Catloaf Software, Inc.

Announcing "Text With Jesus", Our Newest Innovation in Interactive Learning

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We have always been driven by a single mission: to create mobile applications that engage, educate, and inspire. Today, we’re excited to announce the latest innovation born from this mission: “Text With Jesus.”

“Text With Jesus” is a revolutionary new application that allows users to explore the biblical narratives like never before. Leveraging advanced AI technology, powered by the ChatGPT language model from OpenAI, the app offers an opportunity for users to engage in real-time text conversations with beloved figures from the Bible, including the Holy Family, Apostles, and various prophets from the Old Testament.

We envisioned an application that could offer an interactive and personal supplement to traditional Bible study methods, and we believe “Text With Jesus” does just that. With this app, users can ask questions, seek guidance, and engage in personal dialogues that deepen their understanding of their faith.

Beyond individual study, “Text With Jesus” can also serve as a valuable resource for small groups, Sunday School classes, and church sermons. It provides a unique platform to foster further discussion and reflection, making biblical study a more interactive and engaging process.

However, the appeal of “Text With Jesus” extends beyond just the Christian community. Given that the Bible is not only a religious text but also a cornerstone of Western literature and culture, anyone interested in literature, history, or philosophy may find “Text With Jesus” a fascinating tool to explore these age-old narratives in a fresh, modern way.

We are thrilled to make “Text With Jesus” available for download on the Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS platforms. With a clean, user-friendly interface, the app is designed to offer a seamless and enjoyable user experience. The app is a free download, with an optional in-app subscription to unlock unlimited messages and all Biblical figures.

At Catloaf Software, we are proud to continually push the boundaries of what’s possible in educational technology. “Text With Jesus” represents our latest effort to transform everyday learning experiences into interactive journeys of discovery.

We encourage everyone, regardless of their faith or background, to give “Text With Jesus” a try and experience the Bible like never before. As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback, and we look forward to continuing to innovate and serve our user community.

Stay tuned for future updates and new features as we continue to enhance your “Text With Jesus” experience!

New Texts From Bernie Sticker Pack for iMessage

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 07:53:00 +0000

Following the Presidential Inauguration earlier this week, which among other things produced the very prolific Bernie Mittens meme, we have now updated our Texts From Bernie app and added a new iMessage sticker pack.

Featured prominently among those new stickers is the iconic image of Bernie sitting with his mittens, which you can now easily paste all over your text conversations.

Enjoy! This is a new feature of our FREE app!

Texts From Trump App Has Been Removed

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:53:00 +0000

In light of recent events unfolding in Washington, we have decided to permanently retire our Texts From Donald Trump app from the iOS App Store.

As of today, the app is no longer available for download. Support will no longer be provided for the app and it will not see any further updates.

If you previously downloaded the app, it will continue to work on your devices as before. It will not be available to install on any new devices.

We humbly encourage you to try out our Texts From Founding Fathers app instead, which provides much of the same features albeit without the baggage of quotes from a seditious ex-president.

New website for the Fretuoso app

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 07:53:00 +0000

We are proud to unveil the new web home for our Fretuoso® app, now live at fretuoso.app!

The new website is easier to navigate and more up to date with the latest Web technologies. A notable addition is the new documentation page, a new easy way to access reference material previously only available within the app. We will be updating it as we add new features, and it is now an easy way to explore the features of the app without having to install and launch it.

Also of note, our new changes page outlines the changes in the history of the app, outside of the App Store pages and blog posts.

Holidays and End Of Decade Sale for Fretuoso

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 07:53:00 +0000

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and welcome to a new decade!

To celebrate the end of the 2010s and the beginning of the 2020s, and in the spirit of the holidays, we are again offering deep discounts on our Fretuoso®. Stuff the stocking of your iOS-enabled budding musician this holiday season! The reduced pricing is in effect starting on Christmas Day, December 25th, and will last till January 1st, 2020.

During this time, the following prices are reduced:

The bundle with all instruments in Fretuoso will be down to $3.99 (from the usual $6.99 - 43% off!).
All individual instruments will be on sale for just $0.99 (down from $2.99).

