Federico Viticci

10929 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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Why Pull-To-Refresh Isn’t Such A Bad Guy→

Nick Arnott:

Carr would like to see more developers experiment with new interactions for swipe down gestures, and I cautiously agree. Pull-to-refresh is one of those ideas that seems so obvious in hindsight, but took a talented engineer to think of it. The brilliance of pull-to-refresh is just how well it fit into the existing design. When users try scrolling past the top of a table cell view, they’re trying to view newer content. Pull-to-refresh intelligently extends that scrolling to have an app refresh the content to load any new data. A perfectly logical and intuitive extension of the existing functionality.

This, in response to an article by Austin Carr from December. I especially agree with Nick when he says that fast, reliable data connections that never fail aren’t a reality yet, though they have gotten better over the years.

Pull-to-refresh may seem simple and obvious today, but it was a great design challenge for its inventor back in 2010. Nick makes a lot of valid points about its existence and evolution.

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Sifttter: An IFTTT To Day One Logger→

Sifttter takes the concept of Slogger and applies it to IFTTT by using Brett’s original TaskPaper script. Though it is essentially limited to current IFTTT channels, there is lots of flexibility through IFTTT itself, as well as the opportunity for individual input and customization. I’ve been using this for several months, and am happy to share it here for those who might be interested.

While I decided to avoid tools like Slogger for my Day One journal, I think that the solution Craig put together is fun and nerdy. Not for me, but a good weekend project.

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Quick iTunes Affiliate Link Creation with Affiliate for Mac

Developed by Bytesize Apps, Affiliate is a $1.99 utility for Mac that simplifies the process of creating affiliate links for iTunes and Amazon. I was especially interested in checking out Affiliate as, after Apple launched a new affiliate program with PHG in August 2013, we’ve been using affiliate links every day at MacStories, and I’ve been looking for a solution to quickly generate them.

Affiliate lives in the menubar and intercepts iTunes/Amazon links you to copy to the clipboard, adding your affiliate token/tag to them automatically. In the app’s popover, you can configure an affiliate token and campaign tracking code for iTunes (PHG) and an affiliate tag for Amazon links. Every time you copy an iTunes link anywhere on your computer (iTunes, an email message, the browser – anything), Affiliate will see it, append your affiliate data in the proper format, and place the affiliate link in the clipboard for you to paste anywhere you want. The app plays a sound and displays a notification when it generates a URL and the process is simple and immediate.

Unfortunately, in its current version Affiliate doesn’t support international Amazon links (it’ll only work with .com Amazon URLs) and it doesn’t come with an option to choose from multiple campaign tracking codes for iTunes links. We use various tracking codes at MacStories, and I need to choose from multiple ones depending on the link I want to share; for this reason, I still have to use a fill-in snippet created in TextExpander with support for multiple options. I like, however, how Affiliate can detect an iTunes link that’s already an affiliate one and clean it up for you, turning it into an affiliate link for your token.

If you don’t care about the limitations mentioned above (that will likely be fixed soon) and if you generate affiliate links on a daily basis for your blog or Twitter account, I recommend getting Affiliate. It’s fast, it automatically puts affiliate links in the clipboard, it’ll save you time, and it’s $1.99.

App Store Sales Top $10 Billion In 2013, $1 Billion In December Alone→

Apple PR:

Apple today announced that customers spent over $10 billion on the App Store in 2013, including over $1 billion in December alone. App Store customers downloaded almost three billion apps in December making it the most successful month in App Store history. Apple’s incredible developers have now earned $15 billion on the App Store.

In the press release, Eddy Cue calls it “the best year ever for the App Store”. Apple said that developers updated their apps for iOS to bring “content to the forefront while increasing the overall efficiency and performance of their apps” and it notes that several hits of the year were created by developers outside the US. In terms of numbers, Apple confirms that over a million apps are available on the App Store, with 500,000 made for iPad.

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The First App You Open In The Morning→

MG Siegler:

You wake up. You grab your phone. What’s the first app you open?

This sounds like a silly question — or worse, an insulting one. But I find it’s a rather enlightening question. Depending on when the question is asked, the answer can either be telling about the current state of apps or the current state of you.

Like MG, the first app I open every morning is Twitter – well, Tweetbot anyway. It used to be email; then Tweetie; at one point, it was Reeder; for the past year, the first app I’ve always opened in the morning has been Tweetbot. Twitter used to be described as the “water cooler”, and maybe to an extent it still is – but the scope is much larger these days. I can open Twitter and instantly see my mentions about MacStories or The Prompt, direct messages from friends, breaking news, interesting articles, the latest meme – anything. In fact, when in the morning I tell my girlfriend I’m “catching up on the news”, it means I’m scrolling through Tweetbot/Twitter.

In the past few months, I’ve been enjoying the Discover section of the official Twitter app as a “catch up system” too. However, my favorite aspect of the morning Twitter routine remains Tweetbot’s support for background fetching of tweets on iOS 7 – it’s why Tweetbot for iPhone is the first app I use.

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My Photo Management Workflow, Early 2014

Photo Management Workflow, Early 2014

Photo Management Workflow, Early 2014

I listened to the latest episode of Mac Power Users, where David, Katie, and my friend Bradley discussed their photo management workflows, the limitations of iPhoto and iCloud, and shared some tips on how to get the most of modern third-party photo services and Apple’s Photo Stream. It’s a great episode and a solid complement to our photo management episode on The Prompt, always with Bradley (he’s the photo management guru these days, having written a book on the topic). For both follow-up reasons and because it’s the new year and hence a good moment to re-evaluate how technology is supposed to be working for us, I thought I’d give an update on my photo management workflow.

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Backblaze→

My thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring MacStories this week. You need a backup of all the data on your computer, and Backblaze offers unlimited and unthrottled backup at just $5 /month per computer. Backblaze automatically backs up all your files – not just a subset of them – every day, all the time, so you won’t lose any of your data in case of theft, fire, flood, stolen or broken computer.

Backblaze was created by former Apple engineers, and the company understands the needs of Apple users. Backblaze has a native Mac app for Mavericks and it comes with an iOS app to remotely access, view, and share your files. Secure and offsite, Backblaze’s continuous backup ensures you can always view and restore files; once installed, you don’t have to think about complicated options and configurations – if it’s installed, Backblaze will do the rest for you.

Among other features, Backblaze supports external drives, uses military-grade encryption for your files, and it has a free web restore feature that also has file versioning built-in. Backblaze is online backup made easy, and you can check it out and sign up for a plan here.

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