Although FM is now primarily a PC product, the alpha versions of FUNdaMENTAL were created for Macintosh. That made sense at the time since many U.S. schools at that time (early 90's) were running Mac systems exclusively, and FM was designed as an instructional tool.
Then Futurekids, Inc., entered the scene. Futurekids, an international chain of computer camps and training centers, loved FM and offered to write a curriculum to include in their summer camp offerings. Most FutureKids centers at that time had PC's. Since they were our first big customer, we immediately switched the development emphasis to the PC version of FM. Because of this PC focus, a few bugs still remained in the Mac version when the dual platform cd was released in May of '97.
At the time we had plans for further development and product upgrades. But shortly after the first release, development on FUNdaMENTAL was discontinued so the company could pursue new directions with Homestead.com.
If you choose to use the Macintosh version of FUNdaMENTAL, you will notice the following things: 1. The Teachers Manual is written for PC users. That means that the keyboard shortcuts and navigation instructions will need to be adapted. The information in this section of the Lounge should help. With a couple of small exceptions (see number 2 below), all aspects of the internal FM interface are identical to that of the PC version. Once you get past the first two or three instructions in the practice exercises, everything in the manual applies equally to Mac and PC users.
2. The procedures for importing graphics and sounds are slightly different on the Mac. You'll find adapted instructions in this section. Just click here for graphics, and here for sounds.
3. In the Macintosh version, several of the edit menu functions are not enabled for the Task window. Disabled functions: Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear. This means you can't copy and paste sections of your program code, which can be inconvenient. But as one instructor recently noted, it just makes kids all that much more eager to learn about Loop commands! And please note that Copy and Paste ARE enabled in the Graphics Library, so you can still use them to bring in your handmade graphics.
4. The Macintosh version is generally less stable. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of working with FM on the Mac, especially since most people report crashing problems related to running programs. We know it is very frustrating for programmers who are trying to see their work to have to restart the whole application, and for this we are very sorry! We're trying to gather as much information as possible about the specific conditions that cause FM Mac programs to crash. If you or your students are having this problem, please contact us and let us know as much as possible about what's going on. If you can send us an archive of the programs that trigger the problem, that's the biggest help of all!
|