- ing to the company, the lowest- cost BABT-approved fax modem on the market, The Sportster 2400 is not a top- of-the-range model, but is aimed at the home or small office user who doesn’t need the fastest data trans- fer rates. It offers 9,600 bps (bits per second) when you send and re- ceive a fax, with 2,400bps data throughput, plus V.42bis_ and MNP5 data compression and error correction to both V.42 and MNP4 specifications. If you don’t under- stand ‘commspeak’, that means it’s fairly fast and your message should get through intact even when there’s a bad line. The Sportster 2400 comes with a five year warranty and lifetime technical support. According to US Robotics, the price cut on this pop- ular model is made possible by economies of scale. US Robotics UK office is on 0753 811180. MACFORMAT + ISSUE 12+ MAY 1994 The future never turns out the way you expected it to Welcome to the computer of the future. Its full of surprises. This isn’t just a new Apple™ Macintosh? It’s a new architecture. A new chip. A new standard that exceeds all previous standards — yet works with MS-DOS? Windows™ and Macintosh. It’s a whole new kind of personal computer. If you wanted speed, it will give you more than any personal computer has ever given you." If you wanted simplicity, it will give you everything that made Macintosh the world’s most imitated personal computer. If you wanted compatibility, it will give you the ability to run MS-DOS, Windows and Macintosh software. And if you want to own the future, it’s the only personal computer to have. Nobody expected a Macintosh that would be more powerful than the most powerful PC. At the heart of Power Macintosh™ is the PowerPC™ 601 microprocessor: the first of a new family of ultra high-performance RISC chips developed in a unique 3-year collabora- tion between Apple, IBM and Motorola. Whilst standard CISC technology reaches the limits of its capabilities, RISC chips like the PowerPC 601 are smaller, more efficient and vastly less expensive to manufacture — this tadical combination of price and performance is set to revolutionise personal computing. Software written to take advantage of unique Power Macintosh capabilities will, in fact, blow the doors off the same programs written for conventional PCs. Nobody expected a computer that would be more human than a Macintosh. Because Macintosh computers are easier to learn, you don't have to spend a fortune teaching people how to use them. In fact, a recent study by Arthur D, Little confirms what Apple has been saying for years: people who use Macintosh computers tend to do more and do it faster than those people who use PCs* he Power Mache 10160 rceing Seftindo. In the study, Macintosh users completed tasks in 44% less time than those PC users running Windows to do the same tasks. Power Macintosh not only continues this tradition of more productive, more / human computing — it builds on it. With the advent of Apple AV tech- nologies, you can now work with video, sound and communications, just as easily as working with text and graphics. Power Macintosh has the power to change the way you work forever. Nobody expected a computer that would be more compatible than both. By using SoftWindows™ from Insignia Solutions, every Power Macintosh has the ability to run off-the-shelf MS-DOS, Windows and Macintosh software. You can even share information between environments with a simple “point and click.”* As This makes Power Macintosh ideal if you've already invested in other PCs or need to use certain MS-DOS and Windows applica- tions, but want the performance, ease-of-use and consistency of Power Macintosh. Of course, if you already use Macintosh, Power Macintosh systems can work with existing Macintosh software, monitors, cards, cables, keyboards and peripherals — as well as share files and information with other systems on a network. Moreover, millions of Macintosh users can upgrade to Power Macintosh for as little as £599 (excluding VAT)! Whatever kind of compatibility you're looking for — Power Macintosh has just redefined it. Nobody the future to be le today. You can own a Power Macintosh for as little as £1,350 (excluding VAT),* complete with built-in Ethernet networking, file-sharing software, sound and up to 24-bit colour display support. Whatever your need or ambitions, Power Macintosh gives you more power everything you do. It just happens faster on a Power Macintosh. And from an investment angle, the arguments are equally compel- productivity up. It does more. It costs less. It’s that simple. To discover why the future is better than you expected, contact your local Apple Authorised Reseller today or for further information call the Apple Information Centre free on 0800 127753. Introducing Power Macintosh. It’s the future. And it’s better than you expected. -. aaa teat thee nun Pas Se ‘SoftWindows is and i wed under Beene therefrom. MS-DOS isa regsered Anais ~ an independ suey enn hentiper enol pdeighonarpsiminpbrperremenh Windows i . Cempettive Anas Group 2. Source: A Comparative Say 4, Suggested Retail Price othe Power Macintosh Upgrade in the US aod ether. tal See, Mn carl sth ons PowerPC sa trademark ‘cing 08 Ps ess Windows — Artur Dit, Inc, Janay 194.3. Soltis froma Cand. mle heal Por te one co 10060 alge wi MD RA nd deve, exioding keyboard and monitor (aalable st exra cos) Al prices quoted as at 14h March 1994, exuding YT at 17.5%. Apple Authorised Resellers are fre to set their own prices ~ therefore actual purchase pices ay vary frm those ict. StyleWriter gets colour as inkjet wars hot up he high street battle for inkjet printer purchasers got I tougher this month as Apple announced its new Colour Style- Writer Pro at well under £600. Hewlett Packard had been taking a large share of the market with its DeskWriter 310, which has a cheap upgrade to colour capability and can be bought for under £300. The old StyleWriter offered black out- put only, but now Apple is fighting back with the new machine. ing of colours from screen to paper. The StyleWriter operates in three modes: photo quality, business graphics and spot colour. There are individual cartridges for each ink colour, which differs from the three-in-one approach taken by some other manufactur- ers. In