MacFormat issue 11

ISSUE 11 APRIL 1994 @ £ S WITH HD Disk VACEORMAT [We've got the full details of the new ylowerPC-chip-based Mac range inside ‘Sietead it in MACFoRMar first! Learn what the insides of your System folder actually do — and how you can get them working faster and more efficiently CUSTOMISE YOUR MAC WITH OUR * WILSAG JH. Lad Bt 0D © HONVH IVNAIMO” JY, ResEdit Complete! Apple's pra tor which can change the way your Mac looks GNU Chess Challenge your Mac to of wits, Com Fi AllDay wm Quit It 19 Marks XT PuzzleMaker XT demo Firetall Arcade ZZ GaVQNIdKH » ONIINTHG On Complete guide to printing — and leading budget printers tested PLUS: Win a Canon colour inkjet ° GUARANTEE 9 OF VALUE Which Mac chess game makes the te best moves? et me Z 4 How Apple's new do-anything program can make your life easier — in colour! Latest Releases... Softline Authorised Dealers Bedford Computers cords SimCity 2000. taking all the elements that made SimCity a classic this ver Word Uza8 a7 Hon Picea 439 takes it to a new level of realism. Work with realistic 3D landscapes, services repcat 6 recta etree such as hospitals, universities, amusement Logi Computer Solutions Micro Anika Utd parks and prisons and an underground net 2 > amir sijcchiliaten inn work of water lines and sub- omnes Hsien tte ways. The local paper updates PC World The Macintosh Centre you on the progress of the city “tessa : AppleCentre Cambridge and your popularity among Smbridge a the citizens. Maps and graphs PCWorld AppleCentre Kidderminster show how your city compares re ecnlumniee: to neighbouring communities ashalto Kir SRP £34.03 “ —— Scenes cepa Charyd Computes tnd Ltd PC World Quodport Limited Yearn 2 Learn Snoopy They’ back! Snoopy and the whole gang con asus i ea . tinue to make learning fun for children, From the creators of the best selling Yearn 2 Saas on Prsstrinas Learn Peanuts, this new collection of enter: Gordon Harwood Computers AppleCentre Oxford Oe 83678 nord 0865 taining and educational games is loaded with AppleCentre Edinburgh fun and learning for the whole family. This includes Math, Word Skills, Reading and Music Fun pac ApplePoint Farnborough Mac Collection Tower Records AppleCentre Preston with an added bonus —Face Maker which lets children cre Los pie tie Eston me ate their own faces! SRP £44.99 Tomorrows World MacGold ApplePoint Stough Populous is your opportunity to play God and decide the fate of your people Contral Studios Utd You can create and destroy worlds in your aim to conquer the evil God, who's intent ake i Stirling Micro Systems Utd Up To Press Ltd S on your demise. Use your Godly powers to i 26 nkefield 0924 4 control the people and help CChromasonic Computer PC World Lakesid them build up the land then, as you grow in power, you can unleash volcanoes, earth: quakes and floods on the enemy. Populous provides 0 over 500 worlds to you with over 500 worlds t Aberdeen.Union St Leicester, High St challenge. It’s the ultimate Birmingham, New St Manchester, Market St Brighton, Western Rd Oxford St, Lorddon >d game! SRP £34.0 : God game! SRP £34.03 Croydon, North End Edinburgh, Princes St Glasgow, Union St SimCity & Lemmings Bundle get wo of the all time best selling mCity and Lemmings! With SimCity you control programs in one box—the original Si your own city. Design, build and live through Aberdeen 0224 211102 Nottingham 0602 St Belfast 0232 314733 Northampton 0604 604123 Bournemouth 0202 311668 Romford 0708 734803 Coventry 0203 256148 Plymouth 0752 256922 Dublin 010 353 1677 3755 Poole 0202 666255 Kingston 081 549 8018 Sheffield 0742 569299 Leeds 0532 465320 Stratford 0789 267736 Liverpool! 051 709 7205, Woking 0483 768376 Norwich 0603 219221 mareMPS=— Barking 081 591 0091 New Malden 081 949 3255 Chingford 081 $24 7511 London WC1 071 308 4113 Crawley 0293 541000 Staples Corner 081 450 6100 Croydon 081 649 7221 Stevenage 0438 748583 Harlow 0279 454375 West Thurrock 0708 866699 population explosions, crime waves, success, failure and even the occasional godzilla attack, Lemmings is one of the all time classic strate gy games, Save hoards of mind- Cae 1 Fed less cute, green lemmin certain suicidal doom. SRP £29.99 All prices shown are exclusive of VAT Softline Distribution, Mill House, Mill Lane, Carshalton, Surrey SMS 2WZ Tel 081 401 1234 Fax 081 401 1235 AppleLink UK0037 CompuServe 100012,21 RICCI Tnge atic Please check for availablility ‘The Ultimate ‘Virus Prevention, Detection and Treatment forthe Macintosh e Quick Move over SAM? Virex’ is now 25+ times faster! The problem with anti-virus software is that it slows down your Macintosh. Every time you start For complete peace of mind you can subscribe to our Update Service. This means you'll automatically your computer, run a program or insert a disk, you spend way too much time waiting. After all, you receive protection against new viruses as and when they are discovered. spent a lot of money on a fast Mac, right? Virex 5.0 SRP £69.99. oo ot, =e. Virex 5.0 solves this problem with new r 7 New f a SpeedScan™ technology which enables Virex to scan, a £& Freeware ° take | ~ detect and eliminate viruses with blinding speed. ! rs) Cllece val Sharew, ee att _—— With SpeedScan Virex does in 10 seconds what SAM d als bas up pis: £0 Your de ram, even at (Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh) needs over 6 r | £ Ae dress oe lor Only aye and minutes to do. Yes seconds, not minutes. L Tease ad Below With Oe tig disk gy, ig ond ie Virex can be set to scan all disks as they are t oO x "Bs and Paymen, inserted, scan attached hard discs either at startup! f Adan. o or shutdown or check applications as they are d ed Ps launched—for the ultimate in protection. r) c P, Now with SpeedScan you won't be tempted tof cS Boe a shut it off temp-orarily or cancel a disk scan 4 icteque because it’s taking too long. 1 Credit cy mlosed 'a “Ply Die. Of course along with that you get the f best anti-virus software, the easiest to p Mail, Up install, the simplest to use andthe most sf aul House ta “ict effective against viruses. DY For oY apple BM, Carp tited oy Euro Hes in 1, * Shale Pean » the u Sur, ! "PPliers ny "ey Ss 2w, *Virex was measured against SAM 3.5 scanning 79MB £ bs ke (1571 files) on a Mac Tei with a 230MB hard drive. OF detain, CONTENTS i} She Finder hether you're a regular reader or you've picked up this magazine for the first time, welcome to the new-look MAcrorMat! Whatever you use your ‘Mac for, whether you're a novice or an expert, MACFORMAT is committed to helping you get more out of your Mac. The Mac revolutionised computing ten years ago, and Apple's new machines prove there’s plenty of excitment to come. Let Macrormat be your guide to the whole Mac universe! Editorial enquiries: Macrormat, Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BAl 2BW Tel: 0225 442244, Fax: 0225 446019 AppleLink: MacFormat E-mail: macformat@cix.compulink.co.uk Advertising enquiries: Mike Hawkins, Tel: 0225 442244 Subscription enquiries: Future Publishing, Freepost, Somerton, Somerset TAI] 7BR Tel 0225 442244, Fax 0458 274378 Entire contents Copyright © 1994 Future Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. How TO DO IT Editing for beginners 48 Whatever publication you're producing with your Mac, here’s the scoop on researching, interviewing and reporting Designing with clip art 58 How to make best use of the vast i range of ready-made art in your own letterheads and documents, plus how to modify the images yourself HyperCard messages 60 HyperCard can do almost anything for you, if you know what its messages are and how to handle them... Cashflow 72 If you run any kind of business, you need some way to keep track of your cashflow. Here’s how! Databases 98 How to avoid data loss disasters, no matter which database you're using, or repair the damage if it’s happened News 13 Exclusive full details of the new range of 1 ——— PowerMacs, with a special report on what a oa it means for you and for the future of the Mac. Plus the latest products, -’ including a camera you can plug into "© your Mac and an ‘unfolding’ program Apple Talk 22 Your letters on everything to do with Macs, from the ignorance of sales staff to the size of our T-shirts Special offers 63 Macrormar has scoured the planet (well, almost) for top Mac products and brings them to you at amazing prices Subscribe! 66 Get Macrormar for a year plus a special free software offer +conee(E] Gene Been Your real-life Mac problems solved SSS Sts | by our experts - from RAM to the ses wa] black border around the screen... oe ee atlas? Oterys he nacenary {arn soare oon oer eae te. 11+ APRIL 1994 Gamebusters 86 More problems solved ~ how to beat your favourite games, with tips and tactics from MAcFoRMAT readers Back issues 94 Catch up on the issues of Macrormar you've missed Free reader ads Find a hardware or software bargain, contact a local user group - or flog your own used kit for free Buying advice Whether you're buying by mail or in a shop, here’s some helpful advice about your rights and how to protect them Next month 105 I'll bet you're wondering what's coming up in the next issue of MacrorMar. Find out here (but read this issue first) Win a colour inkjet 106 / Your chance to win a complete Canon BJC- 600 colour ink jet printer setup, worth £850! Just enter our simple competition PowerMacs are here! 19 A comprehensive special report on the new range of Macs. Amaze your friends with your in-depth knoweldge! Sort out your System 27 “+ Learn what the contents of your System folder actually do ~ and how you can make your Mac faster and more reliable Printing solutions All you ever wanted to know about printing but didn’t dare to ask, plus three sub-£350 printers reviewed We let four Mac chess games battle it out. (One of them is yours, complete, on the cover disk.) Which one won? COVER DISK Your Cover disk 7 Apple’s customising program, complete; a better Finder for System 7; and much more. Details and installation instructions on page 7 _ CONTENTS REVIEWS What’s new? 24 Take a first look at some of the latest Mac software, including: FreeTrieve HyperStudio 3 Open Sesame! Premiere 3 Es RAM VideoShop 2's suite of Doubler QuickTime editing tunctions. VideoShop 2 inicudes picture-in-picture. HyperCard 2.2 34 The new version of Apple’s multimedia meta-program (to coin a phrase) is here. Does it live up to its promise? PuzzleMaker 36 A QuarkXPress XTension just for creating crosswords? (Check it out yourself with our cover disk demo!) Phototone Textures 38 Quality ready-made textures you can use as backgrounds, or even tile like wallpaper so you can’t see the joins! SuperPaint 3.5 50 A draw and paint program alll in one, for just £150, with lots of nifty ‘plug-in’ tools ~ can it be all it seems? CD-ROM round-up 53 What's new on CD, including interactive demo discs... Dinosaurs Info Mac Ill instant Access to Entertainment Mac Essentials Musical Instruments Quadra Photo Library Vol. 1 Supersonic Shareware 75 Plot the earth, plan a wedding, navigate your frets (it says here) and much more, all for free or next to nothing! Anarchie on the Internet 80 How can you find anything on the Internet, the world- wide computer comms network? Try this little $10 wonder! Star Trek 25th anniversary 88 To boldly etc etc, Stardate blah blah. You've heard it all. But have you seen anything like this new adventure game? Breakline 92 It’s fast. It’s furious. It’s got a great intro. But this arcade game also has something familiar about it... A score-writer for less than a fiver. A truly complete Cubase handbook. Mac music making was never easier! MACFoRMAT « ISSUE 11 + ApRiL 1994 5 ae cs SAE EL teh & ) Lom 14" PP | St] 4/80 | 030) 16" Col} LCPDS | 36me | - 2699 Lca7s_| 14" PP | st| 4/80 | 040) 26|21" Coll LcPDs | 3eme|-| £799 LAS LC475 14" PP | St | 8/160 | 040) 25} 21" Col) LCPDS | 36me | - 2999 NG aon Lca7sco| 14° PP | st| e160 | 040] 25/21" Coll Lcpps | sowa | -| 21149 PP = Pefoms Pus Montor AGB = High es Cour Moar B5))21 Collo40 Pos | came | -| £1299 ‘CD = CD-ROM 300 St» Standand Key LCPDS = LC Processor Direct Sot 610 14" RGB} St 4/160 | LC 475 & LC 040 10cp _|14" RGB] St| 4/160 | 040] 25| 21" Coil o40 Pos | came | «| ©1499 e10cp _|14" RGB| st| @/230 | 040] 25|21* Collo40 PDS| 6aue | -| 21799 es0avep| —- 8/230 | 040] 254) 21" Coll o40 Pps | 6aue | «| 21749 eanaantyd = WARRANT esoavcp| - | - | 6/600 | 040] 254] 21° Coll o40 PDs | 6aue | «| ¢2049 NABRANT, ‘= ine. CD-ROM dive RGB = High Resohtion Colo i i ti i z i R39 Ba] 217 coils NuBus| 136me] -| £1649 a \ $3) 21° Coll NuBus| 136me| -| ©1749 MAILORDER $3 | 21" Coll3 NuBus| 136e| «| ©2049 HOTLINE 650 14” RGB} St} 4/160 650CD |14" RGB} St} 4/160 650CD 14" RGB} St} 8/230 (CD = ine. CD-ROM deve RGB = High Resolution Colour Monitor Si = Sandard Keyboard 4 saoaven| - | - | 800 |oaodmou|ei'Col| lots! |1zame] -| 22999 038 ssoaven| - | - |161000|040s 404/21" Col] lots! |12ems| -| 23599 995 £|5|8 950 - | - | e290 | 0409] $3) 21” Col) 5 NuBus| 256me| «| 21999 1872 ‘Dine CDROM drive O1Or/p = ps 65882 maths co-prvPMMU 40+ = plus COM DSP chip los = 3 NuBus sos & 3 empty bays = Monitors 14" PP. 14" RGB WAV |15"Portrait| 16" RGB | 21" RGB f > 1 2229 | 2269 | 2469 | 2465 | 2729 | «2009 c DOA Keyboards | Standard | Extended |Adjustable 994) 290 | 2155 | 2180 7424 PP = Performa Plus Colour Monitor RGB = High Res Colour Monitor AV = High Res Audio Visual Col Porta monitor is not colour. 