Federico Viticci

10763 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

Ken Segall On Apple’s Christmas Ad→

Ken Segall:

Most of these people mistake their personal opinion, instinct, values and/or taste for actual marketing talent. There are tens of millions of people who will stop in their tracks at this commercial and wipe a tear from their eye. As a result, they will feel slightly more attached to Apple, which is the marketing purpose of this spot.

Far from depressing, this ad is wonderfully optimistic. In the most human terms, it says that the right technology can bring people closer together. It’s a perfect thought for the holidays.

There will always be people who like to compare speeds and feeds and enjoy a commercial focused on tech specs, but Apple is going in a different direction with this ad.

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Leigh Alexander’s Top 5 Video Games of 2013→

Great picks (I have to buy 868-HACK now). I particularly liked Leigh’s take on Ridiculous Fishing:

Pixelly-looking indie game with distinctive physics-oriented mechanic and chippy music goes gangbusters. Not news, anymore. But it’s hard to feel blase about Vlambeer’s success when they keep trying so hard to pay it forward. Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail is a genuine pillar of his community, sharing thoughts on competition and pitching in writing, making the Presskit() tool to help fellow devs reach the media, and showing care for colleagues in public spaces. The success of Ridiculous Fishing, at a fixed $3 price point that had no intention of experimenting with popular free-to-play models, became an important example of how the industry mustn’t leap to assume that micropayments always lead to a more valuable experience for players.

Aside from being a story with a happy ending, Ridiculous Fishing is just a good iOS game. If I had to compile a list of my must-have iOS games for 2013, Ridiculous Fishing would be my top pick.

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App Santa: Tweetbot, 1Password, Vesper, and 12 Other Great iOS Apps On Sale For Christmas

Back in 2006 and 2007, there was an initiative called MacSanta that, through a holiday sale, allowed users to buy great Mac apps at discounted prices. Today, App Santa has launched, and while the project isn’t affiliated to the old MacSanta, the core idea is the same: great, award-winning apps on sale for Christmas.

The apps included in App Santa are all for iOS devices and have been discounted up to 60% off the original price; the project is the collaboration of indie developers Tapbots, Q Branch, Contrast, Readdle, TLA Systems, Junecloud, Edovia, Realmac, and Bloom Built. These are all great apps that we’ve reviewed or mentioned in the past on MacStories, so check out the links below for the full discounts available on the App Store.

Note: If you don’t see the discounted price on the App Store yet, keep refreshing – price changes are propagating in iTunes.

  • Tweetbot 3: $4.99 > $1.99
  • 1Password 4: $17.99 > $9.99
  • Day One: $4.99 > $2.99
  • Vesper: $4.99 > $2.99
  • PCalc: $9.99 > $6.99
  • Delivery Status: $4.99 > $2.99
  • Printer Pro: $6.99 > $2.99
  • Mileage Log+: $9.99 > $4.99
  • Perfect Weather: $2.99 > $1.99
  • Launch Center Pro: $4.99 > $2.99
  • Clear+: $4.99 > $1.99
  • Screens VNC: $19.99 > $14.99
  • PDF Converter: $6.99 > $2.99
  • Calendars 5: $6.99 > $2.99
  • Scanner Pro: $6.99 > $2.99

Amount for iPad→

I first reviewed Amount back in September when the app was iPhone-only and iOS 7 wasn’t out yet. Amount was a simple unit converter that was already compatible with the new OS and that had a nice approach to unit conversions.

Since then, developer Marco Torretta has made the app Universal and added a URL scheme to launch unit conversions from other apps. On the iPad, Amount uses a split-screen layout to organize categories and units. The number pad is a floating widget in the middle of the screen that makes it easy to enter numbers, and, because of the larger screen, you don’t have to tap and swipe as much as on the iPhone. I like it.

Amount strikes a good balance between simplicity and features, and it’s only $0.99 on the App Store.

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Apple and Inter-App Sharing→

Ole Begemann writes about the dilemma Apple may be facing with adding new inter-app communication features to iOS:

I think Apple faces a real dilemma here. Any API that facilitates data sharing between apps without user interaction can easily be abused for tracking purposes, a practice Apple has opposed pretty strongly – at least in word if not in actual rejections of apps.

After Apple forced Smile to stop using the Reminders database to sync TextExpander snippets across apps, this was often mentioned as the reason behind the removal of named pasteboards (which Smile used to leverage): advertisers were abusing the system to track users.

Ole’s proposed solution is “an official sharing API that only works with user interaction”, and I agree with that idea. I have lost hope over the years and I don’t think that Apple will bring something like Automator to iOS any time soon (though I’d always accept a surprise), but adding user-controlled app sharing features would be a good start.

