Year: 2009

Intuit has announced QuickBooks 2010 for Mac. Due in late October at
a suggested retail price of US$199.95, it’s designed to give small
business owners new tools that help them be more productive and
profitable with the simplicity they expect from a Mac product. It has
over 40 enhancements.

Kiran Patel, executive vice president and general manager of Intuit’s
Small Business Group, says QuickBooks 2010 sports a faster setup
process. It reduces the number of set-up screens from 30 in the
previous version to two.

iPresentee (http://www.ipresentee.com), a developer of add-ons for
Apple’s iWork and iLife applications, has released Keynote Themes 6.0
and free Keynote themes to be used with Keynote. Keynote is Apple’s
presentation component of the US$79 iWork suite.

Keynote Themes 6.0 includes 10 new themes: Ornamental Map, Rest,
Green Town, Presentation, Futuristic, Dark Way, Blue World, Globe,
Puzzle and Green Bunch. . The new release extends iPresentee’s
Keynote themes collection up to 100 themes.

LaCie (http://www.lacie.com) has announced high-end speakers, modeled
after Cabasse’s loudspeaker technology — the LaCie Sound2 Speakers,
design by Neil Poulton. Cabasse is an acoustic engineering company.
The speakers are designed for use with any computer system or A/V
device.

Coupled with Cabasse’s loudspeaker driver support, the LaCie Sound2
Speakers provide premium sound quality to computers, according to
Alexis Kobassian, Product Manager..

Tycoon Games (http://www.winterwolves.com), the developer of dating
sim and visual novels, has announced the development of the sequel to
one of their most popular games, Heileen. It’s due for release in
November on Mac, PC and Linux platforms.

The game takes place on the mysterious Caribbean island where Heileen
was shipwrecked with a few of her friends at the end of the first
game. She stumbles upon a deck of tarot cards that represent the
seven deadly sins and the seven heavenly virtues.

ManiacTools (http://www.maniactools.com) has released MIDI to MP3
Converter for Mac OS X (10.5 and higher). The US$29.95 app lets you
convert MIDI files into into WAV or MP3. By using “SoundFonts,” it
can purportedly surpass the capabilities of a particular sound card,
producing tunes that sound better, compared to the computer’s usual
output.

Several SoundFonts can be used simultaneously, so the user is able to
assign individual SoundFonts to each instrument instead of using
ready-made General MIDI sets.