Federico Viticci

10766 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

On Location in Iceland with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus→

This is an incredible collection of photos by Austin Mann for The Verge. Make sure to check out the Focus Pixels and Slo-Mo videos – the difference is stunning.

I loved this bit about the iPhone as a camera:

I really enjoy the challenge and spontaneity of capturing powerful images without directing them. I love to explore, see a moment coming, line up the shot and capture it as it passes. The great thing about carrying the iPhone as my primary shooting device is it’s simple yet so powerful: it’s ready to capture virtually any scenario I encounter. It enables images like this in a way no other camera ever could, no matter the cost.

For a comparison, check out Mann’s trip to Patagonia with an iPhone 5s from last year.

Update: More at Austin Mann’s website.

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iOS 8 Shows Love for HTML5→

Ross Gerbasi has an overview of great changes for web developers in iOS 8.

He notes that WKWebView, a new technology to have faster web views in third-party apps, currently has a major bug:

Remember that amazing new WebView I was just telling you all about? The one with the super fast Nitro JS engine and shiny new everything. Well, its broken… The bug here is a security issue which does not allow “WKWebView” to load files from the local filesystem. So what this means is that your embedded index.html is not accessible to the “WKWebView”. This is a blocker for PhoneGap and Cordova applications that are using offline/local files to serve up an application. So currently, if you would like to use “WKWebView” in your application, you must load your files from a remote server. For example, loading “index.html” will not work, but loading “http://www.google.com” will work just fine.

Several developers of apps I was testing told me they needed to disable WKWebView for this reason. I can’t wait for a fix.

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Essence Icons @3x→

Icons & Coffee (the side-project that I run with my girlfriend Silvia) released version 1.2 of the Essence icon set today. Essence is used in thousands of apps and it includes 350 unique icon designs in multiple versions. Today’s update adds support for the iPhone 6 Plus with @3x sizes.

From the blog post:

Following Apple’s announcements, we’ve added new PNG files for the iPhone 6 Plus (@3x); as always, PNGs are available in three colors (blue, gray, and white). We’ve also included a PNG reference so you can easily find the icon file you’re looking for in the download.

You can check out Essence 1.2 here.

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iOS 8 Document Pickers, Providers, and Dropbox

In yesterday’s coverage of iOS 8 for my daily workflow and Transmit, I mentioned that I hadn’t had much time to test document pickers and provider extensions in iOS 8 and that I couldn’t grasp the full potential of Apple’s document management changes in practice. While that still holds true today, I’ve been playing around with the iOS 8 update that Dropbox launched yesterday and I thought it’d be useful to collect my thoughts on the site for future reference.

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iOS 8 on Older Hardware→

Every year, I’m always curious to know how the latest version of iOS works on the oldest compatible iOS hardware, and I always forget.

Thankfully, Ars Technica published two detailed looks at performance changes with iOS 8 on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Particularly in Andrew Cunningham’s article, it’s clear how Apple’s march towards larger screen sizes has been driving software features that take advantage of pixels to offer more room for information, search results, or toolbars.

I’m not sure I would be able to enjoy iOS 8 this much on a device like the 4S. Hopefully Apple will improve performance on older hardware like they did with iOS 7.1.

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Epic Zen Garden for iOS 8→

Zen Garden, the demo that Epic Games showcased at WWDC ‘14 for the Metal announcement, has been released today as Epic Zen Garden.

Epic Zen Garden is a demonstration of Metal’s capabilities, and it’s meant for modern hardware. I spent about 30 minutes with the game on my iPhone 5s and iPad mini, and I think it looks great. It’s especially impressive in motion.

It’s fun to tap areas on screen and see how Metal can animate thousands of objects at once. I can’t wait to see what kind of new experiences iOS 8 and Metal will bring for mobile gaming. Epic Zen Garden is free on the App Store.

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Apple Highlights “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8”

Following today’s launch of iOS 8, Apple has launched a new App Store section highlighting popular new apps and updates released today.

The section, aptly called “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8” is organized in seven sub-categories for games, share extensions, custom actions, Notification Center widgets, Touch ID-enabled apps, photo editing extensions, and custom keyboards. Highlighted apps include 1Password 5, Day One, SwiftKey and TextExpander, Evernote, Day One, OmniFocus 2, and several other apps that were updated earlier today to take advantage of new iOS 8 features.

You can find Apple’s “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8” section here. You can read our in-depth coverage of iOS 8 and iOS 8 apps here.