theory, this should be more efficient as only the colour which has run out needs to be replaced. The StyleWriter Pro is not fast, with a claimed speed of two min- utes per colour page - about aver- age for inkjets. It features a 100- sheet paper tray, which can also take envelopes. Street pricing is reckoned to be in the region of £550 by Apple, but you can expect some fierce price competition. For more information on the Colour StyleWriter Pro call Apple free on 0800 127753. The Colour StyleWriter Pro features a printing resolution of 360 dots per inch = some 44% better than many other printers ~ and produces “sharp, vibrant colours,” claims Apple’s Bianca Walker. “Small offices, educa- tion and home users can now use colour to add impact to their documents without mak- ing a major dent in their bot- tom line,” she enthused. The new printer is fully com- patible with Apple's colour matching technology Color- Sync, which gives good match- Printing gets colourful with the new Colour StyleWriter Pro from Apple. It is not particulary fast, but its claimed 3606pi resolution is impressive and at somewhere just ‘over the £500 mark on the street, the price is competitive FLIPPING HECK You know the little animations you used to get on the edges of chil- dren's books - flip through the book rapidly and they appear to move? Well now you can create those on your Mac. Taking a QuickTime move or PICS animation as a start point, FlipBook prints out the images onto special perforated paper to create the flip book. FlipBook is available from S H Pierce & Co on 0101 617 338 2222 and the price is $89. FlipBook create the separate frames ofa flip animation on your Mac. But what's it for? Helicats is one of the most popu- lar games on the Mac, but it’s also one of the most difficult to learn. That’s why Mac training company MacUniversity has de- cided to run the world’s first Hellcats training course! ‘On May 28, MacUniversity will be hosting the course at Kings Cross in London in con- ‘Helicats training course! Hellcats training course takes off ‘Hone your flying skills before your next mission on a junction with Parsoft, the nice people behind the classic fight- er-plane simulator. They’ve ti- tled it ‘Hellcats over Kings Cross’, and plan, as the saying goes, a good time for all. As well as picking up top Hellcats tips from the program- mers themselves, you can com- pete in the first All England Hellcats Combat Trophy. And you'll get a chance to try out A10 = the next generation flight sim from the people who bought you Hellcats. ‘Macrormat is co-spon- soring the event, so you might have the chance to embarrass us on a Leyte Gulf mission. The day costs £10, and you can get more details from MacUniversity on 071 582 3702. APPLE BYTES MACFoRMAT + IssuE 12+ May 1994 APPLE BYTES Newton n updated Newton from At has addressed many of the problems which users had with the original MessagePad. The MessagePad 110 has three times the memory of the original, and batteries are claimed to last up to three times as long. A flip-top lid (intended for the original Message- Pad but dropped at the last minute) returns, and the pen is now tele- scopic. The most noticeable differ- ence, however, is the slimmer, longer casing, which allows the new Newton to sit more easily in the hand. The differences continue inside the case, as the software has been revamped. The Newton can now recognise handwriting some time after it was written — previously text became an inert graphic if not recognised immediately. This can speed up text entry enormously, making the Newton a much more arrives viable proposition for taking notes. Single character recognition is now possible, which makes the addition of names to the word list much easier, as they can now be written instead of ‘typed’. Current Newton owners can up- grade their ROMs to benefit from these software changes. The origi- nal Newton continues to be avail- able, now badged as the Message- Pad 100. Pricing for the new Newton is £551, with the MessagePad 100 now selling for £469. The upgrade costs £58 plus shipping to Apple. For more call Apple on 0800 127753. ® Version two of the Newton Con- nection Kit is now shipping for £80. The kit allows you to exchange in- formation in the Newton with data held on your desktop Mac, and di- rectly supports programs such as Dynodex, Now-Up-to-date, Excel, Lotus Slimmer, better ‘The new-look Newton: smarter recognition and longer battery life means a marked improvement on the original MessagePad. 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. The kit will initially ship with demo versions of a number of Newton applications, including Sili- con Casino, GoFigure and Dell Cross- word Puzzles. Aldus’ best-selling presentation package Persuasion is to get a major overhaul with version 3.0 to be available in the summer. With the launch of a new competitor in Clarisimpact, Per- suasion was due for a revamp. The most visible part of the up- grade is an entirely new user in- terface, featuring the now-ubiq- uitous floating palette approach. The charting section of the program has been greatly im- Aldus presents Persuasion upgrade proved, with 84 chart types and support for OLE (the technology which allows data from one application to be inserted ‘live’ into another — a sort of enhanced publish and subscribe.). Aldus claims that colour sup- port has been greatly improved, with new colour models, com- bined colour and greyscale ele- ments and precision editing tools. Sound can be synchronised with animated text and graphics, and transition effects are easier. Branching presentations are pos- sible, with the presenter choos- ing the route on the fly. Persuasion 3.0 will cost £411, with a free upgrade to anyone buying Persuasion 2.1 between now and the release of version 3. Other Persuasion users can up- grade for £112. For more information contact Aldus on 031 453 2211. On-line Oxford dictionaries The Oxford Language Shelf contains four interactive dictio- naries for French, German, Spanish and Italian. From the Oxford University Press, its software al- lows easy searches with wildcards, and a button-based interface allows rapid switching between languages and the use of keywords. The same interface software