Please note that this promotion only applies to the main Fretuoso app. As previously mentioned on this blog, we are deprecating the various instrument editions and those will no longer be updated soon. Please switch over now to the main Fretuoso app if you are still using some of these other editions.

Happy Holidays to all!

Fretuoso 6.5 is out with iCloud support and deprecated instrument editions

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 09:53:21 +0000

Today, we are releasing version 6.5 of the Fretuoso app, with an important new feature: iCloud support.

This means that all of your app data, from your settings, custom tunings, and statistics to your instrument purchases are now safely stored in your connected iCloud account.

If your device is set up with an iCloud account (and it really should be!), your data is automatically imported and synced with the cloud. It will also automatically propagate to any other devices running Fretuoso you may have connected to the same account.

You will now be able to practice the fretboard on your iPhone and your iPad, and can pick up from one device to the other transparently.

This new support for iCloud also brings all of our various editions of the app together for the first time, as your iCloud data is also shared between them as well. So if you are using both our Banjo and Guitar editions, for example, your data will be preserved between these versions of the app.

As a consequence of this change, since your purchases are now automatically shared between all editions of Fretuoso, we are officially deprecating the various instrument editions, as well as the Complete Edition.

From now on, we will provide feature updates only through the main app (previously known as the “free” edition). In the coming months, these editions will stop receiving any updates besides iCloud support, and will eventually be removed from the App Store.

If you are using one of the paid editions of Fretuoso, or made purchases in any of them, just make sure to update it to at least version 6.5 and start it once while logged in with your iCloud account. Your purchases will be automatically unlocked in the main Fretuoso app as well, and you can switch to it immediately.

This consolidation is bringing more clarity to our app offering, and will simplify the life of both our users and ourselves as developers.

We have more important new features coming soon to Fretuoso, so please stay tuned!

Fretuoso 6.5 is available today and requires a device running iOS 10 or newer.

Christmas and End Of Year Sale for Fretuoso

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 07:53:00 +0000

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

To celebrate the end of 2018, and in the spirit of the holidays, we are again offering deep discounts on our Fretuoso® apps. Stuff the stocking of your iOS-enabled budding musician this holiday season! The reduced pricing will be effective starting on Christmas Eve, December 24th, and will go till the end of the year.

During this time, the following prices will be reduced:

The bundle with all instruments in Fretuoso will be down to $3.99 (from the usual $6.99 - 43% off!).
Many individual instruments will be on sale for just $0.99 (down from $2.99) - in the Fretuoso app only.
The Complete Edition will also see a similar drop in price to $3.99.
Other editions will go down to just $0.99 for the base app price (down from $2.99 - 66% off!). This includes editions for Guitar, Banjo, Bass, Mandolin and Ukulele.

Happy Holidays to all!

Black Friday to Cyber Monday Sale for Fretuoso

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 09:53:21 +0000

The holidays are upon us again! This year, we are giving thanks to our budding musicians by reducing the price of instruments significantly over Thanksgiving weekend, specifically starting with Black Friday (November 24) till Cyber Monday (November 28).

During this time, the following prices will be reduced:

The bundle with all instruments in Fretuoso will be down to $3.99 (from the usual $6.99 - 43% off!)
The Complete Edition will also see a similar drop in price to $3.99.
Other editions will go down to just $0.99 for the base app price (down from $2.99 - 66% off!). This includes editions for Guitar, Banjo, Bass, Mandolin and Ukulele.

In related news, the latest version of Fretuoso (6.1.3) now fully accomodates the screen of the brand new iPhone X.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Fretuoso 6.1, now ready for iOS 11

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 09:53:21 +0000

With the recent release of iOS 11, we are proud to announce the availability of the latest version of the Fretuoso® apps to support the latest version of the Apple operating system.

Version 6.1 is now available on the App Store for all devices running iOS version 9.0 and later.

We have recently added support for new screen sizes, most notably the latest 10.5” iPad Pro that came out a few months ago, and we have started making accomodations for the upcoming iPhone X, whose larger screen presents some additional challenges for apps like Fretuoso. We will be further refining support for this new device before its release in early November.

This new version of Fretuoso also uses the latest version of the AudioKit framework, the open-source audio library that we have been collaborating with to help developers provide first-class audio applications on Apple platforms. Version 4 was just released, feel free to check it out if you are interested in making your own audio apps for iOS!

Fretuoso 6, featuring AudioKit

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 05:36:00 +0000

Today we are proud to announce the availability of a major new version of our Fretuoso® apps.

Fretuoso 6.0 mostly features some significant internal changes compared to previous versions of the app. The most visible are the improved support for iOS 10, and the move to AudioKit as our new audio engine.

Now Powered By AudioKit

A few months ago, we announced that we were actively supporting development of this new open-source framework for Apple operating systems.

Today marks the first time that we actually ship an application using it. AudioKit provides Fretuoso with a more solid audio foundation which will pave the way for some exciting new features in the near future.

The main reason the switch wasn't made earlier was that using AudioKit forces us to drop support for devices running iOS 8. Today, the vast majority of active iOS devices run iOS 9 and above, and this will be the minimum supported configuration for Fretuoso releases from now on.

Other changes in this release include the following:

Taptic feedback on the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
Various bug fixes and improvements.

Fretuoso 6.0 is available today on the App Store and is a free upgrade for all users.

As a side note, both the Catloaf Software and AudioKit teams will be roaming the floors of NAMM over the next few days. Please say hi if you run into any of us!

Texts From Bernie Sanders

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:05:00 +0000

We are proud to announce the release of the latest app in our Texts From series, Texts From Bernie.

Focusing on quotes from Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, it follows in the footsteps of the Texts From Trump app we released a month ago, allowing us to cover a wide spectrum of political discourse in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Better known as the anti-establishment candidate of the American left, Bernie Sanders has been active in political life as an elected official for many decades and has managed to shake up the political world in this campaign cycle with his staunchly progressive rhetoric.

All quotes are gathered from various public online sources, and are drawn from many speeches and public appearances across his career, including of course his 2016 campaign for the US presidency.

It also joins previous apps in the series mostly focused on historical figures, such as Texts From Founding Fathers, Texts From Oscar Wilde and Texts From Jesus.

Like in other Texts From apps, a new quote gets delivered every day to your device as a notification, via a Today Widget or on a paired Apple Watch. Quotes can be quickly “loved”, “hated” or shared on Facebook and other social networks.

Additionally, all quotes are indexed by iOS 9 for quick and easy search.

In addition, we also released updated versions of all the other Texts From apps. These bring various bug fixes, and improvements to the Glance for Apple Watch.

The app is now out on the App Store, and it is free (though ad-supported). Get your copy now!

Texts From Donald Trump

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 03:18:00 +0000

We are proud to announce the release of the latest app in our Texts From series, Texts From Trump.

This new app follows in the footsteps of other popular apps in the series, which includes Texts From Jesus, Texts From Founding Fathers and Texts From Oscar Wilde.

The app is timely as it comes in the midst of a very heated and unusual U.S. presidential election year. Donald Trump is best known for his frequent past and present incendiary statements that have set the media ablaze.

We hope to help contribute to the public discourse on this crucial race by making some of these statements more accessible to users of Apple devices, and the public at large. The app will be updated regularly as new quotes become available.

All quotes are from public statements from Donald Trump, gathered from his famous Twitter account, his public speeches, to newspaper articles and media interviews. A few excerpts from some of his published books are also included.

Like in other Texts From apps, a new quote gets delivered every day to your device as a notification, via a Today Widget or on a paired Apple Watch. Quotes can be quickly “loved”, “hated” or shared on Facebook and other social networks.

Additionally, all quotes are indexed by iOS 9 for quick and easy search.

In addition, we also released updated versions of all the other Texts From apps. These bring various improvements, particularly a much improved Facebook integration.

The app is now out on the App Store, and it is free. Get your copy now!

New training feature in Fretuoso 5.9

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 10:02:00 +0000

A few days ago, we released the latest version of Fretuoso for iOS.

Among the usual set of bug fixes and minor improvements, we also included a brand new feature giving you yet another option to focus your fretboard training: a time limit for guessing each note.

