OrchardNest

This past April, 2021, Comcast/Xfinity Seattle increased the speed of its top-tier internet service from 1Gbps to 1.2Gbps. With the 20% over-provisioning that is common to Xfinity, this means that you can now expect download speeds of up...

Illustrator Plug-In Updates and New Scripting SupportI’ve updated all three of my plug-ins to support Adobe Illustrator 2021 (25.x). It’s hard to believe that Ai->XAML was released almost 16 years ago in July, 2005! Ai->Canvas was...

About a week ago, the prolific Marc Edwards tweeted: Seems like a simple question, but I can’t find an answer: Is there a single shortcut to duplicate an object in Illustrator? Like ⌘J in Ps.— Marc Edwards (@marcedwards) June 24,...

If you watched Apple’s September 9th Special Event when they introduced the upcoming iPad Pro, you may remember the segment around 35:05 where Microsoft demonstrated Excel and Word side-by-side using the new iOS 9 Split View...

Today, Apple released OS 1.0.1 for Apple Watch. Among a list of other updates, the release notes mention performance improvements for third-party apps. I was curious to see if this OS update fixed the disappearing status bar bug, and...

Fueled by your interest and encouragement from developers like Brian Gilham (curator of the very useful WatchKit Resources site), and the fact that I’ve already shipped my Apple Watch app, I’ve decided to share some interface controller...

I heard from many of you that my WatchKit Development Tips post was helpful. So, in the same vein, I’ve assembled a set of tips that pertain specifically to the use of images in a WatchKit app. I hope you can find at least one item that...

Update on 5/19/2015: Be sure to read about the Watch OS 1.0.1 Controller Life Cycle Changes There seem to be a lot of questions about the order of WKInterfaceController events and how those events relate to the NSExtensionContext...

I’ve been working full-time on the Apple Watch component of my new WhereNotes app since mid-January. I was also fortunate to be invited to (and attend) an Apple Watch Lab in Cupertino. Over the past three-and-a-half months, I’ve assembled...

Today, Instagram announced an app called Layout from Instagram. It’s described as “a new app that lets you easily combine multiple photos into a single image.” In 2012, I released an Apple Editors’ Choice app called Layout that lets you...

For the past few years, I’ve received an almost-weekly e-mail about my old Adobe Illustrator to XAML export plug-in. It usually begins with something like: “I just upgraded to Illustrator version (later than CS4), and I...

I’ve spent the past few months updating all of my apps to be compatible with iOS 8. In the case of Halftone 2, I wanted to make sure that it took full advantage of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus screen dimensions at launch. All I...

As I mentioned almost exactly one year ago, Adobe approved a request to open source my Ai->Canvas Illustrator plug-in. Since the initial release of the plug-in in 2010, it has always been my intent to release the source code, but the...

Apple introduced iOS support for Auto Layout in iOS 6.0, and while it wasn’t love at first sight, I eventually came to appreciate the power and flexibility of NSLayoutConstraint. I’m one of those developers who doesn’t...

Last week, I released a Photoshop script that I’ve been using to make icons and rounded rectangles for my iOS 7 app updates. The script generates shapes using values that I reverse-engineered from Apple’s UIBezierPath class. If...

When Apple revealed iOS 7 at this year’s WWDC, it was obvious that the new app icons had a more rounded rectangular shape. I was happy to see the improvement, because the old shape had an awkward transition between the rounded corners and...

I’ve ported my Adobe Illustrator to HTML5 canvas export plug-in to work with Illustrator CC, and while I was at it, I added support for gradient stop opacities and non-zero/even-odd fill rules. I know that many of you are still...

I attended Apple’s WWDC 2013 event in San Francisco last week, and I spent a lot of time talking to fellow developers and designers. As we shared tips and techniques, there were a few topics that repeatedly came up regarding my Halftone 2...

For the past eight months, I’ve been working full-time on the development of Halftone 2, a follow-up to Halftone. The app was released on May 23rd as an Apple Editors’ Choice, and since its availability, I’ve received many one-star reviews...

As many of you know, my Halftone app was featured by Starbucks as its Pick of the Week this past August. I visit Starbucks daily for my morning caffeine fix, and over the course of a couple weeks, I managed to collect a small stack of the...

Update on 7/18/2013: An updated version of the Ai->Canvas plug-in is now available for CS6 and CC. My Ai->Canvas Plug-In (short introductory video) was released almost two years ago, yet I still hear from developers and designers who...

I’ve been heads-down working on my next Juicy Bits app, and it was just approved by Apple tonight. If all goes according to plan, it’ll be released in the next week or two. Watch for it. While I’m not ready to reveal the app name, I do...