Ever get tired of using the same old Mac? Now Fun is a set of five desktop enhancements — all of which install as control panels — that let you customize everything from menu colors to Macintosh sounds, to liven things up.
Many of the utilities resemble shareware programs you may be familiar with. FunSounds, for example, is similar to SoundMaster, in that it lets you assign sounds to computer happenings — at startup and shutdown, when you insert or eject a floppy disk, and so on. The utility comes with almost 2MB worth of sounds, ranging from a baby’s giggle to an air horn. It also reads standard System 7 sound files, so you should have no problem configuring your Mac to sound just the way you want.
FunCursors is a cousin to the shareware Cursor/Animator. FunCursors lets you customize, color, and animate the Mac’s standard arrow, watch, text, crosshairs, and plus-sign cursors, as well as the program’s special ones — from spinning beach balls to rotating teacups. Or create your own.
My favorite Now Fun component is FunPictures, which lets you custom-design your desktop. Other programs decorate the desktop by modifying the standard System tiles. FunPictures can use tiles, but it can also cover your desktop with a single PICT, EPS, MacPaint, Startup Screen, GIF, Wallpaper pattern, or Photo CD image. FunPictures lets you crop and resize the picture to fit, although it’s slow at resizing. It also monopolizes your Mac for a few seconds after start-up, a minor annoyance. Many of the patterns and pictures that ship with the program are either juvenile or dull, so be prepared to supply your own graphics.
FunScreenSavers has modules similar to those in Berkeley Systems’ After Dark. In fact, FunScreenSavers can use After Dark modules, although not those from Star Trek the Screen Saver — a disappointment for Trekkies. Many of the included modules are just interesting line patterns; only a few have high-quality graphics. More modules like Night Rider, which features an animated scene of a desert motorcycle ride, would make this an excellent screen saver.
Finally, FunColors allows you to change the color of just about everything you see on your Mac — menu items, window titles, and dialog boxes, to name but a few. It’s not always easy to know exactly what you’re changing, and a window tinge took me a while to figure out (it’s subtle). You can change colors witli several applications open, but doing so noticeably slows the Mac. Even so, the module kind of grew on me. Now when I operate without it my Mac looks naked and boring.
By no stretch of the imagination can you argue that Now Fun is a true Macintosh upgrade, but it does offer some amusing and welcome changes. Consider it if you ever find yourself in a frivolous software-buying mood.
Devine, Paul. (December 1993). Now Fun. Macworld. (pg. 77).
Now Software
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
29 / 
2015-02-05 / 
303248238c6b636a82e4f1d7be4d19705e449014 / 
/ 
now_fun_v101.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
