TOKYO (MacHouse) – This year is almost over. It’s been a terrible year for me since my beloved mother passed away at the beginning of last November. Anyway, before a new year starts in several days, let me announce I submitted a new software title to Mac App Store several few hours ago. I would never have been able to complete this new release without Apple Developer Technical Support’s (DTS) assistance. This new release is called Text 1-2-3D.

Text 1-2-3D is a desktop application that utilizes the SceneKit framework (a group of APIs) that lets you create 3D text objects over a 2D scene plane. There is no limitation as to how many 3D text objects you can create. Grab a 3D text object, which you freely move with your mouse pointer around the scene canvas. Adjust the position of the light source and also change light types to illuminate text objects dramatically. You have an option of showing or not showing a floor that displays the reflections of 3D text objects.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – I’m very slow this month partly due to the family tragedy that occurred last month. Yet, I’m finally ready to introduce the second software title of the month, which I submitted to Mac App Store a few hours ago. This new release is called AskKey Essential.

AskKey Essential is a desktop application that comes with a status menu. It gives you quick access to common characters and their corresponding ASCII code numbers or HTML notations. Regardless of the development platform, ASCII code numbers are important for software developers. It’ll be sometimes easier for them to produce a particular character with a code number, depending on the programming language they work with.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – It’s been one month and two weeks since I submitted a software title to Apple‘s Mac App Store. It’s been a long time, considering that I used to release 4 to 5 applications every month. The thing is that my mother passed away all of a suddent at the beginning of last November. As a result, I lost my will to develop Mac applications. Wait, wait a minute… I just submitted the first software title of the month to Mac App Store a few hours ago. It’s called tiffPack.

For those who use Xcode 5 or 6 to develop Mac applications, it’s not a secret that Xcode combines a non-Retina image and a Retina image (@2x) into a tiff file. That’s what you see if you explore an application package. Xcode will create a tiff container file even when you have a non-Retina and a Retina image in JPEG.

tiffPack is a desktop application that lets you batch-create TIFF packages. An advantage of using tiffPack is that it’ll take this application Retina images (72 dpi x 72 dpi) only to create TIFF containers.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – My household refrigerator is big and full of sticky notes. There are phone numbers posted here and there. Which household doesn’t have a refrigerator with some kid drawings and pictures? If you wish you had a desktop screen just like that with pictures and phone numbers, try an application called Scrapboard, which we submitted to Mac App Store just about a few hours ago.

Scrapboard is a desktop application whose window looks just like a bulletin board. It’s a virtual bulletin board where you can post pictures, text notes, schedule notes with events and dates. You can freely grab and then move a post anywhere around this resizable personal information board. How do you create a picture post? All you have to do is drag and drop a picture right onto the scrap board. Can you handle that? Create a post by specifying the date of an event. Let Scrapboard monitor your events so that you will be reminded of events that are soon to arrive. Create a backup data file easily and share your data across different computers.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – It’s been more than two weeks since we introduced the last software title, hasn’t it? What have we been up to lately? We’ve been learning to use a totally new framework. It’s the Scene Kit framework. This framework lets us work with 3D graphics. Speaking of Scene Kit, we submitted a new software title that implements it to Mac App Store a few hours ago. This new release is called Planet Factory.

Planet Factory is a desktop application that lets you graphically design a solar system of your own. The application implements SceneKit, an Objective-C framework for realizing 3D graphics, so that the user can 3D plot planets on a 2D canvas. You have a cameara that captures the entire scene at a distance involving planets and a light source, the sun. Planet Factory doesn’t just let you plot planets. You can easily save the entire solar system that a camera captures to your disk as a picture. You can of course create a single planet and then save that planet to your disk as a picture as well.   Continue reading →