I don’t know why I haven’t noticed this before, and surely I’m not the first, but if squircle jail is so important, why isn’t the trash also shoved in one?
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Gus Mueller
@ccgus@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Digital carpenter, pixel mechanic. Programmer at Flying Meat. I wrote Acorn, Retrobatch, VoodooPad, FlySketch, FMDB, FMJS & CocoaScript. Probably more.
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Joined August 15, 2018
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I swear I must visit @marioguzman@mastodon.social’s layout guidelines for MacOS once a week: https://marioaguzman.github.io/design/layoutguidelines/
The latest MacOS 27 update has some funky Metal changes in it (I think). Selections in Acorn have turned into an EDR techno dance venue of some sort.
Ran all of Acorn’s regression tests on MacOS 27, and other than some minor compositing changes, everything passed.
That’s a good sign, and I hope there’s not a lot to fix for this release.
This is a pretty good time waster: https://tinywind.io/play?firstvisit=1
It’s time for a MacOS version report on Acorn 8:
MacOS 14: ~2%
MacOS 15: ~19%
MacOS 26: ~73%
MacOS 27: ~5%
Yes, it adds up to 99%. I took out some decimals. Sue me.
MacOS 27 folks, I appreciate you. Please file bugs if you find any.
Also, if you got FM’s latest newsletter, you would have known about this $10 off coupon: <https://flyingmeat.com/store/index.cgi?couponid=acorn86>
I was reading Bartosz Ciechanowski’s post on color profiles (<https://ciechanow.ski/color-spaces/>, via @atpfm@mastodon.social ) and was reminded about how cool OKLAB is and that sent me on a side quest which resulted in the Acorn 8.5 beta now supporting different interpolations for the linear multi-stop gradient filter. OKLAB is amazing, you want that one: <https://flyingmeat.com/download/latest/>
A little mind wondering post about a new AI built app in Rust for the Mac. Tolaria, Rust, and Questions About What Makes a Mac App Feel Good to Me: <https://shapeof.com/archives/2026/4/tolaria_ai_and_rust.html>
I’m back! (You had no idea I was gone though). Here’s a pic of where I wish I still was.
Whoa: <https://terathon.com/blog/decade-slug.html>
> What is now known as the Slug Algorithm for rendering fonts directly from Bézier curves on the GPU was developed in the Fall of 2016, so this year marks a full decade since its inception.
…
> Therefore, effective today, I am permanently and irrevocably dedicating the Slug patent to the public domain.
It’s kind of wild seeing where HDR images show up randomly in MacOS when using the Studio Display XDR. It’s so f’n bright, and you can’t take a screenshot of it to show it to someone else!
There needs to be a German word for when you find dumb show stopping bugs in your app as you’re working on the documentation for the release you’ve already submitted to the App Store, and then you need to reject it and start over again.
Anyway, Acorn 8.5 is hopefully coming soon.
Acorn 8.5 is out! Bendable arrows, SVG things, UI things, other … things: <https://shapeof.com/archives/2026/4/acorn_8.5_is_out.html>
Wearing a DF hoodie.
I’ve been rewriting Acorn’s brush tool to use Metal shaders for the upcoming release of v8.6. It’s amazingly fast!
I also had it do linear blending so green on red strokes don't cause dark fringes.
And the smudge tool? :chefs kiss: It fees amazing.
Give it a spin: <https://flyingmeat.com/download/latest/>
The Journal app on the Mac is … not great.
I launch it, it shows my last entry I wrote. Which is good.
I hit ⌘N to make a new entry. Nothing. File ▸ New Entry is disabled. Why? I have no idea. I have to hit the back chevron to view the journal entries list, and then it’ll validate.
Not good. Such a bad port of an iOS app. Apple used to do better.
