MacFormat 22 March 95

BRITAIN’S eee MACINTOSH MAGAZINE Also available with CD-ROM i SHH ane “Add an extra aliens with ahr cw eal Us step guide anti disks! A VACEORMATE Infini-D 2.6 — SoftwareFPU The latest version ofthe software that ticks your and rendering Mac into thinking ‘package. Complete with sample fles. you have a maths nd easy-to-use tutorials, co-processor MacConcept Fonts Design and bud models on your Mac Two wonderful freeware fonts for fans Jf] wn tis comprehensive 30 drawing of the cult band Led Zeppelin andthe shareware program. cult TV series, The Prisoner. ‘See back cover of magazine for more detaiiz & compatibility information 3.5MB OF GREAT SOFTWARE! M. ACFORM WT an 2 Reenter fat os gin ‘hen manipulate them and add effects Lottery Lolly! AA ‘( Singfvepeee cheapie onthe latest quad-speed — Get your Mac to pick those winning hae dasermmeie _ which CD-ROM drvene Honor yo? YouR Plus: candeCiptoto, Pct, Windowtzard ad loads of cons _ PLUS the best new milumenia btles to try on CD ates Seria en + a © “The \finest imageamanpianion Money can tiny? sane oa = Bh: Voursontand printing problems: i) —-_j- E Per nverm Geryouraatdhase 7) “Teaty for Phonenaym sie mperreanstiOnignt Sim? e visit these stores. Softline Authorised Dealers fl fl j f ] 1 ] | Bedtord Computers Quodport Limited Hi-Tec Computer Services Applet Guernsey Computers Ltd AppleCentre Oxtord They wait for you. Behind ever corner, inside your worst nightmares. On board the intergalactic colony ship Marathon, things have gone horribly wrong. You are the last hope for defending the Marathon against an onslaught of hostile aliens AppleCentre Dundee Absolute Computers AppleCentre Edinburgh AppleCentre Preston Appleolet Ferneerough (OC Software Advanced weaponry and surreal settings create a truly unique environment. Imago Europe Pi AppleCentre Romford m 6 ; 8 384 24; Marathon is possibly the hottest game to ever hit the Mac. ApplePoint Siough AT Computers Prepare for total carnage. Up To Press Ltd Stirling Micro Systems bed jae at pt London NWA 08 é Trinity Systems t Gordon Harwood Computers Micro Anvika Ld vate 0 6382 MacGold eCentre West One ‘ tendon Wt 0 MacWarehouse The Macintosh Centre ~— AppleCentre Chiswick pete i sy . KRCS SelectDIRECT Superior Software, Service and Support S¢ AppleCentre Kidderminster Superplate Computer In Store SofteCO demonstrations available a) Aberdieen,Union St Glasgow, Union St Leicester, High St London, Level One, Oxford Circus London, Oxtord St Manchester, M: Edinburgh, Princes $t Reading. Oxtord Rd Marathon includes features such as: ‘THE COMPUTER SUPERSTORE Real Time 3D graphics (upto full 640x480 screen) * PowerPC Native * a neta Active panning stereo sound with a QuickTime 2 soundtrack * Interactive Bristol, Cribbs Causeway Usbuen, Mallusk Rd eaclbponm raa ee ee lighting effects—flashing lights, depth-cuing even machine gun bullets Staples Comer, MW2 illuminate the darkness * Look up and down whilst running * Motion tracker csi) cemslbacieat and auto mapping * Ability to interface to ships computers * Huge arsenal of weaponry ¢ Killer network play, with up to 8 players at once Caoson: Corpmend Finally, Mac owners can out doom doom. SRP £49.99 London, Sloane Square Milton Keynes, C Newcastle, tidon Square Norwich, All Saints Green Peterborough. Queensgate bison re heranite Sheffield, Barkers Poo! Southampton, Above Bar Welwyn Gdn City, Bridge Rd Por —— Barking 0181 10 Londo Basingstoke 0125651100 Londo Boreham Wood 0181953525 Oxford ae Chingford 01815247511 Slough 01628 605305 Cavey 01293 541008 Staples Corner 018145 g Croydon 181 643 Stevenage 01498 748583 P SY) Edgeware na 0781 ni All prices shown are Suggested Retail Prices exclusive of VAT. vhs cle a eg Softline Distribution Ltd, Mill House, Mill Lane, Carshalton, Surrey SMS 2WZ New Mi 255 erat Tel 0181 401 1234 Fax 0181 401 1235 AppleLink UK0037 CompuServe 100012,21 Product range differs from store to store Please check for availability The Hard Way @ chain. One large titanium chain, reinforced with a carbon fibre mesh, arranged in a standard interlocking patter. SRP £109.34 @ Padlocks. One or more staylock™ security padlocks with exclusive ‘nocopy-o-matic™ key system. SRP £34.03 (ea). @ Bolts. 1 leas: four 7" locking bolts, ensuring that the Mac cannot be removed from the work surface without sustaining major structural damage SRP £19.99 (ea), @ Fence. Ten to Fourteen meters of ex- WWII barbed wire, including wood €n support structure. SRP £10-20 (Secondhand) Optional, but recommended 5000A DC ‘supasparc™ electricity generator with gold plated interlocks, making Mac access virtually impossible without major shocks. SRP £6 530.00 @ Safety Bars. sisndard HMS Prison issue window bars with reinforced concrete surround. SRP £125.49 ©@ Dog. Any large frightening looking hound. Recommended: 150Ib rottweil- er, SRP £300-800 (pricing differs depending on size and past experience), @ Ultimate Deterrent. Mercury tilt switch mounted internally alongside an acme ‘meganova™ flash fusion devic Guaranteed 3 mile vapourisation zone. No debris, No problem”. The ultimate security addition no self respecting kamikaze Mac owner should be without. SRP £10-LImillion. All products (with the possible exception of the ones above) are available at all quality resellers, in case of difficulty call us to find your nearest reseller. All prices shown are exclusive of VAT. Sofiline Di ___ The Easy Way ©@ Virex 5.5, with SpeedScan™. Simple to install software that proactively protects your data from viruses—saving you valuable time and money. Virex files and with the SpeedScan technology itis eliminates viruses, repairs infected the fastest anti-viral software by a wide margin. This version is fully PowerPC Native, SRP £74.99 One year subscription (automatic updates) £149.00 @ Personal Backup is a powerful backup utility that allows you to safely back up your data automatically, without interfering with your work. SRP £39.00 @ Disk Guard isthe straightforward answer to daily security problem DiskGuard will lock your entire Mac with a password, or give limited access with an alternative password. It includes features such as floppy disc, hard drive or screen locking and an activity log. DiskGuard SRP £89.00 DiskGuard Remote allows you to secure Macs from a network administrator, it’s available in either 5 or 10 packs DiskGuard Remote SRP 5 pack £335.00, 10 pack £580.00. @© Conflict catcher 11. 80% of the problems with your Mac are soft ware related. Conflicts between extensions and control panels are common place and difficult to find, CII is the ultimate startup manager which lets you turn these start up programs on or off, create sets of extensions for par ticular tasks and more importantly, offers techniques to test for conflicts and help solve start-up crashes. SRP £59.00 @ FileGuard is an advanced security system that lets you protect and encrypt hard drives, folders or individual files totally transparently You can also time limit applications thereby creating your own demo software and view a surveillance log of activity ‘on your Mac. SRP £169.00 CONTENTS elcome again to Macrormar, Britain’s best-selling Mac magazine! Whether you're a veteran or a novice, we'll bring you news, reviews of affordable and interesting new products, tips and techniques to help you get more out of your Mac, whatever you use it for! Editorial enquiries: © MAcrormat, Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BAl 2BW Tel 01225 442244, Fax 01225 446019 AppleLink: MacFormat E-mail: macformat@cix.compulink.co.uk enquiries: Jackie Garford, tel: 01225 442244 Subscription enquiries: Future Publishing, Freepost (BS4900), Somerton, Somerset TAI] 6BR Tel 01225 442244, Fax 01458 274378 Aword on prices. ‘We try to ensure that all prices quoted in editorial pages in ‘Macronmat are accurate at the time of going to press, and they are all inclusive of UK Value Added Tax at 17.5%. However, this may not necessarily be the case with prices appearing in advertisements, ‘so we recommend that you always contact advertisers before ordering to confirm prices ‘and availabilty. See page 124 for some helpful buying advice. Entire contents Copyright © 1995 Future Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. - How TO DO IT Font Of Wisdom 68 If all the talk of TrueType and PostScript gives you a king-sized headache, you need the Macrormar guide to smoothing those jagged edges and solving your printing problems Education: IT Capability 76 Learning about computers is now part of the National Curriculum. We look at how you can help your child get to grips with your Mac and get a head start at school Databases: Phoneday 80 UK phone codes are changing from Sunday 16 April. Our guide shows you to how to change your address files automatically, whichever database you use Comms 85 You've got your modem: what's next? We show you the essential places to stop off at on the Internet and check out a new guidebook UE 22+ MARCH 1995 4 MACFoRMAT* 17 Macrormar brings you all the latest Mac develop- ments direct from San Francisco — the first Mac clones and an exciting multimedia and games console What’s New re The smallest graphics tablet ever, the latest 3D landscape designer, and a giant hard drive get the MAcrormat test. And there’s more from San Francisco MacroScope 28 The story of how Atari could be changing the face of games everywhere, not least on the Mac. Plus: the cut- price video revolution and an open letter to Dixons Apple Talk 34 The chance for you to have a say about your favourite Mac magazine, plus some words on the occasion of our birthday Mac Answers 89 Your problems solved by our experts, including the low- down on making your Mac into a PowerMac Back Issues 104 Pages and pages of useful reviews and tips at bargain prices Special Offers 109 There are some new additions to the Macrormar store, plus another chance to get a half-price video-editing kit Gamebusters 120 The end of Myst is here. Plus: how to protect yourself from all those horrible men in Wolfenstein 3D Free Reader Ads 122 The Macrormat marketplace has a fresh set of bargains Buying Advice 124 How to make sure you don’t get a raw deal Dilbert 124 Ever wonder how great products are designed? Next Month 129 On the cover: a free book about the ‘Net! Win! Win! Win! 130 You could win one of the very fastest CD- ROM drives around, courtesy of DynaTek Multimedia CD-ROMs are becoming more and more popular. Our group test on page 48 helps you find the best drive for you, and our bumper multimedia section reviews the hottest new title: including a Wildlife-on-CD-ROM special Professor Multimedia The Songs Of Distant Earth Dangerous Creatures Dictionary Of The Living World ,) Coral Reef! PAWS Ephemeral Films The Bolshoi Manchester United ™ Saturday Night Live CIA: The Secret Files First Person: Stephen Jay Gould Photoshop3.0 64 It’s the image processing software the professionals use, whether they're adding spectacular special effects or doing subtle retouching. Will you be able to spot the joins in the latest version? Peter & the Wolf 78 You might think that Prokofiev and the animator of Bugs Bunny have nothing in common, but you'd be wrong... HyperCard 2.2 (part 3) 94 Apple’s original multimedia program now features add-ons that make it more versatile than ever — we take a look Music: FreeStyle 101 If you yearn to make music but find sequencers just too complex, this could be the program for you Shareware Heaven 105 ‘A measurement converter leads off this month's choice of bargain software. Plus: everything you ever wanted to know about cows, and how to get a job multimedia-style LASSSSSRLLBS Games Reviews Fly a World War II bomber, travel through time and build a tower block with these aids to relaxation: Out Of The Sun 113 The Journeyman Project Turbo 114 SimTower 114 Dark Castle 116 Lost In Time 118 CONTENTS FEATURES 3D can help you create images on your Mac