Now has come a long way! Now Utilities started out as a set of simple but handy utilities gathered together in one package. Some of the individual offerings were originally public domain or shareware items which were slightly modified. With the release of version 2.0, Now made some powerful additions—notably SuperBoomerang. Version 3.0, released recently, is a power- and feature-packed set of ten utilities that offers something for everybody. I predict that this will be one of the most successful packages of the year.
Perhaps the biggest news is that Now 3.0 is completely System 7 compatible, and even expands its power by adding exciting features to it.
Most of the Now utility package is made up of “extensions”—what we used to call INITs and CDEVs. These items change the way your Mac behaves on a very basic level, adding features to all aspects of operating your computer.
An installer is provided which lets you decide which of the utilities you want to add to your system. This is handy, because it will remove any old versions as it replaces them with the new items, and it will also make sure that everything is in the right place. You can also install individual items manually if you prefer.
For me, the two biggest new features are in WYSIWYG Menus and Now Menus, so let’s take a look at those first.
Now Menus adds submenus to the Apple menu. For System 6 users, this means making pop-out menus for Control Panels and Chooser documents. If you want to adjust a certain Control Panel, you can go directly to it without the need to scroll through a list. It can also pop-up the menu bar wherever you click your mouse. The big surprises come with System 7. You already know that anything you put in the Apple Menu Items folder shows up under the Apple menu. Now Menus extends this feature by creating pop-out submenus for folders inside the Apple Menu Items folder (see illustration). This ability may very well change the way you think about your Mac.
I’ve created a folder called “Applications” and put Aliases of all of my important programs in it. Another folder contains Aliases of my utilities, and another is set up for current projects. Folders will show up five levels deep! This gives all of the features of programs like OnCue, DiskTop Launch, and others, but gives you complete control over the configuration. And it’s all as easy as making folders and Aliases. Thus, NowMenus both extends and exemplifies the power of System 7. You can customize your Mac’s organization in almost any way you can imagine!
WYSIWYG Menus is a real delight. I’ve been a user and staunch supporter of Adobe Type Reunion since it first came out. Fonts and styles have simply become too complex for Apple’s outmoded Font and Style menus. Did you ever try to get Zapf Chancery bold? (You can’t, but Apple’s system lets you think you can.) Did you ever try to get Helvetiva Black? (You have to select Helvetica Light and make it bold. There is no logic that I can see; you just have to memorize the relationship. Ugh. Shades of DOS.)
Adobe Type Reunion and WYSIWYG Menus both attack this problem by uniting families into pop-out submenus of styles. ATR was notorious for slowing many programs down a little and slowing some programs down a lot, but earlier versions of Now’s competing product were seen as even worse. Version 3.0, however, is a big success. I haven’t done any careful timing tests, but WYSIWYG Menus is noticeably faster than ATR on my Mac II. And, to make it even better, Now’s product displays font names in their own typefaces. You can selectively turn this feature off for dingbat fonts.
It’s also possible to configure it so that font sizes and styles are also displayed in the typeface, but this does slow things down quite a bit. Another handy feature is that you can rearrange the order in which the font names appear. If you use Zapf Chancery a lot, you can put it at the top of your list, or you can group all of your dingbat fonts together at the bottom of the list.
Some of WYSIWYG’s speed is due to the fact that it creates a font file at startup. Adding a font later (for instance with Suitcase II) may cause it to slow down somewhat. It does not work with Adobe Illustrator due to that program’s nonstandard font menu.
Super Boomerang (and its shareware version Boomerang) have been around for long enough to have become classics—items which we have forgotten how to live without. Version 3.0’s new features show up in the Apple menu; there’s now a Super Boomerang pop-out menu that lists all recently-accessed folders and files, in addition to any that you define as permanent. This is great! It lets you quickly return to the project you were working on yesterday without having to dig down through folders to find it. As before, Super Boomerang remembers where you were automatically. Only its “advanced” features need to be configured. SB’s other features are basically the same as they were in the previous version. It lists your most frequently-used files and folders in every Open and Save dialog box, allowing you to quickly navigate through your folders. It also has an extremely fast “Find File” feature which can now even search for content of files, and recognizes compressed files.
MultiMaster will be a handy launch utility for many. It works with either the keyboard or the mouse, and let’s you adjust a program’s memory needs on the fly. While I’m happy with the launching abilities of NowMenus, MultiMaster has a feature that will tempt me to keep it in my system. The “View Memory” command brings up a diagram showing how your Mac’s memory is being used.
As you’re working on your Mac, running and quitting programs, you’ve probably noticed that there are times when you don’t seem to have as much free memory as you think you should. This is because the memory can become fragmented, leaving two or more “pockets” of RAM above or below programs which are still running. MultiMaster’s memory chart can show you exactly what’s happening, and you can often regain large hunks of RAM by quitting a small program.
MultiMaster also has a couple of other interesting features. If you’re using it as a launch utility, you can configure programs to come up with different settings for sound and color depth. It can also automatically “hide” old applications when you switch to a new one.
