Apple IIe - Manual (Page 18)

Page 18 of 74 IIe
Printed: Tuesday, March 4, 2003 10:40:15 AM
PILOT lets you design your own courseware, or CAI (Computer-Aided Instruction).
More About Apples in Education
To get an idea of the number and variety of educational software packages available for the
Apple IIe, go to your local bookstore and thumb through one of the software directories that
describe and rank Apple II software.
Most software directories devote a whole chapter to
educational software. At last count there were over 3000 educational programs available for
the Apple IIe.
Entertainment
Don't be ashamed. Lots of people rationalize their purchase of a computer with talk of word
processing and home budgets, but the first program they buy features a pair of jaws chasing gum
drops through a maze.
There are all sorts of games for the Apple IIe, ranging from computer simulations of board
games like Chess to adventure games sophisticated simulations that put you in a dungeon or on a
remote island and challenge you to find the hidden treasure while avoiding monsters, booby
traps, and other pitfalls.
Graphics
Business graphics programs convert numerical information monthly forecasts, regional figures,
departmental budgets into presentation-quality bar, line, pie, and scatter graphs.
Graphics
generated with your Apple IIe can enhance presentations and even aid in business decisions
because pictures are easier to digest than statistics.
Less business-like graphics programs, like MousePaint™, turn your monitor into an easel
and your mouse into a paint brush, allowing you to create and save masterpieces.
A graphics
program is to an artist what a word processor is to a writer it encourages you to try out a
variety of approaches before you commit your drawing to a hard copy.
It makes it easy to
revise and rearrange until you're completely satisfied with your creation. For less artistic
types, there are graphics programs that come with a disk full of drawings that you can insert
into greeting cards, signs, and banners.
Home Finance
Home finance programs let you play what if... with your home budget the same way electronic
spreadsheet programs let financial planners play what if... with their multi-million-dollar
corporate budgets.
Here are some of the things you can do with a home finance program:
Figure out mortgage payments and depreciation on your house.
Keep track of tax and auto records.
Prepare budgets for your church group or charity.
Evaluate repayment schedules on a new home or car.
Weigh the relative merits of money market, T-bill, stock market, and other investments.
Spreadsheet Programs
The first software best seller for personal computers was a program called VisiCalc that
computerized spreadsheets those sheets of paper divided into rows and columns that are to
business people what legal pads are to lawyers.
With the traditional spreadsheet, accountants and others who had to deal in numbers filled in
their asset and liability figures in pencil.
Then, with the help of a calculator, they arrived