that look as real as photographs. Macrormart tracks the development of three-dimensional software and looks at how the pro- grams of the future will make the 3D Mac even better 3D: We Show You How 43 Use your cover disk demo of InfiniD to create wire frame models in the first part of our tutorial series CD-ROM Drives 48 Which is the best CD-ROM drive for you? We look at the fastest and the slowest drives around Kid’s Desktops 72 If your children find the Mac a bit too tricky for the moment, here are some alternatives to help them get used to it - and have some fun too JOUNING & — Lock It Or Lose It... 98 =| We examine the programs that claim to protect your Mac from nasty accidents and prying eyes COVER DISKS Your Cover Disks 7 A usable demo of top 3D program InfiniD, to accompany our 3D tutorial on page 43, tops the bill of another double- disk special. And there’s more - a brilliant shareware puzzle game and a time-limited version of MacPrefect 3.0 Your CD-ROM InfiniD is joined by a posse of great 3D demos, including Dimensions. You can also edit your own video with Video- Fusion, take a test flight with Out of the Sun and look up the Dictionary of the Living World. And there’s megabytes of shareware! MACFORMAT + ISSUE 22+ MARCH 1 Somewhere, on the office = network, there are Where do Istart...? search me! It's that vital client meeting in the morning. Your presentation must be spot on, informative and, above all, on time! Now where are those reports...? You've been there before. The information you need could be in any files, including ones you have never seen. Anywhere on the network. ‘Trying to find it quickly — and putting it together — can be your greatest nightmare. ‘That's why Apple™ are introducing their revolutionary AppleSearch™ software. AppleSearch takes the ‘sweat out of information gathering, even across the largest networks, providing you with a true competitive advantage. It condenses all the knowledge and effort of the whole company into a single report. Intelligent network query handling will filter out any irrelevant oe data using advanced reporting, It even prioritises information to fit your brief, I) é And it’s fast. By indexing all documents, AppleSearch conducts accurate, reliable searches that take seconds — not hours. What's more, you don't need to be a computing genius to use AppleSearch. Search queries are made in English, not computer language. And it doesn’t demand endless repetitive searches: a search on “car”, can also pick up all references to “vehicle” and “automobile”. So next time you need those reports in a hurry... i AppleSearch hg 4 AppleSearch er Call Freephone 0800 127753 (9am-6pm) for more information = Apple Computer ‘Bete api epee a A ca” pcr we dona yk Copter bred ei Ss he ues ‘© cappi near HX eke Compa ec cn der lea ge ew pe oye Nee th ay a es eh ede ene, A high density floppy disk can contain about 1.4 megabytes of software, but we want to bring you as much as possible every month. Therefore, we use com- pression programs to reduce the files in size so we can fit more on — this month there’s well over three megabytes worth. Unfortunately, this means you can’t use the programs straight off the disk. You must install them on your hard disk first. Doing this is very simple. Just double- click on the floppy disk icon, then double-click on the MAcForMar 22 icon. A copyright message appears. Click Continue. A box then appears that asks you where you want to save the contents of the disk. Choose the place on your hard disk where you want everything stored and click Save. After a couple of minutes or so of frantic disk activity, the files will be stored on your hard disk. Before installing the cover disk we rec- ommend that you back up any important work on your hard disk. This sensible precaution will avoid problems should any software not be compatible with your setup. We make every effort to check our disks for compatibility and viruses, but the information here is intended as a guide only, and Macrormar cannot be held responsible for any damage to data, any inability to use this software or any consequential losses. Please, back up first. Before you do anything else, you should make a backup of the MacrorMat cover disk and work only with the backup — just in case anything does happen to go wrong. Make sure the original cover disk is write- protected (move the tab so that you can see through the hole). Then nothing can be written to the disk or deleted from it. After that, follow these simple steps: 1. Insert the MAcForMar cover disk. icon. The contents of the cover disk will then be copied into a new folder on your hard disk called ‘Macrormat 22’. It’s still not decompressed, however, so at the mo- 2. Drag the disk’s icon over your hard disk’s We bring you two disks this month packed full of software guaranteed to give you a happy Mac. Derek Smith and Brian Larkman spill the beans. hat could be better than a double disk edition of Mactormat? Well, okay, plenty of things, but bearing in mind that they're either im- moral or illegal, this will have to do. With a stunning 6.5Mb of the most impressive soft- ware we've come across, this little lot will keep you occupied for at least a month! Blobbo Strategy game Requires: any Mac, System 6.0.8 or later Blobbo is a little yellow blobby boy who has to clear the screen of chests. There is an explana- tion why, but it’s far too stupid to repeat; even Be careful not to block that blue ring, you'll need to use it wisely to complete the first level of Blobbo. ment you can’t yet 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 that it’s not write-protected and if need be format it, naming it ‘MAcForMar 22 backup’ (or ‘Derek’ if you want. It doesn’t matter). 5. Drag the ‘MacrorMaT 22’ 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 ‘MACFORMAT 22° folder from your hard disk by dragging it across to the Wastebasket, and selecting Empty Wastebasket in the Special menu. (On the second level you'll need to chop down trees to make boats. Don't forget that pressing [press] makes you rest. story than the rationale behind this game. To pick up a chest, all you need to do is walk into one. But removing a chest usually has an effect. For instance, at the top of the screen- shot, there is a chest holding 20 bowling balls. When you remove the chest all those bowling balls tumble out. You just have to make sure that you dodge out of the way, or Blobbo be- comes Squisho. Avoid the fires and be careful of those ar- rows. They're just waiting to fire across the screen, There are 25 levels and some of the puzzles will keep you head-scratching for ages. MacPrefect 3.0 Software security Requires: any Mac, System 6.0.4 or later Please note: before using this program, copy the entire folder to a floppy disk «id always run you have System 7.5, then a good place to get a handle on this demo is the Apple Guide menu: it contains complete instructions on how to use MacPrefect. MAGFORMAT « ISSUE 22+ MARCH 1995 MACFORMAT COVER DISKS the program from that disk. This is because some of the program’s features can stop you from launching programs on your hard disk - which means that you could end up being un- able to open MacPrefect itself to turn it off! Protecting your Mac is crucial, whether it’s from accidental damage by children, malicious fiddling by adults or theft by pirates. This pro- gtam protects you from the lot and its easy-to- use interface makes it a pleasure to use. This demo is the full working product, time-limited for 30 days. To read more about MacPrefect, turn to page 72 for a full review. When you first open the program you'll need to click on the Extension Installed box, then make sure that the Protection Enabled box is checked. You can now click on the icons below to set the program up. If you want to disable the program, load up the control appli- cation and uncheck Protection Enabled. MacMasterMind Puzzle game Requires: any colour Mac This is a wonderful Mac adaptation of that mind game that was incredibly popular about ten years ago. I was no good at it then, and proving Einstein's theory that time is a con- stant, I'm no good at it now, either. The idea is to guess the arrangement of coloured balls that the computer randomly generates. Drag the coloured balls onto the first empty row, then click OK. You are then re- warded with a number of white and black balls. Each white one represents a ball whose colour, but not location, you've guessed correctly. Each black ball represents a ball whose colour and location you've guessed correctly. You have a set number of guesses to find the sequence. ‘An interesting feature is the facility for you to pick a sequence and then ask the computer to guess it. Surprisingly, being the adjudicator is not as easy as you may think. Thumbnailer Icon utility Requires: any Mac If you’ve ever used Photoshop, you'll have no- ticed that it uses a really nifty feature: the icon of a file is a miniature of the picture itself. This means that you can quickly see what a graphic files looks like. Thumbnailer enables you to do this with any graphic file. Simply drag it onto the program's icon and wait a couple of seconds. Hey presto, a neat icon. You may find that nothing happens. Don’t worry: the Mac can sometimes be a little funny with icons. Try closing the window and re- opening it. That usually works. If it doesn’t, then restart your Mac. CatFinder 1.41 Disk cataloguer Requires: any Mac We featured an earlier version of this program in MacrorMat 17, and now that it has got even better, we decided to put it on the cover disk. The idea of the program is to catalogue floppies, SyQuests, hard disks, and CD-ROMs. Once they're catalogued, you can browse through any disk ~ whether it is in the drive or not! You can also search for a particular file when you are unsure which disk it is on. Oper- ation is simplicity itself. The accompanying doc- ument has full details. Icons Icon collection Requires: any Mac Readers of our CD edition are used to receiving lots of programs sent in by our readers. We get sent quite a few icons, but this is one of the best collections we have seen. There are over 100 cartoon-like icons to choose from. To use them, click once on the icon you want and se- lect Get Info... from the File menu. Click once on the icon in the top left corner, and choose If the cover-mounted high density disk or CD-ROM you have is defective, return it to us and we will replace it. Please make sure you have followed the installation pro- cedures described in these pages correctly, to ensure that there is a physical problem with the disk itself, Otherwise, the replace- ment will be just the same! Return HD disks to: Discopy Labs PO Box 21 Daventry NN11 5BU GIG THI € tte! at 1@ ID Pig iN io ia fein wig} fe 149} @ia mews z 5 g Fy Hy Eo g i g i i 8 i It you can't afford to upgrade your hard disk to a 32 gigabyte whizzo drive, then at least you can give it a new icon. Copy from the Edit menu. Now click once on the file or folder you want to change. Go though the same process again, but choose Paste instead of Copy. You can change the icon of most things ~ files, folders, hard disks and even floppies. However, there are a few things that you can’t change. These include the Wastebasket, the System Folder, and shared disks. WindowWizard Utility Requires: any Mac, System 7 or later Conjure up a bit of magic on your Mac with WindowWizard. Once the Extension is installed in your System Folder, you can access any open window, anywhere, any time. Simply click and hold down the mouse but- ton on the window title. You are presented with a list of all currently open applications, in- cluding the Finder. Move the mouse down to one of these applications and another window pops out listing all currently open windows in that program. Select a window and it will come to the front. Return CD-ROMs to: MAcFoRMAT CD returns Future Publishing FREEPOST (BS4900) Somerton Somerset TAI1 6BR Enclose a self-addressed padded envelope (but we'll pay return postage) with the disk | — or CD, and a description of the fault. Please do not return disks or CDs to the editorial | office; we don’t hold stocks of them and can only refer you to the addresses above. MACFoRMAT « ISSUE 22 * MARCH 1995 ? 