Federico Viticci

10608 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

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SoundSource

New Year, New Audio Setup: SoundSource 6 from Rogue Amoeba

You Can Use Clean Up with a Clear Conscience→

I enjoyed this take on Apple Intelligence’s Clean Up feature by Joe Rosensteel, writing for Six Colors last week:

The photographs you take are not courtroom evidence. They’re not historical documents. Well, they could be, but mostly they’re images to remember a moment or share that moment with other people. If someone rear-ended your car and you’re taking photos for the insurance company, then that is not the time to use Clean Up to get rid of people in the background, of course. Use common sense.

Clean Up is a fairly conservative photo editing tool in comparison to what other companies offer. Sometimes, people like to apply a uniform narrative that Silicon Valley companies are all destroying reality equally in the quest for AI dominance, but that just doesn’t suit this tool that lets you remove some distractions from your image.

It’s easy to get swept up in the “But what is a photo” philosophical debate (which I think raises a lot of interesting points), but I agree with Joe: we should also keep in mind that, sometimes, we’re just removing that random tourist from the background and our edit isn’t going to change the course of humankind’s history.

Also worth remembering:

For some reason, even the most literal of literal people is fine with composing a shot to not include things. To even (gasp!) crop things out of photos. You can absolutely change meaning and context just as much through framing and cropping as you can with a tool like Clean Up. No one is suggesting that the crop tool be removed or that we should only be allowed to take the widest wide-angle photographs possible to include all context at all times, like security camera footage.

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AppStories, Ep. 409 - 41 minutes

Raycast, Tailscale, and Day One with Comfort Zone’s Niléane Dorffer

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 409 - Raycast, Tailscale, and Day One with Comfort Zone’s Niléane Dorffer

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41:07

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John are joined by Niléane Dorffer who writes at MacStories and is a co-host of Comfort Zone, a podcast all about trying new things in your tech life, to talk about three of Niléane’s favorite apps – Raycast, Tailscale, and Day One – after which Federico quizzes Niléane about some of the everyday apps she uses.

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AppStories, Ep. 408 - 48 minutes

iPad mini Review: The Third Place

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 408 - iPad mini Review: The Third Place

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47:58

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John announce that AppStories is now on YouTube and discuss the Club MacStories Fall Membership Drive and listener follow-up before digging into Federico’s iPad mini review and the concept of “The Third Place.”

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iPad mini (2024) Review: The Third Place

The new iPad mini.

The new iPad mini.

My first reaction when I picked up the new iPad mini last Thursday morning was that it felt heavier than my 11” iPad Pro. Obviously, that was not the case – it’s nearly 150 grams lighter, in fact. But after several months of intense usage of the new, incredibly thin iPad Pro, the different weight distribution and the thicker form factor of the iPad mini got me for a second. Despite being “new”, compared to the latest-generation iPad Pro, the iPad mini felt old.

The second thing I noticed is that, color aside, the new iPad mini looks and feels exactly like the sixth-generation model I reviewed here on MacStories three years ago. The size is the same, down to the millimeter. The weight is the same. The display technology is the same. Three minor visual details give the “new” iPad mini away: it says “iPad mini” on the back, it’s called “iPad mini (A17 Pro)” on the box, and it’s even called “iPad mini (A17 Pro)” (and not “iPad mini (7th generation)”) in Settings ⇾ General ⇾ About.

I’m spending time on these minor, largely inconsequential details because I don’t know how else to put it: this iPad mini is pretty much the same iPad I already reviewed in 2021. The iPadOS experience is unchanged. You still cannot use Stage Manager on any iPad mini (not even when docked), and the classic Split View/Slide Over environment is passable, but more constrained than on an iPad Air or Pro. I covered all these aspects of the mini experience in 2021; everything still holds true today.

What matters today, however, is what’s inside. The iPad mini with A17 Pro is an iPad mini that supports Apple Intelligence, the Apple Pencil Pro, and faster Wi-Fi. And while the display technology is unchanged – it’s an IPS display that refreshes at 60 Hz – the so-called jelly scrolling issue has been fixed thanks to an optimized display controller.

As someone who lives in Italy and cannot access Apple Intelligence, that leaves me with an iPad mini that is only marginally different from the previous one, with software features coming soon that I won’t be able to use for a while. It leaves me with a device that comes in a blue color that isn’t nearly as fun as the one on my iPhone 16 Plus and feels chunkier than my iPad Pro while offering fewer options in terms of accessories (no Magic Keyboard) and software modularity (no Stage Manager on an external display).

And yet, despite the strange nature of this beast and its shortcomings, I’ve found myself in a similar spot to three years ago: I don’t need this iPad mini in my life, but I want to use it under very specific circumstances.

Only this time, I’ve realized why.

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Traveling with the Vision Pro→

Excellent deep dive into the Vision Pro’s travel capabilities by Azad Balabanian, who’s used Apple’s headset extensively on various flights:

The Vision Pro has quickly become an essential item that I take onto every flight.

It’s a fantastic device to travel with—Be it by train or by plane, it offers an unparalleled opportunity to selectively tune out your environment and sink into an engaging activity like watching a movie or just working on your laptop.

In this blog post, I’ll outline what I’ve learned about the Vision Pro while traveling, explain some of the functionality, shine light onto its drawbacks, as well as assess how it fares against solutions like a phone or a laptop.

I haven’t been on a plane since I got my Vision Pro earlier this year; however, the next time I’ll be on a transatlantic flight, I plan on bringing mine and seeing how self-conscious I feel about it. Azad’s blog post has some great practical tips regarding using the Vision Pro during a flight, such as my favorite bit:

The problem is that for meals that require eyesight to coordinate (aka using a fork to pick up food from a plate), as soon as you look down at your food, the tracking often gets lost. This causes the movie to stop playing and for you to have to look forward for the tracking to re-initialize.

Additionally, the Vision Pro’s field of view is more horizontal than vertical (unlike most other VR headsets) which can make eating challenging, requiring me to fully tilt my head down to look at my food.

If you plan on bringing the Vision Pro on a flight with you (personally, I recommend checking out Waterfield’s compact carrying case), don’t miss Azad’s experience and advice.

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AppStories, Ep. 407 - 31 minutes

A Desk Setup Update

FedericoJohn
AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

AppStories Episode 407 - A Desk Setup Update

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30:35

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AppStories+ Deeper into the world of apps

This week, Federico and John share the changes they’ve made to their desk setups in recent months and the philosophies that have driven those changes.

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Home Screens: Federico

My iPhone Home Screen In last week’s issue of MacStories Weekly, I shared my iPad Home Screen and mentioned some of the recent experiments I’d been testing with new apps and workflows on my devices. After another week of testing, there have been some changes, which I will cover in today’s second installment of this...