Type of Article: MacNews News Article

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.

Toolfarm, a global distributor and reseller of video, VFX, 3D, and motion graphics software applications and plug-ins, has released the RenderGarden plug-in for Adobe After Effects CC on macOS and Windows. Developed by Mekajiki, it purportedly accelerates render speeds by as much as 3X.

It leverages existing system hardware processing power to improve the speed of motion graphics and visual effects workflows. RenderGarden is available from Toolfarm (www.toolfarm.com) at an manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $99.