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 v2.0
Official review of the latest registered version
"A graphical working environment of which users can be justly proud"
(by Nick Ridley)
When Edge Magazine published two pictures comparing
the Amiga Workbench to the Apple Mac Desktop it made me feel quite ill.
Why was that? The Amiga shot they showed was a beautiful black and white
picture of the default Workbench being run on a high-resolution screen, and
so it looked horrible. Many Amiga owners know that they do not have to put
up with an environment like that since MagicWB has been available for quite
some time. It has steadily become accepted throughout the Amiga community,
it seems, as THE replacement icon scheme, as more and more shareware and
Public Domain software comes with MagicWB style icons. (..)
One of the first things that strikes you about the MagicWB2 package is the
standard of presentation. The disk icon for the install floppy is very
striking and introduces the MagicWB logo. Having unarchived the disk, you
should have a directory on your hard disk which contains the package. On
opening this drawer you will immediately notice how carefully all the icons
and windows have been arranged - real care has been taken here.
The real test of the package is how well the install routine works, though.
Previous versions had an odd quirk or two, though it is no wonder - no two
people have their Workbench partitions set up identically, so any install
program has to be moderately intelligent. It is on this point that I can
forgive the author for not using the Commodore Installer utility, as
perhaps it was not flexible enough for his purposes. (..)
The installer program does its job very well, and I uncovered no problems
at all. In theory, I was updating my installation from version 1.2, but I
can not see that there would be any problems. Those curious to know
precisely what the program is doing can find rough details of what is going
on in the documentation.
 Summary
MagicWB2 is very much a major upgrade to previous releases, and the
list of changes in the documentation makes interesting reading - many things have
been adjusted, and it is by no means just a case of a few newly designed
icons being added here and there. (..)
Magic Workbench is beautiful - it will transform your Workbench environment
totally. For those who concentrate more on working from within shells, it
is probably a waste of disk space, but for anyone who takes pride in
snapshotting their windows neatly, this is an essential purchase.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about MagicWB is that it has already been
accepted as a standard, and so there are loads of MagicWB style icon and
background sets available in the Public Domain. (..)
 Comparison to similar products
There are other icon collections available for Workbench, though none of
them are to my knowledge as comprehensive or as good-looking as MagicWB.
If you are looking for a way to standardise the entire look of all your
icons, MagicWB is the perfect option. (..) I have no doubt that
soon the MagicWB look will be synonymous with the Amiga Workbench.
Vendor support
Martin Huttenloher responded quickly and professionally to all of my
enquiries about Magic Workbench (email used). He is dedicated to supporting
and developing MagicWB further, and will gladly help design the odd icon for
spurious programs. If MagicWB2 sells well he promises to look into
extending MagicWB from 8 to 16 colours (only required at present by Magic
Copper).
 Conclusions
For anyone who uses the Amiga Workbench seriously, a decent icon collection
is going to be an important purchase. They do not come any better than
this one (..) For anyone who has been using a previous version of MagicWB,
I strongly recommend that you purchase this upgrade, especially if you are
an AGA user.
My advice is that you go and download the demo of this package off Aminet
immediately, if only to get your hands on the SASG registration program.
And while you're at it, register Magic User Interface as well. MUI and
MagicWB used together give Amiga users a graphical working environment of
which they can be justly proud, and which outshines those of any other home
computer on the market.
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