120 Chiswick High Road, London W4 Fax: 081-742 1455 9.00 am - 5.30 pm s LBL Lp hid ey t pis= levels of gey c= colous st Supertwist am Acivewutrix w Dock = Dock required Modem is optional, feet tt) tt = 2 165 | 10 169sst| + 030 14m ©1099 071 8 165 | 10 t6gsst| + | 4/160 090/83) 16" Col | Modem| 14a |-| 1199 602 5 180 | 10"16gsam| + |4/120 |030|83 | 16" Col| Modem| 14me | -| 21799 94 AA 180m |10"169sam| -|4/120]030/98}t6rCo!| - | tame |-| 22049 — - 290 Kensington High £ 180c | & 256e am| + | 4/160 |030|83 | 16" Col| Modem| 14me |-| 21949 Street, London W14 Fax: 071-371 6203 1800M | 2° 2560 am| + |ai160|030|aa|iercol| - | 14we |-| 22199) 09:30 am §:30 pm MF TOOM inc Express Modem — g/s= Leves of gey st Superwist ava Aciveatrix Modems are optional unis specified. 10.00 am - 5.00 pm Sat 230 | 9" 16gsst| -| 4/80 ]030/SalwiDock|Modem| 24me | -| 2799 10 yrs Macintosh = experience & 230 | 9°16 9's 6] - | 4/120 [030] 83 | w Dock| Modem| 24me | -| 2939 el 4 FREE ! & 250 | 9'16gsam| - | 4/200 |030| 38) w Dock | Modem| 24me | -| £1599 ite 270¢ | 9°a2ke am| - |4/240 }030| 38 |wDock| Modem| same |-| ©1949} | ———___ ServiceCentre at Next StyleWriter | BJ |360 dpi (LA ppmiiooshts |s97T| Aszs2 |-| 2239 atvory “210 £ ‘A3/A4 Colour| Bi |360dpi |V2ppm|t00shts |eatT| scsi |-| 2599 ball Lwriter 300 | LW |300 dpi | 4 ppm |100shts |go7T | Rsa22|-| 2499 Software Training Select 320 |PSUW|300dpi | 4ppm|100shts |a5Ps| ut |-| 2099 ‘All goods have a Pro 810 PSUW| 800 dpi |20 ppm|750 shts [64 PS| Teeth | -| 23999 hana BW) BobbleeePSLW = PoscrptLaserWrter ppm = pages per min shs= paper ay capacty T= TrueType PS = Fostcrpe All peces are exclusive of VAT, are subject to change without prior noice and are valid while stocks last. ROE. A complete chess game, ResEdit to play with the innards of your Mac, SpeedyFinder to improve the Finder beyond recognition, and Firefall to blow aliens up. And that’s not the half of it... START HERE Macrormar’s cover disk is a high-density floppy, so it can bring you more for your money. Almost all Macs made in the last four years (anything since the SE/30, including Classics and Performas) have a ‘SuperDrive’ which can read high-density disks, but older models don’t and can’t (that’s Pluses, old SEs and original Mac Ils). If your Mac is chronologically challenged, don’t worry: you can get the same programs on two ordinary (double-density) disks. Just send your original cover disk with a self- addressed return envelope to: Macrormar Disk Swap, DisCopy Labs, PO Box 21, Daventry NN11 5BU. Make sure the envelope is big enough to hold two disks and sturdy enough to make it through the post. If you don’t want the hassle of doing this every month, you can subscribe and choose to get your copy with two ordinary disks delivered for no extra cost. See page 66 for details; when you subscribe you also get the choice of the following software: Lemmings, SimEarth or Adobe Type Manager CK IT UP Before you do anything else, you should make a backup of the MACFoRMAT cover disk and work only with the backup, just in case anything goes wrong. Make sure the original cover disk is write-protected (move the tab so that you can see through the hole) — now nothing can be written to the disk. Then follow these simple steps: 1. Insert the MacrorMart cover disk in your disk drive. 2. Highlight the disk icon (but don’t double- click on it) and drag it over your hard disk’s icon. The contents of the cover disk will be copied into a new folder on your hard disk called ‘MacrorMar April disk’ (but not decompressed, so you still can’t run any- thing directly). 3. When the copying finishes, drag the cover disk icon into the Wastebasket to eject it. 4. Insert a blank high-density disk. Check it’s not write-protected, and, if need be, format it, naming it ‘MAcrormar April backup’. 5. Drag the ‘Macrormat April disk’ folder from your hard disk on to the new floppy disk’s icon. When it has finished copying, your backup is complete. 6. You can now delete the ‘MAcrorMar April disk’ folder from your hard disk by dragging it to the Wastebasket. AL MACFORMAT COVER DISK __ This month’s goodies Yours on this issue’s MACFORMAT cover disk (more details overleaf): & ResEdit — the ultimate Mac customiser. Rewrite those alert messages, change colours and fonts — but use with care! Full details in the ResEdit Primer free with this issue! 1 GNU Chess - probably the ultimate share- ware chess game. Mac chess games roundup, page 84. § Firefall Arcade demo — a hot new arcade shoot-em-up, straight from the States. Watch for a full review next issue. § SpeedyFinder7 - improve System 7's Finder. @ lastDitch — a HyperCard stack that enables you to read any text file, clean it up, run the fastest word count in the world, and more. Use it or pull it apart and see how it’s done. How’s it done? See HyperCard, page 60. @ AllDay - give yourself a pop-up calendar. 1 Typesetting Marks XT - haven't upgraded to QuarkXPress 3.2 yet? Neither have we. So use our exclusive XTension and you can create curly quotes, em and en dashes and ligatures in XPress 3.1. § FindStuff - a vastly improved ‘Find’ util- ity for System 7. §§ Puzzler XT demo - try out this crossword- puzzle-creating Quark XTension for yourself! See review, page 36. § QuitIt - quits applications for you auto- matically. GET GOING Before you install any new software on your Mac you should ensure that you have a full backup of your hard disk, in case anything goes wrong, and that applies equally to our cover disk. Once you have backed up your hard disk, make sure you have no applica- tions running, only the Finder, and insert the cover disk in your floppy drive. Double-click on the disk’s icon to open it; there will be two files. Read Me contains information about the programs on the disk — double-click on it to read it. The other icon is the compressed file containing the cover disk programs. We compress the programs into a single file so we can fit more on the disk, but before you can use them you must decom- press the files. Double-click on the icon, and a dialogue box will appear which looks sim- ilar to the normal Save dialogue. Select the place on your hard disk where you want the expanded programs to reside, and click Save. After a few moments, the software will be installed on to your hard disk. You do not need to copy the files on the disk on to your hard disk before doing this. Some programs may need further installa- tion - typically dragging them into the System Folder; check the Read Me files which come with the programs for details. MACFORMAT + ISSUE 11+ APRIL 1994 7 eae COVER DIS ‘o oe ResEdit Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: any System: any Display: any Before we describe ResEdit, a word of warn- ing. It’s an extremely powerful program which directly alters both programs and System files. Because of this it can easily damage files beyond repair. Never, ever, use ResEdit on any- thing other than a copy of a program, and if you use it on System files, make sure you have the proper emer- gency disks to repair any damage done. We can’t stress the importance of this too much, Right, dire warnings over with, what does ResEdit do? It edits resources. And what are resources? The fundamental building blocks of all Macintosh applications. When you choose Save, the dialogue box which appears is a resource. So is the File menu you used to pick it, and the mouse pointer you Get inside your applications with ResEdit— the resource editor that enables you to tweak your Mac's appearance. indicated with. All these resources are stored in the program file and called up when needed. With ResEdit you can tweak these resources ~ create your own mouse pointer, change the text in dialogue boxes, alter the colour of the menu bar or add a keyboard shortcut. The free book with this month’s issue explains some of the things you can do. ResEdit is a powerful program which can fatally damage files very easily. You use it at your own risk. Always make a backup of anything you intend to modify using ResEdit, Macrormat cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by your use of ResEdit, nor can we answer any queries on it, either by phone or by post. Take care and good luck! GNU Chess Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: any System: any Display: any Challenge your wits against your Mac in this complete and fully operational chess program. It plays a pretty good game, and you can see how it compares to commercial games in our feature on page 84. Can you beat your Mac at chess? GNU Chess is a black-and- white game, but then what more do you need with chess? Firefall Arcade demo Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: any System: System 7 required; needs 2.8Mb RAM free Display: 256 colours Firefall Arcade is based on Millipede, the arcade classic from around 1980. On a playing field filled with obstacles, a millipede winds its way towards the bottom of the screen, from where you shoot at it. If you hit a segment it turns into an obstacle, and three shots on an obstacle clears the area. If any segment of the millipede hits you, you die. Other nasties fly at you from time to time, as do power-ups. The sound and graphics on this version are delicious, and it’s one of the best-looking straightforward shoot-‘em-ups available on the Mac. Watch for a review of the full program next issue; meanwhile try it for yourself! Firefalt fleets of maniac fireworms worm their way down the ‘screen to zap you and your heavily-armed ship. SpeedyFinder7 Shareware fee: US$25 (A$25 to Australians) Compatibility Mac: any System: System 7 Display: any SpeedyFinder7 has been described as the ‘Swiss army knife’ for System 7 Macs. It offers many useful improvements to the System 7 Finder in one package: speed up copying, no more delay when renaming files, fast emptying of the Wastebasket, auto Alias resolving, opening doc- uments from one application with a different application, and much more. Its package of enhancements makes anyone's life that little bit easier. SpeedyFinder7 has a big advantage over similar programs in that it doesn’t directly alter the Finder at all ~ it’s a configurable Control Panel, so you install it by placing it in the Control Panels folder and de-install it simply by dragging it into the Wastebasket. Other utilities require that you re-install the whole System! The speeded-up copying is worth it alone! eerie —ee toe — aii Bi cotew at tons ® Bh owrement meg Epeaerens Geoee ates Henenere |_| Slowovew mee Corerae nen | : — aoe Gamrmaalen ne Bh ew presence tm mere tar Di Aromatic ates reseiving: Cecnnren | | Compaen (3) ce Enhance the Finder with SpeedyFinder7: a Swiss army knife for your Mac! lastDitch Shareware fee: none ‘Compatibility Mac: requires HyperCard System: any Display: any This is a HyperCard stack that’s not just a demonstration of HyperCard but a useful text- reading utility in its own right. You need to have HyperCard on your Mac to use it, You can elect to load only text files or all files. The stack loads them into memory (very quickly) and displays the contents in a scrolling field. Hyper- Card fields can display a maximum of 30,000 characters, and if the file is longer than this it is broken up into blocks which can be displayed MACFORMAT + ISSUE 11+ APRIL 1994 | | e consecutively. This stack can also export files in ASCII format. You can load a file and then export it immediately. This exported