Earth to Mac....Earth to Mac....


You've taught the maid to water the garden for two hours each day,
and you come home to find her watering the garden in the middle of a downpour !

talk back ?

Now that your Mac has learned how to control things, like the "Sprinklers", and will neatly turn them on and off each day, it needs to know about things like:

"It's Raining".

You also might walk out into the garden and see that it could really need more water. It would be nice to have a simple button to push which would tell the Mac to give you another 15 minutes or so.

In both cases, your Mac "Needs Input" .

Some commercially available 'interfaces' are only capable of sending commands.
Some can both send and receive them.

This is the distinction between 'one-way' and 'two-way' systems.

This capability may cost another $100 or so, but it is much more powerful, and you will probably want it sooner than you think.

Giving your home a 'two-way' system is like
giving it eyes and ears and a mouth !

If you think that you only need the capability of turning things on and off by schedule or demand, then you do not need to buy the software and hardware to support the more complex system.

You can of course start with a simple 'one-way' system, and when you're ready for 'two-way', your Mac will adapt to the new 'interface' without any hassle.

You will need to purchase a version of XTension for the new interface, but all of the work you did with the simple system is recognized by the new version, and there is no change in the user interface !

OK, I'm still interested :

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Last modified: May 1, 2002
Michael Ferguson, webmaster@shed.com