Federico Viticci

10787 posts on MacStories since April 2009

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.

Apple Rejects Trailers App…For Using Apple’s Public RSS Feeds [Update: Steve’s Reply]

We know that Apple is very strict about apps approval process, and we all know the story of applications rejected because of violations of the iPhone Developer Agreement. If you don’t follow the rules, you’re rejected. Simple, right?

There are a few exceptions though, and you can blame the app review team or the lack of more specific rules in the agreement for them. Thing is, sometimes a developer works hard on an application, thinking it’s perfectly compliant to the agreement, and then he sees his app rejected with no understandable reason. Sometimes, someone forces Apple to remove an app - yeah, that happened, too.

Now imagine this: there’s a RSS feed publicly available on Apple’s website and a dev builds an app around it. Anyone could build an app around it, being it a public RSS feed, available for free to everyone. In this case, we’re talking about Apple’s Trailers page and an iPhone app developed by Jonah Grant.

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iPhone 4 Drop Test with Bumper

iFixyouri is doing it again. They once performed a drop test of an iPhone 4, and it took 3 drops to break the front glass. But what about Bumpers? They should offer protection, right?

Well, maybe so. But check out the video after the break, and pray that you’ll never drop your new toy. [via iFixyouri]

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Fortune: Steve Jobs Is The “Smartest CEO”

Jessi Hempel over at Fortune Magazine is praising Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs this morning: he’s the smartest CEO in tech.

“iTunes reinvented music. Pixar, now part of Disney, elevated animated films. The iPhone changed telecom. And the new iPad has other computer makers scrambling to respond. Rocking one industry could be luck, but upending four? That’s smart.

He is a visionary, a micromanager, and a showman who creates such anticipation around new products that their releases are veritable holidays. And Jobs is a pop culture icon like no other business executive.”


And as Steve would say, you haven’t seen anything yet.


New 3x3 cm Apple Touchscreen Spotted in the Wild?

Apple.pro posted some pictures of a new Apple-branded touchscreen, 3x3 cm in size, which - of course - they don’t know what it could belong to. As MacRumors notices, the site has been a reliable source of early Apple parts in the past - such as the Macbook enclosures and iPhone 4 parts.

What could this ever be? Some kind of new iPod nano? The much rumored iWatch? A simple demo unit for Steve Job’s touch-sensitive microwave oven? We’ll see.

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iOS 4 Now with Direct iTunes Access - DJ Apps Developers Rejoice

DJ apps seem to do pretty good in the App Store, but from today on, they’ll just keep getting better. One of the biggest complaints of DJ apps devs was the lack of direct access to the music library to edit songs already synced with iTunes. You had to upload another song to an app-specific library, fire up the app and find that song you uploaded.

Now, it looks like you can just pick up a song from iPod.app and start scratching.

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