version can be read by anything that can read ASCII. The stack will do very fast word counts, and you can also check for words or phrases. Click on the Info button to display a scrolling text field and click on the button again to hide it. AllDay Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: any 4 System: System 7 si Display: any A simple desk accessory which provides a pop- up calendar. Simple and extremely useful. To use it, you just copy it into your Apple Menu Items folder, and it’s then available in your Apple menu any day you need it. # i} i Tate mre ES ream 24587 reaeuee giagu HS 8B eS Bie w st RBBRBRE RaShS nis ee, i Beze Fy Basu 21 SBse F Bo # ae B8aeF oe oom igs daz dee i: $28 gBe one ete ase Fi az. 2] Base F Bane F SBz0 2] urzs Fi Typesetting Marks XT | Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: requires QuarkXPress : ‘System: any oe ig Display: any | A custom XTension which was written here at Future Publishing, makers of Macrormart. We wanted an easy way of using proper ‘curly’ quotes, correct em-dashes and en-dashes, and ligatures (fi fl), not to mention an easy way to remove excess spaces. Some of these features are implemented automatically in XPress 3.2, but for everyone who’s still using 3.11, here it ist Just copy it into your QuarkXPress folder, and next time you launch XPress there it is in your Utilities menu. Typesetting Marks O Selected tent onig @ whote document c Give your XPress documents the professional touch. FindStuff MACFORMAT COVER DISK Quitit Shareware fee: a postcard Compatibility Mac: any System: any Display: any One of the worst things about System 7 is the dreadfully inflexible and slow Find File com- mand (many people feel that System 6 did it better all along). FindStuff is an enhanced file finder which can search for files based on many more parameters than the ordinary Find, and it’s quicker too! SE Fing Sturt Shareware fee: $15 Compatibility Mac: any System: System 7 Display: any Using this nifty Control Panel you can prevent your Mac’s memory being cluttered up with applications with no open windows. You know the problem: you close all of an application’s windows but you forget to select Quit from the File menu, so the application is still in the background, guzzling memory. But no longer! Now, when you click the close box of the last open window, Quitit will quit the application More powertul file finding, and at speed too, with FindStuff, The Puzzler XT Demo Shareware fee: none Compatibility Mac: requires QuarkXPress System: any Display: any Never a cross word? See the full Puzzler review, page 36. ABOUT SHAREWARE Some of the software on the MACFORMAT disk is shareware: commercial software which can be freely distributed. If after a fair trial period (normally one month) you decide to carry on using it, you are obliged to pay the shareware fee specified in the program's documentation files. Sih Whew automatically! (Beware though: you won't want to install Quitit if you like being able to switch back to an application using the Application menu at the right of the menu peel bar instead of waiting for it to start from scratch Foler Cem) Gr) again.) Just copy Quitit into the Control pits Panels folder in your System folder. ne al = Gemmvers..) mw) || = Quit it Date Created Date & Q it It @on "ue Ey oo ul Oort Ss Application settings & (add... _}(Remove) (Settings...) ( About... ) [wut © 1993, Berrie Kremers | Quit out of a program simply by clicking the close box. When you duplicate as many thousands of disks as Macrormar does cach month, unfortunately a few duds are bound to slip through the net. If you think you have one such lemon, read through the installation procedure on Page 7 just to double-check that you're not missing something. If the disk still won’t work, then return it by 20 April with a sturdy self-addressed envelope (a Jiffy bag is ideal) to: Macrormar April Disk, DisCopy Labs Ltd, PO Box 21, Daventry NN11 SBU. Telephone: 0327 300077. Please do not send your disk to any other address ~ we have no stocks of disks at our Bath or Somerton offices. We regret we cannot answer phone queries on disk installation problems. ———— MACFORMAT + ISSUE 11+ APRIL 1994 9 Authorised Education Reseller Anat bol Waray Saas CW SPRING SPECIALS Macintosh PowerBook 100 computer BR) wena ciee, — aee FoR “Macintosh PowerBook for less than £200! warehouse i “Why pay more in 94? wwenrwor @ Authorised Reseller rr) STOCKS ONLY The excellent value Classic Il features a 16Mh Motorola 60030 processor and is extremely (0 25Mhz 68040 ‘space efficient. Ideal for word processing and 0. 4Mb RAm Exp to 36Mb Sonne 68020 + MD RAM * 40Mb Hard Drive « Built-in 9* mono screen QUADRA POWER IMA SLIMLINE LO ‘This superb general use machine features a Motorola 68040 clocked at 25Mnz| means it's ready to rip through your business, entertainment and education ‘epplications with gusto. It includes support for all Apple displays, including the 21" ‘with 4M Top Value PSI Modems ipssieporaeh neuen 2400p" Modem 96000ps FAX. DOO ‘ee dons w= POWERMODEM 4 represent stunning PONCE mers Powe/Scok Ci vin Ce rae 0249.00 for your PowerBook —™ COMSTATION 1 eect eeane | eT ates [rele Rr ed ent TWO GREAT MACINTOSH SUPERSTORES AG Die m SOFTWARE lm PRINTERS, NETWORKING lm HARD DRIVES, CD-ROMS | GAMES, EDUCATION lm SCANNERS, MODEMS @ ACCELERATORS lm MEMORY, UPGRADES lm CONSUMABLES. lm ACCESSORIES And all at the UK's LOWEST prices. COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 2 COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 1 Complete the coupon 708A The Tudor Estate. Abbey Road 9 Hatton Street. NOW or phone London NW10 7UW London. NW8 8PR 071 724 41041! Tel: 081 838 5553. Tel: 071 724 4104. FAX: 071 7243775 MAIL THIS FORM TO RECEIVE FREE CAT, 071 72441046 08183855538 zhicsss No 9 HATTON STREET. LONDON NWS 8PR FAX: 708A TUDOR ESTATE. ABBEY RD. LONDON NW10 FAX: 081 963 0624 POWER PC's AT CW’s ae : FAVOURITE WAREHOUSE Pearse © Authorised Reseller computer warehouse COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 2 COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 1 708A The Tudor Estate, Abbey Rd 9 Hatton Street, London London. Tel: 081 838 5553 NW8 BPR Tel: 071 724 4104 Macintosh Colour Classic onjeg 18015 ays 14h RAM + 160 Mb Hare Ore #21" mentor: "QUADRA 610 4/60 use grey lets you display crisp text and CW It's also CW fast with a Motorola 68030 + 2 QUAD av 8/500CD 5 * Colour "4 x monitor! POWERBOOKS!! CW PRODUCT CHECKLIST ; POWERBOOK 165 4/80 SaMnz Motorola 68030 ahah ve |_| sn fast tn Dee Tha Warn ar your sen 16 grey level screen, 4Mb RAM 4M RAM fitted . 80Mb H.Drive GENUINE APPLE 260dp4 COLOUR A3 PRINTER! #3601 ree £081 838 5553 1071 724 4104 = absolute LOWEST UK prices. ‘708A TUDOR ESTATE. ABBEY RD. LONDON NW10 FAX: 081 963.0624 No HATTON STREET. LONDON NW8 SPR FAX: 071 724 3775 The Only Colour Printer Your Mac"Wil Ever Need The new Canon BJC-600™ is a 360 dpi plain paper A4 colour printer which takes colour ink jet technology into a new dimension. The BJC-600 is the first printer of its type to offer true plain paper support. The ink drying time is considerably faster than that of other colour ink jet technologies thereby virtually eliminating the head banding normally associated with such low cost devices. The BJC-600 offers Laser quality colour output onto paper, OHP film or even onto company stationary. The standard version of the BJC-600 for the Apple Mac includes a Chooser™ level QuickDraw™ driver which offers ColorSync™ support as well as a fast black & white printing option. The BJC-600 is also available with an accelerated RISC based PostScript processor upgrade PISA Saye Tl’ Ek M.S All trademarks acknowledged =— @ 4 Colour Bubble Jet Print Engine @ Colour and Black & White Modes @ Plain Paper Support @ ColorSync Compatible QuickDraw™ @ Optional PostScript @ £725.00 SRP (QuickDraw version) To find out more about the Canon BJC-600 call Pisa Systems on Tel: 0494 564455. Or contact your nearest Apple dealer. NEWS owerMacs storm in Exclusive! Full details of the three new Macs from the future... ompleting one of the bol- dest moves in its ten-year history, Apple has finally unveiled its next genera- tion range of computers, Power Macintosh. At the same time, Apple itself and some other manu- facturers have announced up- grades to enable owners of current Macs to convert their machines into PowerMacs. Based on the PowerPC 601 RISC processor, jointly developed by Motorola, IBM and Apple over the last two and a half years, the first PowerMac models are available now. Starting at £1,750 for the entry-level 60MHz 6100/60, the PowerMac range comprises three machines offered in different con- figurations. At the high end, the 80MHz 8100/80 represents the sharp edge of Apple’s new technol- ogy, offering double the power of the 6100 for a competitive £4,700 in its 16/500CD format. Pitched between the two, at £2,600 for a 8/250 configuration, is the 7100/66 rated at 66MHz. Each model also comes in an AV form with S-video and composite video in/out com- pleting each base system’s built-in 16-bit stereo audio capabilities. The PowerMacs come bundled with the new System 7.1.2 Macin- tosh operating system and the leading PC equivalent combi- nation — MS-DOS 6 and Win- dows 3.1. Each can run the host platform’s software under emulation, typically at speeds broadly equivalent to Quadra 700 Mac and 33MHz 386 PC perfor- mance. On the Macintosh side, users will also benefit from new versions of PC Exchange, Apple- Script and QuickTime, as well as Plain Talk, Apple’s text-to-speech and speech-recogntion software. All this is configured to run auto- matically on startup. But the biggest benefit to users will be the ‘native’ versions of most of the popular Mac applications converted to draw directly on the underlying RISC _ architecture, These so-called ‘accelerated appli- cations’ or ‘fat apps’ will deliver performance levels some two to four times the speed of a 33Mhz Quadra on a basic 6100, rising to the unprecedented peak perfor- mance of the 8100, delivering eight times the power of a Quadra 950. In addition to the three desktop models, Apple has simultaneously announced logic upgrade boards for six current Mac models. The 6100/60 board, for use in the Quadra 610 and 660AV, is £800, and replacement PowerMac boards are also available for the IIVi, IIvx, Performa 600 and Quadra 650 in their 7100/66 format. Quadra 800 and 840AV owners can enjoy the benefits of upgrading to the 8100/80 specification for £2,000. Again, each board will be offered in AV configurations. Although the new RISC Macs THE PRICE OF POWER ; : om The cheapest of the new PowerMacs is the £1,750 6100/66, housed in a modified Quadra 610 casing. The 7100 and 8100 models use the Quadra 650 and 800 designs respectively. are priced slightly higher than widely reported previously, per- haps due entirely to Apple's reduced profits over the last few quarters, the range still represents extraordinary value for money. Rs And while it’s difficult to antici- pate sales figures for first-time buyers, Apple expects to sell one million units in the next year to both consumer and pro- fessional _ markets. But for existing Mac owners, the promise of an upgrade path will be matched only by the pressure to take that path and upgrade. Since Apple has announced upgrade paths for all current Macs, including the LC 475 and perhaps, thereby, the LCI and LCI, the best bet might be to buy a Power- PC-capable machine before the value of your current model begins to plunge and upgrade later. The advantage is that, in the meantime, all the bugs should be sorted out in six months’ time. But the temp- tation to buy now is a strong one because existing Mac owners have an affordable opportunity to trans- form their machines beyond recog- nition. Mac Ilvi users, for instance, hitherto constrained by average 16MHz 030 performance, need Product Computer _| System* System w/ SoftPc* | now spend only £800 to harness Power Macintosh 6100/60 8/160 £1,526 £1,761 £2,254 the’ power of a 66MHz RISC Power Macintosh 6100/60 8/250/CD £1,878 £2,113 £2,607 Dace coca oven 7 five inka — times faster than they're used to, ludes video display adapter as standard and offering built-in video grabbing Power Macintosh 7100/66 8/250 £2,466 £2,701 £3,194 ___ | and cb quality audio sampling too. Power Macintosh 7100/66 8/250/CD £2,701 £2,936 £3,429 Just how successful Apple