Federico Viticci

10791 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.
@[email protected]
@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

This Week's Sponsor:

BetterTouchTool

Now with a Powerful Launcher for Your Mac

Crafting Subtle & Realistic User Interfaces

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“The underlying secret to beautiful user interface design is realism: making 2D objects on your screen appear to sit in 3D space with volume, surface properties and undulations that might appear in real life. These faux 3D objects have highlights and shadows just like objects on your desk might have, and they have textures that emulate real objects from glass to sandpaper and everything in between. Designing beautiful user interfaces has more to do with the why than the how.”

For everyone who’s interested in User Interface design, this is a great post. Go read it now.

Win a Copy of Notify!

Notify is a great mail notifier / client for Mac OS X that sits in the menubar waiting for new messages to arrive. It supports Gmail and Google Apps, Rackspace Mail, MobileMe and generic IMAP.

As I wrote in my review: “Notify 2 is one of the best application of this late 2009, allowing you to keep track of your mail accounts and manage your mail messages from the menubar, which is just great. The interface is clever and well designed, the animations smooth and,overall, the application is stable. But the coolest thing is that now I can finally keep Mail.app closed, leave Notify running and open Mail.app only if really needed. This – is just great.“.

Vibealicious gave me 5 licenses to give away to MacStories readers. This is a last 2009 gift for you guys, from MacStories, Kyle Van Essen (developer) Joel (developer) and  Sir Matthew Rex Downham (Graphic Designer and Media Dude). Details after the jump!

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Mac VideoStories: How To Extract an Application’s Icon and Convert It to .png

Today I’m very happy to announce a new series of posts on MacStories, called “Mac VideoStories”. The VideoStories will feature video tutorials about every tweak, hack or how-to you should know about your Mac. From beginners stuff to advanced tricks, both long and brief videos, I’ll try to cover every possible thing that will come in my mind.

Let’s start with the first screencast, a tutorial that shows how you can easily extract an application’s icon and convert it to a universal .png file.

Enjoy!

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The App Store Approval Delay Is Now History

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“According to 148Apps’ App Store metrics, not only the delay is slowly reducing, but it reached a new low this November. Having an app approved in November took only 4 days on average and that is with 376 apps per day being submitted.”

I guess Apple has read some blogs this year.

My Desk: Your Desktop, On Your iPhone. And There’s Coffee Too.

If you’ve been wondering why I chose to redesign MacStories a few months ago, that’s because I wanted my blog to look (of course) better  but most of all, I wanted it to look like my real desk. A pencil, papers all around, a mouse, some coffee. I should have added even more coffee maybe, but still. Anyway, I stumbled upon this little nice application called “My Desk”, which basically puts a virtual wooden desk on your iPhone, with the addition of some features like Twitter and to-do management. Is it really good?

Find out after the jump.

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Win a Copy of Reportage for iPhone

Reportage is an awesome and unique Twitter client for iPhone which takes a brand new approach to mobile tweeting. As I wrote in my review back in November “Reportage rather than give you a list of unread Twitter updates, lets you “listen” to your Twitter followers as if they were radio stations” and “It’s different from any Twitter client you’ve tried, has a stunning UI (that kind of UI I wish Tweetie 2 will have someday) and it’s smooth”.

The application has just been updated to the long awaited 1.5 version, which brings many new interesting stuff: built-in browser, Instapaper support, old style / new style retweets, geolocation and many refinements and bug fixes. Also, it’s priced $1.99 now!

WhereCloud gave me 5 promo codes to giveaway to celebrate the 1.5 update. Details after the jump!

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Stainless: The New, Multi-Processor Browser for Mac OS X

A few months ago I stumbled upon this new browser for Mac called Stainless and I immediately realized the developers had big plans for it. The browser was fast, stable, it featured a simple and uncluttered UI and some good features which made it stand out from the crowd. I really appreciated the “tabs as single processes” thing, inspired by Google Chrome.

But now that Chrome is out on the Mac as well and Mozilla is working hard on the next version of Firefox (the much anticipated 4.0 version that will hopefully refresh the whole interface) is Stainless still the new kid on the block of Mac browsers worth a look, or is it just a geek alternative to Safari, Chrome, whatever? Could it be your new default browser?

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