Author: dsellers

Apple has scheduled downtime for iTunes Connect from Dec. 23-27, so its employees can celebrate the holidays. iTunes Connect is a suite of web-based tools for managing content sold on iTunes, the iBooks Store, and the various app stores. 

New apps and app updates won’t be accepted during those dates, so any releases should be submitted, approved, and scheduled in advance. Other iTunes Connect and developer account features will remain available.

Apple has released the fifth beta version of iOS 11.2, the fifth beta of macOS 10.13.2, and a tvOS 11.2 beta. Developers can download the betas through the Apple Developer Center or the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.

Jumsoft has debuted Toolbox for MS Office 1.0 (https://tinyurl.com/y7ybcdo3), an addition to their productivity suite for iOS devices. Toolbox for MS Office contains a vast variety of professional and stylish templates of Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, infographics, decorative artwork and icons.

Apple has opened registration for thousands of free Hour of Code sessions available at all Apple Stores from Dec. 4-10. The company also introduced a new educational challenge in Swift Playgrounds and added new teacher resources to the Everyone Can Code curriculum to help teach Swift, Apple’s programming language.

B-Eng has introduced Similar Pic Finder 1.0, a duplicate image discovery utility for macOS. It tracks down duplicates and copies of pictures.

The tool leverages three proprietary, dedicated algorithms to locate duplicates of images on a drive, independent of their name. The algorithms are optimized for different tasks. . A contour based algorithm takes care of focus base search, with a second specialized algorithm that traces colors and color gradients, while a fingerprint algorithm is able to ignore different sizes of images that are to be compared.