723] Opening the Control Panel enables you to select how ‘many items Clipfotio will remember and store. Clipfolio Clipboard enhancer Requires: any Mac, System 7 or later Whenever you select something and choose Copy from the Edit menu, that selected item is copied to a place inside your Mac called the dipboard. It is stored there ready to be pasted. The problem is that only one item can be on the clipboard at a time. Clipfolio solves this problem by storing up to the last 20 items that you copied onto the clip- board, giving you easy access to recall them. To install this program, drag this Control Panel onto the System Folder and restart your Mac. SoundHandle 1.0.2 Sampling Requires: any Mac, sound input source With System 7, you could record up to ten sec- onds of sound, using the input port at the back of the Mac. SoundHandle expands this, enabling much longer samples and giving you the facility to view and alter your sound afterwards. As simple to use as a word processor, you can cut and paste sections of a sample, and add effects such as reversing a sound or adding echo. OPict Picture browser Requires: System 7 or later, QuickTime If you have a large collection of clip-art or other pictures, it can be a real pain searching for the image you want. What you need is a library of your pictures, giving you a preview of what they look like, plus quick access to the full size version. Enter QPict to solve your problems. The documentation makes it sound a bit confusing. It’s not. Just drag several PICT files on the pro- gram’s icon and see the results. ‘The world of sound sampling is now at your fingertips with ‘SoundHandle. But be warned — it will probably take af east 40 minutes to create a number one hit! Keep a copy of /nfini-D installed on your Mac. We'll be featuring it a lot in our series ot articles on 3D, so you'll be able to try out the ideas and concepts with this demo, InfiniD 3D Demo Requires: 3Mb free RAM, System 7 or later, colour monitor, QuickTime 1.6.1 or later, FPU (such as SoftwareFPU supplied) When you launch the program, you're pre- sented with four windows: Top, Front, Right, and Camera. These windows are all different viewpoints of the same 3D. space. Imagine that they are the four walls of a fish tank. The standard views (front, top, right) are all fixed in terms of orientation - the viewing angle can’t change, ‘The camera view is the view seen through a camera object that is inside your virtual fish tank. This camera can be moved and rotated to any position within the 3D world. If you zoom out in the top view, you can actually see and manipulate the camera object. To zoom out in the Top View, click and hold on the Panels menu in the title bar of the Top View window. Move down to Navi- gation and let go. The Navigation Panel en- ables you to change which part of the world this view is seeing. Click and hold the Magni- fying Glass with the minus sign in the Navi gation panel several times. The camera object will come into view. InfiniD’s tool set is quite simple. The red tools are chiefly associated with object man- ipulation (movement, rotation, and scaling). The blue tools are for object creation. The Infini-D enables you to view objects from three different ‘angles, and see the final rendering all at the same time, So now you can design yourself a tidy house. MACFORMAT COVER green tools are for linking and unlinking ob- jects. The pink tool adds a light source. The yellow tool creates a new camera object (and associated view window). The red ball with the dotted line around it is the Local Area Ray Trace tool. With this tool selected, drag around a region in a window that contains some objects, That region will be ray traced (complete with reflections, transparency, and shadows). The object creation tools include: Primi- tives (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, square, and plane); the editable lathe object (looks like a doughnut); the editable extrude object (looks like a 3D triangle); the freeform object (looks like a wrapped gift); and the terrain tool (looks like mountains). Objects are created by selecting the desired tool and clicking in one of the view windows. Double-clicking on those objects which are editable will bring you into the appropriate editing environment. You can create text objects by choosing Text from the Model menu. If you have 2D EPS artwork that you wish to turn into 3D, choose Import from the File menu, and then choose EPS... from the sub-menu. Open your EPS file from the standard Open dialogue box. Try your hand at designing a new car with MacConcept. ‘See if you can come up with something as elegant and as, ‘sexy as a Skoda — | pull loads of chicks in mine, MacConcept | 3D Modeller Requires: IMb RAM MacConcept is a 3D CAD (Computer Aided De- sign) program that owes more to traditional 2D engineering drawing programs than more modern modelling and rendering software. Nevertheless, it is quite useful to anyone who wants to produce 3D views of objects but present them as 2D line-drawings. For this reason it saves 3D models in its own format, but saves 2D drawings in EPSF and ClarisCAD formats. MacConcept has a simple interface, like some engineering packages, but it provides the normal three plane and isometric views, plus a range of reasonably sophisticated tools. These include: move, rotate, and scale, lathe, extrude, group, and cut, as well as line-and- point editing. ar MACFoRMaT + ISSUE 22 + MARCH 1995 9 MACFORMAT COVER DISKS reating three dimensional pictures on a two dimensional screen is a strange art, but we'll show you how it’s done. Over the next few months we will be featuring various 3D programs, but to get you off to a marvellous start we have a special themed CD this month. Derek Smith takes a look at the contents... & Highlights: this folder contains aliases of the best bits of the CD-ROM and is a good way to get started. 3D: we bring you over 100Mb of 3D soft- ware to complement our on-going 3D series, which is this month’s cover feature. Floppy: contains all the software off the first floppy disk on this month’s magazine. The con- tents of the second floppy are in the 3D folder. ™@ Demos: interactive and rolling demos of software featured in this and past issues. Shareware City: all the best software from the Internet to be released in the last month Shareware in MACFoRMAT: contains most of the software reviewed in Shareware and PD, which starts on page 105. & Reader's Corner: it’s weird, it's wonderful, it’s the software sent in by you, the readers. Enough of the chat. Don those silly-looking 3D glasses and read on to find out about the great software we have this month... There’s well over 100Mb of 3D software this month to accompany our cover feature. AS our 3D series progresses, we will continue to put more demos and sample files on the CD. Beware though: 3D programs tend to be pretty memory-hungry. For more details on each program, check the ReadMe files. Another month, another excellent CD. How do we do it each month? Well, a combination of hard work, dedication and a lack of a social life. Lights! Macintosh! Action! See how easy it is to create your ‘own QuickTime movies with the demo of VideoFusion. VideoFusion Desktop video Requires: 4Mb RAM, QuickTime Following our desktop video issue last month, this issue we bring you a demo of VideoFusion, the challenger to the industry-standard Adobe Adobe, the company that produces the standard-setting Photoshop, shows ott its excellent 3D program Dimensions with this save-disabled but otherwise usable version. included are samples and tutorials to get you started. Premiere. This is a save-disabled version, and it comes with several pre-created movies so you can jump straight in and see what the program is capable of. There is also a rolling demo of VideoFusion’s little brother, QuickFlix. Designed for the home market, this program earned an impressive 86% in Macrormat 21. The Crystal Rainforest Education Requires: colour monitor and System 7 or later Sherston Software brings us politically correct, ecological education. Don’t let that turn you off, though ~ this is a very good program and well worth a look. It was reviewed last month, and it scored an excellent 89%. Try it for your- self and see how you like itt Also from Sherston is Animated Numbers. This is an ideal program for teaching mathematics to young children. For more details, you can con- tact Sherston on 01666 840433. Alias Sketch is a state-of-the-art rendering program requiring more an excellent rendering and modelling program, and is memory than capable of very ‘most. But the impressive results for _ stunning effects a £500 program. that it can produce are worth the time and effort needed to draw pictures. MACFORMAT COVER DISKS ml. a TOO MANY TO MENTION... With over 600Mb and over 8,000 files on the CD, there's way, way, way too much to feature it all in depth. Here is a guide to some of the best bits. (aes Prince of Destruction sa wonderful adventure where you fi (get to be a hero and kill goblins. But just ask yourself, what did they ever do to you? You've just leant the 13 times table... What happens? They produce this thing called a periodic table to earn! We have two programs, Atomic Mac and LabHelper, to ease the process. ora aT too oe Rescue is an entertaining | shareware space game where ag | Kis Comers you ea around conquering and | generally bei ressive. ‘game, but take sig | my advice ~ | never play | cards against | ‘a. computer, Sample the excellent Living World cheats! tile which we review on page 54, and meet some of my best friends. | cores Voyager sample | Multimedia Requires: colour monitor Macbeth, evolutionary theory, culture, facts... we got ‘em all. On this month's CD there’s a collection of rolling demos from Voyager, covering titles in this issue of Macrormat and several before it. To run them, all you need to do is double-click the projector icon; to stop them, press [command] Q. The simple bright graphics in these educational games really Voyager now have a huge range of titles on (rab children and shake them awake (something banned in everything from evolution, to design, to Shakespeare. most schools nowadays, by the way), | wonder if the bard would have enjoyed multimedia? Stephen Jay ¢ olution Ityou ever need a professional-looking tree, then Tree Pros definitely for you. This demo shows how the program can produce stunningly realistic trees by observing and copying nature. LUpFRONTis an impressive One of the most popular ‘addition to the range of available 3D packages (and on the 30 software, offering disc this month), InfiniD, sophisticated tools and options, requires little RAM and Dut requiring only 2Mb RAM. hard disk space. MACFORMAT « IssUE 22+ MARCH 1995 11 Alls . 14 eri ‘Authorised Education Reseller ‘Authorised ‘Apple Workgroup Server Resetier Certified Digital Audio Editing Systems Specialists 1 b ALL OFFERS STRICTLY LIMITED AND SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY TOP CW VALUE! ‘The Power Macintosh 7100/66. is Ss 601 chip with 32K on-chip cache. ‘66Mnz 601 with 32k on-chip cache 3 NuBus expansion slots Internal 5.25° bay for optional CD Optional Dual monitor support 8Mb RAM, expandable to 136Mb Built-in Ethemet networking Enhanced SCS! data bus Macintc y if you want to run complex graphics, dip, word processing, database or spreadsheet applications at breakneck speed then Jook no further than this stunning Special Deal from CW's handy ir Pew Fo re U FORMAC 17" SONY MONITOR Apple's most powerful desktop computer and a CW “Best Buy’ for all those users who need maximum from their Macintosh. The alt applications. Expansion ‘slots, 5 internal storage bays and capacity to use up to 284Mb of RAM. ‘BOMhz 601 with 32K on-chip cache 256K memory cache (makes ait the ditference!!) 