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MacFonts would be ideal for anyone who loves the almost infinite variety of modern TrueType fonts.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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Unique OS X software from MacXWare


March 24, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   When I switched from Windows to a Macintosh OS X computer, I was worried that I would have a hard time finding OS X versions of the kind of software I was used to running under Windows. My worries turned out to be groundless. Top-quality software from Microsoft, Adobe, AOL, Netscape, Apple and many other companies was easy to find and worked well.
   But what proved to be a genuine surprise was the wealth of top-quality software from smaller companies. Some of these smaller companies are well known, such as Roxio, which makes some of the world's best CD- and DVD-creation software, but others are new to many OS X users.
   MacXWare (www.macxware.com), a software maker in Omaha,Neb., is one of those newcomers. I tried five of the company's OS X programs and found two of them outstanding; the others were good, but have tough competition from similar software from other sources.
   The two that I liked most are MacFonts ($30), a collection of hundreds of unique TrueType fonts that includes a font installer, and LogoCreator ($40), a program that gives you an easy way to produce slick looking corporate or club logos. (Logos, or logotypes, are identifying symbols used on letterheads, signs, business cards and so on.)
   I wasn't as impressed with two mainstream programs, a video and audio producer called MediaEdit Pro ($40) and an image editor, PhotoEdit ($30). A program of interest to anyone who makes training or demonstration material is ScreenRecord ($25), which can create still images or videos from anything shown on an OS X screen.
   I recommend MacFonts -- which installs on older Macs as well as on OS X models -- to anyone who loves the almost infinite variety of modern TrueType fonts. A printed booklet shows each font, but I worked with MacFonts for weeks before I realized they were shown in the booklet. The font installer showed them so well that I never felt the need for printed versions.
   As is common in just about every extra-value font collection, MacFonts has a lot of cute but mostly useless fonts such as ones that look like mountain peaks with snow on top, letters that slant the wrong way and candy-cane characters that look good enough to eat. (I love fonts like that and hate them at the same time, if you know what I mean.)
   But there are dozens and dozens of great "normal" fonts, too. This could well be the best collection of Mac fonts you can buy without getting a loan.
   MediaEdit Pro and PhotoEdit aren't bad. They're cleverly designed and fairly easy to use. Because I do a lot of video editing and image processing, I'm probably set in my ways and therefore prefer the software I've been using rather than any new software for those tasks. (The fact that I'm about to turn 61 might be part of the problem, too. I tend to like what I'm used to.)
   But one aspect I liked about MediaEdit Pro is its collection of special video effects. Cool videos can be fun.