This new option can be enabled by going to the training options, within the settings menu or from the wheel icon that appears in training modes.

The new training option

This option basically allows you to set a time limit within which you need to guess the note prompted to you. Being a training option, this only applies to the fretboard training and staff training modes, not the game mode which is independent of these settings.

The maximum value is 10 seconds; the option is turned off by default.

In effect, this allows you to make your training more challenging, and adds a time element which was previously mostly relegated to the game mode.

Any guess not made in the allotted time will effectively count as a miss, though you will get a nice TOO LATE sign to tell you you were too slow to answer! We suggest you start with a higher value and progressively lower it as you get more comfortable.

You should have answered faster!

We would like to publicly acknowledge our user Andrew Owen who suggested this new feature a few weeks ago. We are proud to be listening to our users, so feel free to shoot us an email with your feedback and suggestions. We just might turn your idea into a new feature...

Have fun with this and keep practicing daily!

2016 is Here! Guitar Trainer now 100% free

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 03:10:00 +0000

Before there was the new Fretuoso app for iOS, came its venerable grand-daddy just a few years back.

Guitar Trainer was a Java app for feature phones and BlackBerry; the first version came out in 2007 before the iPhone even made its mark on the mobile industry. It was regularly updated up till version 1.2 released back in 2011, when further development pretty much stopped in favor of Trainer HD (now known as Fretuoso).

Up till now, the original Guitar Trainer app was still available for sale on a number of legacy app stores, including directly from our mobiletutor.org website. The cost was about $5 per copy on average, which for such an old app was rather high. Looking at recent usage for the app, it appears that it is still in use mostly by people in developing countries stuck with legacy feature phones.

To celebrate the new year and the recent release of Fretuoso, we have decided in turn to make the original Java Guitar Trainer completely free! The app will no longer see any new updates, but you will be able to enjoy it as it is for as long as it works on your old phone without having to spend any money. We hope it will still be a useful tool for users of legacy phones around the world.

To get your copy, you can now head to our product page and request a free download code. Further instructions will then be provided to help you complete the download and installation. For BlackBerry users, the app can also be downloaded on the BlackBerry App World store directly.

We still have a demo version of the app available, but at this point it should be considered deprecated. Feel free to upgrade to the full version right now if you were still using it.

Happy New Year 2016 to all!

Introducing the new Fretuoso!

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 02:35:00 +0000

If you have been using our Trainer HD educational games, the app has been rebranded!

Trainer HD is now Fretuoso. We also have a new logo!

We also have a new version out for you (5.8), which brings some major improvements to the old Trainer HD app. Just in time for Christmas!

Adds full support for new devices, including the new iPhone 6S and the large iPad Pro.
Also supports the latest iOS 9 system. We had to drop support for iOS 6, and you'll now need at least iOS 7.1 to use Fretuoso on your device.
3D Touch shortcuts on the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Force-press the app icon and you'll be able to quickly start or resume training, game, or free play.

New 3D Touch Shortcuts

See more of the instruments on the large screen of the iPad Pro.
We also fixed a bunch of nasty bugs!

All previous users of Trainer HD will be upgraded for free to Fretuoso on supported devices. Besides the free version, we will also still release and update the separate instrument editions, as well as the Complete Edition.

As we approach 2016, we have some very exciting features in development for the next major version of the app, Fretuoso 6.0.

To keep up with updates on Fretuoso, feel free to follow the new @Fretuoso social accounts on Twitter and Instagram. We also still have an official Facebook page.

You may also get in touch with us directly by e-mail at support@fretuoso.com.

Texts From apps 6.0, now for Apple Watch

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 23:28:00 +0000

We are proud to announce that the newest version of our Texts From apps (including the popular Texts From Jesus, Texts From Oscar Wilde and Texts From Founding Fathers) is out.

All of those apps now include built-in support for Apple Watch. This simple app allows you to quickly access the quote of the day from your wrist, as well as share it with your friends over Facebook. A Glance is even available for quick access to the daily quote simply by swiping up from the watch face.

