TOKYO (MacHouse) – Yes, we are back to software development after sending the main machine to Apple, Inc. If you remember our last public announcement, it was supposed to be a simple fix for light burns that were found on the lower side of the iMac display. And we wanted to send this 2013 iMac to Apple before its one-year warranty expired. In fact, it’s his one year birthday today. It’s nice to have a one-year warranty to fix broken parts. And an Apple tech guy actually fixed something that we didn’t asked for. They said they detected an unusual noise coming out of the power supply unit. It’s very nice of them to run a diagnostic test to see everything is all right. The scary part is that we could have ended up with another broken iMac if we had not sent it to Apple with unnoticeable burns. If you remember what happened to us exactly one year ago, we had to send a 2011 iMac to Apple for repair. And they discovered that an internal speaker (just one of them) and an internal DVD drive were broken. That’s why we ended up buying that 2013 iMac in the first place.

Anyway, we submitted our first software title of the month to Apple’s Mac App Store a few hours ago. This new software release is called TextAround2. TextAround2 is the second major release of a desktop application that lets you create a text image along a circular path. It’s been developed from a scratch with several new features. You now have an option of laying a text image on a circular path or a horizontal path. The user no longer has to manually create a color gradation map. The application comes with a built-in library containing more than 100 color styles. The second release also lets you generate a bunch of text images in rotation for the purpose of creating an animation movie.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – We hereby announce that our software support hours will be reduced, starting on Aug 29, 2014. It’ll start at 02:00 AM (PST), 10:00 AM (London), 01:00 PM (Moscow), 06:00 PM (Tokyo), 07:00 PM (Sydney), 05:00 AM (New York), 06:00 AM (São Paulo). While software support hours are reduced, we will not be able to fix software and send updates to Mac App Store. Our reduced software support hours are expected to last till Wednesday, September 3rd.

It was almost one year ago from today that one of our machines experienced a terrible hardware issue. A defective video card was the cause, and Apple, Inc. fixed this 2011 iMac model with free of charge. But that wasn’t all. Apple hardware people told us that the internal CD drive and one of the audio speakers also malfunctioned and that the motherboard would have to be replaced. There was a sign that there was something wrong with this machine. There was a huge burn on the right-hand side of the display, exactly at the spot where the internal CD drive is located inside. And we were forced to buy a new machine.

The picture above comes from that new machine we purchased on September 3rd, 2014. 2014? Really!? Yes, that’s not a mistake. It’s not even one year old. When I was developing Blinders, I saw noticeable burns on the lower side of the display. Not again… So we are going to send this machine to Apple, Inc before its one-year warranty wears out. It is only this machine that has a developer certificate, which is required to send software updates to Mac App Store.

Sadly, this isn’t the first Apple product that didn’t last for three years without a repair for us. Only one of our five hardware products from Apple has survived without a repair for more than three years.

TOKYO (MacHouse) – We suddenly came back at the beginning of this month after a short summer break. So far, we’ve released three software titles. And we submitted the 4th software title of the month to Mac App Store several hours ago.

Drawing the background pattern of an NSView or a UIView object with a uniform color is too simple. If you are developing OS X applications, you can use NSGradient. Or create a CGGradient object with the CGGradientCreateWithColorComponents function to realize color gradation for iOS applications. But how do we translate colors and their relative positions that we visually select with the mouse in the graphic user interface into Objective-C code? Gradiest offers a simple solution to creating color gradation maps and then translating corresponding color values and positions into lines of Objective-C code. You have an option of generating a mutable array (NSMutableArray) with color values and positions as dictionary keys (NSMutableDictionary) or generating float arrays that can be easily used with the CGGradientCreateWithColorComponents function to create a CGGradient object for iOS applications.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – Let’s say that you work for a company. Or there are several people coming by daily. What would you do if you have to leave your desk for several minutes?

1. Just several minutes? I’ll leave my Mac as it is.
2. I have some important stuff. So I’ll turn off the computer.
3. I’ll put the computer to sleep.

Blinders will give you another option. It’s a desktop application that we submitted to Mac App Store a few hours ago.   Continue reading →

TOKYO (MacHouse) – As you probably know, Mac OS X gives you access to beautiful emoji symbols. Some of emoji pictures are quite cute. You can explore hundreds of them by choosing Edit > Special Characters over TextEdit.

ePics is a new desktop application that we submitted to Mac App Store several hours ago. It gives you access to more than 750 emoji symbols and lets you save them as image files. All emoji symbols are divided into seven groups. Explore seven toolbar buttons and pick emoji symbols you are interested in. Then double-click to store the selected one. You can save the currently-selected emoji symbol in the top storage box as an image file by just clicking on the Export toolbar button. You can also save emoji pictures in the storage box all a time by choosing Export All under File.   Continue reading →