is in sell- Power Macintosh 7100/66 8/250/CD/AV £3,406 | £3641 | £4,134 ~ | ing this dream is the key to not only the fortunes of Power Macin- == = os tosh but Apple’s very future as a Power Macintosh 8100/80 16/500/CD £4,816 £5,051 £5,220 Sei crenpaay bp Dares Power Macintosh 8100/80 16/1Gb/CD £5,403 £5,638 £5,808 Power Macintosh 8100/80 16/500/CD/AV £4,933 £5,168 £5,338 my No RISC! “System’ inc 14-inch colour monitor and extended keyboard; SoftPC is an IBM-PC emulator Eiperades RISC — Reduced Instruction Set Power PC Upgrade Card £703 _ Computer ~ chips are faster by Power Macintosh 6100/60 upgrade £1,056 design than the chips currently Power Macintosh 7100/66 upgrade £1,408 used in Macs. They use fewer Power Macintosh 8100/80 upgrade £1,878 instructions, all of a uniform Power Macintosh 6100/60 AV £1,408 = = ee Oe ee efficiently, all of which means Power Macintosh 7100/66 AV £1,526 cs extra processing speed at every Power Macintosh 8100/80 AV 22,113 stage, whatever the task MACFORMAT + ISSUE 11+ APRIL 1994 More compact Quadra power If anyone needs assuring that Apple is committed to conven- tional Macintosh models in the face of the PowerMac initiative, its announcement of two new LCs should allay fears. The LC 550 and LC 575 machines, based on 33MHz 030 and 040 processors respectively, have just been launched into the US education market following the same route as the LC520. Like the earlier model, both are shipping with a built-in 14-inch colour monitor with unidirectional micro- phone and stereo speaker. In ad- dition, both come with a tray-load- ing CD-ROM drive, 160Mb hard disk and 4Mb of RAM upgradable to 36Mb. The 550 is priced at $1,199 (£800) while the 575, pre- senting Quadra 800 performance, sells for $1,699(£1,150). Along with the LC520, these two new machines represent what Apple has labelled its Entry Sys- tems PowerPC line - in other words, models which will be pro- vided with upgrade paths to the new RISC platform. It’s not clear yet though whether upgrades for these, and the LC475, will be based on the PowerPC 601 chip. Sources close to the company indicate they could well be based on the 603 chip, a cheaper derivative due later this year and delivering similar performance levels. Apple UK is not yet in a position to confirm whether either LC will find its way into Europe. @ Apple is on 0800 127753. All of life is there ‘All Human Life’ is an exhibition of great photographs from the famed Hulton Deutsch Collection at the Barbican in London unti April 24. As well as viewing almost 500 pho- tos from the earliest days of photography up to today, visitors can pop downstairs to see 12 Macs displaying Hulton’s ‘Decades’ series of CD-ROMs - 1920s, "30s, '50s and ‘60s. ‘Freehand in its older incarnation, in use in | context... This user could upgrade ‘to the new version 4.0 for just £150. Each disc is £116 and contains 2,500 low- resolution images from one decade; you can export and use them as-is or order a high-res image or print from Hulton (071 266 2660). With the custom Photofinder software you ccan search for images by keywords or types. Quick click and shoot Ina bid to corner the market for affordable digital pho- tography for personal computer users, Apple has announced a £700 camera which plugs directly into any Mac. QuickTake 1000, based on Kodak’s £6,000 DCS200 digital camera, shoots full screen, 640x480 pixel, images in 24-bit colour. Using built-in flash memory to store up to eight images, the camera offers simple point-and-click auto-focus and auto-flash oper- ation. Once shot, images can be ported to the Mac via a serial cable connecting it to QuickTake and loaded into any QuickTime-aware application for editing. A lower resolution mode of 320x240 is also available, enabling users to store up to 32 images to be saved in the camera. Results are said to be perfectly acceptable for personal DTP purposes where the final output is for lasers, colour printers and photocopiers. @ For more information call Apple on 0800 127753 Dreaming on Top 3D rendering and modelling package Ray Dream Designer has been upgraded to include Photo- shop plug-in extensions and more than 50 other new features. Version 3.0 now integrates model- ling and rendering modules and includes a 3D Paint feature allowing artists to add colour and tex- ture directly on to an object's surface. It’s priced at £428 to new users; upgrades for any previous version cost £75, but Ray Dream users who bought a copy of the previous ver- sion after July 15 last year can up- grade for free. @ Contact Amtech Gilding the lily, or just colouring the on 0202 476977 for raytrace? Ray Dream Designer now further details. enables you to colour objects directly Apple in catalogue With the news that Ryman Com- puter Shops, one of the high street retailers selling Macs, is to ditch computers in favour of telephones following the company’s takeover by a telecommunications outfit, Apple has struck a deal to sell its Performa range through the cata- logue store chain Argos. 34 outlets will stock the range, adding to the 516 Dixons, John Lewis and PC World stores retailing the range nationwide. We are unable to con- firm the rumours that you will soon be able to buy a Mac in your local comer store or order one from your milkman for Christmas. PowerCD slashed Apple's three-in-one portable CD- ROM drive, PowerCD, has had its Price cut from £411 to just £199. Capable of playing CD-ROM titles, Photo CD and audio disks, the drive can be used directly with tele- visions, hi-fis and as a portable stereos as well as a regular CD drive connected to your Mac. More details from Apple on 0800 127753 After months of _ speculation, Apple’s boss, Michael Spidler, has finally confirmed that the company is seeking PC manufacturers to build Mac clones in a bid to boost market share. Dell and Compaq are believed to have been among those approached, but IBM looks the most likely candidate to sign an agreement. Till now, production of Macs and the Mac operating system has been firmly in Apple's hands, Colour without cost The price of PostScript-compatible colour printing has been signifi- cantly reduced with the launch of the Fargo dye sublimation printer from Colorgraph on 0734 819435. The 2.3-page-a-minute Fargo costs £995 and comes with a thermal transfer option which its manufac- turers claim produces results virtu- ly indistinguishable from glossy colour prints, Watch for a review in MACcFORMAT next issue. Stylish Colour Next month, Apple is set to unveil a Colour Stylewriter costing less than £600. The 600dpi inkjet prin- ter, based on a Canon engine, out- puts on to plain paper using fast- drying inks to overcome the absorption problems associated with inkjets. Its drivers are Quick- Draw-based, designed to compete head-on with Hewlett Packard’s acclaimed 550C inkjet in terms of price and performance. More infor- mation on the Colour Stylewriter lable from Apple, 0800 127753. MACFoRMAT APRIL 1994 APPLE BYTES | MacTel goes global Leading Mac bulletin board MacTel, home to more than 30,000 share- ware files, is now providing sub- scribers access to the worldwide Internet network. For £2 a month, ‘users can e-mail any address any- where in the world using an icon- based interface. MacTel can be con- lacted by voice on 0602 455077 or ‘on-line on 081 543 8017. Macs on telly E-Machines’ Simply TV card could ‘be ideal for anyone wanting to dis- play their Mac screens on standard colour TVs. The £295 card - designed to fit into the Processor Direct Slot of Colour Classics, LCs and Performas - outputs the Mac display signal to any TV or VTR with composite video or S-video socket to provide flicker-free_pic- ‘tures. Simply TV is being handled by DirekTek on 081 845 5969. Pushing the Plus Macrormat readers deliberating over whether to buy a CD-ROM drive might do well to wait a few ‘months for Apple’s new Apple €D300 Plus device based on a NEC ‘engine. Expected to sell for £50 less than the external version of the current CD300, the Plus offers the ‘same data transfer rates of 300K a second and average access times of 295 milliseconds. But don’t wait to0 long. The Plus could well be the last of the dual-speed drives in the Mac market ~ Apple is said to be working on a four-speed drive using the same NEC mechanism. Write on ‘MacWrite Pro 1.5, updating the pop- ular Mac word processor, has just been released by Claris, offering full ‘support for the features of Apple's "System 7 Pro, including AppleScript events scripting. QuickTime and the PowerTalk electronic mail system. It can also generate an automatic, configurable Table of Contents and ‘even ‘text wrap around QuickTime ‘movies’, which sounds like quite a ‘trick. MacWrite Pro 1.5 costs £175, or £23.50 to upgrade from MacWrite Pro 1 and £70.50 from earlier ver- ‘sions of MacWrite. More from Front- line Distribution, 0256 463344 file access utility, has been up- graded to enable Mac users to ‘access DOS and Windows files resi- dent on Novell Netware network servers. For £9.95, users can mount any DOS-formatted floppy disk, ‘removable cartridge or optical disk. the latest version, 4.1, is available from Computers Unlimited on 081 200 8282. A new version of ClarisWorks 2.1, the best-selling integrated appli- cation on the Mac, is set to be one of the first applications to ship in a ‘native’ PowerMac form (that is, optimised for best performance on the new machines). The new release will also début on the Mac as a standard application, pack- aged in the same box at the same price of £195. Added to what could quickly become the standard method by which most new software is shipped and bundled, the soft- Works first on PowerPC ware automatically detects whether the Mac is PowerPC- based or not and then installs the appropriate version. This means that PowerMac users willbe treated to a version of ClarisWorks which takes advantage of Apple’s PlainTalk technology, enabling users to convert text to speech and vice versa, as well as signifi- cant performance enhancements. As far as conventional Mac func- tionality is concerned, 2.1 now features hyphenation and ad- ditional file translators. Updates for 2.1 cost £23.50 through Front- line Distribution, 0256 20534. ClarisWorks on a PowerMac could set new standards for integrated packages... Graphics for For converting graphics between formats, DeBabelizer may be for you — and now you can also choose its ‘lite’ little brother! Readers wowed by last issue’s review of Equilibrium’s elegantly- titled DeBabelizer may be interested to know that a cut-down version of the £293 comprehensive graphics file format converter is now avail- under £100 able. DeBabelizer Lite, priced at only £99, can handle 55 cross-platform bitmapped graphics formats and can utilise Photoshop Acquire, Filter and Export plug-ins. What's more, you can translate individual images or entire folders in one go. Lite is able to ranslate images made in any paint, scanning or photo retouching application and maintains maximum colour integ- rity and quality to and from each platform. Common file types in- clude most Macintosh, Windows, Atari ST, Amiga, Silicon Graphics, Sun and general file formats like JPEG, GIF and Photo CD. Would-be cross-platform con- verters should call Letraset on 071 928 3411 for more details. Fancy a If you've always wanted to draw and paint but never attempted to get started, Dabbler from Fractal Design may provide some inspi- ration. It provides an educational approach to computer art, featur- ‘ing an easy interface, visual tuto- tials and a good choice of natural media painting tools. Among Dabbler’s innovations are exten- sive use of sound to accompany selection from a_picture-based menu system, animated exam- ples of colour basics and artistic techniques linked to a step-by- step manual ~ and, perhaps best of all, the facility to draw directly over photographic images. Scans or Photo CD images can be Allmy own work, if you don’t count tracing. treated to Dabbler’s built-in nat- ural media brushes, which in- clude mimics of Van Gogh and Seurat, before being removed to reveal your overlaid creations. For details on availability and price call Letraset, 071 928 3411. The future unfolds A bit of a weird one, Touch 3D; it's a CAD package which enables you to take a solid 3D model created in any major CAD program and break it down into its constituent parts to be unfolded on screen or in print. Any CAD output device can be used to print Touch 3D’s de-con- structions — PostScript lasers, ink- jets, plotters, cutting machines, the works, Pitched at prototyping industrial design, sheet metal work, packages, sketches, fabric pattern- ing and architectural, exhibition and theatrical models, Touch costs £299 from Gomark, 071 731 7930. rT \ others, and... well, unfold It with Touch 3D. Falling Newtons Apple has dropped the price of its Newton MessagePad to £499 in a move believed to be due to lack- lustre sales of the hand-held organ- iser. But the company is expecting sales to improve now that several innovative applications are avail- able. Titles like The Economist World in Figures, Time Out Guide to London and The Good Food Guide look set to change the MessagePad’s fortunes. @ More information from Apple on 0800 127753. MACFoRMAT E11 + APRIL 1994 15 You wouldn’t without test driving it first The Macintosh Essentials CD from Software Dispatch. 