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.

Pressure Sensitive Drawing on iPad [Video]

Ten One Design, makers of the Pogo Sketch, posted a demo video of their latest creation, a pressure-sensitive sketching software for the iPad that allows you to draw on screen with a stylus and it’s able to capture different levels of pressure from that stylus. They’ve also included the possibility to exclude touch from your hands / fingers and let the iPad choose only touches form the stylus.

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Snowtape for iPhone Now with Multitasking Support - 3 Codes Up for Grabs

I reviewed Snowtape for iPhone back in March, and since then I kept the app on my iPhone, until iOS 4 came out a few weeks ago. Why? Because when I installed the new OS and tried Pandora Radio, I couldn’t go back to listen to music in streaming without multitasking support. So I deleted it and thought “Well, let’s wait for an update”.

Lucky me, and update was already awaiting for Apple’s approval in the App Store. The new version of Snowtape comes with iOS 4 multitasking support: you can now listen to music when the app is paused (like Pandora) and go back to where you left off thanks to fast app switching. It works great, and it’s still available at $1.99 here.

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UI Changes in Facebook App

The Facebook app for iPhone was updated a few hours ago with support for iOS 4 multitasking and high resolution graphics. But, the designers over at Facebook also refined some elements and interactions in the app, which now surely feels and works much better than before.

Those are subtle changes, but that’s what making a good iPhone app is about, right? Focusing on the details. Check out Brandon Walkin’s overview of changes in the latest Facebook app update.




Fast PDF Is What iBooks for PDFs Should Be

There’s a huge market in the iPad App Store right now, and that’s for PDF readers. Here’s what’s going on: the iPad came out without a dedicated PDF app developed by Apple and so GoodReader (our review) quickly became the most popular paid app. Months later, Apple announced that a PDF-capable version of iBooks was coming out, and we all started wondering whether iBooks for PDFs could kill any other similar app out there.

Reading PDFs in iBooks feels good, but it’s not the perfect experience many predicted. The interface design is beautiful and elegant as Apple’s tradition, but the app doesn’t hold up well to large documents and, in my tests, I found that opening a 14MB file required even 10 seconds (or more) for the app to start up, load the document and let you swipe through it. Unlike Apple said weeks ago, there’s no page curl effect, and TUAW exposed the problem. Ultimately, I’m deeply disappointed by the poor performances of iBooks with large PDFs. Perhaps another update is on its way, but who knows.

I’ve been using another application to read documents on my iPad, Fast PDF. It’s indeed the best 3rd party software to read PDF files currently available in the App Store.

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