Yes. the Mac is an easy computer to use. Yes, all the commands can usually be found somewhere in those pull-down menus. But when you already know what has to be done to accomplish a specific task, it can become quite a dull experience selecting and reselecting the same series of commands over and over again. Wouldn't it be nice to have the ability to avoid doing just that? Say hello to Tempo.
Tempo lets the Mac do what IBM owners have been doing for ages: create macros. Mouse commands, text entry, cutting and pasting, just about anything that you do can be recorded and the prpcedures can be recalled and played back at any point.
Simply put Tempo into Record mode and it will faithfully track everything you do. But Tempo takes things one step further by allowing the macros to respond intelligently to different situations. Macros can branch to other macros, depending on what the user types into a dialog box. A procedure can repeat itself a specific number of times or until it sees a particular chunk of text. It can pause for seconds, minutes or hours, or until a specific time (AM or PM) to do something. You could set up your Mac to call a database service at a predetermined time, when the phone rates are tower Custom dialog boxes with instructions for complex situations can be created to assist the meek. Tempo will be invaluable for people programming custom database and business systems.
Tempo can be programmed to activate immediately upon starting up the computer, and it remains active between different programs, so that data can be automatically moved from one program to another. Macro files can be edited once they're created, by playing them back and modifying specific actions. The files can also be sent to friends that also have Tempo, paving the way for macro libraries.
Macros can be activated by either selecting them from Tempo's main dialog box, or by assigning them Command and Option key combinations.
Tempo is a desk accessory, a very large desk accessory. It needs at least 60K free on the disk when it installs itself. The program can be used on floppy disks, but a hard disk makes life much easier. And it's not fully compatible with every program (ReadySetGo, for example), so it may be wise to contact Affinity to see if it works with the software you plan on using. The documentation is well written, and does give advice as to what does and doesn’t work, and hints as to what works best. Even with these few limitations. Tempo is a valuable addition to a serious user's library.
Biedny, David. (May 1986). Tempo. MacUser. (pgs. 38, 40).
John Pence
Applications
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10 / 
2023-01-07 / 
d0b6ce693228d9551df4bb247f0308241bbe812d / 
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Tempo.img
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Mini vMac