In addition, Texts From Jesus now includes a lot of new verses (by popular request), mostly drawn from the Gospel of Thomas.

Texts From Founding Fathers also includes quotes from four new Fathers: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and John Jay.

Finally, we have redesigned the websites for each of these apps. Check them out!

Build cool iOS music apps with AudioKit

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 22:40:00 +0000

If like us you are passionate about building audio-oriented apps for iOS, you might be interested in checking out the latest version of the new AudioKit open-source library.

Version 2.1 was just released, and it is the first version to include significant contributions from Catloaf Software's own lead engineer, Stéphane Peter.

AudioKit is a powerful audio library based on the popular Csound library, providing an easy-to-use API in Objective-C and Swift with powerful features for audio synthesis, processing and analysis.

Development is very active and new features are being added all the time, and we are proud of being a part of the core team behind this effort.

We plan to use AudioKit as the audio engine behind the next major version of our popular Trainer HD apps, and more. We're sure our users will be equally excited about the new features we'll be able to add to our apps thanks to AudioKit!

Announcing Trainer HD v5.7 with new Scales!

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 05:54:00 +0000

We are proud to announce the release of the latest version of our Trainer HD series of educational apps for iOS. Version 5.7 is a major update to the apps, and besides a slew of bug fixes it contains a few nice new features!

The staff display has been greatly improved to make it more readable and intuitive. It now scrolls from right to left, which should feel more natural. It also now supports the common 8va/8vb notation to make it easier to read notes on the far sides of the fretboard. You won't have to count lines on the staff anymore!

Introducing scale focus! You will now find over 40 types of scales in the training options, allowing to focus your training on any one of them in the key of your choice. When picking a scale, only notes from that scale will be used for training.

New "Focus on a scale" training option

Free Play mode can now apply training options to restrict which notes are shown on the fretboard, making it easy to visualize the scale of your choice on the fretboard map.

You can now apply training options to the fretboard map in Free Play.

A new wheel icon is now present in training, staff and free play modes, allowing quick access to the training options screen to change the settings without interrupting your session.

Remember, the training options do not apply to Game mode but only to Training and Staff modes. The new setting now also allows the fretboard map to be customized in Free Play.

Free Play with Fretboard Map showing a blues scale

The app is available right now as a free update on the App Store for most editions, although the update for the Banjo edition is slightly delayed but should be available very soon.

We have some major new changes coming up for version 6.0! We may even have an entirely new app coming out soon. Stay tuned...

Trainer HD 5.6, now supporting the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 06:44:00 +0000

Just in time for the holidays, we are proud to announce the release of the latest version of our Trainer HD series of educational apps for musicians.

Version 5.6 brings full support for the latest Apple devices, the bigger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Of course, we still support all previous devices, as well as the iPad.

This is also the first release to bring full support for the new iOS 8, on all devices. As a side note, we have had to drop support for iOS 5 in this release, and a minimum version of iOS 6 is required to install this update. If you still have an old device running iOS 5 (mostly the first generation iPad), we urge you to update it to a newer version of the system if you can, or ask Santa to bring you a new iPad.

We have also fixed a whole lot of bugs, and managed to make the application significantly lighter, making it faster to download.

All editions of Trainer HD have been updated and are now immediately available to install from the App Store.

Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving 2014 Sale on Trainer HD!

info@catloafsoft.com (Catloaf Software, Inc.) — Thu, 27 Nov 2014 08:57:00 +0000

To commemorate the American holiday and the start of the shopping season, we are having a big sale on our Trainer HD educational apps from Thanksgiving Day (November 27th) all the way till the end of the weekend. All apps and instruments are now deeply discounted!

The various editions of Trainer HD are the following :

Free Edition: select individual instruments now just $0.99 (down from $2.99), or $2.99 for the complete bundle with all instruments.
Instrument Editions: now just $0.99 (down from $2.99) - this includes :

Complete Edition: now just $2.99 (down from $6.99)

We are also getting ready to release in the coming days the next major revision of the app, version 5.6, which will bring full support for the bigger screens on the new iPhones and full support for iOS 8. It will be a free upgrade from the current version, so take advance of the discount while you can!