has been added to The Oxford Writer's Shelf, which in its second incarnation re- places the Oxford Minidictionary with the Pocket Oxford Dic- tionary and adds the Compact Encyclopaedia to the pack- age. Both cost £88 from the Oxford University Press on 0865 56767. ‘Mountain High Map Frontiers is a CD-ROM containing EPS, FreeHland and TIFF maps featuring political boundaries, designed to link up with the company's relief maps series. The CD costs £141, or £56 if you already have the reliet maps. Contact Digital Wisdom on 0223 566250. MACFORMAT + IssuE 12+ May 1994 19 This month’s selection of keystroke shortcuts, tips and discoveries In System 7.1, open the Memory Control Panel, switch on Virtual Memory, then click on the Select Hard Disk pull-down panel while holding down the [option] key. You get a list of the VM developers, with a short witty comment on each as a sub- menu. Very useful. Thanks to Sandy Janas, via CIX. @ More System 7.1 Control Panel tips, this time from Bernard Lebelle in Croissy sur Seine in France, who wins a cosmopolitan MACFoRMAT T- shirt, In the Monitors Control k on the version the top right hand corner of the window and hold the mouse but- ton down. You get the names of the au- thors of this Control Panel along with a hilarious face. Do the same thing with the [option] key held down and the little face sticks its tongue out. (This also works in System 7.0.) Then try the Memory Con- trol Panel: first, select the ‘yes’ option in the virtual memory choic- es, then hold down the [option] key while clicking on the list of possible volumes for virtual memory. You get all the names of the vir- tual memory gurus with a pop-up menu describ- ing each character. W The Key Caps utility in your Apple menu shows you where to find some of those special characters lurking on the Mac key- board, like ©, # and g, but what about characters that require two keystrokes, like €, fi or &? Hold down [option] and the keys for such accent marks have a grey border, indicating that you need to press another key for the letter you want the accent on. If you've found any hidden secrets or keyboard tricks, send them in! There’s a ‘Macrormar T-shirt for the best, and a fiver for the rest, every month! * Controversy. Acrimony. Heated debate. But enough about the office. Write to ‘Apple Talk’, Macrormat, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. Virtually “Don’t use virtual met Macrormar in December, “bei it slows your Mac down.” Well yes it does, but there’s an important fact you're forgetting here. Virtual memory is free, and in any cost/ benefit assessment that’s impor- tant. My system manager will cringe to read this, but I routinely run 7Mb of virtual memory on my 5/40 SE 30 at work. This allows me to keep open most of the ap- plications I routinely use over the course of a day (Nisus, Address Book, QuickMail, 4-Link, XPress) without having to fart around shutting things down and _re- opening them. The saving in time and frustration that results from not twiddling my thumbs wait- ing for these big things to happen is worth the slight speed decrease in the Mac’s normal operations, Most competitions that invite you to ‘use your skill and judgement’ come down to luck in the end... but here's one that doesn't. Whenever you enter a competition in Mac- FORMAT OF Send US a tip or query, just use your taste and imagination to make sure you've selected an eyecatching postcard and, whether you win a prize in the competition or not, you could win a Macrorwar T-shirt. This ‘month's winners include Sean Ferguson from Liverpool, who tried valiantly to win our recent ‘AutoRoute competition (but, sadly, didn't) with his postcard of a simian version of Atlas (appropriately customised). And for sheer Kitsch value, it would be hard to beat this Mission Impossible card from Rose Thompson of London NS. What ! want to know is, how did they get the colours looking so tacky? MACFoRMAT + IssuE 12+ May 1994 20 especially as I can have it by click- ing a dialogue button instead of persuading an overworked system manager to install more memory or, if it was my own machine, shell out hard-earned dosh John Stevenson Bath Watch for a special feature on how you can get more disk space and more mem- ory, even without buying any extra hardware, in MACFORMAT next month. To make sure of your copy, ask your newsagent to reserve you one, or turn to page 66 for details of how to subscribe. Oh, and John, I can say with fair confi dence that our — I mean your, your system manager isn’t likely to cringe, ‘cause he doesn't usually read these pages. So, no point in that ingratiating bit about him being overworked, really. Nice try, though. for old o your local computer k for Screw-lt-Up Lite , which you want to use on your new, top-of-the-range Macin- tosh Octra XV. The helpful assis tant’s face falls: “I'm sorry, sir. The version we sell won't run on your machine. If you buy it, you'll have to write to the distributors and get them to send you an update. Or al- ternatively get a patch progam from some bulletin board until they eventually get around to re- leasing a new version.” A fairy story? Very probably. It’s more likely that they'll take your money and let you go through the frustrating process of trying to in- stall the software and wondering if your machine is at fault. You could accuse some retailers of ‘knowing- ly’ selling out-of-date software, ex- cept I suspect that would be flatter- ing them. At least that’s the im- pression you get from some sales assistants - so blankly uninformed that you wonder if they've ever used a Macintosh or opened a magazine. Owners of machines with 040 chips will already be familiar with the time-lag problems between old software and new hardware. (I pity the first people to buy PowerMacs.) In a recent issue of MACFORMAT, you warned us that MacTools v3 was the only one that worked with new System Enablers. This kind of information is very valuable and it would be nice to have more of it = a regular feature on software com- patibility perhaps? Here’s a true story which does have a happy ending. I bought Now Utilities 4.0 a year ago and a techie friend downloaded for me a patch to update it to the less buggy More Macrormar T-shirt ‘winners: Nick Shaw of Black Ash Design in Liver- sedge, West Yorks, sent in this remarkable picture titled ‘Die fntte Augen- waage’ or ‘Eyebalance num- berfive’, which doesn't make alot of sense but you should see what the gold ink looks like. Then there's Alan Morton from Glasgow, who ‘created his own Peter Gabriel postcard for our Xplora 1 ‘Compo which, yes, is “worth ‘one of those fab T-shirts..." version 4.0.1, but even this wouldn’t work on an LC475. The UK distributors were unhelpful, but! finally wrote to Now Software in America. They expressed me a disk patch (the Americans do care about customer relations) and I'm now using v4.0.1p, which works fine. My friend now tells me that a v4.0.2 patch is available. Do you think the retailers know yet? David Clough London SE24 Old software may not take advantage of the speed or power of new hardware, but with Macs it's very unlikely not to work. Apple has always had a policy of making its new hardware as ‘back- wards-compatible’ as possible — that is, ‘making sure it can run older software — and this applies even to the radically- mew PowerMacs. Some commentators believe that the Mac could have been “light-years ahead of where it is now” if not for this policy (at least, that's what Andy reckons...). But it has ‘meant that upgrading to a better Mac won't instantly render your precious software collection useless. The difficulty really is System soft- ‘ware revisions, which more or less radi- cally change the environment in which @ program has to operate. The last ‘watershed’ revision was 6.0.7: just about all current software should work fine with that version or any version newer than that; some software will re- quire it. The exceptions will be the diag- mostic programs and utilities such as MacTools and Now Utilities, which ‘ave to tackle new ground rules like the introduction of System Enablers with System 7.1. As for ‘buggy’ software: well, at the end of the day it’s not down to either the retailers or the distributors, is it? American software houses may be help- ‘ful, but we at MacrorMatr are finding that even major upgrades to profession- al-level desktop publishing packages an turn out to have... shall we say, cer- tain quirks. If you've had any problems with software bugs and incompatibili- ties, do send us details and we'll see about publishing a dossier of common problems. Just don’t ask me about the ‘Vanishing Text bug’, that’s all. HD Emergenc Ihave some advice to rej ing rok you tio! th running Norton Utilities ‘HD Emergency Disk’ (not the 800K Emergency _ Disk which also comes with the pack- age) on newer Macs whose System requires a System Enabler. I would strongly urge you to test that you can boot up successfully from the HD Emergency Disk. Just switch off, wait a few seconds, and then restart with the disk inserted. If you are presented with the familiar Norton Utilities interface, everything is fine: you can put the disk away again and hope you will never have to use it. Otherwise you will be presented with some sort of dia- logue explaining why the disk will not work. Don’t waste your time trying to fathom a solution, but in- stead get straight on to Symantec customer support at Symantec (UK) Ltd, Sygnus Court, Market Street, Maidenhead, Berks SL6 8AD, Tel: 0628 776343, remember- ing to quote your Product Serial Number and Registration Number, and mentioning which Mac model you have. You should be sent a new set of disks by return of post. The updated HD Emergency Disk should contain a ReadMe file ad- dressing precisely this question, in case you're interested in the expla- nation. Do it now, and avoid the harrowing experience of finding yourself completely up the creek when your Mac trashes its hard disk and Apple’s standard Disk Tools fails to cope. Graeme Cook Lonan, Isle of Man Graeme wins a Macrormat T-shirt for his helpful community spirit. Glenn Robinson (MAcFoRMar 9, February) asked about how to send payments for shareware to the US. Firstly, don’t try to send a cheque. Many shareware authors will warn you against this in their registration docu- mentation. US banks charge ex- orbitant fees for handling cheques drawn on UK accounts, and some will not even look at them. By far the most efficient way to send small sums to the States (or anywhere else for that matter, since shareware authors worldwide are happy to accept dollars) is plain, simple cash. The risk involved is minimal, and for the sums in question (usually $5-$25) not worth worrying about if you take a few sensible precautions. Use a decent quality envelope, just large enough for the unfolded notes. Place the notes within a folded sheet of writing paper (so that even if the envelope is held up against a strong light the contents will not be visible). Finally, seal the envelope with sellotape if necessary. The cash itself is readily ob- tainable in the high street (I find Thomas Cook’s the most helpful). Because there is usual- ly a minimum commission on foreign exchange transactions, I would recommend changing about £100 at a time if you ex- pect to make regular shareware payments. Below that amount you will pay the same com- mission (normally around three quid), and above it the com- mission will increase as a per- centage of the total. If you batch your shareware payments, you will find that you are paying out quite a lot in one go anyway, and any excess can be held in reserve for future payments. When you’re changing money, be sure to specify a range of denominations: it’s not much use if you walk out of your bank with only $50 bills and you want to pay a $5 share- ware fee. At the same time, a wad of $1 bills is going to look pretty conspicuous in an envelope. For larger sums, Eurocheques (ask at your bank) are the cheapest and easiest way to pay in Europe. For the States or elsewhere, a bank draft (expen- sive) or credit card payment are probably the best bet. Just a couple of final points: if the program is more than a year or two old (and especially if the fee is more than a few dollars) it does no harm to drop the author a card (or an e-mail message) first, asking them to verify their current address. Also, when sending payment remember to state the name of the program and the version number - it helps the author