AlarmsClock is similar to SuperClock, a popular public domain offering that puts a digital clock in your menu bar. If you click on the clock display, you see the date, and there’s also a stopwatch function. All of these features are available in SuperClock, but AlarmsClock goes much further by providing a “reminders” feature; you can use it to jog your memory about appointments, birthdays, etc. When a reminder goes off, a short message flashes over the clock display. Optionally, you can set a sound or menu flash to accompany the reminder. I like the ability to set a different sound for each event; a polite beep might be an appropriate alarm for a business meeting, but a siren might be might be more helpful when your wedding anniversary is approaching.
A very strong feature of AlarmsClock is that you can “program” it right from the menu bar, without the need to go through a Control Panel. A pop-down menu lets you cancel or postpone (“snooze”) an alarm, set up a new reminder, or edit previous alarms.
AlarmsClock is not as feature-laden as CE Software’s Alarming Events—it doesn’t provide an advance notice, and it does not archive your files—but it is a surprisingly handy device, and it might be all you’ll ever need. My only real complaint is that it apparently cannot be set to give reminders for events which occur on, for instance, the second Wednesday of each month. Perhaps in the next version…?
DeskPicture is fluff, but nice fluff. It allows you to put pictures onto your desktop, in order to provide relief for those who are bored with a plain gray desktop. Like most of the Now utilities, it has been carefully thought out and gives a number of fresh and interesting options. I’m happy to report that it supports multiple monitors. Also, you can place more than one picture. Each picture can be placed wherever you want it, and it can be resized. You can even place one picture on top of another—your monitor might start looking like a page out of your family scrapbook. Even more interestingly, you can set some of the pictures to choose randomly from a selection of images.
Despite all of these clever features, I had assumed that I would not use DeskPicture; I have more “important” needs for my RAM and don’t feel the need to have family photos, dragons, or pinups on my desktop. However, a tip in the manual suggested other possibilities, and I now have a “picture” of commonly-called phone numbers nestled down in a corner of my monitor.
DeskPicture performed flawlessly on my Mac II under System 7, but refused to load on an SE running System 6.0.5.
ScreenLocker provides a level of confidentiality for your Mac by providing a quick and easy-to-use password system. It also keeps a log of all activity so you can tell what attempts have been made to use your computer, and what programs were run if they were successful.
NowSave’s purpose is to protect you from data loss from System crashes by automatically saving your work at regular intervals—either a certain number of minutes, keystrokes, or mouse clicks. It can be adjusted on an application-by-application basis. You can turn it on for only those applications that you want. While I am not a fan of autosaving utilities—it seems to me that they undermine the “Revert” command—this one seems to be well thought out. It certainly has a lot of options.
StartUp Manager provides a way to control all of your extensions, by allowing you to decide which ones load, and in what order, when you start up your Mac. It’s fast and easy to use. The new “Link” feature in this version lets you specify special relationships between certain extensions, such as making sure that AppleShare is on when your mail program is used, or making sure that two extensions which do the same thing will never run at the same time.
StartUp Manager can also automatically adjust your System Heap in order to help prevent System crashes. The manual is not very helpful on this point, though, especially since System 7’s Heap is supposed to not need adjusting. The Now manual does not provide any information on the differences between System 7 and System 6 in this regard.
Finally, ProFiler provides a way to closely examine the state of your Mac. Profiler is the only application in the set. Running it will provide a report showing more information than I know what to do with, such as a list of all installed fonts (including their resource size and ID number) and all extensions (and their versions and sizes), etc. I found a couple of duplicate preference files on my Mac and solved some puzzling behavior as a result.
In all of this, there’s bound to be something for everybody. I’ll be using Super Boomerang, Now Menus, WYSIWYG Menus, Startup Manager, and (probably) DeskPicture and AlarmsClock. Other users might pick a different combination, but any three or four of these ten utilities are worth the price of the entire package. In fact, there are a couple that I’d pay the full amount for.
If I have a complaint about Now 3.0, it has to do with an embarrassment of riches; there is some overlap of utility among some of the Now components. MultiMaster, Super Boomerang, and NowMenus (under System 7) all provide program and document launching capabilities, and each has some feature that is absent in the other. Of course, we have choices: install them all or pick and choose. It might, however, be time for Now to consider consolidating some of the utilities in order to minimize the redundancy. For instance, some users might like to have access to Memory View or sound level adjusting without installing MultiMaster.
MacUser called Now Utilities “a must-have for experienced users and novices alike.” Version 3.0 carries that value even further. If you only use one or two of these ten utilities, you’ll have spent your money well. And you’re likely to use many of them. Now Utilities 3.0 is sure to be a hit.
Now Utilities 3.0 works on a MacPlus (and up) with 1 Mb of RAM. It needs System 6.0.4 or higher, and is compatible with System 7. Testing for this review was performed on a Mac II with 8Mb of Ram running System 7, and on a 2Mb SE under System 6.0.5.
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