Terms like wacky and silly are usually not what software authors hope to hear about their first product. But when applied to Bit Jugglers’ UnderWare, they’re a compliment. UnderWare is a control panel that adds three features to your Mac’s desktop. It’s a screen saver. It allows you to personalize your dull desktop with one of dozens of patterns. But UnderWare’s unique claim to fame is its ability to run animations on your desktop, underneath your windows and icons.
If these animations don’t make you grin, you may need a humor transplant. Cartoon babies crawl across your screen in the Babies module, pausing briefly while thought balloons with text that you’ve defined pop up above their heads. With the Dragon module, a fire-breathing saurian burns holes in your desktop. Ballerinas pirouette; a T. rex stomps; and the Jungleman swings on vines across your screen. You can even have Rubber Chickens flying in formation.
Better yet, many animations interact with your desktop’s icons and windows. The Robber skulks on screen, rummages through the icons, then gets chased off screen by the cops. Jungleman is likely to slam into the side of an open window. And many of the modules act differently when used as screen savers. For example. Blast-off launches rockets from the bottom of your screen when used as a Desktop Animation; when it’s a screen saver, your desktop’s icons rise on a jet of animated flame.
The price you pay for this whimsy is mostly measured in disk space; full installation takes 5.8MB, and gives you 100 desktop patterns and 26 animated modules. If you have a 640-by-480-pixel screen running in 8-bit mode, UnderWare takes a moderate 80K of RAM. Also, the program is good about not slowing your Macintosh; the Desktop Animations halt when UnderWare senses your Mac is busy, such as with mouse, keyboard, or network activity, or when the serial port is receiving data fi-om a modem.
UnderWare can also run Berkeley Systems’ After Dark modules, except for the Star Trek and Disney module sets.
UnderWare has a few incompatibilities with older versions of some utilities. It doesn’t work with Connectix’s PowerBook Utilities 2.0 or Symantec’s CopyDoubler 2.0.1; updating to the latest versions of these programs, 2.0.1 and 2.0.3, respectively, fixes the problem. As I was writing this review, Bit Jugglers released a free updater program (version 1.0.1) that fixes minor incompatibilities. The updater is available on America Online, CompuServe, and AppleLink.
There’s no business-like reason to have UnderWare running on your Mac. But don’t underestimate the value of a smile while you work. UnderWare is inspired, silly fun for your Mac’s desktop.
Negrino, Tom. (June 1994). UnderWare 1.0.1. Macworld. (pg. 86).
Bit Jugglers, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
20 / 
2014-04-14 / 
208547faf002af86472477f436c033e4c41206ce / 
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underware.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
