MacEdition Pro News : April 9, 2002: Sonnet slices, CSS feng shui and Bozo bashin’
by MacEdition Staff (feedback)
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Another subtle Sonnet price slice
Sonnet’s prices seem almost to be in freefall at the moment. That’s good news for Mac users, providing these price cuts are sustainable. Sonnet did choose an ominous date to announce its lower prices:
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA – April 1, 2002 – Sonnet Technologies, the worldwide market share leader in processor upgrade cards for Apple Macintosh® computers, lowers prices by as much as $50 on some of its most popular products. Price drops occur on not only Crescendo/PCI and Crescendo/7200 G3 upgrades, but also on the Tango™ FireWire®/USB PCI combo card.
Sonnet’s new lower prices in Crescendo/PCI upgrades are as follows: Crescendo/PCI G3 450/1M $149.95 (was $179.95) Crescendo/PCI G3 500/1M $199.95 (was $249.95)
[...]
Sonnet’s new lower prices in Crescendo/7200 upgrades are as follows:
Crescendo/7200 G3 400/512 $199.95 (was $229.95)
Crescendo/7200 G3 400/1M $249.95 (was $259.95)[...]
Sonnet’s new lower price on Tango FireWire/USB PCI combo card is $89.95 (was $99.95)
– Tango is compatible with all PCI-based Macintosh models and supports Mac OS 9.1 and OS X 10.1
For further information about product compatibility, check out Sonnet’s site. For PCI Mac models not officially supported for Mac OS X, there’s the Sonnet PCI OS X Installer for US$29.95, available at http://www.sonnettech.com/downloads/osx_upgrade_sw.html#installer.
(Oh yeah, we checked. It’s no April Fools’ prank.)
Position! Position! Position!
Western Civilisation, Pty. Ltd. (aka WestCiv), makers of Style Master, CSS gurus and Webmasters of the House of Style, have recently upgraded Layout Master to Version 1.1. In a nutshell, Layout Master takes the pain out of CSS positioning, but the press release explains it best:
... With CSS2, the web finally got page layout. With Layout Master, the web gets it right.
While hand-coding both HTML and CSS is relatively simple, when it comes to finely tuned page layouts with numerous positioned elements it can be infuriatingly complex. Getting a page exactly right can take real time and effort.
Enter Layout Master, a specialized tool for working quickly and intuitively with HTML elements and the CSS positioning properties. Using simple drag and drop and powerful properties editors, Layout Master is a complete and affordable solution for developing web page layouts.
[...]
With Layout Master developers can
- design flexible layouts using any units, including ems, percentages and pixels
- edit layouts with sophisticated editors, or drag and drop ease
- create extremely precise layouts by nudging elements using the arrow keys
- align and distribute elements using the kind of alignment editor you would expect in a page layout application
- add background colors, images and borders to any element
- easily add HTML, text or image elements to a layout by dragging and dropping
- edit the appearance properties of a page, including its background color and image.
- configure their own rulers, guides and grid
A fully featured 30-day demo can be downloaded from the company’s site, and the full application can be purchased for US$49.99.
Who the hell needs Intuit anyhow?
Aside from Intuit’s great and fearless CEO, Bill Campbell, warming a seat on Apple’s board of directors, Intuit hasn’t really seemed to be overly enthusiastic for the Macintosh. Quicken for Mac seems to have been left to wither on the vine – which is a shame since there’s a reasonable demand for personal finance apps (by anecdotal evidence, at least).
So, perhaps it’s just too difficult for Intuit to write something native for the new Mac OS X. Not so, according to Modeless Software, Inc., who has released Liquid Ledger, a finance app written in native Cocoa. Here’s some snippets from the press release:
Modeless Software, Inc. today announced the availability of Liquid Ledger, the first complete personal finance application based on the object-oriented Cocoa framework of Apple Computer’s Mac OS X operating system. Rooted in extensive user interface design research, Liquid Ledger is a comprehensive, user-friendly tool that enables consumers to effortlessly manage and analyse their personal finances on Mac OS X.
[...]
Product Features
[...]
- Record Bank Account and Credit Card Activity
- Track Income, Expenses, Investments, Assets and Liabilities
- Manage Foreign Currency Accounts
- Translate the Value of Foreign Currencies into a Designated Home Currency
- Track Capital Gains and Losses
- Obtain Summary Information with a Single Click
- Utilise Unlimited Undo/Redo Support
Liquid Ledger for Mac OS X is currently available for purchase online. The software retails for $40 USD and includes a 30-day, money-back guarantee.
As always, feedback from brave souls who’ve already ordered a copy is greatly appreciated. But based on the evidence so far, we have two words to say to Mr. Campbell: “Bite me.”
Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.