70 leading applications for you to try before you buy. Thanks to Software Dispatch™ from Apple, you can now unlock the formidable power of Macintosh™ software in an exciting new way. Just imagine if you could try and compare 70 of the latest software products without leaving your desk. Imagine being able to find the software you're looking for without having to search for it. And then imagine that buying and installing new software only took a simple phone call Almost unthinkable — but not any more. With the arrival of the Macintosh Essentials CD from Software Dispatch, now you can. The Macintosh Essentials CD not only contains titles such as System 7 Pro, Letraset® Fonts, Norton Utilities™ and SAM,™ but also many other leading software products the most popular categories ~ Business, Utilities, Fonts, Graphics/Design, Games, Education and Travel. (© Janaary 1994, Agge Computer, ne. Al gh reserved. 2 are reqistord othe USA and thar cours. Letraset trademark of Essai Letraset Software Dispatch will revolutionise the way you buy Macintosh software forever. The CD already holds complete programs and demonstrations to help you try them so that you can find the software you want before you buy. Al you need to enjoy this new way of buying software is a Macintosh personal computer and CD-ROM drive — then you're ready to go shopping on your Macintosh? ‘When you've chosen the software you want just call the Software Dispatch hotline and you will be told how to unlock the applications and install them onto =f your Macintosh : Immediately.** Now the same is also true for Macintosh software Introductory Software Offer. Macintosh Essentials CD from Software Dispatch. , For free j, call = 0345 678 001 today. Buy one title and you can get 50% off vaca s one of following titles! Alternatively, you may prefer to complete this coupon and return it to the address below (no stamp required). @ Battle Chess — An exciting game that lets you match your wits Mr/Mrs/Ms First Name with your computer. ‘Surname Tithe @ Safe & Sound — An easy-to-use utility that finds and fixes 100 of me the most common disk problems. Company/Organisation ‘Address @ Crystal Quest — A fascinating game that will test your skill and your imagination. County. Postcode Stay In touch with the future. Daytime Telephone Once you have made a purchase using the Macintosh Essentials CD, you will automatically be sent free update CD's with more new software for you to try and buy. So you'll always stay in touch with the latest and best. Call for your free copy today. @ 0345 678 001 "Ofer apps to ret purchase only and loses 300 June 1994 I use a Macintosh model (e.g. Macintosh LC 475) Do you currently use a CD-ROM drive? C1 Yes CINo If yes, please specify model Software Dispatch SOFTWARE AMS/AMS/015306/M02 P.O. Box 66 Hounslow ‘TWS ORT DISPATCH ae ee Raytek eR kN [ News 4 It may look an awful handful but FAST Electronics’ Video Machine contains all the tools you need to use your Mac as a video post-pro- duction studio on your desktop. Which is why it'll cost you just a little under £4,000 to get it up and running. But its features really go to show what your Mac is capable ‘of when applied to custom re- quirements. VM-Studio 2, the software which holds this modular hardware sys- tem together, can directly control DAT (Digital Audio Tape) drives and handle eight-channel, broad- cast-quality vision mixing with FAST video br audio. With its TitleMagician com- ponent, users can combine Post- Script fonts with on-screen mater- ial to produce titles while its DVE Editor offers more than 300 Digi- tal Video Effect presets which can be user-modified. A few years ago, this sort of power might have cost tens of thousands and filled a largish studio. So if you're a bud- ding Mac videographer and would like to find out more, give Mag- nifeye a call on 071 221 8024. = {H you thought ‘desktop video’ meant playing Quick- S-— Time movies on your Mac, you may find the new Video f-=~-~~ ‘Machine from FAST Electronics a bit of an eye-opener. Semana How to stay sharp ‘Smarter than Newton? Maybe not, but you could say it was a pretty Sharp alternative, Mobile organisers with pen input and facilities to transfer files to and from the the Mac aren’t just con- fined to the Newton MessagePad. Sharp's new 1Q-8920 also fits the bill, weighing only 300g and fea- turing a QWERTY keyboard. And at £299, its infra-red file transfer capability and optional fax/modem unit may seem to be an attractive alternative. With onboard calendar, word processor and database appli- Readers wanting buying advice from the Macrormat team can get it straight from the horse’s mouth at the National Computer Shopper Show this month. At the show, to be held in Birmingham's NEC complex, Macrormat will be hosting the Macintosh buying advice centre, so if you're thinking of buying a new Mac, want advice on soft- ware, or just fancy a chat, come along and see us. We even hope to have one of the new Power- Macs going through its paces, showing the PC owners at the Computer Shopper Show show a thing or two about speed! You'll also have the chance to pick up a Macrormat subscrip- tion at a special show price! The National Computer Shop- per Show runs from Thursday March 24 to Sunday 27, and fea- tures more than 100 exhibitors, including the country’s biggest AppleCentre group, KRCS. On the door admission is £7, but you can order advance tickets for £5 on 021 767 4343. There are special train deals available for travellers from London; ring the above number for details. ee eee -- 5) 1 TECHNICAL WRITER{_ / Disk EDITOR cations, all of which can process 1 Macrormar is looking for another member of the team dedicated to pro- ducing the best Macintosh magazine in Britain. The person we are look- | ing for can remember the model numbers of all the current Macs, under- | stands why rebuilding your Desktop can solve problems, and has a good | Working knowledge of a wide range of Macintosh programs. handwritten input from the accom- panying pen, the 19-8920 is avaial- ble from most high street stores. @ More details from Sharp on 061 205 4255. Powerhouse mouse It had to happen. The first PowerMac mouse is ready to ship. Logitech has even got a PowerMac trackball too. But don’t be fooled into thinking there’s any special technology involved — both just plug straight into the same old ADB port to be found on your Mac. But if you're after smooth, precise and comfortable input devices with a utility to assign commands like Cut and Paste to either of the two extra buttons, MouseMan (£69) and TrackMan (£75) are worth checking out. Call Logitech, 0344 891313. ledge of the Internet and comms would be an advantage. Extensive Mac- H ware programs and compiling the monthly cover disk, so a good know- 1 intosh experience, perhaps in technical support, is essential, as is a good 1 clear writing style, and the ability to make complex subjects comprehen- sible to the rest of us. Salary commensurate with experience, 1 Apply to: Anne Dillow, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath 1 Bal 2Bw. I Include a full Cv and a 300 word article explaining what hard disk frag- 1 mentation is. 1 ! | ! | I I ‘The successful applicant will also be responsible for sourcing share- : | | | | | | ! I FUTURE PUBLISHING * BEAUFORD CouRrT * 30 MONMOUTH STREET BATH * BA1 2BW MACFORMAT * ISSUE 11+ Ai 18 ye stararerowea" Nemes Lio! - ay £19995 249 fi MOD o165 it) ee LIGHTNING-FAST syquest 4AMB Festerins ORDER IT TODAY, USE IT TOMORROW - OVERNIGHT DELIVERY ONLY £5 MICROSOFT OFFICE WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT & MAIL TOLCHR | DATEBOOK PRO AND ' red TOUCHBASE PRO ° fi BOTH - ONLY £49"! ee | EUR ZZZ 1005 r u CATALOGUE SUBSCRIPTION ; I)" Stet in Ute counon to recele your PREE deer eabecrgtion to the J M#2WAREHOUSE catalogue Mall to: MacWAREHOUSE, Queens Road, Barnet, Herts ENS 4DL : Overnight Delivery-Only £5.00! I or simply copy and fax to: 081 447 1696 ; Thame : I FAX: 081 447 1696 T soress ; EXPRESS CUSTOMER SERVICE: 081 449 7113 I T town county Postcode : ALL PRICES EXCLUDE V.A.T. MCFAPR 7 b POWERPC PowerMacs: che _feture QSTCOCS Want the latest low-down on PowerMacs? Macrormar has the exclusive full details. Imost exactly ten years after its first machine brought a smiling face to the dull world of personal computing, Apple is poised to storm the nineties with a range of desktop RISC computers of unprecedented power. The company’s first three PowerMac models are being billed as nothing short of the founda- tion of Apple’s future. Apple’s confidence rests ‘on three premises. One, PowerMacs combine significant breakthroughs in price and perfor- mance; two, they offer existing Mac and PC users smooth migration paths; and three, they deliver top-notch ‘native’ applications drawing directly on the custom hardware. In terms of price and performance, the PowerMac range certainly looks a winner. For £1,500, you can now buy a 60MHz 6100 which delivers two to four times Quadra power in native mode and Quadra 700 performance under emulation. Couple this with a range of hardware upgrades for most Macs starting at £700 or so and demand could certainly begin to exceed supply. But since any Mac owner's major investment is in software, itll take more than raw power to convince existing users to upgrade ~ the key is in how effectively PowerMacs run all current Macintosh applications. As you might expect, Apple had paid a great deal of attention to this matter. Its emulator for PowerMac, System 7.1.2, is a port of System 7.1 running on the 68LC040 chip to be found in the LC475. And since few if any of the 200 leading developers readying native applications for the range have publicly declared any incompatibility problems, one can only assume the emulation is both stable and thorough. The machines MacrorMaT tested certainly performed flawlessly, even run- ning shareware titles with no inexplicable com- plaints. Moreover, we found them to be faster in many respects. All file transfers are now car- ried by SCSI-2 architecture, and hardware calls for essential system level functions like Draw- Text, QuickDraw, font management, QuickTime, and resource and memory management now directly address RISC architecture. These performance benefits under emulation aside though, System 7 on PowerMac is still an unknown quantity to most of the Macintosh world’s 6,000 developers despite Apple's claim that applications can be converted at the rate of half a million lines of code in less than five days. While over 200 have committed to date, Apple wants to make 1995 the year in which it will concentrate on co-marketing a sustained conversion of applications to PowerMac. Besides pitching the platform as the ideal solution for the publishing, productivity, tech- nical and multimedia markets, the company is also targeting the education, consumer, mobile and entertainment sectors. A significant per- centage of both kinds of customers are expected to be from the world of PC users, attracted by Pentium-beating horsepower, Windows emu- lation running at 486 speeds and prices that Mac model Vendor Type Speed AY option Iivi ‘Apple logic board 7100/66 yes Tivx Apple logic board 7100/66 yes Performa 600 | Apple logic board 7100/66 yes Quadra 610 ‘Apple Togic board/PDS | 6100/60 yes ‘Quadra 650 ‘Apple logic board/PDS | 7100/66 yes. Quadra 660AV | Apple Togic board 6100/60 yes Quadra 700 DayStar PDs 7100/66 no ‘Quadra 800 Apple Togic board/PDS | 8100/80 