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.
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@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

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Interview: James Hoover - Creator of Bean

Link

I’ve heard artists say that you can’t wait for the magic to happen, you have to sit at your desk in your office and make it happen. So I sat there looking at my clamshell iBook’s screen for about two weeks, trying to rid myself of the torpor. I was using Microsoft’s Office X at the time, which was very old school. At the bottom of your document window in Word you had this row of winkie blinkies with cryptic labels like REC, TRK, EXT, and OVR. I thought, “What are those things? Does anybody know?” People where complaining then about the endless rows of tiny icons you had to deal with in Word. Dozens and dozens of them. Back then, there was almost no other option for a Mac word processor. Microsoft had crushed all of its competition.

Interesting interview to the developer of Bean, a nice word processor for Mac OS X.

Mein Kampf Complete With Nazi Logo Approved

TechCrunch link

Ok Apple, this is embarassing. Let’s face it.

Now, I wonder how does Apple exactly “organize” the approval process. Is there a staff of drunk monkeys sitting in front of Powerbooks? Is it a team of - ehm - droids?

Or is it just a way to make people talk about the AppStore? I wonder how many people have bought that Mein Kampf thing today.

You’re smart Apple.

Dropzone: Your Dock Wants This.

I am a blogger, and my daily workflow often consists of repeating and boring tasks. That’s a given: I have to upload pictures, shorten URLs, send emails,install new apps. But if you’re not a blogger like me, it’s very likely that you repeat common tasks too.

Now, Mac OS is an excellent platform from this point of view: everything is simplified but yet powerful and thanks to some tecniques like Applescript or Smart Folders you can let the OS do stuff for you. But still, I missed an real application which would do tasks for me. By “real application” I mean an app that would sit in my Dock and not some scripts or complicated folder rules.

Here comes Dropzone.

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Snow Leopard: Disabling Exposé in Dock menus

Betalogue link

You just need to enter this command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool no

After restarting the Dock (with killall Dock or with another utility), you will now have a Dock where clicking and holding on an application icon gives you the same menu as the one you get with control-clicking. And it’s instantaneous. Yey!

And just so you know, changing this setting does not disable the other feature, i.e. the “Minimize windows into application icon” feature. It still works. You just don’t have to deal with slow Exposé crap anymore.

Great tip aimed to those who can’t stand the new Exposè menu feature.

iTunes LP Now Available For Apple TV Customers

TUAW link

“With the latest versions of iTunes (9.0.2) and Apple TV software (3.0), you can now use iTunes LP on your Apple TV. We have updated the iTunes LP that was included with [your previous purchase here] so that it can now be viewed on Apple TV in addition to your Mac or PC….”

Still, I don’t get the point of Apple TV.

MacHeist nanoBundle: 6 Mac Apps Worth $154 For Free. Some Thoughts About It.

The new edition of MacHeist isn’t called MacHeist IV but “nanoBundle”. It features 6 Mac apps worth $154 available as a free download. The apps are:

  • Shovebox

  • Twitterrific

  • Writeroom

  • TinyGrab

  • Hordes of Orcs

  • Mariner Write (unlocked when the nanoBundle will reach 500,000 participants!)

Now, I don’t think anyone can really criticize this year’s MacHeist. When people is able to get paid stuff for free, nobody can criticize the apps (which for instance are very good in my opinion).

Years ago Gruber wrote a very interesting article which questioned the real value of MacHeist to software developers. Now, I believe that if a developer agrees to partecipate to MacHeist with an application, he actually knows the pro and cons of it.

Who are we to criticize their choices? Do the user really care about this? No.

Do we care about it just because we are bloggers? Yes.

Coda: A Collection of 120+ Plugins, Clips, Snippets and Tuts For Designers and Developers

I’m quite sure that every Web developer out there who owns a Mac knows / is using Coda.

What’s Coda, exactly? As Shawn Blanc wrote in his review back in January 2008:

“Coda is a text-editing, CSS-styling, WebKit previewing, file-managing, FTPing, terminal-accessing, web-site-building and publishing application for the Macintosh.”

Now, I’ve collected 120 of the best resources about Panic’s Coda: they include tutorials, clips, snippets, plugins and more.

Do you know other useful tools for Coda? Feel free to share them in the comments!

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