AlphaBaby is a nice little program, and its price is right, but the shapes and sounds it uses are very simple, and did not hold my toddler's interest for long.
BabySafe offers a much richer experience:
- letters and numbers the child hits on the keyboard are displayed on the screen and spoken with charming sampled childrens' voices
- photographic images of people, animals, and objects of interest to toddlers are displayed on the screen
- if so configured, pictures from your iPhoto library will also be displayed on the screen, as well, a particularly nice feature
BabySafe II has been stable for me, and my daughter loves it. I like to use it as a learning tool, naming the pictures displayed or (now that she's older) asking her to name them. My only complaints would be:
- it can run sluggishly on my PowerBook G3/400, getting far behind on processing keystrokes, and making me wait to exit the protected mode
- it is certainly not impossible that a toddler will at random type one of the many supported words for exiting the protected mode
- at times it can be too compelling; I can't get my computer back!