yes Quadra 840AV | Apple logic board 8100/80 yes ‘Quadra 900 DayStar PDS 8100/80 no Quadra 950 DayStar PDS 8100/80 no Upgrading to PowerMac should not be a problem - Apple promises a range of hardware upgrades start- ing at £700. Macs listed in the table (left) have already been designated as upgradable. Apple is expected to offer upgrades for the LC 475 later this year, while DayStar has indicated its intention to provide upgrades for the full Mac I family. There are no details yet concerning other Mac models. How it works: with the addition of a processor upgrade card fitted in PDS slots, 040-based systems will run at twice the speed — eg a 25MHz system will run at SOMHz. Users will be able to switch between PowerPC and double-power Mac modes. Logic board upgrades can include optional AV tech- nologies, but this is not possible with PDS upgrades. § For enquiries contact Apple on 0800 127753. For DayStar contact Merisel, 081 568 8866. While many readers will greet the PowerMac range with open arms, some of you may be wondering what this means for the future of the Macintosh we all know and love. Will developers con- tinue to offer new Mac software? And will they continue to offer software upgrades to existing titles? Will parts supplies continue to be available? Will third party hardware manufacturers continue to bring new peripherals to market? In short, will the Mac be around for much longer? The answer to all these questions is yes. With ten million Macs sold, only a fool would abandon the platform. But ‘Apple is adamant the future of the Macintosh is RISC and to that end no more Macs based on Motorola 68xxx chips will be built. If your machine appears in the upgrade table above, you might be considering making the move to PowerMac. Bear in mind, though, that if your current machine is already faster than a Quadra 700, you'll derive no determinable performance benefits unless and until you buy native PowerMac applications. However, you may consider it worth selling your current Mac CPU and buying a cheap Iivi or Ivx CPU, which are now discontinued, so you can buy a 7100/66 logic board upgrade. This will work out cheaper than buying an off-the-shelf 7100/66. The latter may be a wise move if you're a Classic or LC owner since no upgrade paths have yet been announced for these machines. The decision, as they say, is yours. SUE 11+ APRIL 1994 20 MACFoRMAT crush the best mail order bargains. Indeed, the success of Apple’s PowerMac plan is assured by the relatively low technology cost involved. In fact, there’s simply no point in buying a new ‘Mac, or upgrading an old one, unless it’s a PowerMac. With prices close to £1,500 and £700 respectively, the future-proofing benefits are obvious. Existing technologies are improved by near real-time responsiveness, while new technologies like speech recognition can draw ‘on the hardware’s native power. ndy Storer first thing you notice on powering up ‘a PowerMac is that the startup sound has ed to a higher pitch. And from then on in, everything else seems to follow ‘suit. Simple things like copying files, “emptying trash, loading and saving appli- is HQ and left me with all three models | to play the day away. I took along leading | Mac applications like Word, Excel, Claris- Works, Morph and Premiere, which all ran ‘under emulation with no problems at all, | enjoying Quadra-level performance enhancements. Even the odd shareware titles ran with no complaints. But the best results were from the ‘native’ or accelerated applications on | offer. Painter for PowerPC, for instance, applied filters and refreshed screens with alarming ease, while a new application, Atlantis Render, enabled near real-time ray- “traced rendering of solid 3D geometrics. ‘SoftWindows, Insignia’s Windows 3.1 emu- ‘ator, flew along at speeds I'd associate with a fast 386 or 486 sx PC, while Claris- “Works for PowerPC ran at a blistering pace. The only disappointment was the of a native version of Adobe shop, or rather one which would | load. So although we're assured Photoshop native is all ready to roll, its absence blew | any chance I had of comparing native “speeds with straight Mac versions of the same software, applying time-intensive | to wait until next issue for the full-low Overall Performance Rating 1 6.21 7.81 8.34 12.74 20.08 21.58 23.17 24.59 POWERPC PowerPC POWERMACINTOSH SPECS IN FULL 6100/60 8100/80 7100/66 (Casing based on Quadra 610 Quadra 650 Quadra 800) Processor PowerPC 601 PowerPC 601 PowerPC 601 Speed 60MHz 66MHz 80MHz Performance Native 2to 4x 040@33MHz_ | 25% faster than 6100 | 2x faster than 6100 emulated fast 030 to 040 fast 030 to 040 fast 030 to 040 RAM 8Mb standard ‘8Mb standard ‘8Mb standard max possible 72Mb 136Mb 264Mb SIMM slots 2 4 8 Expansion slots 1x 7-inch NuBus 3 full-size NuBus 3 full-size NuBus Storage hard disk 160Mb to 250Mb 250Mb to SOOMb 250Mb to 1Gb floppy 1.4Mb 1.4Mb 1.4Mb CD-ROM optional optional optional Video VRAM video IMb standard 2Mb standard VRAM expansion 2Mb 4b Audio 16-bit audio stereo in/out with DMA Networking Ethernet onboard with DMA channel scsi high speed asynch | high speed asynch _ | high speed asynch + dual SCSI channels AY option yes yes yes video in NTSC/PAL/SECAM | NTSC/PAL/SECAM | NTSC/PAL/SECAM video out NTSC/PAL NTSC/PAL NTSC/PAL interface S-video/composite | S-video/composite | S-video/composite Onboard software for all machines recognition software System 7.1.2, AppleScript, PC Exchange, QuickTime, PlainTalk text to speech and speech Optional software MS-DOS/Windows 3.1 with Insignia Solutions’ SoftWindows So far 61 developers have publicly commit- ted to port versions of their software to PowerMac. Here’s the best of the software bunch: Adobe, Aldus, Claris, Fractal Design, Insignia, Macromedia, Microsoft, Quark, Virtus and WordPerfect. Most are promising software within six months of the March launch, with 15 to 20 having native appli- cations ready at launch. Most vendors look likely to release just one version of their software ~ dubbed ‘fat binary applications’ - which will run on either processor. Hard- ware companies signed to ship PowerMac- compatible kit include Dayna, Radius, RasterOps, Scitex and SuperMac. MACFoRMAT + Issue 11+ ApRiL 1994 Reckon you could tell us a thing or two? Go ahead - you might win a T-shirt for your trouble! Feeling unlucky? Never win any of Macroruar's fabu- lous competitions? Cheer up! Just use an unusual postcard when you enter, and even if it isn’t drawn as the winner it could win you a consolation prize! Every month we'll pick out the most eye-catching postcards and award them a Macsonuar T- shirt. This month's win- ners include R A Hein of Edenbridge (for a very clever image from the Canon Portfolio by artist lan Murray, left), and M Pyke of London WC1 (below). (Yes, London streets can often seem like that, right?) A horrendous jungle I have to tell you that there is a horrendous jungle out there for Mac buyers. I am looking to upgrade and I find that most sales staff out in the high street and some of the main dealers just don’t know what they are talking about. In fact 99% of the people I have spoken to know less than me (and I’m not fully conversant with all aspects of the Mac range). I'm sure they have lost sales simply because of lack of know- ledge and expertise — and those with the infor- mation most useful to the beginner just don’t want to know about the small purchaser. It has taken me ages to sift through the data to decide what I want — now I have to find a dealer who can offer it to me at a good price. This is where some of the Apple people come into their own - they prefer to wheel and deal rather than get involved with advice and sales and back-up. I would like to see a report showing the machines most suited to a given use, based on what an individual is actually looking for a machine to do. Unless someone wants to play with a computer, what is the point in buying an '030-chip-based machine? They are already out of date. Why should a buyer accept a machine that has ClarisWorks 1 pre-loaded when that too is out of date? Paul Ruck Bushey Heath, Herts. It's true of computers, and washing machines, and hi-fis, and dishwashers: most of the people selling ‘em know very little more than the best price they can do for you, Paul wins a Macrormar T-shirt for making the point. We've considered doing ‘buyer's guides’ to Mac setups, but there are so many options and per- mutations, and so many potential uses that people might have in mind, we couldn’t possibly cover enough of them and give you enough digestible infor- mation to base an informed choice on. It’s usually a good rule of thumb to buy the fastest, most powerful system you can afford, but then if you find something that isn’t the very latest or very best but does what ‘you want at a good price... well, there's always a market for Fiestas and Metros as well as Rolls-Royces. One small thing We all know that Macs come in all shapes, sizes and configurations. Here is some news for you: So do humans! I am, of course, referring to your knee-length dresses ~ I believe you call them T-shirts. Yes, just like my Classic I am one of those “best things that come in small pack- ages’. So if you want one of my hard-earned tenners you will have to come up with some- thing a bit smaller than L or XL! On a more serious note, there is one small thing you could do to help combat the theft of our precious Macs. Why not print a list each month of serial numbers of stolen Macs? Then people looking for second-hand Macs could check the serial numbers against your list first. Obviously the list would not be comprehensive, but it could go some way to deterring thieves. Audrey Hudson Larkhall, Lanarkshire Even assuming we could get a reliable source of serial numbers, keep the list up to date and eliminate the merest possibility of typographical errors, would such 4 list justify the space it would take up? Our feature on security (MACFORMAT 9) suggested some ways to prevent theft, and here’s another novel security mea- sure we've just heard about: normally when you start up you get a screen that says “Welcome to Mac- intosh”, but one company has created a startup sereen that reads “This Mac has been stolen from CCM Concepts, Middlesbrough. Call the police.” Now that would deter you, wouldn't itt It’s easy to do in System 7: simply create a screen in startup screen format (you can do it in PixelPaint 2.1, SuperPaint 3.0, UltraPaint 1.1 or Canvas 3.0, or use ResEdit) — any bitmapped colour image will do, so long as it is saved out in the correct format — and save it with the name StartupScreen in the root directory of the System folder (ie loose). If you fear that Mac thieves are savvy enough to find it, you could always use ResEdit to make it invisible — it will still work. (The nearest you can get in System 6 is to use SetStartup to open a document with a similar message on startup, but this is much less elegant.) Thanks to CCM and Mark Smiddy for that idea. Oh, and I am reliably informed that knee-length Macrormar T-shirts are the ultimate fashion state- ment, so I'm sorry to hear you'll be missing out. Can’t be sure Please help me, I think I'm cracking under the pressure! I have just been playing A-Train and doing rather well, even if I say so myself, I was up to the early hours of July 8th in my second year of operation (in the game, that is - I’m not that sad), using the new town scenario and was looking at the ‘Railroad’ fly-out, when my eye was caught by something moving erratically on the screen behind. I saw a UFO in A-Train! I can tell you that it was white and shaped like a floppy sun hat with black square dots for win- dows around the edge. I don’t think I was ab- ducted but I can’t be sure. It certainly didn’t affect anything in the game; it just flew in top’ left and exited middle right. Please don’t tell me that the medication has stopped working... I really did see a UFO in A-Train.... Graeme Babbs Edinburgh A UFO in A-Train? Ridiculous. Next you'll be say- ing there's an alien in Sim City 2000. ‘Drop’ charts?! Could MacrorMar publish an article on geneal- ogy programs for the Mac? Family history is one of the fastest growing hobbies and keeping records on a computer is ideal. I've looked at a couple of PD programs but they hold limited records and are not that easy to use. I need something that will go back at least eight generations, cope with