Federico Viticci

10758 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

Apple Posts Countdown to 50 Billion App Downloads

With its weekly App Store refresh, Apple has today launched an official countdown to 50 billion app downloads. Through a page available on iTunes, Apple explains that they will award an App Store gift card of $10,000 to the lucky customer who will download the 50 billionth app, plus a $500 App Store gift card to each of the next 50 people to download an app.

Apps have revolutionized the way we play video games, consume news, do business, educate, communicate, create art, and so much more.

The countdown promotion is open to entrants who are 13 years of age or older and are located in one of the 155 countries where the App Store is available. There’s a limit of 25 entries per person per day; Apple specifies that the live counter is for “illustrative purposes” only.

In the App Store page, Apple has also posted links to official rules and a guide to enter to win without a purchase or download, but the links aren’t live on Apple.com yet. We will update this more with more information as it becomes available from Apple.

Apple announced 40 billion App Store downloads in January 2013, with 20 billion of them in 2012 alone. For the 25 billionth app download in 2012, Apple awarded  Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China – who downloaded  Where’s My Water? Free – with a $10,000 gift card.

Calzy Calculator

Calzy

Calzy

When it comes to iPhone calculators, I have simple needs: they have to help me when I’m buying groceries.

I have been using Tapbots’ excellent Calcbot app for years: unlike Apple’s built-in calculator, it comes with proper support for undo and history, which allows me to easily keep track of the items I’m buying at the grocery store. You could say that, like image editors, I seek out for non-destructive calculators: I want to have access to a stacked list of the single operations I have entered and to be able to delete items inside the expression list. The problem with Calcbot, as I tweeted in March, is that the app still hasn’t been updated for the iPhone 5’s taller screen, and, as MacStories readers know, I can’t stand looking at a letterboxed app on a daily basis. Calcbot works fine, but I wanted to see whether I was missing out on new calculator apps that were ready for the iPhone 5 and had comparable feature sets. Fortunately, I found Calzy. Read more

Apple Releases iOS 6.1.4→

Today Apple released iOS 6.1.4, a minor update that is available through iOS’ software update tool and that is now propagating on iTunes. The new version, weighing at just 11.5 MB on the iPhone 5, comes with an “updated audio profile for speakerphone”. iOS 6.1.4 follows the release of iOS 6.1.3 – another minor update – in mid March.

The update (for iPhone 5, GSM) can be downloaded directly by clicking the title above. A CDMA version is available as a direct download here.

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Heads Up! By Impending→

Cool new $0.99 iPhone game designed and developed by Impending for the Ellen DeGeneres Show. The game is, essentially, an iOS version of one of Ellen’s classic games: using your iPhone as a “card” to hold over your head, other players will have to help you guess the name of a celebrity, an accent, and so forth.

There are 18 themed decks in Heads Up!, and the design and interactions look fun and polished. Impending – co-creators of Clear with Realmac – have a history for producing great-looking and delightfully touch-based apps, and Heads Up is no exception. While holding a card over your head, you can tilt the iPhone up to pass, or tilt it down when you answer correctly. As shown in the announcement by Ellen, the app also records videos with the camera to capture funny moments.

It’s great to see Impending collaborating on a mainstream project like Heads Up! while keeping the same attention to detail as always. I can’t wait to play this with my friends this weekend. Check out the video below, and the game’s website here.

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Evomail Review: A Gmail Client for iPad With A Clean Design and Push Notifications

Evomail, a new Gmail client for iPad released today at $2.99, wants to fill the void left by the announced-but-never-released Sparrow for iPad, providing an alternative to the largely web-based official Gmail app and the upcoming (?) Mailbox for iPad. To differentiate itself from iOS’ native email client, Apple’s Mail app, Evomail focuses on three main areas: a new, modern design; push notifications; and tight integration with Gmail. The first version of Evomail is good, but rough around (many) edges.

Read more

Penultimate 4.1 Adds New Premium Options, Sync Improvements→

A nice update to Penultimate has been released today. This is the first major update to hit the App Store since I first reviewed the (re)launch of Penultimate with version 4.0.

Penultimate 4.1 lets Premium Evernote users to access every item in the Paper Shop for free (which is a nice and welcome extra) and to set a passcode lock for enhanced security. There are new options to pause syncing with Evernote (good when traveling or if you simply lack an always-on Internet connection), sign out and switch users, and have the app suggest notebook titles based on location and calendar events (a feature also shared with Evernote). My favorite subtle improvement, however, is that Penultimate now shows the last page you were editing directly in a notebook’s cover.

Penultimate 4.1 is available on the App Store.

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Acorn 4.0 Brings Non-Destructive Filters, Updated Interface, And More

Flying Meat’s Acorn has been my favorite OS X image editor for a long time now. With a clean interface that, unlike more powerful solutions, never overwhelmed me with options, I use Acorn to edit the occasional photo and correct screenshots on a daily basis. Version 4.o of the app, released today, adds a number of features aimed at increasing the app’s functionalities while also slimming down interface clutter and making menus easier to organize and access. Read more

The State of Apple Rumors→

John Moltz:

It’s a weird time for those of us who’ve followed Apple rumors for years. (And I’m not the only one who has noticed.) At the risk of sounding like your prototypical hipster, today’s rumors just aren’t as good as they used to be. The devices that we hear whispers about now—a smartwatch, a television, a cheaper iPhone—seem lackluster compared to the rumored products of days past—products that, when they actually appeared, changed entire industries.

I think that a lot of this has to do with an increasing shift of rumors towards software: just in the past week, various people have spoken with their sources to detail what’s coming with iOS 7 and OS X 10.9. It is an exciting time to think about what Apple may do with an iOS redesign, better inter-app communication, iCloud improvements, and changes to core iOS apps that have basically stayed the same since iPhone OS 1.

On the hardware side, changes to existing product lines tend to be more incremental, often detailed well in advance by rumor sites, and even shown in photos of “leaked” components. But even with current products, there are interesting scenarios to talk about.

And as far as the smartwatch rumor goes, I don’t think that’s lackluster at all.

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