send you the right documen- tation, upgrade etc! Graeme Cook Lonan, Isle of Man Just for the record, I have to say that ‘we cannot recommend sending cash through the mail, especially to the US, where the postal service is notori- ously unreliable. Ask at your own bank about international bank drafts, which are essentially bank cheques drawn on a US ‘correspon- dent’ bank and made out to a named payee. US banks will accept them just like US cheques and usually not charge for them; the charge you pay varies from bank to bank, but in my experience is usually only a few pounds. Anyone else have any {favourite methods of doing the right thing and paying for shareware? MACFORMAT + ISSUE 12+ May 1994 21 Communicative can only be bothered to take calls from your readers for a few hours each week then I don’t think I can be bothered to buy your mag- azine any more. Hopefully your competitors will be a little more communicative. Brendan Beirne (ex reader) London SW10 Oh dear. Let me explain our position on this one. We produce a magazine. We Just do not have the personnel to run a telephone technical support or advice service as well - we do that via our Mac Answers pages in the magazine (with the help of a whole team of outside ex- perts whom even we sometimes have trouble reaching by phone). And much as we welcome your views on MACFOR- MAT or anything Mac-related, we sim- ply don't have the time for lengthy chats on the phone ~ these ‘Apple Talk’ pages are the place for that. (Aside on telephone manners: why do people al- ways assume that just because they're not busy Another reader's wish-list... Casper van der Bilt from Delft in the Netherlands wants to see three things: first, easier updating of the Desktop file without you losing any comments in the Get Info box; second, a ‘normal’ backup program where you can see all files and can restore them separately; and third, a good hard disk manage- ment program which can join fragmented files (that is, files that have not been saved to disk in one continuous block of data) and also restore recently-removed files. These, he says, are things every- body with a computer uses to keep a clean system. Well, everybody who's moderately techie, at any rate. If you’ve been too wary of sophisticated disk tools suites to try joining fragmented files before, it certainly would be nice to have a friendly System do it for you... What would you like to see in System 8, when it appears? and feel like a chat, it’s a con- venient time for the person they've phoned?) However, if you really desperately need to talk to us, we'll make the time — but we try to limit reader calls to Wednesday after- noons, simply to minimise the disruption to our already im- possibly tight production schedules. By the same token, we are not always in the office sitting by a tele- phone ~ there are meetings, photo-shoots, press briefings and so on which demand attention elsewhere — but we make a point of having someone available on Wednesday afternoons to take your calls, If you find this offensive... well, either you've got a truly disastrous Mac problem or, frankly, a truly disturbing attitude problem. I’m afraid the world doesn't revolve around you after all. And speaking of attitude: if you do phone at any time, even if you're doing $0 to give us a piece of your mind, please remember that the friendly people who operate the switchboard are innocent parties. They are there to help you reach the people you want to talk to. They are not there to be abused or sworn at. If they do not im- ‘mediately put you through to the right place, ask yourself whether you have made clear who you need: Future Publishing currently pro- duces 32 magazines and has sepa- rate departments for editorial, ad- vertising, subscriptions and mail or- ders for every one of them. You do not come through directly to Mac FORMAT editorial. If you are put through and get a recorded mes- sage saying there's no-one avail- able to take your call, that means Finally, Marlon Seton from London ‘SE10 with the confrontation of the year, ‘Sav Sadness vs Godzilla’ Remember, whenever you write to Macrorwar, you have an extra chance of winning a T-shirt, so be creative! Two more Macronmat T-shirt winners for this month: Chris Wyatt of London W4 tickled our art staff's fancy with this little allusion... but then, you ought to see some of the stuff that gets stuck up on the walls of our office. Still, de gustibus non disputandum, that's my motto. there's no-one available to take your call and we ~ not the switchboard — have left you a courteous mes- sage rather than just let the telephone ring unanswered. It does not mean the telephon- ist has deliberately mis-rout- ed your call. It does not mean you should ring back and abuse her. Thank you for your attention. We'll now resume our normal letters page. Speech th I am a speech thera my fourth year at the Zagreb, Croatia. A fe g0 I visited some friends in England and saw MAcForMar. Since I have a Classic 11, I bought I've been looking for software for voice analysing and other soft- ware connected with speech thera- py, and I haven’t found any infor- mation so far. I even went to the Apple Centre in Zagreb, but with no success, Therefore I'm asking you to help me and send me any information about any software of this kind, and also advise me about hardware needed for that kind of work. Since I can’t buy MacFoRMaT in Croatia, please reply to me di- rectly, Thank you! Christian Nikoli¢ Antuna Strbana 6 41000 Zagreb Croatia A bit specialised for us, this one. Hard- ware: a microphone, and maybe an AV Mac if your budget runs to one? Soft- ware: we're out of our depth here. If anyone writes to Christian, could you fill us in 00? The address is on page 20. SHORT BUT SWEET Got a point to make? A short note on a postcard stands more chance of getting printed. Burning desire I’m an ardent Harpoon fan (and wargamer in general). Do you know of any club or group that swaps scenarios? I appre- ciate that there may be ones on Internet, but do they have a snail-mail address? I and many other people do not have access to a modem. If you don’t know of such a club then please print my address and consider me to be looking to start one. Thanks for your help. Guy Sansom Tanelorn, 8 Little Manor Gardens, Cranleigh, Surrey GU6 8BF I want it! T have just got to have it! In Decem- ber’s MAcroRMAT you mentioned the BMUG PD-ROM. I really like the idea of pumping up my Performa 600CD with all those memory-hungry little Exten- sions that just love to clash with each other. But where can I get the BMUG disc? | Have | got news for you! Just turn (0 page 63 of this very magazine... No Mac experts Like Michael Brooke in March’s MAcFoRMaT, I have had trouble with Patriot Com- ‘mand freezing up. But no, Mr ‘Mac Answers, you don’t have — to resort to the main power ‘switch. If you are running Sys-— tem 7 or above, you just hold 4 down [command] and [option] and then hit the [esc] key and | confirm you want to ‘force quit’. I’m no Mac expert. 