mort@ihuxn.UUCP (Dubman) (03/23/84)
I just saw the mouse for the Apple II+/IIe and was very impressed. It is essentially the same mouse as the Macintosh's, with a cable running into the mouse card which was installed in slot 4. The mouse card is supposed to have some ROMs on it that can be "easily" called to determine the position and status of the mouse. Along with the mouse package comes a great graphics program by Bill Budge (of Pinball Construction Set fame) called MouseDraw (or is it MousePaint?) which really mimics the great Macintosh drawing program. It has icons, small pictures for menu choices, and it works in COLOR. It has about five nice character sets (unfortunately, not Old English) and is incredibly fast. It also has the "pull-down menu" system like the Mac which prints sub-menus when selecting main functions. It is also extremely easy to use - I figured out about 90% of the functions just by looking at the pictures and experimenting. I asked the dealer about support for the mouse, and he CLAIMED that Apple was going to come out with 40 programs that support it. I asked him "Four zero?" and he confirmed that I did not misunderstand. Regardless of the number of supporting programs, I was very glad to see that Apple was backing up its 1,500,000+ Apple II/II+/IIe with new products. (i.e. Mouse, Duo-Drive, ProDos, Profile for Apple II, new software, etc.) and that the II family is going to remain viable. Apple is supposedly going to announce its portable IIe in may. (IIp?) I wonder how many peripheral slots it will have... when I get a mouse I will have 5 filled up. I also got a peek at ProDos, which was fast and had nice file structuring. I wonder if it will work with 8 inch drives and Corvus type hard-disks that are non-Apple. I commend Apple for making ProDos not work on fake, copycat Apples such as the Franklin that act as parasites on Apple's one-of-a-kind ingenuity. Yes - it will work if you change three bytes to NOPs, but it is the thought that counts. In search of New Apple-ications....... -- Jonathan Dubman - care of: Mort Dubman AT&T Bell Laboratories ihnp4!ihuxn!mort Naperville, IL.