3 NuBus stots for plenty of expansion ®Ethernet internal 5.25" bay for optional CD (total 6 bays) Dus! monitor support mBMb RAM, exp to 136M Enhanced SCSI for faster data transfer es 'P/MAC 6100/80 8Mb RAM 250Ntb DRIVE computer warehouse SUPERB BUNDLE GIVES QUADRA 800 PERFORMANCE AND HIGH VALUE SOFTWARE of you add the £€£'s worth of FREE SOFTWARE it's an offer you can’t afford to miss! Just look at what CW offers you.. 86/33Mhz 681.C040 processor - the clock speed of a Macintosh Quadra 800! '8Mb RAM (Expandable to 36Mb) ™250Mb Hard Drive. ® Optional CD-ROM 14° Performa Pius color monitor ® Apple Extended keyboard * Mouse 3 expansion slots Support for 1,000s of colours (16-bit) ‘Optional TV Tuner (for full screen TV or TV in window operation) Video support for 15° monitors (Check out the new 15° multiscan) infra-red Home Publiaher DTP package, Touchbase, Datebook, Aidus ‘TypeTwister, Thinking Things & Spectre Supreme. SUPER ALL-IN-ONE 630 CD/TV WITH 14" MONITOR & KEYB. ‘Ths poche be st yo noe to crate movie, ete TV, pny uo Cl’, we eters, (8 ALL HERE - NOTHING ELSE NEEDED! - ad a colour 3 ‘Wit the Duit-in TY Tuner you can watch you favourite TV programs and wth the FREE VideoShop software you can capture video cia and build QuickTime ‘movies - complete with amazing nema eftects & ities! Then amaning package incudes EVERYTHING! © > 3 © 1°) => 5 = 3 © 2 ry > uld YySo} 2 buys BIG 26 you get the very best jeals available in the UK. 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Why not call in and see the new Sicos™ for yourself, You get more & for & value with a icos™ than any other AA colour exconier unay by singly telephoning 01.773 830781 anit Boras iharwood the UK's favourite Apple reseller! Distributed by Gordon Harwood Computers Limited. New Street, Alfreton, Derbyshire DE55 7BP Ss Authorised Reseller Telephone: 01 773 836781 Facsimile: 01 773 831040 ‘Colour Desktop Scanners System requirements: Apple™ Macintosh ™ with a min. of 4Mb RAM and 10Mb. of free disk space operating on System 6.0 or higher and a SCSI bus with one free ‘device plus a colour monitor with a minimum control pane! setting of 256 colours capability All Trademarks recognised. a Clones are coming, and the games comshle meets the Mac. Richard Hill forgets the flowers and goes to San Francisco... Mac clones storm Exp he first non-Apple Power- Macs were revealed at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco last month, pro- mising low prices and big advances in desktop video production. A number of alternative machines running Mac OS (the Mac operat- ing system) will be available later this year, as the 72,000 show visi- tors heard. The announcements were the biggest surprise of the Expo and set the halls buzzing. Power Computing, a brand-new company from California, will be making PowerMac components to sell to other companies who join the Apple licensing scheme. It will VideoVision Workstation, a ma- chine using the same chip and op- erating system (OS) as the Mac, but with Radius-designed graphics cards and software to boost the video capabilities. The Workstation will be aimed at video-editing pro- fessionals and companies, but the pricing and release date haven't been decided yet. Chuck Berger of Radius told Macrormar: ‘We're the only company other than Apple that has made a Mac system in the past - our Rocket products are Quadra 950s on a card.’ Despite all the Mac alternatives that are going to be around there won't be any problem identifying also be making and selling its own versions. Stephen Kahng, head of Power, says his PowerMac clones will be on sale by summer ’95. Radius had a prototype of the the clones: none will be called ‘Macintosh’ — Apple is keeping that name for itself. But it’s clear that your choices for new machines can only get wider and better. | Radius boss Chuck Berger with the first PowerMac clone: | of demand out there for an | alternative to Apple.’ ‘We think there's a lot Mighty Morphin’ Power Players ATV-console that plays Mac CD-ROMs as well as its own games should be on shop shelves by Christmas. Designed by Apple, it’s being made by Bandai, a company better known for its Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers toys and its co-operation with Nintendo when the Super Nintendo was launched. The console is expected to cost $500 (£313), and — the good news for Mac users — its games will be Mac compatible. With the growing popularity of multimedia, the Power Player will appeal to families who might otherwise have bought a games console like the Super Nintendo or the forthcoming Sony PlayStation. As well as games, owners will be able to use encyclopedias or education titles ~ all on the same machine. Apple calls the new machine design ‘Pippin’ (mentioned briefly in Macrormat 20). Pippin uses the super-fast PowerPC 603 chip — yet to appear in any Apple computer — and a quad- speed CD-ROM drive, which is twice the speed of most of the drives you can buy. It will play CD-quality stereo sound and display millions of colours. Other companies are expected to be bringing out consoles based on Pippin. Like any console, the new machine won't come with a keyboard or mouse (although these can be connected), but will use pad con- trollers ~ up to four people can be connected at once. There’s also a slot for fitting additions like a hard drive or a graphics accelerator. You could even build up a PowerMac piece by piece! Some of the companies who have confirmed they're developing programs for Pippin include Bandai itself, LucasArts (the maker of Rebel Assault) and Cyan (who made Myst). Japanese titles coming to Pippin include Dragon Ball Z and Ultraman (a cult Japanese super-hero). Pippin will use a slightly modified version of the Mac OS, so you'll be able to buy Pippin CD- ROMs and use them on your Mac. Mac CD- ROMs will run on Pippin with some slight alter- ations. Your current CD-ROMs won't work on it but future Mac releases are likely to be set up so that they will work on either platform. Of course, more machines running Mac CD-ROMs should mean that we start to see more Mac games and multimedia titles on sale. MACFoRMaT + UE 22+ MARCH 1995 17 [= a me APFLE BYTES Britain is running out of phone numbers! BT's solution is to add an extra digit to our area codes. From ‘Sunday 16 April you'll need to add a 1 after the first 0 - so 071 for Central London becomes 0171, while 0225 for ‘Bath becomes 01225. Five codes change entirely ~ Leeds (0532) now becomes 0113 2, Sheffield (0742) becomes 0114 2, Nottingham (0602) becomes 0115 9, Leicester (0533) becomes 0116 2 and Bristol (0272) changes to 0117 9. The single digits at the end of each the new codes are added to the front of the existing local numbers in each region. So if you live in Bristol and you're just making a local call, you'll need to dial the 9 before you dial the phone number. ‘Special codes, such as the free 0800, the local rate 0345 and those lovely, profitable premium rate codes (0898, 0891, 0881, 0839, ad infinitum) stay exactly the same. ‘The international code is also ‘changing from 010 to 00. If you're calling Britain from overseas, you'll still ‘need to ignore the 0 at the front of the local area code, but you should dial the 1, Dial London, England on 44 for Britain, followed by 171 and the rest of ‘the number. ‘The two things Phoneday is ‘guaranteed to do are (a) confuse every- ‘one, and (b) screw up all Mac database files with phone numbers. But don't ‘worry: MacFoRMAT has the solution! See ‘our Phoneday feature on page 80 to find out more. ‘With the increasing competition among ‘on-line services Apple is cutting its ‘hourly rate for using eWorld from $4.95 ‘to $2.95. The monthly subscription remains at $8.95. For more details contact Apple on 0181 730 2204. See also ‘What's New’ in Macrormar 19. Optics if you work on your Mac for long spel, ‘you may find your eyes get tired, One answer is a screen filter to darken the whole screen. Gepro is offering an alternative in the shape of Computer Optics spectacles, which are tinted and shade your eyes from ultraviolet light. Gepro is offering you a discount of £8 off its normal prices if you mention ‘Macrorwar. This means the spectacles ‘are £24.99, or there are clip-ons if you already wear glasses for £21.99 - both pairs also require £1.99 postage and packing. Write to Gepro, Freepost MB1927, Keston, Kent BR2 6BR ~ or call Gepro on 01689 851206 for details. Big guns unveiled at Expo *95 Mac releases and upgrades. FreeHand, the design and illustration tool, is now out in version 5.0. It also has a new publisher, Macromedia, which has am- bitious plans for enhancing FreeHand further and mak- ing it a capable multimedia tool. FreeHand 5.0 has been speeded up and extra features have been added, including multi-colour gradient fill- ing, improved text handling with style sheets, and a spell checker. The new version also accepts drop-ins ~ sub-programs T his year’s San Francisco Expo saw some major 2 — similar to Adobe Ug SSSRSE plug ins id Macromedia =. and other com- panies will be adding drop-ins The new-look FreeHand offers a wider range of design, illustration and text tools than ever before KPT Convolver packs ‘a mighty graphics- processing punch in an unusual package — can you get five stars? to extend FreeHand’s functions further. FreeHand 5.0 costs £529. If you have an earlier ver- sion, you can buy 5.0 for £116.33 before Saturday 15 April (after that it will be £147). For more details con- tact Computers Unlimited on 0181 200 8282 - and look out for the MAcFORMAT review soon. The makers of Kai's Power Tools and KPT Bryce re- leased a graphics processor, KPT Convolver. It’s capable of altering your images with spectacular effects. But using the progam is a fairly leisurely affair thanks to creator Kai Krause’s distinctive interface. You start with the basic tools. As you explore the program, try- ing things out, you're rewarded with a star that marks your rising level of competence. Only the most pro- ficient users receive the maximum five stars and get to use reportedly staggering facilities. KPT Convolver is on sale now for £152 — for more details contact Principal Distribution on 0181 813 5656. Mass market Mac extras Americans spent more on buying personal computers than TVs in 1994, according to one electronics association, and companies are changing their products to respond to the proliferation of Macs in the home or small business. There’s a growing recognition of the demand for programs or devices that do a specific job very well and are easy to use and fairly cheap. SmartSketch from FutureWave is a $99 (£62) drawing program with lots of simple ideas to make art on the Mac easier than ever. Basic drawing tools are given an extra flourish with imaginative touches like the Paint Behind function. Fill in a shape with your brush, but don’t worry about going over the edge - SmartSketch tidies it up for you. This Spring release hasn't got a British distributor at the moment, but it can’t be long — look out for a full review in Macrormar. For more details contact FutureWave on 00 1 619 637 6191. PaperPort is a $399 (£249) com- pact scanner that resembles a StyleWriter printer. You can feed in a design or photo and the scanner will con- vert it into an elec- tronic document that your Mac graphics program can use. The soft- ware is designed to make the process Drawing, cutting out. filling in — it's all simple with SmartSketch, one of a wave of bargain software releases. of scanning and displaying your image as simple as possible. There is also a $49 (£31) kit that enables you to scan an image straight into an e-Mail document that can