1 found this incredibly useful piece of information in a mag- azine I subscribe to called q ‘Macrormat. Perhaps you should take out your own subscription and pass it round | the office! Stephen Dobbin q London E5 q MACFORMAT + ISSUE 12+ May 1994 7 Courses and a choice of greens PGA TOUR® Golf Il, served up on the Macintosh with a feast of new features. In addition to Practice and Tournament modes, there's now a Skins Challenge on the menu, bringing you all the tension of high-stakes golf for cash. And that’s just for starters! ’ The 7 main courses are the most challenging the American Tour has to offer, each one identical in every way to the real thing - even down to the wildlife. Select a club, compensate for the wind gusting up to 20mph, draw or fade your drive around obstacles. But miss the Accuracy Point, and landing in a Sahara-sized bunker could be your just desserts. You'll eat up these greens. Every ridge and contour has been modelled after its PGA TOUR® counterpart. And when winning the championship, taking 4 Skins, or simply making the cut depends on a 16 foot putt, you can bet that the tension will reach boiling point. PGA TOUR’ Golf II - finish all these courses, and you'll still be gagging for second helpings. Ly] reteur ‘Macintosh SPORTS ELECTRONIC ARTS THIS MONTH re What’ A font of your own handwriting, a video post- production studio on your Mac and a loopy neural network: Andy Storer tells it like it is ‘Ul kick off this month with a little self in- dulgence. See that handwriting in the screenshot — that’s mine, converted into a font! Just to prove it here’s some more: Til write the word ‘MacroRMar’ eight times so you can see it’s so uniform I couldn’t possibly have physically written it: Mactoruat Macforuat Macforuat Macforuat Macforuat Macforuat Macforuat Macfermat There ~ impressive, eh? Well it was to me when it came through the post, courtesy of FontWorks on 071 490 2002 for £116, with a cover note written in my handwriting. Real spooky, I can tell you, because I honestly couldn’t notice any difference and I was read- ing something someone else had written in my handwriting! Fontworks had sent me through a template in which I had to write the alphabet in upper and lower case, plus half a dozen phrases, and all the usual jumble of other char- acters which go to make up a complete font. Oh and my signature just for good measure. So how’s the conversion done? Well, it’s here we enter muddy waters. On receiving my tem- plate, Fontworks air-freights it out to Moscow where some unnamed boffin scans my scrawl, works out the maths needed for scaling and produces a bitmap font. This TrueType font, known as AndHand in my case, is then copied to disk and flown back two weeks later. Hey presto, I whack AndHand straight into my Sys- tem Folder and I’m typing away in my own handwriting. It behaves just like any other font = you can italicize it, embolden it, blow it up, shrink it down, whatever. Now, FontWorks is understandably reluctant to reveal its source in Moscow for fear competitors do the dirty on it, but here’s my theory. This guy is a Muscovite in his thirties, trained by the KGB as a forger, who's now gone freelance in the post-Soviet turmoil. Simple. Who on earth else would be converting writing into fonts in the good old CCCP? With the amount of paperwork pro- duced by that bureaucracy, is there any wonder there was a need for digitised signatures? Make of it what you will ~ I reckon my new font may come in handy for some reason or other, like This guy is a Muscovite in his thirties, trained by the KGB as a forger... convincing my parents I've actually taken the time to put pen to paper rather than sent them some perfectly formatted Quark document. But the best thing of all is that my handwriting is now available for ever. And I guess, as far as my wife is concerned, so is my signature, It did occur to me, though, that maybe your Yes this could be your handwriting eWW own handwriting font could be extremely use- ful if Apple and FontWorks put their collective minds together. Think about it: the Newton MessagePad could become almost completely accurate and much, much faster in a jiffy if your own font was burned into its ROM as an optional upgrade. Just a thought (and my monthly intellectual copyright royalty, please guys). If we really want digital assistants for ‘“in- timate’ rather than ‘personal’ computing then this might be a smart move. Another example of this move towards inti- mate computing comes in the form of new soft- ware like Open Sesame!, which I covered last month. I thought it was a smart move at the time but I'm having doubts now. ‘Automate your Mac... automatically’ is the sales line. It supposedly saves you time and trouble by learning all your common Mac operations and automating them. But it’s not quite that simple. By all accounts, there’s some kind of neural network lurking in its innards which learns how to be your friendly assistant ~ emptying the trash, placing aliases of commonly used items in your Apple menu, opening your favourite folders on startup and so on. And last issue I was fairly impressed by my little neural pal. But, as you can see from the screenshot below, he’s growing up to be a bit of a nutter. This kind of problem occurs all the time with him - you do something once and he concludes it’s one of the laws of your personal universe. I'm not quite sure why he reckons I should Hope you caw read this - | caw - but thew I've dee