marriages between cousins, up to three marriages, print out pedigree and drop charts and, as a bonus, print out the whole thing as a book. I have not seen any commercial programs advertised but I'm sure there must be some out there. Agnes J McGhee Glasgow Not the McGhee of Glasgow? Family history must be a growing hobby: we've had a couple of requests for MACFORMAT «ISSUE 11 + APRIL 1994 ‘or send us a tip or query, you have an extra chance of win- fing a T-shirt, $0 think weird! information on genealogy Programs, from people who ‘weren't even related to each ‘other. We'd be happy to ear from anyone who's found such programs and can recommend one. Poor soul ‘As one of those poor souls who haven't man- ‘aged to purchase a removable 1Gb hard drive, I have very little space hanging around on my internal hard drive. My problem is this. Un- ‘Stuffit and Compact Pro will not decompact indi- ‘vidual programs from Macrormat cover disks. It is therefore necessary for me to copy about 1.5 to 2Mb of stuff off my hard drive just so I ‘can look at the programs contained on the disk, many of which are of no interest anyway {although in all fairness I have to say that a great many are extremely useful). Please, ‘Mr Price [MacrorMart 9, complaining that “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ does not include all the letters of the alphabet] will find that changing the expression to the correct one, namely “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’, will include his missing ‘s’. We Scandinavians are still left with the problem of showing our peculiar «, @ and 4. Pethaps we should take a clue from Inspector Clouseau: “Yes, yes, a dog, that’s Paal Ovrum, Personally, I've always liked ‘Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs’, or at a pinch “Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz’. Any more? How ‘about some Mac-related ones? please, please change back to a format that I can get at individual items in I am sure that I'm not the only one short on space. I do however have a couple of suggestions for items for your cover disk. As a manic card player I would recommend Gin Rummy to any- one, and as a slightly less manic player of arcade games (no, I don’t know why it is that way round either) I would recommend Space Junkie and Cyclone. All three are shareware and well worth a look at. And on a purely personal note would it be possible to put some Harpoon scenarios on the disk at some point? Guy Sansom via CIX Anyone else unhappy about getting 2Mb or more on the Macroraar cover disk? I don’t know, some people are never satisfied.... But thanks for the suggestions, and thanks also to John Walker of Leeds, who asked for genealogical programs (what, again?), “something to make these Mandelbrot and fractal type images to help while away the winter evenings, and something that would let you put notes onto a musical stave and then hear what it sounds like without needing to buy keyboards and MIDI inter- faces, whatever they are.” Jonathan Alldis of New~ castle upon Tyne asks for some more fonts, virus pro- tection and disk tools utilities. (“Are there any share- ware fonts for Roman numerals?” he asks. I thought Roman numerals were letters like MCMLXVIII, or am I missing something?) Jonathan goes on: “Utili- ties that defragment hard disks, utilities to improve graphic handling. On the leisure front, can we have Seahaven Towers please?” (You did have that on MacrorMar cover disk 3, but that's now sold out, so if we get enough requests to repeat it that’s a definite maybe.) “Also [You still there, Jonathan?] shareware about astrology, Tarot, biorhythms and astronomy, sailing, cycling, and other specialist subjects. File com- pression programs. How about the shareware you review each issue?” Etc etc. All duly noted. Any fur- ther cover disk suggestions gratefully received. Got something to say? Write to Apple Talk, Macrormar, 30 Monmouth St, Bath BAI 2BW. This month’s selection of tips, keystroke shortcuts and discoveries. Eh Jeremy Bloomfield of Lud- low wins a Macrormat T-shirt for finding an interesting use for Font/DA Mover (remember it?) with Sys- | tem 7. [0 opening causes to appear in the dialogue box (ie not only suit- cases), so you can extract odd fonts from games etc. But it goes further than that. The Wordfinder thesaurus DA that came with MaeWrite I only works with System 6, until you use the above method to install it into ‘MacWrite, and it then appears in the Apple menu only when MacWrite is running. The implications of this are huge - you can have a different Apple menu selection for every application. Jeremy says he hasn’t explored it fully, but he’s installed the §uperhelp DA into SuperPaint, and knows you can have a different, non-global, font menu for each application too.... Anyone know more? @ Richard Laing of Colchester reminds us that when you get a system error and can’t ‘get out of it with [command] [option] [esc], you don’t have to switch the power off to reset. As long as your Mac is one that can be started up from the keyboard, you can reset with [command] [control] [start button], ‘even on Macs that lack an interrupt switch, like the Colour Classic or IIsi. Of course, you still lose unsaved data, but at least you spare the hardware the shock of switching off and on again. You don’t have to move your fin- gers so far, either. @ This month's token Australian presence: Paul Bonetti from Brisbane notes that if a dialogue box comes up asking you to insert ‘a disk that you don’t have handy, pressing [command] [full stop}) will get rid of the dialogue box and the computer will forget it ‘even asked. It’s always worth trying this key combination (it’s the universal ‘cancel’ com- mand) when you get one of those annoying dialogues where the only option is ‘OK’ and it’s not OK ~ it sometimes (but not always) ‘saves you from a fate worse than crashing. Finally, this from regular tipster a] Tom Paterson of Loughborough. (Thanks, Tom - keep ‘em coming!) If you have SuperClock running, while in the Finder hold down the [option] key and click ‘on the time. It disappears until you click there again. (Of course you already know you can display the date and a stopwatch by clicking on the time display.) Tom also says that if you forget your password when run- ning At Ease on your Classic, just press the furthermost button on the right hand side of the Mac to return you to the Finder. Then go to the At Ease control panel and change the password. This is a lot simpler than hav- ing to boot up from a floppy disk. (But, kids, don't try this at home. Daddy has a reason for not wanting you to find the Finder...) W Have you found any hidden. secrets? There’s a Macrormar T-shirt for the best, and a fiver for the rest, every month! MACFORMAT « ISSUE 11+ APRIL 1994 23 WHAT’S NEW? What’s new? Feast your eyes on the latest software to arrive at the MAcrormat offices. including a RAM doubling extension and a ‘software assistant’... his has been a really great month for new Mac software, with at least three notable new programs turning up. First up is a software-only innovation which doubles your RAM. No, really! Connec- tix’s RAM Doubler is here alright, and it works — what more can I say? A couple of things actu- ally. On the one hand installation’s a breeze ~ the RAM Doubler extension simply copies itself to your System folder, you restart and hey presto, your Mac has double its original mem- ory. But on the other, your Mac must have a ‘System Software 8-7.0.1 © ae Mavtatosh LE © Api Comper, he 1985-1991 Dette Pemery: 4/080 Largest Unset Bleek: 5,044K Total emery: 8.19% ivr 52508 <— — © Prete = O Seen severe 21: TT | Well here it is — ing a 4Mb LCi to the wide open legs. So what's the catch? There just ere... rao 7 EEE with RAM Doubler only be 5% of $0 ble your memory. Why RAM Doubler registers a lower performance rating in ‘Speedometer is the key to how it works — the program cons ‘the Mac into thinking it's got double RAM via virtual memory. Memory Management Unit (MMU) fitted, which effectively rules out older machines based on the 68000 and 68020 chips, like the Mac Plus, SE, Mac II and original Classic, and secondly there’s a marginal trade-off in perfor- mance. As you can see from the Speedometer test I conducted, RAM Doubler has had the overall effect of slowing down our office LCI by about 5%. Interestingly, graphics handling suffered the worst — down by 8.5%. Whether this is a small price to pay in return for double your precious RAM largely depends on what you use your Mac for. If you're into QuickTime video or audio, for instance, you'll be disappointed. I have to confess I don’t know how RAM Doubler works — and until Connec- tix’s US patent clears, no-one outside the com- pany will - but I guess it may work by emulat- ing virtual memory in some way. I think this because when I was running the new Microsoft CDs reviewed on page 53, I got error messages telling me to turn off virtual memory before the applications would run their QuickTime compo- nents. I never use virtual memory - I don’t fancy plodding throtigh sludge — so I checked the Control Panel and found that it was indeed turned off. So something's definitely odd some- where. Luckily, you can disable RAM Doubler before starting up by holding down the ‘~’ key, so you can circumvent these virtual memory dashes. Meanwhile, for all other intents and purposes, it works fine; I can now use both Photoshop and QuarkXPress at the same time on an 8Mb Mac. So now I'm hoping Connectix will go one stage further and bring out Clock Doubler to ramp up my CPU performance to the point where they'll both run rather than crawl. Someone's watching me Another item on my wish list has arrived, and that’s Open Sesame! ~ the Mac's first ‘learning agent’. It’s a software assistant which over a period of time picks up your working patterns and begins to automate them for you. At its heart is a neural learning module, lurking in the background, which observes your mouse clicks and keystrokes and attempts to form pat- terns of meaning, which it passes to its infer- ence engine. This then compares incoming user event patterns with patterns for instructions that have already been automated. When one matches, Open Sesame! produces a set of Apple- Events to perform the automated instruction. But no, this isn’t the answer to your prayers for a Mac which anticipates your every move ~ it does have certain limitations. In a nutshell, Learn: Open item Close item Empty trash shut Down [Make Stationery Eh Rebuitd Desktop Biice snow Barrenge Apple Menu Gi Stortup items: desktop items Open Sesame! is the first ‘learning agent’ to make it to the Mac. Here you're able to configure the range of events it" offer to automate for you once it's learnt your habits... the patterns learnt are those based on time or sequences of Finder level events. So if you switch off your Mac at 5.30 every day, Open Sesame! will automate that, or if you regularly load up your diary on startup to catch up on your appointments, then check your e-mail, then run your word processor, Sesame! will pre- sent you with that too. Such repetitive, sequen- tial events are no problem. This is fine in as far as it goes, and I expect as Open Sesame! begins to learn my patterns, I’ll no: longer have to do tedious chores like emptying the Wastebasket myself, But what I’m after is something a little smarter, something which auto-saves my work for me, which loads up my For any decent QuickTime quality you need to capture at 30 frames a second, and saving that to disk takes an eternity. accounts package only on days when bills are just about to go into the red, which reminds me, when I'm not busy, every day for a week that I have to buy my wife a Mac for her birth- day. That kind of thing. Then our two software agents can argue out whose turn it is to do the washing up. I'll keep you posted on just how smart Sesame! really is - bet it’s not as func: tional as QuicKeys 3, which I'll look at next month. Nice to know there’s a neural network lurking somewhere in my Mac though... The third new product which I just couldn't While HyperGard's only just got round to offering full-colour support, one of its derivatives, HyperStudia, has provided it for a while now. What's more, itl read the same stacks... MACFORMAT + ISSUE 11+ APRIL 1994 24 case you can edit out its misses. Butits hits are Genuinely useful ~ like