Federico Viticci

10788 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.

Transport App: Easy iPad / iPhone File Sharing From Your Mac

How do you share files on the Internet? Do you use a Mac app like the recently released Cloud, or you chose to stick with the good old Droplr? Maybe you just use a web service to share pictures and shorten links, ‘cause you’re not really into this file sharing thing. Either way, you want to keep everything simple and straightforward and have your files shared just fine across multiple devices so that your online fellows can access it anywhere. I understand your position, you don’t want to spend too much time searching for the right app for you, so you’re still sticking with emails to send links and PDFs to your collaborators. What an old way to accomplish tasks.

The app we’re going to talk about today is called Transport, woks for both iPhone and iPad (it’s a Universal app), and allows you to quickly upload and share files from your Mac to your portable devices.

Read more


OpenFeint’s Founder Talks Game Center

TUAW has published an interesting interview with OpenFeint’s founder Jason Citron here, where he talks about the future  of the platform and the Game Center announcement.

From the post:

“So why now? “Apple stumbled onto this,” he told us. “They were trying to make cool phones, an iPod and a phone coming together. They opened up the SDK, and all of a sudden there were all these games out there, and now it’s disrupting the handheld gaming industry.” We’ve seen a few hints, mostly in commercials and rumors, that Apple has been looking at the iPhone and specifically at the iPod touch as a gaming platform, but Citron believes the wind has changed for good. “I don’t think they’re thinking of it as an accidental opportunity any more. I think they’re diving in headfirst.”

And considering all the mentions regarding the iPhone (and thus the App Store) being more successful than Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP as a gaming device, I definitely agree that Apple is seeing this a huge opportunity.


Radium Winners Announced

Thanks everyone who entered the Radium giveaway.We also want to thank the CatPig Studios developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.

Here are the winners:

Matt

SensorPro

Henry Yue

Bruno

Sofia Fontes

Adamtree

Juan Angosto

Remy

seventoes

jaryre

Viktor

Cindy

Adam Jones

Patrick

Joresch

svenmw

You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few hours. Thank you!


Taska Winners Announced

Thanks everyone who entered the Taska giveaway.We also want to thank the bitAlpha developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.

Here are the winners:

bacce

Levi Figueira

OddIceTroll

TrevorML

perKypot

Richard Cousins

You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few minutes. Stay tuned for other giveaways coming this week. You can follow the official MacStories Twitter account as @macstoriesnet or Federico as @viticci



Twitter Acquires Tweetie, Becomes “Twitter for iPhone” Soon Free in the App Store

This is today’s big news: with an official blog post, Twitter has announced the acquisition of Atebits’ Tweetie 2 for iPhone.

From the press release:

“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.”

And there you have it guys. As I’ve just said on Twitter, we at MacStories won’t write our take on this until further details ( Tweetie for Mac, for example) come in. What we know for sure, it’s that when an indie app is acquired by “the mothership”, it usually gets screwed up. We’ll see.

Congratulations Loren, enjoy your new job.


iPhone OS 4.0, The User Centric OS

To tell the truth, I didn’t have God knows how big expectations for the iPhone OS 4.0 keynote. Sure I was hoping that Apple would announce new features and functions, but I actually didn’t really expect the event to turn out this good. Because yes, in my opinion the latest keynote has been one of the most important since years, which is gonna be remembered in the future as the day Apple marked the path for something new and revolutionary. Yesterday, Apple showed us  that there could…there should be a better way to work with a mobile phone. To use a mobile phone. To enjoy the web on a mobile phone.

Apple has reinvented mobile operating systems.

Read more


You Can Enable Multitasking on the iPhone 3G

Right after Steve announced yesterday that iPhone OS 4.0 multitasking is going to be exclusive to iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd Gen., people started complaining. Steve said that due to hardware limitations these devices won’t be able to support multitasking, but it turns out that some people have started looking into the OS beta and found out that, actually, it’s possible to have multitasking on the iPhone 3G.

Read more


Twitterrific for iPad, Reviewed.

When I was waiting for my iPad to arrive in Italy, I spent a good amount of time browsing the iPad App Store looking for some great apps to install and try. Of course I searched for RSS apps, word processors, PDF readers but most of all, Twitter clients. As I started looking for decent Twitter apps to install and review, the most obvious choice was to give a try to Twitterrific from the Iconfactory already out in the App Store in its free version with the possibility to upgrade in-app to the premium version.

After 24 hours of intensive usage of the app, here are my thoughts about it.

Read more