Say Hello to Acorn 8: https://shapeof.com/archives/2024/12/say_hello_to_acorn_8.html
Mask Subject, Remove Background, LUTs, Data Merge, Quick Processor, Canvas Ruler, new shape tools, Export Presets, SVG improvements, QOL things, in/cm support in all the UI, Shortcuts rewritten to use App Intents, JPEG-XL support, Live Text. And more.
It's on sale for a limited time, so grab it at a discount while you can: https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/
Acorn is one of the few remaining independent full featured image editors left, built just for macOS.
Boosted by @octothorpe@mastodon.online
It's Friday night so I'm hacking around on Acorn a little bit and I stumble upon a giant speed boost to shape layers because past Gus just assumed things on ARM worked the same on Intel, or at least didn't check up on some prior assumptions.
Anyway, shape layers are hella faster (~3x faster at drawing on my Mac) in the 8.4 betas: https://flyingmeat.com/download/latest/
I’ve been closing super old Acorn bug reports on SVG parsing things, which the next release (8.5) does now.
I feel kind of bad saying “it’s fixed now, 5-8 years later!”, but I suppose it’s better late than never.
Shape of ▸ Greg Knauss Is Losing Himself:
<https://shapeof.com/archives/2026/2/greg_knauss_is_losing_himself.html>
Replying to
Well thanks to @sdpd, I think this answers the Java to Objective-C question: https://developers.google.com/j2objc
I should boot up my Apple //c today.
@marioguzman@mastodon.social It’s a nice framework. It’s amazing how much they got right from the very start.
I thought I was horrible, but apparently I’m in the top 1%: https://dialed.gg/?c=UDAKRW
CasNum is pretty amazing: https://github.com/0x0mer/CasNum
> "Most modern developers are content with a + b. They don't want to work for it. They don't want to see the midpoint being birthed from the intersection of two circles. CasNum is for the developer who believes that if you didn't have to solve a 4th-degree polynomial just to increment a loop counter, you didn't really increment it."
Replying to
@Drarok Maybe! Something tells me that Google would write their own transpiler though, because they are mad scientists at heart.
Guitar stuff: just bought another Klon clone, this time a NOTAKLÖN. Surely this one will be the best.
Some Crop Keyboard Shortcuts in Acorn: https://shapeof.com/archives/2026/4/some_crop_shortcuts_in_acorn.html
Replying to
@griotspeak Oh you got a notadumble as well?! It’s such a good little pedal, I’m glad I managed to snag one before JHS said “whoops”.
Replying to
@ctietze Nope, just where some memory was stored, or at least how it was accessed. The pixels for shape layers are now backed by whatever IOSurface uses. Previously it was by whatever CGBitmapContext used - and for some reason access, or at least drawing to it, is way faster. Even though it all uses the same shared memory?! Computers are hard.
From the FM blog - A Quick Tip for Cropping a Single Layer: https://flyingmeat.com/blog/archives/2023/5/quick_tip_for_cropping_a_single_layer.html
TLDR: Commit the crop action with the option key down.
You can of course get the same effect using the select tool, using the Select ▸ Inverse menu item, and then pressing the delete key. But our minds all work a little different so it's nice to have multiple ways of doing something.
Replying to
@drewish Most tutorials for Photoshop will work, like this one: https://medialoot.com/blog/how-to-simulate-film-grain/
I packaged that up in a little filter if you'd like to see my take on it: https://flyingmeat.com/stuff/FilmGrain.acstyle.zip
Apply that style to a blank new layer.
Replying to
@rdrhyne Ooof. Get well soon!
Also the bottom part of that collar look like Mater’s teeth (from Cars), so I’m just going to call you Mater from now on.
Replying to
@mrudokas Does it look similar to what you find here?
There’s a red to green option on the right side of the color picker.
@Gte@mastodon.social Maybe?! It’s sooooooo much better. I want CoreGraphics to support it as well (though - check this out if you’ve never seen CGShading before: <https://gist.github.com/ccgus/adfa97ab27fe79b05e0551645df05bad> )