Measure 1.1 Press Release

November 3, 2009.

MEASURE 1.1 FOR MAC OS X

Measure is a unit-savvy calculator combined with a 3,400-item database of real-world numbers.

You can use it to convert meters to feet-and-inches, figure out what you would weigh on Mars, multiply kilowatts by years, compare population densities and boiling points, and find the square root of an acre. The possibilities are endless.

Screenshots and documentation are available at <http://www.UnitSoftware.com/>. Measure requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

How much would you weigh on Mars? What country has the highest population density? How big is a 5-acre circle? Measure makes it easy to find the answers. You can do calculations using your own data, or using data from the database, or any combination. Once you have a result, you can get some perspective on the answer by comparing it against similar values in the database.

Measure automatically tracks units of measurement for you, and you can construct complex units of measurement from the ones provided:

2 days plus 1 hour is 49 hours
5 volts times 2 amps is 10 watts
9.8 meters/second^2 times 1 minute is 588 meters/second
1 foot plus 1 second does not compute

The database contains over 3,400 items, including:

200+ basic units of measurement (997 including metric prefix variations),
65 unit categories ("kinds of units"),
all countries, and some other places,
all U.S. states, capitals of states, and some large cities of the world,
all known chemical elements, a few other substances,
planets, moons, and selected other astronomical items,
certain people (chosen, for example, because they are rich, famous, or infamous),
communication media, videotape formats, television standards,
vehicles, tall buildings, events, activities, snack foods, household items, and
equations relating to geometry, algebra, physics, money, and time.

WHAT'S NEW IN 1.1?

Text in all Measure windows is now smoother.
You can now enter a value and ask for it in specific units, all in one step, using "as" or "in". Examples:
- 2 hours as minutes
- room temperature in fahrenheit
- amount of water of earth's oceans as acre feet
- 18 inches as feet
"Convert" is smarter about which units to include in the results, taking the value into account. It generally includes any unit where the displayed value will be between 0.001 and 1,000, and any unit whose scale is within a factor of 1,000 of the original unit.
Measure chooses simpler units for results (in Best Units, and when finishing a computation). For example, the result will no longer be expressed as "dollar percent" or "dollars per percent", and "5 volts * 2 amps" is just "10 watts" (not "... foot pounds-force/minute").
Visual comparison bars: "Too large" messages now have red ellipses after them to fill in all the space, so they "look" large (for example, try "populations").
The database is expanded and updated.