Over time, Apple has given us quite a few tools that make graphic design easier for us to do in our own apps. Unfortunately, we’ve come to rely on our fellow graphic designers to do a lot of the grunt work for us, even though tools like Xcode 6 give us the capability to do it ourselves. Hopefully, with this article, we can learn some things that can prevent our fellow graphic designers from going postal and doing things like printing out 1x, 2x, and 3x image assets on paper and stapling them to our faces.
Custom US-Polish Keyboard (for OS X) (14 Dec 2015)
If you wish to write in different languages on OS X, one approach is to add as many keyboards as you need in System Preferences and then swap between them using ⌥⌘Space. One setback is that cycling between keyboards is time consuming, a larger problem is that punctuation and symbol keys can be remapped to completely different keys - just compare the U.S. and German keyboards!
Making an SKLabelNode Clickable (02 Dec 2015)
One of the limitations of SpriteKit over other Game Engines and Frameworks is that it comes without any User Interaction elements built in, while it is expensive (and potentially dangerous - but more on that in the future) in mixing UIKit and presenting different views.
αბц for OSX (17 Jul 2015)
A few months ago I wrote about αბц (Alphabets, pronounced Alphabaytz), a simple alphabet learning application for iOS, focusing on the Georgian and Armenian alphabets. Well in a few days I’ll be landing in Western Georgia and taught it’d be a good idea to revisit this idea.
Aspector / Conjugator (29 Jun 2015)
A few months back I spoke about Declinator, an application game for testing one’s command of the various noun and adjective declinations for Russian. Today I want to introduce Aspector and Conjugator, two impromptu applications I have just created.
Inter-device Audio Mode (17 Jun 2015)
For musicians and those who code iOS music apps, one interesting development for iOS9 and OSX 10.11 is the forthcoming Inter-device Audio Mode, discussed during the ‘What’s New in Core Audio’ (from 37m20s onwards) talk at WWDC 2015.
Return of the Hackintosh? (11 Mar 2015)
While studying experimental music, I started using Macs at university in 2009. I then bought a second-hand iMac in 2010 followed by a second-hand MacBook in 2011. With Apple moving arguably more towards the consumer end of the computer market with more compact and non-user upgradable devices, in 2012 and 2013 I decided to invest in a Mac Mini and a non-retina MacBook Pro. With Apple’s announcement yesterday of the new, ultra-slim yet vastly underpowered 12” MacBook Pro, and the inevitability that sometime in the next three years I will need to update my hardware again, I have begun hypothetically considering what direction I would explore.
MIDI over Bluetooth LE between iOS 8 and OSX 10.10 (20 Feb 2015)
While studying my MFA, I designed the application kontrolr so that I could control Ableton Live and Max for Live modules directly using MIDI from my iPad and a MIDI-USB cable. Although this functions perfectly fine, and is better than OSC and a wireless router or WAP, the cable is somewhat inconvenient I must admit. Since the announcement of Bluetooth LE and iOS 7, I’ve been meaning to add MIDI over Bluetooth support, but never got the chance. Today I was browsing through WWDC 2014 topics and discovered Core Audio updates which actually effortless allow MIDI over Bluetooth LE between iOS 8 and OSX 10.10 devices.
A Declension Game Idea (09 Feb 2015)
On Friday I spoke about αბц, an alphabet learning application I created to help me learn the Georgian alphabet. However, αბц isn’t the only application I’ve designed to aid language learning, and Declinator is one such other example.
Code Signing OSX Applications using the Terminal (25 Feb 2014) Xcode easily allows one to sign (using an Apple Developers Account) an application or installer by selecting the relevant certificate in the Project’s general settings. However, what if you are building the project outside Xcode? Luckily there is the codesign terminal command
Creating a Quick Look plugin (26 Jan 2014)
A tutorial on how to create a Quick Look plugin for Mac OSX and associate a custom file type with that plugin.
Native Notifications on OSX 10.8+ (18 Dec 2013)
Since the introduction of Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8), Notification Center and Notifications are possible for native applications on OSX just like on iOS.