Nouse Mover
Mouse Mover Award
 

Articles Mouse Mover:
1) MACazine 85

2) S.F. Examiner

3) Mac Connection

4) N.Y. Times 86

5) Lotus 85

6) Micro Today 85

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San Francisco Examiner
 

D2 Sunday, June 23, 1985 * * San Francisco Examiner
From MacKludge to MacQuality



John C. Dvorak

COMPUTER users know the word "kludge" - a clunky, unaesthetic solution, a quick fix. Every time a new piece of equipment is announced, some entrepreneur thinks he can add something to make it better. More often than not it turns out to be a kludge (pronounced "klewj').

I think the phones that some companies glue to the sides of the Macintosh computer arc kludges, for example. I also don't like the MacStation, the box into which you slide the Macintosh to allow you to put the printer on top of the Mac and stuff some books into some shelves. To me, it's a kludge. The Examiner has two of these things, Some people find kludgy products endearing. Sometimes I do too. Here's one

  I must recommend to Macintosh computer owners. It's called Mouse-Mover ($19.95 from Magnum Software, 21115 Devonshire St., Suite 337, Chatsworth, CA 91311; 818 700-0510). It's a device that slides onto the bottom of the Mac mouse and adds ball-bearing action to it. It's as though the mouse is floating on air.

While the thing may look a little awkward, it took nearly a year of engineering to get it to work perfectly, Magnum Software tells me.

And this product is needed. The mouse is susceptible to wear. I first noticed that the two plastic pegs on the bottom of an original Apple mouse were almost totally worn down. The mouse movement was starting to eat away at the mouse-ball retainer ring.

Some vendors have tried to solve this problem by offering special low-friction pads on which to use the mouse, but this limits the motion of the mouse to the pad dimensions - no good, I figured Apple would make a fortune on replacement mice. The Mouse-Mover will surely prevent that. 		  Magnum has another product I can recommend called the slide show magician ($59.95). It allows a Macintosh owner to quickly create a rather elaborate video presentation on the Mac Salesmen should look into this product It's a good substitute' for slide-based presentations and includes elaborate special effects like those you see on network TV news broadcasts. You know, those fancy wipes and fades from one image to the next.

The software also can do subliminal imaging - those quick, unreadable images on the screen that your subconscious is supposed to see and retain. While I've never seen any definitive, evidence that subliminal visual messages do anything at all, they are still illegal to broadcast on TV. I'm sure it's something that would be fun to experiment with.

Finally, the company produces two volumes of Macintosh art that, while some of the best I've seen, are priced a little high at $49.95 a disk. These products are called McPic Vol 1 and Vol. 2.
 

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