almondbread 0.2.2

The guided tours are rewritten in plain English, and there is a new first tour.

Install: download almondbread_0.2.2_aarch64.dmg below (signed and notarized), or brew upgrade --cask almondbread (new: brew install --cask ractive/tap/almondbread). Needs Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 14 or newer.

Tours

• New first tour, "z² + c, step by step": the formula worked through one step at a time, with numbered orbit dots, a point that stays in the set and one that escapes.
• All other tours rewritten to one writing guide: short sentences, the real formula explained, one fixed set of words, and every sentence about something the screen shows. Labelled points and circles mark what a card talks about.
• The bulbs tour has Fibonacci steps (periods 13 and 21, and the golden-ratio point they lead to).
• Links to Numberphile videos where a video covers a step (π at the cusp, Fibonacci, Ford circles, filled Julia sets, the Feigenbaum constant, −7/4 and others).
• Bigger orbit dots.

Mini-map and overlays

• The mini-map has a button to enlarge it and shrink it again.
• A resized mini-map or Julia view Mandelbrot panel now always finishes drawing; before, it could stay half drawn on a still view. While it renders, the old picture is shown stretched.
• New setting "Orbit iterations shown" (10 to 1000 dots): under the Orbit switch in the control center, in a popover on the Mac toolbar's Orbit button, and in the long-press menu on iPhone and iPad.
• Control center: settings that depend on a switch that is off are now greyed out instead of hidden. The "Large mini-map" row is gone (the mini-map size slider and the button do the same).

Changes since 0.2.1.

almondbread 0.2.1

almondbread has its own icon now.

Install: download almondbread_0.2.1_aarch64.dmg below (signed and notarized), or brew upgrade --cask almondbread (new: brew install --cask ractive/tap/almondbread). Needs Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 14 or newer.

• New app icon: seahorse valley drawn as flat escape-time bands, mint and forest green on almond, with a dark variant (macOS 26 Liquid Glass icon; flat icon on macOS 14 and 15).

No other changes since 0.2.0.

almondbread 0.2.0

More fractals, a travel journal, a calmer control center and many fixes.

Install: download almondbread_0.2.0_aarch64.dmg below (signed and notarized), or brew upgrade --cask almondbread (new: brew install --cask ractive/tap/almondbread). Needs Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 14 or newer.

New fractals

• Multibrot z³ … z⁸ + c, Mandelbar (Tricorn) and the Burning Ship, all with unlimited deep zoom and their own places.
• Deep Julia sets: ⌘-click any point to open its Julia set, one click takes you back; U shows a Julia companion panel.
• Buddhabrot and Nebulabrot looks, live while you move at shallow views.
• The fractal choice is now a fixed row at the top of the control center.

Exploring

• Travel journal: ⌘Z flies back to the places you visited, ⇧⌘Z / ⌘Y forward again (the last 100, kept across launches). In text fields ⌘Z stays text undo.
• Guided tours on the maths (limits, bulbs, valleys, period doubling, colours, Julia sets, Misiurewicz points, π, minibrot periods), a first-launch walkthrough, and tour links where a topic comes up.
• "Raise to 1 M / 10 M": when compute further stops at the iteration limit with fog left, the progress line offers a higher limit and goes on in the same render. Continue now really continues.
• Gentle view limits: zooming out stops softly at each fractal's whole view, with a rubber band.

Control center

• Each section shows its essential settings; the rest sit behind "More…", which tells you how many hidden settings differ from the look and resets just those.
• Search finds settings, places of every fractal and palettes by name; Esc returns to the fractal.
• Section resets reset only their own section.

Smoother and sturdier

• No more stalls of up to half a second at the start of each refinement level on deep views (chunks now stay near 16 ms).
• Panning keeps the finished picture instead of showing fog rings; interior colourings stay stable while moving.
• An internal error no longer freezes the view silently or fills the disk: the HUD says "Rendering failed here", and the crash log is deduplicated and capped.

Feedback and issues are welcome.

almondbread 0.1.0

The first release of almondbread: a deep-zoom Mandelbrot explorer for Macs with Apple silicon, built for flying through the set in real time.

Install: download almondbread_0.1.0_aarch64.dmg below (signed and notarized), or brew install --cask ractive/tap/almondbread. Needs Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 14 or newer.

What's in it

• Real-time deep zoom far beyond 1e1000: perturbation with linear approximation on the GPU, float32 kernels, a Rust core.
• Driving: manual, cruise with 26 gears forward and reverse (E / Q), autopilot (Z) that steers away from the empty interior toward detail, and journeys (J) from landmark to landmark. The cockpit at the bottom shows the level and the speed.
• Seek minibrot (N), lane assist (L), copy and paste coordinates (⌘C / ⌘V), fly-to.
• A catalogue of famous places, endless dives and a guided tour (Feigenbaum and period doubling).
• Orbit overlay, mini-maps, interior colourings (period, multiplier, distance, bubbles), lighting and looks, a cosmic size scale and a π meter.
• Interior proofs (cardioid, bulbs, attracting cycles) and "compute further" with Continue for views that need more iterations.

Feedback and issues are welcome.