2012

At Christmas StitchBuddy and its predecessors will celebrate their 5th birthday! I have started developing the first Quick Look for Janome JEF files in the Christmas season of 2007. Since then a remarkable track record of enhancements was built, mostly based on your feedback! To show my gratitude for your input, all updates were offered free of charge, but now I want to give even new users a hearty welcome:

For one week, from November 23rd to 30th, 2012, both StitchBuddy products are offered with a 70% discount: Get StitchBuddy for your Mac (USD 14.99), or for your iPad (USD 8.99), and enjoy your embroideries like never before.

As I announced on Facebook yesterday, StitchBuddy v2.4.5 is just released for both, Mac and iPad as a free update. In addition to some minor enhancements the new version is able to read Janome JPX design files, and adds WonderFil Splendor to the supported thread charts. Customers asked for both features, and I’m happy I could provide them.

Unfortunately the support for JPX files is not as smooth as I wanted it to be: As a matter of fact the file extension “.jpx” is already reserved by another file type: JPEG 2000, a graphic file, so Janome made a bad decision using the same extension for their embroidery designs. Implications for StitchBuddy can be found on the related support pages (Mac, iOS).

I’m currently looking into Janome’s JPX embroidery format: extracting stitches / threads seems quite easy, but I’m unsure about the image background which is used to layer JPX designs with graphics. Unfortunately I don’t have any Janome software and therefore no experiences with this feature on my own. @Horizon users: How are you using the new file format? Feel free to comment on StitchBuddy’s Facebook page.

Today Apple has released the new major release of iOS, with new maps, Siri for the iPad, Facebook integration, Passbook, and much, much more. I’m happy to announce that the current version of StitchBuddy HD is 100% compatible with iOS 6, so there is no reason not to update if you want to view or work on embroidery designs on the go…

Apple has just approved a new version of StitchBuddy HD, and I have updated the Mac version, too: Version 2.4.4 is now available for both platforms and supports Coats Rayon and Trilobal thread charts.

In addition the iPad app has a feature to highlight a selected thread, which makes it easier to identify where a specific color was used in a design.

What do you think about supporting different measurement units in StitchBuddy HD (mm vs. inch) and how to select them: With a separate option in the app’s settings to switch between both measurement units? Or is the iPad’s locale setting sufficient to identify the appropriate unit? Are you using inches with decimals or with fractions for embroideries? Please comment with your opinion on StitchBuddy’s Facebook page…

Today I’ve added a new feature to StitchBuddy HD, although it still needs some testing: In the color list a thread can be selected to be highlighted, leaving the other threads gray-scaled. This way it is much easier to identify where a specific thread is used, e. g. before changing its color.

In StitchBuddy for Mac this function is available for a long time, and it was missed by me and others on the iPad. Expect it to be incorporated into the next update of StitchBuddy HD…

Today I enlisted in Apple’s Mac Developer program to support the “Gatekeeper” security feature in OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion”: Unfortunately my iOS certificate was not sufficient to sign StitchBuddy for Mac.

I just uploaded a very, very, very minor release of the OS X app and its plugins: StitchBuddy v2.4.3 is now completely code-signed to comply with Gatekeeper of OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion”. In addition I tested all functions of StitchBuddy and the Quick Look / Spotlight plugins with the upcoming operating system, and everything is working flawless.

I should have known better then to look into StitchBuddy HD’s App Store reviews, as this system has two major shortcomings: First of all it does not allow developers to respond to comments, neither in the store nor directly by mail. Additionally people are more willing to leave reviews if they are not satisfied with a product, often leading to a mismatch between published reviews and the perception of all users. But StitchBuddy is barely two months released, so I’m still monitoring the reviews closely. But that’s another story and not the main reason for this blog entry.

Tonight, after one week „Waiting for review" a minor bugfix of StitchBuddy HD was approved by Apple. It addresses some issues that were identified by a customer using specific PES files. So far unknown color codes were included in these files, and selecting these caused the app to crash. Thanks for your help, Di!

Additionally I made some changes to improve the performance on the new iPad’s Retina display. Here’s a list of all changes: