Just a few short notes on some interesting products. The full MacDirect II Catalog on Disk is about to ship and will be available late next week.
New Products
HyperStudio $265
HyperStudio is an interesting point and click, colour Hypercard clone from Apple II programming legend, Roger Wagner. It may be difficult to imagine that an Apple IIGS product might be useful in the Mac environment, but HyperStudio is seriously cute.
HyperStudio is a colour Hypercard with out scripting. There isn't a faster way to put together, text, pictures, Quicktime and sound in a stack/card/button structure than HyperStudio. A player is provided for stack distribution.
BBS in a Box IX $110
The latest BBS in A Box IX CD is now available. Version IX includes files upto 22nd June.
Radius StudioVision $7,389
Radius StudioVision addon for Videovision $3,335
Radius looks like winning the race with Rasterops and SuperMac for the best full motion video system. Studiovision seems to have few of the early problems of the other boards and is available as an addon for the Radius Videovision capture board.
Freddy Pharkus - Frontier Pharmacist $89
Another Sierra adventure from the creators of the Leisuresuit Larry series.
PageMaker 5.0
Aldus says PageMaker 5.0 is in manufacturing. We expect a local release in about 3 weeks.
The Free Freehand offer is over on the 31st July - unless you call very quickly. Another offer with Freehand 3,and PhotoShop Light is still available for $1,345. There will still be a free upgrade for anyone who has bought PageMaker 4.2 after January 6th, 1993. If you have been thinking about buying PageMaker now is the time. The RRP will rise to $1,445 as soon as v5.0 is available.
Quark Xpress 3.2
Quark Xpress 3.2 is shipping in the US. As international versions are specially manufactured, we expect local release within the month. The upgrade $295 for all users - there will not be any free upgrades. The RRP will rise to $1,895 when XPress 3.2 becomes available.
Now Compress $156 and $96 ED - available to students and teachers
I have had a close look at Now Compress and I'm impressed. Now Software seems to have discovered the secret of designing good interfaces to recycled ideas. Now Compress is a real second generation approach to Mac compression and should be conisdered by anyone who makes extensive use of compression products.
Compress supports direct and transparent compression. It can covert DiskDoubler, AutoDoubler, Compactor and Stuffit 1.5.1 archives to Compress format and also offers Drag'n'Drop expansion.
Compress is easy to use has great control over all aspects of the process. One example is the option to expand files when copied to removeable disks.
It's claim to produce the smallest files seems to be realistic.
.CPT Example
Original Application 493,354 bytes
Now Compress 204,264 bytes
Compactor Pro 213,719 bytes
Stuffit Deluxe 219,133 bytes
Disk Doubler 295,355 bytes
The Self Extractor adds 25K which is slightly larger than Compactor and Stuffit.
The Drag'n'Drop expander will expand DiskDoubler/AutoDoubler which makes it better than the Stuffit expander. The Now Expander can be freely distributed.
The advantage that Stuffit Deluxe has is support for PC formats and some advanced user features. Compress appears completely superior to the DD/AD combination.
With small files, fast operation and good control over the process. Recommended.