auto- matically putting regularty- used programs in your Apple Menu, for instance. to rip from its shrink-wrap was HyperCard I first started using the program in 1987, ck in the days when no one really had a due to describe it. What I liked about it then is the ease with which you could script y d to execute commands with the mer- lick of a button. It made authoring interac- ive applications a cinch, and I always expected to become the de facto multimedia authoring ckage on the Mac. Apple’s lack of support have had something to do with why this n't happened, or maybe it was more its lack colour capability. I won't pre-empt Rod’s ‘on page 34, but just say that full colour still isn’t included and I simply can’t this remains the case after seven years. as coincidence would have it, I was more ian pleased when a demo of HyperStudio 3.0 idio offers built-in support for colour, ch , Audio CD, live video digitising and h-based animation for starters. What's more, read HyperCard stacks, so you can convert your old mono efforts into full colour ex- Even more interesting for budding iors is that you don’t need to use any scrip- language to build up stacks. When you confidence, though, you can dip into rLogo, the HyperTalk-style language for precise control. Only pity really is the = after years of enjoying Hyperactivity ee thanks to Apple’s evangelism, it turns out be £111. Mind you, set against comparable r such as HyperCard 2.1 at £170 and tor 3.1 at a hefty £1,175, this doesn’t seem that unreasonable a price to pay for surpris- good multimedia support. ‘On now to Mac video. When you hear that en an old heavyweight like QuarkXPress is to r QuickTime capability in its next upgrade ‘due Real Soon Now, folks - you know all this malarkey is heading somewhere perma- T'm not sure how well sales of the recent ‘Macs are going, but I, like a lot of other T guess, will be buying an AV version of PowerMac upgrade card when it’s available in the spring. Mac AV video capabilities really that bad at all. I spent what seemed like straight hours on a friend’s 840AV the other and was suitably impressed by the quality its video digitising. This is probably where 48 hours comes in — for any decent Quick- quality you need to capture at 30 frames a nd, and saving that to disk takes an eter- aity, especially if you compress it on the fly. ‘Once the clips are in situ, though, the fun begins. I was using Adobe Premiere 3.0, which really is the bee’s knees when it comes to video editing - animated titles, mates, transitions, dissolves, audio mixing, Photoshop filters, the works. Since a couple or three London video post-production houses are now using Premiere in their ‘non-linear suites’, I thought I’d better check to see just how professional it was. All I can say is that it'd be worth every single penny at three times its £580 price. If I could afford it. What's needed is a sub-£100 QuickTime edi- tor — ‘Premiere Lite’ perhaps — which gives us budget-conscious users just a couple of video and audio tracks, a transition track and smooth anti-aliased titling. I thought Avid’s VideoShop 2.0, which arrived the other day, might fit the bill, but, again, it’s altogether more high-end, with much the same capabilities as Premiere, plus the added bonus of a couple of other neat tricks like picture-in-picture and movie re-siz~ ing. And it’s £465. So I've put in an order for FreeTrieve will scan every storage device attached to your Mac and catalogue it for you, with thumbnails. the £150 QuickFlix 1.0 to look at for next issue - by all accounts it could fit the bill. But as I said, digitising QuickTime movies takes up a horrendous amount of disk space. Typically, you're looking at overheads of at least 1OMb per second, which in turn becomes another headache as far as keeping track of the data is concerned. What's needed is an archiv- ing application like FreeTrieve which’ll scan every storage device attached to your Mac and catalogue it for you, with thumbnails. FreeTrieve goes a stage further in that it'll also read in text documents, still images and sounds, and you ce i ee oo WHAT’S NEW? _ snes * open “Semaphore 11" * after ctosing *ZTerm 0.97 ‘Woukd you like me to automate this teak? =] =e —o I This is where Open Sesame! gets smart — it offers to oad my downloads into an off-line reader. can annotate these with your own keyword descriptors. What's also handy is its ability to search any volume for all instances of a specific word. So if you know the words “buy her a plastic mac instead” are somewhere on your hard disk, it'll scan all the documents at 2,000 words a minute and display the exact instance ‘of every use of those words. As you might imagine, this is incredibly useful for anyone with a lot of files and a poor memory. The package also comes with an OCR component you can use if you have a scanner. At £580 it might only appeal to users with one helluva lot of data, but then again it'll probably pay for itself in weeks. So what do we have coming up for you next month? Well, besides QuicKeys 3 and VideoFlix, I'll also be taking a look at a new clip art and sound collection, plus, if I can get hold of it, the amazing photo manipulator Live Picture. See you then. Andy Storer FreeTrieve scans every device attached to your Mac for any text or picture which may be residing on it in any document. Extremely useful for anyone with loads of data. FreeTrieve £580, Adaptivity, 0494 875172. Requires Mac I! and up. HyperStudio 3 £117, TAG, 0800 591262. Any Mac. Open Sesame! ‘$99, Charles River Analytics, 0101 617 491 3474 Premiere 3 £580, Adobe, 081 547 1900. Requires 8Mb RAM. RAM Doubler £82, Computers Unlimited, 081 200 8282. 68030 Macs. VideoShop 2 in action — all you need for cutting QuickTime ‘movies in one easy-to-use package. Its highlights include movie resizing and picture-in-picture. VideoShop 2 £465, Letraset, 071 928 3411, Requires Mac I! and up. MACFORMAT « ISSUE 11 + APRIL 1994 25 Bl entre Warrington Part of the MCC Group of Companies Telephone: 0925 444499 Still going strong!! With over twelve years experience, AppleCentre Warrington is the North West's longest standing Apple only Authorised Dealer, supplying computer systems to Education, Business and Corporate organisations. @Sales ¢@Service Support @ Training @# Maintenance CLEARING THE DECKS READY FOR POWER MACINTOSH Access, Visa & American Express HOLDENS DkICI 0772 615512 FAX 0772 615919 HOLDENS COMPUTER SERVICES LIMITED Chapel Lane, Longton PRESTON PR4 5EB In order to pave the way, and provide warehousing space, for the forthcoming Power Macintosh launch, we are disposing of a large quantity of obsolete, demonstration and used items. All of them represent an unequalled opportunity to obtain coveted Apple products at an extremely low price. NEW BUNDLES COMPLETE WITH STYLEWRITER Il & MICROSOFT WORKS 3.0 Macintosh Classic 2/40 £525.00 Macintosh LC 4/40 with Performa Plus Display £725.00 Macintosh LC II 4/40 with Performa Plus Display £825.00 Macintosh LC II 4/80 with Performa Plus Display £875.00 USED POWERBOOK BARGAINS PowerBook 100 2/20 with Floppy Disk Drive £350.00 PowerBook 140 4/40 £450.00 PowerBook 160 4/40 £599.00 PowerBook 170 4/40 £799.00 NEW CD ROM DRIVES Apple PowerCD Bundle with cable £175.00 AppleCD 300 with cable & terminator £139.00 ORIGINAL MACINTOSH PORTABLE - ALMOST A COLLECTOR'S ITEM Used Macintosh Portable 2/40 with carrying case, several available £299.00 GENUINE APPLE PORTRAIT MONITORS Used Apple Portrait Monitors, only £199.00 “Twelve months manufecturers’ warranty on all new tems, three months on used equipment but excluding batteries. All prices subject to VAT “Macintosh, PowerBook and the Apple Logo are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc. AppleCentre i a service mark of Apple Computer U.K. _ SORT OUT YOUR SYSTEM Jort out youre hat makes your Mac a Mac? The hardware, after all, is just a collec- tion of components - chips, disk drives and so on. Although the ‘Mac uses a different family of chips from PCs, all desktop computers from whatever manufac- turer do a pretty similar job. No, it’s the soft- Ware that makes the Mac so different from any ‘other personal computer. And, in particular, it’s the contents of your System folder that make everything happen. The System file itself — along with other bits like the Finder, Exten- sions, Control Panels and so on — turns a box full of printed circuit boards into the most easy 10 use, powerful computer available. So isn’t it ‘a good idea to know what everything does? In the first place, if you know you don’t have to be frightened of your System folder, you'll sleep better at night; but knowing what's What is also useful because it will enable you to take more control of your own Mac. Say, for ‘example, that you tried out Seahaven Towers, the shareware ‘Patience’-style card game from Macrormat cover disk 3. You played a few games but eventually decided it wasn’t for you and binned it. End of story? Not quite. You might never have realised that Seahaven Towers left a ‘Preferences’ file behind in your System folder. This file contains nothing more impor- tant than your high-score table, but it is mis- Teadingly named ‘Indexor’ and there’s nothing to indicate what it is, so how are you to know that you ought to trash ‘Indexor’ but leave, say, ‘Chooser’ alone? True, Indexor is probably Under 10K in size, but what about all the other Preferences files floating around in there, and all those fonts, and those odd things in the Extensions folder... In fact, if an application doesn’t seem to be ‘working as it should, or your preferred settings seem to have vanished, or you can’t use some fonts you're sure you've installed, the odds are that something is not in the right place in your System A € The System folder is the heart of your Mac. If you know what its insides actually do, you can save valuable RAM and disk space, and make your Mac run more quickly, reliably and efficiently... System folder ~ a Preferences file, an Exten: or perhaps the application or Accessory itself. System 7 (and upwards) tries to make life easy for you: if you drag something over the System folder that needs to go somewhere in particu- lar, the System will very helpfully put it there for you; but just about everything can be moved by hand again. The problem is that things can get pretty complex within the System folder. It’s impor- tant not to move or delete things unless you're pretty sure that you know what you're doing. Otherwise you might find that the next time you try to start your Mac up, all you get is a blinking question mark over the top of a floppy disk icon - a sure sign that you've got prob- lems. For this reason, over the next six pages we're going to give you an explanation of exactly what's in a ‘standard’ System folder — that is, one which hasn’t been customised at all. That way, you'll know what you can throw away, and you'll be able to identify any items which have been added by other applications. A tidy, well-organised System folder is vital if you want to keep your Mac running smoothly. Tum the page to begin the spring-clean... UE 11+ APRIL 1994 27 MACFoRMAT SORT OUT YOUR S Phe System Folder he System folder contains all the soft- ware needed by your Mac to start up, implement the familiar user interface and handle things like input from the keyboard and output to the screen. The file that does most of this work is the System file. This contains the Mac’s ‘Operating System’, and is essential to your computer's operation. Without a System file, no Mac will start up. However, there are plenty of ancillary files too, which are more or less important to the operation of the Macintosh. For instance, if you're using a Mac introduced in the last 18 months or so, you're almost certain to require a ‘system Enabler’ file in the System folder before the Mac will work. The System Enabler tells the System file about specific features of your computer's hardware; when System 7.1 2 SSE ae 14 items Apple Menu Items Clipboard Control Pat 38.8 MB in disk nels Disinfectant Prefs 122.1 MB available System ‘System Enabler 040 ~ ATM 68020/030/040 ro Ey Apple Menu Items Apple uses this Alias mechanism itself; there's an Alias of ‘Any object placed in this folder will appear under the Apple ‘menu (atthe far lett of the standard menu bar, whenever itis showing). This can be a file, an application, a folder, a volume... in fact, anything a