be sent across the Internet. For more details contact Visioneer on 00 1 415 812 6400. The £164.44 QuickCam is al- ready on sale in Britain, and we'll be featuring it soon. It’s a minia- ture video camera and the cheapest way of getting home-made video onto your Mac, although it records only in black-and-white for the moment. It’s made by Connectix, which is launching an inventive range of software to go with it. QuickCards, out at the end of Feb- ruary, is a multimedia greeting cards maker. You have 60 designs with the program, covering every occasion from Valentine’s Day to Congratulations On Your New Baby. With the QuickCam, you can record your own message and i corporate it into the design. The finished card fits onto a floppy disk. For more details contact Comput- ers Unlimited on 0181 200 8282. MACFORMAT + ISSUE 22 + MARCH 1995 18 Introducing the Adobe Collection.” Three ways to improve your image at avery attractive price. ‘Adobe Photoshop ™ ~ the industry standsed for photo design and production. Helps you create original artwork, or retouch and correct scanned images using image editing tools and filters. Adobe Dimensions™ — an easy way to add 3D effects to your art ‘work, Allows you to extrude, revolve and manipulate paths and text Adobe Iilustrator™ - a leading illustration and page design tool Makes it easy for you to create and refine electronic artwork, The Adobe Collection, Three of the world's top creative software packages at one great price. AI Adobe It’s everything you imagine. | Available only for Macintosh® To find out more, contact your local Adobe stockist o telephone Adobe Customer information on: UK 0800 23 22 23 + Republic of Ireland 1800 409 044 | Adobe, the Adobe logo, Adobe Collection, Adabe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Dimensions are trademarks of Adobe Systems incorporated or its subsidiaries and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. I Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc yt Pentium problems asian The Pentium PC, the PowerMac’s closest rival for the accolade of fastest personal computer, has had a bumpy ride lately, after a design fault with its main chip came to light, The chips in Pentium machines give an incorrect answer to a tiny minority of calculations. Intel, which makes Pentiums, claims that it should affect only a small number of owners ~ mostly scientists and mathematicians, who use their machines to perform sophisticated tasks. Fortunately, it’s easy to locate the problem if you know which numbers to enter. And in any case, the problem crops up only rarely... But what should have been a minor matter has exploded in Intel's face. The problem has appar- ently existed since the Pentium was launched, but has been confirmed by the company only recently (as. a MacrorMat reader discussed in last issue’s Apple Talk). Intel at first announced that despite the fault, it would only replace Pentiums ‘owned by people who could show they used them for specialist tasks. It has now undertaken to replace the main chip on any faulty Pen- tium machine, while IBM is refus- ing to sell any of its Pentium ma- chines until the problem is solved. The company says its own tests show the fault is more serious than Intel claims. As well as showing the impor- tance of dealing with potential problems straight away rather than burying them, the story of the Pen- tium also raises the issue of whether chip design is becoming too complicated. Even with modern technology, how feasible is it for complex chips to be manufactured with 100% accuracy? Well, this goal could be in sight. There is some research into com- puters using parallel processors ~ simple chips working alongside each other, rather than one central processor controlling everything. ache in on PowerMacs he entire PowerMac range { has been revamped with faster chips and increased hard drive sizes. And if a new Mac is beyond your means, you could turn your current machine into a PowerMac with a new range of cards from DayStar Digital. ‘The most popular PowerMac to date, the 6100/60 is replaced by the 6100/66 (the second number refers to the speed of the chip). A 256K memory cache has been added, which makes the Power- Mac 6100/66 work even faster. With hard drive capacity increased from 250Mb to 350Mb, the Power- Mac 6100 keeps its old price of £1,526 (not including keyboard or monitor). The 7100/80 replaces the 7100/66. This also gets a memory cache for extra speed. There's a slight increase in price for this model, with the 350Mb hard drive version costing £2,291. The 100/100, on the other hand, is actually cheaper than its 8100/80 predecessor, at £3,261 for the 700Mb hard drive version. All PowerMacs have 8Mb of RAM, and CD-ROM versions are avail- able. For more details contact ‘Apple on 0800 127753. The PowerCard 601 is the first of the DayStar Digital upgrade cards to turn your Mac into a Improved chips and a dedicated memory cache means that the PowerMac 8100/100 goes faster for less money, joining the revamped range of new generation Apples. PowerMac. Like all the cards, it enables you to switch between your old processor and your new ‘one, It fits into the Performa 475 and 630 or their LC equivalents. The PowerCard runs at twice the speed of your Mac's existing chip - either S0Mhz or 66Mhz. The card is available now, and costs approx- imately £664. The Turbo 601 fits into any Mac Mc, Ivi, IIvx or Performa 600, changing it to a PowerMac with a 66MHz 601 chip and 256K mem- ory cache, Your Mac II can run at the same speed as the brand-new 6100. DayStar claims an increase in performance, when running PowerMac software, of up to eleven times your Mac's old speed. ‘The Turbo 601 is out in March and costs around £1,228. A 100MHz version of the Turbo 601 follows in April. This £2,309 version takes your humble Il series Mac up to the level of the new PowerMac 8100. For more details contact Aptec on 0171 627 1000. Runa P You can now run Microsoft Win- dows programs on your Mac at the same speed as they would run on a PC — because you can have a PC inside your Mac! Apple is in- troducing a card with an Intel 80486 chip on it. You can slot this into your Mac and then run both computers at once. The Apple DOS Compatibility Card will be available shortly for the PowerMac 6100 ~ full details were in MAcroRMAT 20, Mean- while, the California-based Reply Corporation is already making £670 cards that fit into a variety of Macs. The company calls its version the DOS On Mac Card. Like its Apple cousin, this uses an 80486 DX2 chip running at 66MHz; this is one of the fastest 486s available. There are current- ly cards for the Quadra 610, 650, 660AV, 700, 800, 900 and 950, and the Centris 610 and 650. ‘More cards are expected in the not-too-distant future. For more C on your Mac details contact Apple on 0800 127753, or alternatively Reply’s UK distributor, Perisol Tech- nology, on 01734 776556. ‘This PowerMac case contains both the ‘the-art PowerPC 601 chip and the intel 486 ~ that's the one that adds up correctly. MAGFoRMAT « IssUE 22 + MARCH 1995 20 CD-ROM marches on he growing world of CD- ROM entertainment gained momentum at San Francisco with a batch of exciting new releases. Top of the bill was The Way Things Work, the first, long-awaited Mac title from education book publisher Dorling Kindersley. Due for release here on Thursday 9 February for £79, The Way Things Work helps you dis- mantle turbines and discover what makes clocks tick — among other things. For more details contact Dorling Kindersley on 0171 753 3488, and watch out for a review in MacrorMar soon. The Discovery Channel, a well- established feature of satellite and cable TY, is now taking its docu- mentaries onto CD-ROM. Discov- ery Multimedia has no British dis- tributor yet, but is releasing In The Company Of Whales and Wings Over Europe in the United States this Spring, with titles like Nile: Passage To Egypt and Connections (based on the TY series hosted by James Burke) to follow. Due out in the summer, Mummy Trouble is one of a range of chil- dren‘s CD-ROM games from Strata, better known for its 3D programs. It features the work of Chuck Carter, who played a pivotal role in the creation of beautifully-ren- dered Myst. Mummy Trouble takes a more cartoony approach. And the Living Books company, responsible for MacrorMaT Classic- Award winning titles like Harry And The Haunted House and Ruff's Bone, announced it would be pub- lishing a series of CD-ROMs based on the books of Dr Seuss ~ author (poet?) and illustrator of the in- spired kid’s books Green Eggs And Ham, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and, of course, The Cat In The Hat. We can’t wait...! THE WAY THINGS WORK want my Mummy. {In Mummy Trouble, you have to save Egypt. But even if you fail, you're Stil rewarded with tonnes of great-looking cartoon-style animation. _JET ENGINE Tin eee a cans aca by sing ae cnrbalans drive big iinet fan a in large velumes af air. More fans compress the air and push it inuo the combustion chamber to be heated. The aie cs called thigh speed. Je. oat dws The Way Things Work takes you inside simple and massively complicated machines to show you how they're built. Here's a turbofan — the thing that keeps Boeings etc in the air (usually). Mac’s super System delayed until 1996 The next major version of the Mac operating system, known as System 8 or Copland, will not arrive until 1996, according to Apple. There should be another upgrade of System 7 while we're waiting. The delay is because of changes that need to made to the programming code, so that certain new machines, including the forthcoming PowerMac clones and the Common Hardware Platform machines, can use the Mac OS. (For more information on the Common Hardware Platform machines in development by Apple, ‘version of Claris’ popular FileMaker Pro database ~ 3.0 —is due later this year, the company n Soe bee, rfull relational capabilities. Unlike a typical database, information in a similar way to a card Pi bey tony pmordre he FILEMAKER ADDS NEW FEAT IBM and Motorola, see MAcFoRMaT 21.) Some of the features that were to have been part of Copland will have to be introduced be- fore 1996. OpenDoc, the system that enables mini-programs or components to work together, will need to be part of the Mac OS quite soon; so will software to support PCL which is the hardware device connection port due on the next generation of PowerMacs. These and other important system software features are likely to be made available relative- ly soon with the upgrade for System 7. opt les ie sane ee entered once. Relational databases are faster and more efficient than card index programs, but tend to be more ‘complex to use. Claris claims FileMaker Pro 3.0 will be as ‘easy to use as the old one. The price has yet to be set; version 2.1 costs £222. Contact Claris, tel: 0181 756 0101. The Quadra Apple is reviving the Quadra, its popular busi- ness Mac. The Quadra 630 is similar to the exist- ing Performa 630, but its 68040 main processor has a maths co-processor. This useful chip speeds up the Quadra’s calculations, making it ideal for complicated tasks like huge spread- sheets or rendering 3D images. The minimum specification of the Quadra 630 is 4Mb of RAM, a 250Mb hard drive, mouse and keyboard, for around £1,109. Although it has not been publically stated, the Quadra brand had been abandoned in Britain to encourage business users to switch to the faster PowerMac. More recently, the LC business brand had been more formally merged into the Performa to make the Mac range easier to understand. Apple UK now seems to have decided there’s a significant gap in its range, with even the Per- forma 630 not proving quite speedy enough for some jobs - while the PowerMac is still building up its range of native software. Apple was un- able to say if other new Quadras would follow. For more details contact Apple on 0800 