readiug it all uy life. You Kusw that Xplore dleke feter <advie) lives iw Baut Yeak, everyosdy kere kas see Wim, wet Wim, ued with Wim, cut a t8-track wix eww with Wim aud spout a weekeud with Wim Laugiug suf with Priuce, Gric aud Vaw Marrisow. Buf | remember Wim whew ke used te dress up as a flower, se | dew't recsquise Ww these Says. converted into your own personal font. Great for making people think you actually have the time to write them a letter want to go online at 12.32 every day or load my word processor at 4.14 but he must have a reason. Maybe it’s something to do with RAM ‘Sometimes Open ‘Sesame! tries a litie too hard to be helpful. Since ¥'d only been using it for ‘one Monday, how could it possibly have known this? The neural network Griving it to make these observations clearly displays supernatural abilities and should be marketed as such. Aindy, | notice you frequently * open “System Folder” 3:42PM Would you like me to automate this task? CD Geer) MACFoRMAT + IssuE 12+ May 1994 24 File Edit Define Sets Options Utilities Altogether more functional than Open Sesame!, though somewhat less manic, Quickeys 3 records ‘sequences of key presses and stores them as macros. Then a simple key combination can trigger a whole series of complex operations. Dead useful for repetitive tasks. Doubler. Maybe my little neural matey is expe- riencing some dubious form of heightened Zen- like awareness. Just like HAL. Or maybe he’s just plain bats. Or maybe it’s me who's screwed and he’s just copying me. Well, let’s just say ‘one of us needs debugging and it ain’t going to be me. I'll let you know what happens when he starts going all Freudian on me next month. So it’s a good job QuicKeys 3 rescued me from this leading edge neural madness with a few good old simple key presses. It’s much more useful than Open Sesame! because all it offers is the capacity to memorise sets of key combina- tions, known as macros. Twelve sets come bun- dled to help you speed up things like zooming windows, toggling file sharing, viewing files and the like. But where it really scores is in its capability to record series of key presses and as- sign them to just one combination like [op- tion] [M]. Such a simple macro can trigger a huge set of personalised shortcuts. So when I boot up each day I can just hit [option] [M] and this happens: my diary schedule loads and opens on the date while, in the background, Let’s just say one of us needs debugging and it ain’t going to be me. my comms package logs on to my conferencing system, files all my unread mail, archives it, downloads it and logs off. The macro then con- tinues by loading up my dearchiver, saving the mail as a text file and auto-double-clicking it for display in Word. Of course, the only hassle to this automation is remembering what those key combinations are and what they trigger. So Treckon I'll give my little neural buddy the Job ‘of keeping track of them. One can only ima; the mayhem about to ensue. But in amongst the chaos of Open Sesame! cutting in every half hour and asking me whether I want to make an alias of my waste- basket because I junk so many useless messages from Open Sesame!, came some real excitement. The best news this month, for me, just has to be the QuickTime 2 story. And about time too because three years is an absolute eternity in computing. Yep, all this video-on-your-Mac malarkey began in ‘91, when I remember first seeing version 1 QT movies at Boston’s Mac- World Expo running in WordPerfect of all things. And at that time all us Mac hacks were pretty ambivalent about this brave new QuickTime thingy ~ yeah it’s fun, it’s free and it may well be the future but who really wants to watch Pea Te oo Peta os At ast, you too can have an entire ‘non-linear video post production studio on your desktop with Adobe aneaien Premiere 3.0 - only trouble is you ‘need around ten grand or so for the | TT AC A DT extra kit to do it justice. ropey little micro movies jerking about in win- dows the size of matchboxes? Well, it seemed a fair enough opinion at the time, and over the intervening period, despite a couple of upgrades, nothing’s much changed. Sure, QuickTime runs bigger, it handles sound better, it’s a whole lot faster and it’s gained support from more than way-out word process- ing companies. It’s all over the shop now ~ games, encyclopaedias, infotainment, edutain- ment, soft porn, hard porn, eduporn — even QuarkXPress 3.3 is going to support it. But it’s still limited. The reason being that in this area of multimedia, Mac hardware is way behind Mac software. If you look at QuickTime editing software like Adobe's Premiere 3 you'll see an entire non-lin- ear video post-production studio in there. All it needs is ten grand or so and you can pull in broadcast-standard footage, mix it down with effects and CD-quality sound and put it back out to broadcast-spec VTRs. Only problem being the ten grand for the 2 gigabyte disk array, the VideoVision 24-bit realtime frame grabber, an optical for back-up, oh and a Quadra 800 or 840 with 20Mb of RAM or so. So Premiere’s all ready to roll with high-end hardware but who’s got that list on their desk- top? Not me, that’s for sure. Never- theless it’s preferable to the prohibi- tive costs of a traditional linear set-up using three VTRs, a mixing board and some natty Quantel software. Ten times better in fact; but it still ain’t cheap. And it should be. Because you should be able to simply plug a cam- corder into your Mac, transfer the tape to your hard disk, edit it together and print it to video. All at full screen, full motion, full colour. Even freeware QuickTime editors like Pop- corn would let you do that if you had the right hardware to hand. So Apple’s continuing pursuit of a software solution to the problem of hardware lag has really come up trumps with QuickTime 2. I'll now chine you're at least a quarter of the way to af- fordable mass multimedia already - you can pull in video and sound dead easily. But, as with so many developments making up the Mac’s future at the moment, PowerPC is the key. The coupling of QuickTime 2 with the per- formance edge of RISC processing suddenly be- comes very exciting. The hardware’s finally caught up. OK, so prices for these