Computers: The New Breeds of Software

Programs for making art, probing minds, dabbling in pork bellies

Computer buffs have thousands of exotic software packages to choose from, but most of them still use their machines largely for five basic tasks: writing, calculating, drawing graphs, organizing data and sending messages over telephone lines. Until recently, the biggest news in software was the arrival of programs like Ashton-Tate's Framework or Lotus' Symphony and Jazz that can do all five jobs at once. Now, however, programs designed for quite different uses have begun to catch on. Among them:

ELECTRONIC ART. MacPaint, which works on the Apple Macintosh, seems to have opened up a new artistic world on personal computers. Using...

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