My idea is still the same one from May:

This is an issue that I have been pondering for years. In 2010, Chris Clark posted a prototype (powered by Briefs) of a “services menu for iPhone”, and I keep thinking that such menu could be the solution to iOS’ inter-app communication woes. I don’t see Apple moving away from the one-app-at-a-time model, but I think that allowing users to invoke a menu (either for text selection or general shortcuts) to activate actions could help in better linking apps together. The menu would be sanctioned by Apple and available with a new API, so that developers would also be able to integrate it in more classic versions of “Open In” and “Share” menus.

Furthermore, by leveraging technologies like XPC, I’d like to see Apple enabling users to do less switching back and forth between apps. Today, you can tap on “Email” buttons to bring up a Mail.app modal view that doesn’t yank you out of the current app. Imagine, with iOS 7, being able to “read this later” by tapping on a link and saving it in a Pocket popup; pasting text and links from Safari into a Pages popup of the document you are working on; or, tweeting a photo from the Camera app with a Tweetbot menu and composing a Drafts note from anywhere.

Today, Greg Pierce tweeted about a possible “OAP” (Other-App Purchase) concept, and that’s also something I’ve been thinking about. If apps could better communicate with each other, apps could become “features” to unlock. Imagine if the user could choose to save a photo to Evernote or Dropbox from any app using a Mail-like popup that doesn’t take you out of the current app. Maybe next year?

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Rdio for iOS Gets New Profile Views, Sleep Timer

Rdio for iOS 7

Rdio for iOS 7

Music streaming service Rdio has today released an update to their iOS app that brings a new design for Profile views, a sleep timer, and various UI improvements for iOS 7.

The Rdio app has been regarded as one of the iOS 6 apps that, in hindsight, got the design of iOS 7 right before Apple even unveiled iOS 7, but, after the release of the OS in September, Rdio hasn’t done much to turn what was a forward-looking iOS 6 app into a real iOS 7 app. Today, version 2.5.4 shows an iOS 7 keyboard for search and it brings subtle changes to backgrounds, but otherwise Rdio hasn’t received a major redesign for iOS 7 yet.

Profiles views have been updated, showing avatars in the middle of the screen on a blurred background of the profile picture itself. The new design is available for both your personal profile and other people’s profile views, and it gives you easier access to a person’s “FM” station as well as the song they last played on Rdio.

In this update, Rdio also included a sleep timer feature: from the Settings, you can choose to automatically stop music playback after 15 to 120 minutes, which is a handy addition for people who like to put on some music before bedtime. You can get Rdio 2.5.4 on the App Store.

My Must-Have Mac Apps, 2013 Edition

Must Have Mac Apps 2013

Must Have Mac Apps 2013

For the past three years, I’ve been running a series called “My Must-Have Mac Apps” that, once a year, would list the apps that I found indispensable on my Mac. This year, considering the changes that I went through from a workflow perspective, I thought it would be appropriate to start focusing on iOS as well. The first installment was about the iPad; today, I’m going to talk about the Mac.

As I wrote when Mavericks was released, I don’t need my Mac as much as I used to. I can do most of my work from iOS (particularly from my iPad mini), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need a Mac for some tasks or that I’ve stopped using it altogether. I still have to use a few OS X-only apps and tools to get work done – stuff that wouldn’t be possible on an iPad, no matter how hard I try.

I may not be covering new Mac app releases on a weekly basis anymore, but, honestly, 2013 has been the year of iOS 7, with thousands of third-party developers shifting their focus to Apple’s mobile platform in order to update and redesign their apps in time for September. And the fact that Mavericks didn’t bring a radical new design or groundbreaking user features didn’t help either, as developers of Mac apps chose to release updates that focused on under-the-hood improvements and general optimizations.

And yet, in spite of a new design direction and several changes to built-in apps, iOS 7 still doesn’t come with valid alternatives to the stuff OS X is great at: a filesystem with easy management of files that can be opened by multiple apps, precision editing with a cursor, command line utilities, system-wide automation tools, and more. For as much as the iOS ecosystem is maturing and changing at an incredible pace, I haven’t stopped using my Mac and there are some things that can only be done on OS X. And therefore, like every year, I have put together a list of the apps that I consider my must-haves – apps that I install every time I set up my Mac and that I use regularly.

This year, I’ve simplified the list and gotten rid of extra layers for apps that I’m no longer using. You can compare the 2013 list to last year’s one and follow links from there to go back to previous years. You also won’t find last year’s section for price and Mac App Store stats at the bottom: developers often make price changes and release new versions of their apps outside the Mac App Store, so, ultimately, those stats couldn’t be properly contextualized over time.

The list below is organized in four sections: Main, for apps that I use several times every day; Writing, for tools that I employ to research and craft articles for MacStories; and Image & Video Editing, listing apps that allow me to put together screencasts, GIFs, and images for the site. Each app is listed with its App Store/website link and, at the end of the article, you’ll find my Mac app of the year.
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