127753. MACFORMAT + ISSUE 22 + MARCH 1 21 WHAT’S NEW Wacom ArtPad and Dabbler Graphics tablets are quickly becoming the ‘in’ peripheral for 1995. In Macrormar 21 we looked at a Handwriter pad that enabled you to use a pen instead of a keyboard and this month we have a graphics tablet with a difference: it’s tiny. The ArtPad has a drawing area of five inches by four; you'll wonder how you can do anything useful with it. But you could be pleasantly sur- prised: it’s pretty reponsive, although you find yourself running off the edge at times. The ArtPad connects up to the the mouse socket, but you can still keep the mouse plugged in — unless you have an AppleDesign keyboard, where the mouse lead goes into the bottom cavity. But you can still use the pad and pen on menus and windows. The ArtPad comes complete with Fractal Design’s Dabbler. Dabbler is a simple art program that uses the ideas of natural media to give the use of effects like lead pencils and wax crayons. It’s not as sophisticated as the more expensive Vista Pro 3.0 Vista Pro 3.0 has no paper manual: it’s been abandoned for an electronic version, thus saving trees. Quite appropriate, given its subject matter. You can use Vista Pro (which was featured in Macrormar 20) to create With the range of tools offered by Vista Pro, you can start creating your first landscape in just a few minutes. The combination of the ArtPad and Dabbleris ideal for (getting quick ideas and sketches onto your Mac = Put a Graphics Tablet in your pocket and save trees with landscape generator Vista Pro. Plus Richard Hill visits the San Francisco Expo to hunt out some new Mac goodies You only have 20 square inches to play with on the ArtPad, but you should find it'sall you need. Painter 3 (reviewed in MacrorMat 20), but it’s a love- ly basic sketching tool for putting down ideas. The pen is pressure-sensitive, which makes Dabbler even more pleasurable to use. i Price: £233.85. Out: now. @ Requires: ArtPad requires Mac Plus or better, 4Mb of RAM, System 6.0.4 or later. Dabbler requires LC or better, at least 4Mb of RAM, System 6.0.5 or later and a 13-inch monitor. ® For details contact Letraset on 0171 928 3411. a breathtaking variety of scenes from nature ~ real or imagined. Make movie fly-throughs of your landscapes, setting a route and leaving your Mac to do all the hard work. The CD-ROM has a lot of extras, including stunning images to give you inspiration and data for recreating views from right across the States, Ayers Rock in Australia, or even Mars. I'm not sure that the electronic manual works, though. It’s concisely written and easy to follow, but it’s a bit of a pain to read on-screen. You might even find your- self printing it onto paper ~ there go those trees. Maybe a recycled paper guide might please everyone! Price: £119.95, but shop around for the best deal. Out: now. ™ Requires: Mac Il or better, 4Mb of RAM (more recommended), System 7 or later, a colour monitor and a CD-ROM drive. ® For more details contact Meridian on 0181 543 3500. and with a little more practice, you can start creating images like these examples from the CD-ROM. MACFoRMAT + IssUE 22 + MARCH 1995 22 Gasteiner SCSI drives With hard drive prices dropping all the time, it’s good to see really big drives be- coming more affordable. Gasteiner’s half-gigabyte external drives start at under £280 and the internal version cost: The external drive is supplied in a smart-looking compact case that stands next to your Macintosh. An easily accessible front-mounted power button and a SCSI ID | switch on the back panel makes the drive easy to connect and use. Because the drives r are ready formatted, all you have to do is ‘plug-in-and-play.’ If you do want to set up the drive partitions yourself, MakPeak’s Spot On formatting software is supplied as standard with each drive. Gatteinen In operation the drive is very quiet; the fan and the drive itself are barely audible. i Because Gasteiner only uses Quantum or Connor units in its drives, you can be sure og that they're fast and reliable, with an average access speed of 1 1milliseconds. All Gasteiner’s external drives have Twin SCSI ports and are supplied with an ex- ternal SCSI terminator block. Internal units can be supplied, with or without ter- minators — depending where you are putting it in your SCSI chain - and jumpers enabling you to set the SCSI ID. And if you ask Gasteiner nicely, it'll even set the jumpers for you when it despatches the drive. lH Price: half gigabyte external drive, £279.65, half gigabyte internal drive, £210.33, one gigabyte external drive, £561.65, one gigabyte internal drive, £475.88. B® Requires: any Mac. ® For more details call Gasteiner Technologies on 0181 345 6000. Cutting the cost of hard disk storage, Gasteiner’s whole half-gigabyte of space. NEW FROMSAN FRANCISCO WorldWrite One of the more intriguing offerings at Expo San Francisco was WorldWrite, a word processor that can change alphabets (and even directions of \wrting) as easily as fonts. Already on sale in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, the program can use language typefaces including Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. WorldWrite also has a powerful range of word processing functions, a built- in spreadsheet, and desktop publishing abilities, without appearing to demand too much memory. British distribution is still being arranged, but for ‘more details contact California's World Software on 00 1 415 567 6647. Zip Drive The Zip Drive is another addition to the ranks of removable storage options (see Macronmar 21), but this is cheaper than most. British prices are yet to be set, but in the United States the drive costs $200 (about £125), and a disk capable of storing 100Mb of information costs $19.95 (£12.50). A 25Mb disk costs just $9.95 (26.20). ‘Acrude description of how the Zip works is that it uses a disk similar to a floppy disk and a drive similar to a hard drive. The intention is for you to have the speed of a hard drive, but stil have the practicality of a floppy disk - which remains the most convenient storage medium when it comes to stuffing it into your jacket pocket or passing it along to a friend. For more details contact lomega on 0800 898563. LightningDraw GX Lightning Draw GX's a new drawing product that takes advantage of QuickDraw GX (hence the GX). It uses QuickDraw GX, the new graphics and type display technology in System 7.5, to create impressive effects simply, with tonnes of options for degrees of transparency and colour blending. You can use QuickDraw GX's text capabilities to distort text or apply a 3D perspective to it. There's also an impossible-to-explain, but easy-to-use, function, which enables you to distort shapes in different ways depending on how much pressure you put on them with a sliding scale device There's no British distributor for LightningDraw GX at the moment, but the program is on sale in the States from the end of February, for the launch price of $75. Lightning Draw GX will be sold with a copy of The Zip Drive is another example of how Mac companies are trying harder to ive you convenience and value in 1995. QuickDraw GX. For more details contact Lari Software n 00 1 919 968 0701. Look out for a review in ‘Macronmat soon. Apple Guide Book ‘Apple Guide is one the more delightful touches of ‘System 7.5. I's an on-line help system that takes you through how to use a program step-by-step. Well, those speech balloons may be cute, but they can only 90 so far. Now Apple is making it possible for you to ‘make your own Apple Guides. Guide Maker is a program that you can use to create a file that Apple Guide can consult. You can Create a text file on a word processor, convert it to a Guide file and test it to make sure it's working. It's sure to prove popular with developers of commercial programs and shareware authors alike. ‘ACD-ROM of the program and example files will be available with a forthcoming book ~ Apple Guide Complete - written by Apple. It is due to go on sale over here in Apri, but the book has no price set for it as yet. For more detalls you can contact Addison- Wesley on 01734 794000. drives cost less than £300 for a == a How do they do that? Now you can tell other Mac users how to use programs by creating your own ‘Apple Guides. A book to help is out soon MACFoRMAT SUE 22 * MARCH 1995 23 Now they're sharing their frustration. With you. Time for a Workgroup Server. That's the funny thing about the Apple™ Macintosh™ computer. With little fanfare and an idea known simply as ‘plug and play; it turned a whole group of novice users into networked team players. Is it any surprise? Just plug a con- nector into the back of a Macintosh and you're networked. You can share files, printers —virtually any computing resource, For some users this is the only kind of ‘peer-to-peer’ networking they need. Others, however, find they need a Workgroup Server, dedicated to improving the productivity of their team or department. So how do you know which is right for you? Just ask yourself some simple questions. Do I have more than five net- worked computers? Has printing begun to slow down my Macintosh? Am I sharing more and more files with more and more people? Is that essential in- formation locked up on someone else’s Macintosh? Is there a danger of losing vital information? A ‘yes’ to any of these questions means it's time to consider an Apple Workgroup Server. Apple Workgroup Servers provide the industry's easiest to manage cen- tralised information store* he pi ge w 4 regional rademart a ple, Macmbad and Reverb are ademurts of pe Computer bac reed eS wad ote count: Power Bukemart of dora Hames Nach Carperate erapes Rermte 8 4 rgd rademsart of Cunt: (aekyemient Corporation AieBive oa rauernd Padma f Bae Bake. rb Ar w 4am of Dose" see Can fr CLAN Adrnaa Buea” © Busine Remarc Group 19M, "Rate Roma i mcuded i all aver congrats tha! icinde a pe dre Zee afta op (7 Dai. © Sepaber 1904, ile Compe, Users can share files, ensuring they are available to just the right people at the right time. Without losing information or slowing systems down. Apple Workgroup Servers also provide ways to share network appli- cations and services, like accounting programs, databases, e-mail, calendars and more. And that is just the beginning, With our integrated print spool- ing software users can free-up their Macintosh computers from printing jobs much faster, enabling real gains in productivity. With Dantz Retrospect Remote® softwaret you can schedule auto- matic back-ups of both server and individuals’ Macintosh desktop data across the network — automatically, Never has your information been so secure! With FileWave®* software you can simplify the management of up- grading or installing new software. FileWave automatically checks the networked Macintosh systems, en- suring that key applications and documents are uniformly maintained at the correct version. And using Apple Remote Access software from Apple, even mobile PowerBook™ users can be managed. Apple Remote Access allows users to exploit their network services from anywhere in the world — across any time zone — as if they were on their local network. Viper Instant Access™’ is a high performance application for fast access to reference information such as tele- phone numbers, price lists, product and people details, without the overhead of a general database application. Central administration ensures both consistency and guaranteed availability — at any time. So how easy is an Apple Work- group Server to use? As easy as a Macintosh. And choosing the right Apple Workgroup Server for your needs is just as easy. We have a complete family of products, including our newest models based on highest performance PowerPC™ technology. If this hasn't convinced you then browsing through our Apple Workgroup Solutions Guide will un- doubtedly reveal the perfect solution from the