More Apple Bits

Apple has been busy with System 7.0, TrueType negotiations, HyperCard’s transfer to Claris, and the like, but they continue to do interesting things. First off, if you’ve ever watched a TV show that had a Mac with a color monitor on it, you probably noticed how terrible the monitor looked. That’s because the scan rate of the color monitors is 67 Hz while the NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) standard is 30Hz. The scan rates don’t match; thus the flicker. To fix this problem and improve their look on television, Apple introduced a $35 cdev called VideoSync. VideoSync eliminates the flicker by changing the scan rate of the color monitor to 60 Hz (double the NTSC rate). VideoSync works with 13" color monitors driven by Apple’s color video cards, though we suspect it will not work with third party cards. VideoSync is available through APDA (Apple Programmer’s & Developers Association) and comes with documentation.

We’ve received news that the Macs to be announced October 15th will indeed have built-in sound digitizers. It seems that Apple is pushing them for use with the voice mail capabilities recently made available in applications such as QuickMail and Microsoft Mail. Easy addition of voice clips to various parts of the Macintosh interface certainly wouldn’t be amiss either, since voice communications can be faster and clearer than written communication. Of course, voice can also be far more ambiguous as well, which is why verbal agreements are so unreliable. Well, maybe we’ll be able to count on a Mac keeping its word.

APDA — 800/282-2732

Information from:
Pythaeus
Adam C. Engst — TidBITS Editor

Related articles:
MacWEEK — 18-Sep-90, Vol. 4, #31, pg. 5