Japanese Localization

We have the next release of Xslimmer ready to be delivered. We have been waiting for our localizers, who have diligently worked on the translations for French, Italian, Dutch and so on. For this next release we have included German. As each localization has been finished, we have prepared and tested the geometry to ensure that all localized versions of Xslimmer do look as good as the original English version. There is one missing, though.

Unfortunately, our Japanese translator is unable to comply with our request at this moment, so we need someone else to do the job of translating Xslimmer 1.5 to Japanese. If any of you are able to, or know of someone who could help us, we would be most grateful, and we could ensure a prompt release of Xslimmer 1.5. To contact us, use our web form. Many thanks!

Xslimmer is one year old

Xslimmer is one year old. During its first year of existence, Xslimmer has evolved a lot, and has gained quite a lot of friends. It has been downloaded, directly from our site, more than 150.000 times, we have answered more than 1.500 emails and a quite a few people have even bought the product.

It has been your support what has kept us coding, evolving Xslimmer. Your nice comments, suggestions, questions, purchases and even your demands have encouraged us to keep on working and trying to improve. We have put a lot of effort trying to make our software the best we possibly can, and it is really encouraging to see people realize it and appreciate it.

To all of you, thank you very much!

Sketches 0.4 beta 2 released

We have just released a minor revision of Sketches, our native iPhone app. We have removed a dependency with a dynamic library (libarmfp.dylib) that we took for granted, but was in fact installed by the BSD Package. This prevents new users from experiencing crashes when trying Sketches.app without having installed the BSD System first.

It looks like this is a common problem with many apps, more so as easier jailbreak methods are available that do not require the user to ssh into his iPhone or install any low-level command line tools.

Other than avoiding the frustration of new users, this new release does not add any new features. We have spent the last few weeks completely focused on the release of a fully 64-bit and Leopard compatible version of Xslimmer, which is an intermediate release before we finish the beta-testing and localization of what will become Xslimmer 1.5.

PS: Sketches works on your iPod Touch, too.

Xslimmer 1.2.6 is Out

Featuring support for 64-bit binaries in Leopard, we released a new version of Xslimmer yesterday. Xslimmer will now correctly recognize Universal Binaries that contain 64-bit code. It will keep the 64-bit version of the binary on 64-bit capable machines running Leopard, or the 32-bit version otherwise. In addition, non-Mac architectures are now correctly identified. The release notes are available in our download page.

If you use Time Machine, please exclude the Time Machine backup path in Xslimmer preferences. Even though Xslimmer will not slim Time Machine backup apps, it will analyze them when the Genie is launched, resulting in an overall performance decrease. To avoid this, simply exclude that TM path. A future Xslimmer release will automatically detect and exclude Time Machine folders.

This release is not to be confused with the one for which we are now in betatest period. We just borrowed some of its features, to ensure that Leopard was fully supported.

Enjoy Xslimmer and Leopard!

Xslimmer and Leopard

We are getting a good number of enquiries about Xslimmer's current version with Leopard. As far as we now, it should work fine: we have tested it out with all developer betas and it did.

Developers did not get the Leopard final build before the general public, so we are now in the process to test it thoroughly with the commercial release to see if there are any new issues we should cope with, although they are not anticipated so far.

On the other hand, apps in Leopard may contain additional architectures with 64-bit versions of the binaries in addition to the usual 32-bit versions. We are now beta testing a new Xslimmer release that is optimized for this situation. Hopefully, it will be released in a few days.

Interested in testing the new Xslimmer?

We have finally pushed the Xslimmer version to a few testers. This is the start of the private beta.

We would like to add a few more people to the beta testing group. So, if you are interested in testing the new Xslimmer version, and want to help us in giving it the finishing touches by sending us your comments or bug reports, please contact us.

Sketches, iPhone Drawing Fun

Edit: Sketches is available in the App Store since July 10th, 2008, as described in this newer blog post.

After a temporary shift of priorities, we have developed and released a beta version of our second app. But in this occasion, even though it runs under Mac OS, it is not a Mac application. It is an application for the iPhone.

Sketches, as the application is called, allows you to draw on the screen, select a picture from the photo album or shoot a photo to draw on top of it. It also has the ability to select pencils and colors, a library of stationery to use for your background, saving your work to the photo library (so that you can synchronize back to your computer), send to mail and undo. You can even erase your drawing by shaking your iPhone, as if it were an etch-a-sketch (see David Pogue demonstrating it).


Users have given Sketches rave reviews:

- "I'd like to congratulate you on creating this fine app. It is really useful and fun."

- "Everyone I show it to immediately turns into a little kid and enjoys the hell out of it."

- "Sketches .3 beta is awesome. It's definitely among the best 3rd party iPhone applications."

We really hope that Apple, one day, decides to open the iPhone platform to third party apps, Then, Sketches could be used by all iPhone users. And we, developers, could get all the right tools and documentation we need, so to make the iPhone an even greater device.

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