Federico Viticci

10962 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

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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Secrets Updated for Snow Leopard

HawkWings link

“Secrets provides easy assess to many of Mac Os X’s settings that you can otherwise only change by messing around in Terminal with long command strings, which is not everyone’s cup of tea.

It includes tweaks for many Mac core and a wide range of third-party apps. The most popular tweaks across all the apps are listed separately as well.”

A long-awaited update of a great prefpane every Mac geek should install.

Vitae Theme Now Available For Snow Leopard

This is a post aimed to all of you Mac customization nerds. That said, you should probably know Vitae, one of the best custom OS X themes available for Tiger and Leopard.

Now, since Snow Leopard hit the shelves back in August, many users started to request a porting of Vitae to Snow Leopard. Due to some changes Apple applied in the core structure of 10.6, the conversion process took a little longer, but I’m very excited to confirm that Vitae theme is finally available for download.

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