PowerMac beasties are maybe a bit on the high side for most people. But a £700 upgrade is perhaps not too much of a burden for the fourfold power increase over a top-end Quadra you'll get from native PowerPC applications. I reckon in anoth- er year, and with the real emergence of MPEG Macs, we'll have real video running, no prob- Jem at all Don’t get me wrong - I’m not trying to hype QuickTime beyond belief; it’s just that when a significant enhancement comes along we should greet it as such, It’s this kind of advance that makes owning a Mac feel so good. And if you look at what’s happening in this area Win- dows-wise you'll feel even better. I went up to the Windows show at Olympia last month and came away feeling pretty chuffed that Apple Macs still have the edge over the millions of Windows boxes out there. Aaly Storer run full motion video in quarter screen windows on all 040-based Macs without additional hardware as- sistance. So if you have an AV ma- ‘So when's QuickTime the first full-screen QuickTime movie out on the Mac and what will it be? My money's on a Spielberg extravaganza even though the new 2 will have some way to go before it can cope with wide screen. MACFORMAT + ISSUE 12+ MAY 1994 25 PowerBook Duo 230 The Apple Macintosh PowerBook Duo 230 computer is offered exclusively from Crown at this discounted price. With over £173 worth of accessories absolutely free of charge if you thought Apple quality was outside your budget then look again. This slim, lightweight notebook outperforms desktop machines at many times it's 4.2 pound weight and sandwich-thin dimensions. The PowerBook Duo 230 has a Motorola 33MHz processor, 8OMb hard disk drive and 4 Mb RAM. Built-in Speaker and microphone for voice annotation and multimedia. The PowerBook Duo is designed for those who need maximum performance while on the move. Perfect for taking just about ‘anywhere and when you return to your desk you can insert It into the Macintosh Duo Dock* to create a complete Macintosh desktop system. 12 Months warranty Cat. Code APP90 Inc. VAT £821.33 IBM Compatible through Windows. PowerBook Doo Lig. | owed, and lexble 1 LaserWriter Select 310 The perfect companion for your Apple Macintosh, PowerBook Duo 230 or any IBM compatible PC with Windows). Postscript Laser printing with the LaserWriter Select 310. With 1.5Mb of RAM (expandable to 5.5Mb) and a dedicated RISC processor, it speeds through documents at up to 5 pages per minute. With 13 scalable Postscript fonts, 300dpi resolution and Adobe Postscript Level 1 software, excellent results are obtained every time. 250 Sheet paper cassette as standard, optional second 250 or 500 sheet multipurpose cassette. RS422 Serial and Parallel interfaces. 12 Months warranty. Cat. Code APP200 Inc. VAT £586.33. + LASER PC.... TOSHIBA .... HEWLETT- PACKAI here’s something very satisfying about buying Mac software. You invariably get a huge box, a manual the size of the Greater London Yellow Pages and ‘some nifty stickers along with your five master disks, But ultimately, it’s how the program per- forms, not how it’s packaged, and even the ‘Most outrageously expensive program can fail “to meet your needs. Thank Jobs then for two things: shareware and competition. Competition is responsible for much of the best Mac software. Smaller com- panies seeking to get a piece of the action in the global software market will often release great programs at very cheap prices. Peculiarly, people will buy the well known program de- spite the fact that its budget counterpart is ‘often as good as it, if not better. It’s one of “those peculiarly snobby things that we've all _ done at one time or another. Why not try our " light-hearted quiz below to see if you're a soft- ‘ware snob? Shareware’s that mysterious software writ- ten by mysterious programmers who ask only for a bit of recognition and enough money to ‘tarry on creating. Shareware software is specif- ically designed to meet your peculiar needs, THE BEST FoR LESS You want the best software, right? But do you have to spend hundreds of pounds when you can do just about as much for a tenth of the cost? however odd they might be. If you've ever had a problem with your Mac or its software then you can bet your Aunty Ratchet’s top set that somebody somewhere’s programmed a cure. What is shareware? No doubt you've seen the regular shareware column in Macrormat and tried out the pro- grams on the cover disk. Most of these cover ‘® Does all of your Mac software have the words Microsoft, Quark, Adobe or Aldus emblazoned on the box? I Do you need to re-mortgage your house ‘every time you want to buy a new program? Do you need a 250Mb hard drive just to store your word processor's help files, gram- mar checkers, macros, appointment tabu- lators, biorhythm charters and wedding planners on? IB Have you ever actually used the Flesch Reading Ease calculator on your word processor? Does your local software shop send you a Are you a software snob? crate of Bollinger at Christmas? I Do you ever wonder why you can’t afford to go on holiday anymore? Have you ever accused shareware users of being communist traitors to the capitalist system? Answers: If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I’m afraid you’re a bit of a software snob. However, don’t panic, there’s a cure — read the prescription con- tained within this feature and chant the fol- lowing mantra at sunset each day: “Just be- cause it’s cheap, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.” Next patient, please... disk programs are shareware. This is software which can be freely distributed — the authors of the programs ask only that if you like their work and intend to keep using it, you send them a small fee (usually about £20). Their ad- dress is contained either in the program’s start- up screen or in a TeachText document distrib- uted with the program. After you've sent in your shareware fee or ‘registered’, you might receive a special code number which unlocks more of the program’s features and entitles you to free updates too, or an upgraded version of the program, or documentation, or even some extras into the bargain. Often these shareware programs are tiny en- tities which perform a tiny function, be it un- mounting