breadth of software and hardware available. To get your hands on our Solutions Guide — and for the name of your nearest Apple Authorised Reseller—call 0800 234800 today. And get the power you need most from your workgroup environment. Apple ~ se unr rt ert umparasee Pau of 5 NOS fer ark frm Wise Rsnarch fer Pesan Aci © pen! myvure arable rom cathaven “Call us free on O800 242 444! ” @cainaven = rerronma +) Performa 475, with 4Mb RAM, 250Mb HD, Performa Plus Display and Apple Design Keyboard... Calthaven Price — entry. £799 = While stocks last Mi = s Performa 475 8/250 & Performa Display Performa 460Plus 4/160 & Performa Display- £745 Quadra 630 4/250. £859 PowerMac 6100/60 8/250/CD. £1229 PowerMac 7100/66 8/350. £1605 PowerMac 7100/66 8/500/CD. £1739 PowerMac 8100/80 8/500 £2299 PowerMac 8100/80 16/500/CD. £2515 PowerMac 8100/80 16/500/CD/AV. £2625 PowerMac 8100/80 16/1Gb/CD — PowerMac 100/110 16/2Gb/CD Apple StyleWriter Il (inc Accessory Kit) zis Personal LaserWriter 320. HP320 Printer with Cut Sheet Feeder <210 HP Deskwriter 560C Mac £405 Apple LaserWriter Pro 630 8Mb £1255 GCC Elite 600 £955 HP Deskwriter 320 Printer. £179 Apple Colour StyleWriter Pro £415 Apple Colour StyleWriter 2400 £375 PowerBook 150 4/120 £919 PowerBook 520 4/160 £1369 PowerBook 520C 4/160. £1845 PowerBook 520C 12/320EM PowerBook 540C 4/320 £3069 PowerBook 540C 12/500EM £3515 Apple's newest Powerbook! With 4Mb RAM and a 120Mb hard disk for only. £919 rPerrorma 630 Performa 630Plus, with 8Mb RAM, 250Mb HD, CD-ROM Drive, Apple Multisoan 15” Display, Apple Design Keyboard & | Multimedia Home Learning Software Pack... | Calihaven Price While stocks last Performa 630 4/250 & Performa Display Performa 630Plus 8/350/CD TV/V-in & M’scan 15"_ £1399 Apple Macintosh 14” Colour Display_ Apple Multiple Scan 15” Display Sony CPD-15SF 15” Multiscan (ine Adapter) £319 Sony 17” CPD-1730 Multisyne (inc Macview Adapter) £645 Apple Multiple Scan 17” Display £719 Radius Intellicolour 20” ERGO Display __ £1415 SuperMac 21” TXL Monitor £1449 £1285 Radius LeMans GT Video Card__ 2 SQ80 Removable Drive £240 Apple CD3006¢ Plus. £178 2 Speed2 - 1000Mb internal Hard Disk £549 d2 SQ40 Removable Drive =. 2s d2 MO-128Mb Optical Drive External__ £510 d2 $0200 Removable Drive — £356 Apple CD300i Plus (Internal) =a d2 500Mb Internal Hard Disk AGFA StudioScan II Bundle £649 AGFA StudioScan Il Transparency Unit £269 Epson GT6500 plus LE PhotoShop & OmniPage__ £535 Epson GT8000 plus LE Photoshop & OmniPage__ £699 Epson GT6500 / 8000 Transparency Adapter. £385 Epson GT9000 plus LE PhotoShop & OmniPage__ £849 =] PowerlVlac 6100! PowerMac 6100/60 with 8Mb RAM & 250Mb HD CPU: only. CPU _—_| with Apple 14” | with Apple 17” | with Apple 20” operiee 6100/60 wits | £1179 | £1599 | £2375 misao | _ £1375 | £1799 £2449 CD-ROM Drive PowerMac 7100/66 with 8Mb RAM, 500MB HD & | £1825 (£2275 £2949 _CD-ROM Drive b PowerMac 8100/80 with 8Mb RAM, 500MBED& | £23OQ | £2799 £3499 CD-ROM Drive Mac Software " | only £140 only £580 || only £279 | Adobe PhotoShop 2.5 (f.0.c. upgrade to 3.0)_____— £399 £240 Adobe PhotoShop 3.0____ Adobe Premiere V.4. Quark XPress 3.3 for PowerMac (Native) RAM Doubler SAM 4.0 (no subscription) _ WordPerfect Filemaker Pro bundle. You can fax us on 071 410 9193 @ 071 4109191 £445 £435 £645 £49 £55 £175 Always the , —_ fOvvest 9 rices on - Microsoft MS Office 4.2 MS Word 6.0. MS Art Gallery CD. MS Bookshelf__ MS Creative Writer MS Dinosaurs CD MS Encarta for Mac CD___ MS Fine Artist MS Flight Simulator = MS Musical Instruments pppgoeenge = f rg d I a 3) wasnt E * £16 Million ple * 33,000 transactions last year ¢ 45% Growth 93/94 * New £200,000 Order Processing System - we're more efficient! * Transax fast clearing of cheques * Low cost delivery * Microsoft Award-Winning Training Centre * UB Networks, Oracle and SUN Integration * If you're a regular Mac-buyer, Callhaven can now offer 28- day account facilities (subject to status) MACROSCOPE Can Atari change the future of Mac games? Will digital cameras become an essential component for the Mac? Plus, how Dixons can boost Mac sales. The fate of the game n 1978, Nolan Bushnell created an arcade game called Pong that triggered the home console explosion and the birth of the computer games market. His company, Atari, went on to become the leading light in the console market, responsible for the sale of over 20 million home video game systems Since then Atari has changed hands twice and is now owned by the Tramiel family. So what's this got to do with the Macintosh market? Back in the 1970s, Bushnell, and then Atari’s second owner, Time Warner, were keen to keep their competitive edge. To that end, they patented everything that the Atari engineers invented. Every time they came up with a new concept, they'd call the lawyers over, have them turn the invention into legalese and then go off and invent something else. Incidentally, Several large companies have created some highly profitable games that do compromise Atari's patents. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got their first jobs at Atari, working on the design of the early arcade games, before they left to set up Apple. But I digress. Right up until five years ago, nobody outside of Atari knew that much about those patents. Then, in 1990, the Tramiels instructed their lawyers to start court proceedings against Sega for patent infringements. Nobody really held out a lot of hope for Atari at that time, because it was a relatively small player in both the console and the computer markets. The con- sensus at the time was that Sega would soundly MACFoRMAT + ISSUE 22+ MARCH 1995 28 beat Atari in court and it would end there. In 1994, Sega settled out of court with Atari to the tune of $50 million cash, with an extra $40 million invested in Atari stock. As a direct result of this, Atari’s share price doubled overnight. Sega and Atari then entered into a cross-licensing deal, meaning that Atari can re- lease Sega games on Atari’s Jaguar console. In other words they've partially broken the monopoly that the console companies have over particular games. Atari has said that its intention is to com- mence court proceedings against anyone who infringes its patents and can also afford to pay. Now while Apple doesn’t have much to worry about, there are a few software companies who should start watching their backs. The reason is that the Atari patents cover both hardware and software. One particular patent that many games developers could fall foul of concerns sprites that move off the left of the screen and reappear on the right — scrolling backdrops, in other words. This doesn’t mean that every game with a scrolling backdrop infringes Atari’s patent, because the wording in that document is quite specific. However, I've been reliably in- formed that several large companies have crea- ted some highly profitable games that do com- promise Atari's patents. As Sam Tramiel, the President of Atari Corporation, recently put it “We will maximise their (the patents’) value and will pursue whatever means are necessary to ensure that they are not being infringed upon. We have some very good precedents and we look forward to more favourable outcomes.” Atari has let it be known that it will offer the same sort of deal that Sega got to anyone who infringes its patents. But it’s not just the control that Atari has over the marketplace that’s inter- esting about this case. Whether through design or by accident, Atari has shaken up the whole notion of proprietary games, with the result that the console companies have started re- examining their entire attitude to competition and profit. During the latter half of this decade it’s likely that games will receive cross-platform releases, rather than being restricted to one console or computer only. All of which is very good news for the Mac market, where games releases are still relatively few and far between. On a slightly different tack, Atari has also disclosed that it will be re-entering the publish- ing market. This means that some of the best arcade games ever devised will be converted for use on other platforms. Thanks to the foresight of Bushnell and Time Warner, the Mac games market could look a lot healthier than it has at any time in the past. Even if Apple sells its computers as productivity products, it’s the games market that can really boost the sales of a machine — just one of the reasons why the PC market remains the dominant format. More games on the Mac means more sales of Macs, which means more support from more software companies. All of which is good news for Apple Andy Hidtchinson and good news for us. Sam Tramiel, the president of the Atari Corporation (centre), is bound to profit from a coup that is set to change the face of the games on the Mac and other platforms. ‘Macronmar spoke to Roy McDonald of Connectix at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Video revol veryone will have a video camera to attach to their Mac in a few years’ time, according to Roy McDonald of Connectix. Desktop video editing facilities are already available for the home user (see the cover feature in Macrormar 21) and camera prices are plummeting. Connectix has just launched the QuickCam, a tiny black-and- white video camera that hooks up straight to your Mac and costs only £164.66. ‘We believe that by 1997 or 1998, people will be able to produce things like the Quick- Cam for under $20,’ says Roy McDonald. ‘These things will be so cheap that people who build computers won't be able to afford not to give them away with their computers. So sometime toward the latter part of this decade, you are going to find digital video cameras that aren’t too different from QuickCams being an essential component of a computer, just like a mouse is now.’ The QuickCam takes advantage of Apple’s QuickTime video software technology, which takes video saved on CD-ROM or your Mac’s hard disk and plays it on the screen. Despite the power of QuickTime, most of us see it as some- thing that enables us to watch pre-made video from a game or encyclopedia, rather than something that we can use directly to make our own. McDonald says: ‘The reason why people don’t take advantage of that processing power is because there isn’t any convenient input de- vice to get images into your computer. Think about what you have to do if you want to get a movie onto a Macintosh. You've got to buy a camcorder, a $400 digitising board, and a bunch of software — maybe it isn’t going to work right the first time. It’s just... too hard. “We came to the conclusion that if we could come up with an inexpensive input device for imagery, it would be a big advance on how people use personal computers — it would give people the ability to begin using QuickTime.” The idea of the QuickCam is a marked de- parture from the traditional way of getting We filmed Roy with a camcorder and grabbed these images using a Mac fitted with an expensive graphics board. video onto your Mac, as McDonald explains. ‘It was kind of a hypothetical question - we said, “Well, it costs a thousand dollars to make a QuickTime movie. Is there some way of doing it better than that?” What we noticed when we looked at the current solution was that every- one started with a camcorder ~ and what comes out is an analogue signal, whether it’s NTSC or PAL [the American and British video formats} So now you have to get a digitiser board and Roy McDonald: ‘Sometime toward the latter half of this decade, you're going to find digital video cameras not too different from QuickCams being an essential component of the computer, just like a mouse is.’ convert it back into a digital form. The irony is, the signal that came off of that camcorder was a CCD signal. [A CCD, which stands for Charge Couple Device, basically takes light and con- verts it into digits a computer can understand,] So three quarters of the cost is in going from digital to analogue in the camera, and then back to digital in the computer.’ But now there’s a camera designed specifi- cally for the computer. It’s clear that McDonald sees a big future for this new device — he reck- ons there'll be a million out there in about three years’ time. Connectix is itself planning a A colour digital camera would remove the need for this Complex procedure ~ and one is coming soon. ution colour version for later this year, as well as a special version for AV Macs. Other companies are bound to join in, and perhaps out-sell Con- nectix, as the cost of making the cameras drops. So when these devices become ubiquitous, how will they affect the way you use your Mac? McDonald says his company’s working on some interesting ideas, based on the feed- back it’s getting from interested potential users. “All of a sudden you start thinking about using pictures in everything you do. When I send a fax — maybe to some distributor in Israel I've never met — my picture is going to be there. This year for Christmas we didn’t mail out Christmas cards - we made a 30-second video that gave everyone in the company a chance to say “Merry Christmas”, put it on a floppy disk and mailed it out to all our clients and friends. “Imagine a floppy that’s your business card. It could have a picture of you, your résumé, your contact address so that the person who gets it could put it into their database without having to type it in “We will, of course, do video-conferencing {communicating with others by phone, only they can see you as well]. Another one that’s turned out to be as much in demand today as conferencing, to our surprise, is security. Secu- rity cameras are relatively expensive. The nice thing about a video camera connected to a computer is that you can control a lot. So for example you can say, “I want this thing to be a motion detector.” ’ Alternatively, you could find yourself accepting a security pass at a com- pany’s reception desk moments after someone has filmed you on a camera connected to a Mac and instantly printed out a pass card with your photo on it Although Connectix seems to be kick- starting the new home video boom, McDonald is keeping his eyes set on the long-term bigger picture. ‘Our real interest is in producing soft- ware for digital video users - that’s going to be an important market as we go towards the end of the decade.’ Richard Kill MACFORMAT + ISSUE 22+ MARCH 1995 be ACROSCOP ear Mr Dixon, I've noticed for a couple of years now that you've had a number of Macintoshes in your store in my local high street. I've also noticed that you don’t seem to be shifting many of them, and I wondered if I could give you a bit of friendly advice. (I'm also sending this letter to Mr Comet, Mr Argos and all the other electronics stores who sell Macs, because you're all pretty much doing the same thing.) First, can I say a word about Af Ease. 1 know it’s kidproof and therefore stops anyone tinker- ing with the Mac, and I know that kids love to play with computers in stores and bugger them up. Indeed, I recall going into Smiths many years ago and typing 10 PRINT ‘YOU'RE CRAP’ 20 GOTO 10 into many an unsuspecting Oric. But look at the cost/benefit analysis here. At Ease takes away all the Maccishness of the Macintosh. It reduces its functionality to zero and gives tot- ally the wrong impression of what it’s like to use a Mac, Since nine-tenths of the appeal of the Mac is what a joy it is to use, installing At Ease at one stroke removes the best sales point ‘At Ease is a handy program if you want a bit of security. It also takes away the ease-of-use that the Mac’s famous tor. ‘As I write this on the beach in Cannes, sipping a Grand Bleu and waiting for my langoustines to arrive, I’ve been musing on the new multimedia games console, the Pippin (see the news story on page 17). I'm in Cannes for Milia, the multimedia equiva- lent of the Cannes film festival, and the Pippin is the show’s equivalent of a buxom starlet, sunbathing topless. A PowerPC 603, 6Mb of RAM, a quadruple speed CD-ROM drive, Mac OS compatibility and an ADB port for an optional keyboard has the multi- media developers here, most of whom use The hard sell for the machine. Macs, left to their own devices, will sell themselves; Macs with At Ease make good doorstops. Trying to sell Macs while only showing a demo of Art Ease is like a garage displaying a car with no windscreen or dashboard, and not letting you test drive it. Daft. (I guess it would be useful if Apple took the time to write a little program that to- tally blocked off access to the System Folder and stopped files being deleted, with a password to protect it, but left the interface intact. It would probably take one of their engineers an afternoon and a pizza to write and would instantly increase British Mac sales sub- stantially. Hey, they could even do what they did with System 7.5 and... er, ‘borrow’ ideas from what's already available. With System 7.5, Trying to sell a Mac while only showing a demo of At Ease is like a garage displaying a car with no windscreen or dashboard. Daft. what they've done is bolt on a handful of fune- tions previously available via shareware utili- ties; for a new interface they'd do well to take note of programs like Kid Desk and Launch Pad, reviewed this issue. Or ~ here’s a radical idea ~ how about bundling one of those programs with the Macs...?) ‘The other area where you hamper Mac sales is software. My local store sells not one floppy of Mac software, but has a wall full of PC stuff, I know PC stuff sells more, but just imagine being a potential computer buyer in Dixons. You like the idea of these Macintosh Macs, drooling. With a rumoured price in the £400 band, CDi and 3DO developers were looking particularly concerned. T’'ve always been deeply sceptical about the project, but with the backing of Bandai and a tech spec to dream of, this Pippin thing might fly. It’s more powerful than any currently shipping Mac, for God’s sake. At Macworld Expo, hawkers outside were selling T-shirts with the logo, ‘Mac- intosh - the power to crush the other kids’. With Pippin, that may soon be the best sell- ing shirt around. review of At Ease, See things because your mate has told you that they are dead simple to use (although the one in the shop doesn't seem to do a great deal). So you decide to browse the shelves to see what software you can get for it. You find PC word processors, PC spreadsheets, PC educational software, PC games, PC databases, PC weird CD-ROMs ~ but not a thing for the Mac. Now, are you going to stick to your mate’s advice and go with this strangely crippled-looking Mac- intosh with no software, or go for the Windows PC that can run all those great programs? No contest really, is it? Now you might say that if you read maga- zines like MacrorMat you could find out about all the great stuff that’s available for the Mac, but the average Dixons buyer doesn’t ~ if they did, chances are they wouldn't be buying from Dixons in the first place. So, not to put too fine a point on it, you are spoiling the ship for a ha‘p‘orth of tar — a few software packages, and a way of displaying Macs that uses the real Finder would have your sales rocketing, I guarantee it. 1 look forward to receiving a percentage of your increased profits. Fora Yours sincerely, ‘PS, Love to Mrs Dixon. ‘At Ease enables you to stop other people trashing your Fin- der, but it isn’t the best way of displaying a Mac’s potential. MACFoRMAT + ISSUE 22 + MARCH 1995 30 With a 33MHz 68030 CPU, Mb RAM and a 160Mb Hard Disk Drive, GH entry level Mac Bundle is ideal for business, home ‘OR education. Apple 14° Performa Plus Colour Monitor & Macintosh Performa 460 Plus - 4/160 Macintosh Performa 475 Plus - 4/250 INCLUDES THE GH HOME OFFICE BUNDLE - System 7.58 PC Exchange, Eo, Garis Works 2.1, Tra, Mavs Baoan Teaches Typing, Sec Supreme (Game), Click At Performa, Melly Cp At Treasure Pack PLS... HOME PUBUSHER (OTP), TOUCHASE ond DATEBOOK! ans YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GH CHRISTMAS BUNDLE CHASE YOUR 1CKS WITHA DIFFERENT MONITOR, KEYBOARD OR MEMORY CONFIGURATION... Phone Us Now! 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GROLIER MULTIMEDUA ENCYCLOPAEDIA, 1994 GUINNESS DISK OF ‘RECORDS, MICROSOFT DINOSAURS, ROSETA STONE POWER PACK, THE SAN EGO 700 PRESENTS THE ANIMALS, BEATRIX POTTER'S THE TALE OF BENIANAN BUNNY ond LEORARDO THE INVENTOR ..0n CD ROMII! elas and be the ltt adel rad. sed tie Pane wet ch ve ns mld # ie ne A Wed prin ar what YOU PAY, aad here are NO HIDDEN EXTRAS. rie ave erecta ime of “..at GH, we'll look after you...” is oe Ap Us ced ated Serving re stl Rees brs cova. ender Oe Tew Gt Ga ‘Warenty get you elt pots o nd with echoed xnded ett ere 7 Me Wott help with any queries un whe yore red te dr wept Yi Mastrad Acess, Sith, Comec, ele and Lombard reich (mest ‘seco anherd Coders al we hag ene ten yg When sceing add your name, oss od pelry eee text phen seer with you der i drying « cet /deht rd DY leis mambots expey dat en sot mone with Sw ad. : a eat tn pct weg cs ‘open. 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Every GH Performa ew | tc ie VR your Power Mac too! little as £1191 Run your favourite Please ask us for what you if you're used to Microsoft Windows our Scion aad its re aol rom need THE POWER MACINTOSH RANGE Call us for a GREAT DEAL on everything from the 6100 PowerMac to the ULTIMATE NEW 8100/110 MHz unit! rales te 5 ARE HERE FOR 1995. Take Advantage NOW!!! 6100/66 100766 4/350c0 tow cost | Matta POWER AT GH mom ony 7100/80 8/700 7100/80 16/700AVCO 8100/100 8100/100 16/700C0 8/700 8100/100 16/1000avC0 8100/110 16/20000D Just "MIX 'n’ MAC’ its AB Packs inc. a NEW Apple 15° Multiple Scan Monitor & Design Keyboard - Performa 630's also inc, Claris Works ing. 15° Monitor & Design Keyboard SCOOP PRICE “(01260 ne. VAT) MOWITOR PRICES = boop wrt ns sis) erm (om on (0H) sae) om om cam ten von Takes 1 Toten D Mono 360dpi Inkjet Printer for budget pried laser Groat 600 x 300dpi ‘Mono (Colour kit available) ‘GM Bast Budget Buy Inkjet Trinter Recommended! (wry orn (ieee WAN cna te Wat) (coal the one for you! Plays CD ROM's, Photo CD's NEW Caddyless CD with Wople printer driver software ond Audio CD's! Even dis- double speed and multi ‘i dve for release very soon)! —_play Photo CD on your TV! session plus PhotocD! ‘Oriya Few Left now at this VERY Special Low Price Eacetent and Truly Unique ‘Rasget inkjet 720dpH Printer ont SICOS 24-BIT, up to1200dpi, RTE Oe Ne CCL Ete 600. af HARD DISK DRIVES... EXTERNAL PHONE AND ASK ABOUT § GREAT PRICES ON OUR 3 RANGE OF POWERBOOK ACCESSORIES S ‘A, GD. Voppm Poston 2 (C1435 NeW External Hard Drives, ‘to match your Mac. ply plug in and use! “..at GH, we'll look after you...” itis oe of Apple U's selected thried Serva ‘roidrs, nt a Retr hee hs axceditinn. Ow sSonderd On Yor GH ald Wrranty gre you complete pce o mid, wit eboncd/esinded option eat. eth wh te ed when ee nw st Massrcard,Aces, Such, Comme, Dee end Lombard Cicer ma cond ore LamberdCredncharge and we happy cept them ‘Wes rer inde your name, aces nd pelerby 0 oe AP tipo mnie pecirnpiaantangrcniawed A ‘ocd 1 eamber ad pry date (edie member with Sich ard. ‘ Please remember te coaficm prices bn case you are inching ten ‘le’ maging, Pies cu change [np dre) bee the mapecn' cove ‘enh es posed Pes caf blr end re ype. £3 POE at es leo WERE PAE on everest seo Pse (acim opt od cag rps. oe oF arwood—— Every letter published wins a binder — at least until the Publisher finds out! Write to ‘Apple Talk’, MAcrormat, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. fter two years, Stuart the __ printed on these pages wins an Publisher has moved on to do something easier, like spearheading Future Publishing's expansion into on-line publishing. (After Macrormar, it’s bound to seem easier.) So say hello to Jim the New Publisher. Jim doesn’t know that every lett