Federico Viticci

10874 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

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Second Build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 Seeded to Developers

Last night, Apple seeded the second build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 to developers. The new build, weighing at around 1 GB, carries number 10K524 and it’s available now for download in the Mac Dev Center. According to people familiar with the new release, focus areas mentioned in the seed notes are still AirPort, Graphics Drivers, Mac App Store, Networking, QuickTime and VPN.

The first build of 10.6.8 was seeded last week on May 13, coming as a surprise for those who thought Mac OS X 10.6.7 would be the last Snow Leopard update. Apple is expected to unveil the final version of 10.7 Lion at the WWDC in June with a public release this summer, leading many to believe 10.6.8 will be the last maintenance update for machines running Snow Leopard.

Apple Reaches Deal with Sony Over Cloud Music

As work on the rumored cloud music service nears finalization for an official WWDC announcement, Bloomberg reported last night Apple has reached a deal with Sony Music Entertainment, following reports that the company managed to sign the Warner Music Group and EMI. This leaves Universal, the biggest label of all four in the United States, out of the equation, but according to the rumors Apple’s Eddy Cue is actively focused on closing all the remaining paperwork with music labels by next week.

Apple has reached licensing accords with Sony Corp. (6758)’s music division, EMI Group and Warner Music Group, the people said. Universal Music Group, the largest recording company, is close to a deal, another person said. The company also would need to reach agreements with music publishers, which control different rights than the labels.

Apple’s cloud music service is said to be part of a major MobileMe revamp the company has been working on for the past two years, which will include several new functionalities and a new price point with basic features offered for free. As for the music service, it’s unclear whether Apple will adopt an upload system like Google and Amazon or a subscription-based delivery with songs coming from the iTunes Store, but a patent surfaced yesterday seems to suggest Apple’s implementation will go as far as allowing users to upload their own songs, and stream others they don’t own from a larger “content source” like the iTunes Store.

Ars Investigates Recent Mac Malware→

Ars Investigates Recent Mac Malware

MAC Defender has changed everything,” one Apple Store Genius, who requested to remain anonymous (we’ll call him Lenny) told Ars. “We probably get 3 or 4 people with this per day. Most of them only got as far as installing the program and haven’t entered their credit card details.”

Lenny went on. “This always sparks a debate at the bar on whether antivirus software is necessary on the Mac. This is difficult, as the store sells several antivirus products implying that Apple supports the idea, but as many customers point out, the sales guys aren’t shy in making the claims for Mac OS X’s security. Internally, Apple’s [IT] department mandates the use of Norton Antivirus on company machines.

Following the controversy that sparkled after the large diffusion of MAC Defender (covered here) that rose (again) the inevitable question as to whether being scared of malware on a Mac is nothing but crying wolf, Ars Technica takes a step back and tries to analyze the situation interviewing Apple employees, Geniuses, and various representatives of antivirus / security companies. Whilst it’s kind of obvious that antivirus makers will always recommend their products because you have to keep your machine secure, the takeaway from support specialists is interesting: there’s no need to panic, but people are undoubtedly coming over asking for help with this recent malware.

Of course, the peculiar nature of Mac Defender (it’s a “scanning software” that asks for your credit card details, and it’s downloaded through a malicious script from certain websites and Google Image Search) raises another issue: users are installing the software by manually going through an installer and giving it their passwords – this shouldn’t happen. Anyone who’s a little skilled in computing should know that stuff you didn’t want to download shouldn’t be granted permission to run in the first place. And MAC Defender comes as a whole installer. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s really about crying wolf (though some people like to run overly sensationalistic headlines), as much as it’s about the fact that this malware ultimately exists. Fact.

Ars has an interesting read, and our friends at TUAW have a pretty handy guide detailing the removal of MAC Defender. The best tip, however, is still the same: don’t execute programs and documents you don’t know.

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DropDAV 2.0 Launches, Goes Paid at $5 Per Month

If you’re a heavy user of the iWork suite for iPad or the recently released OmniOutliner and have been looking for a way to easily keep documents in “sync” across machines, you’ve probably already heard of DropDAV. By providing a WebDAV interface to your existing Dropbox account, DropDAV allows you to export documents using iOS apps’ “save to WebDAV” function, and have your docs conveniently saved on the desktop. Because DropDAV simply gives Dropbox the capability of becoming a WeDAV server, you’re not really “syncing” documents when you use Pages or Number for iPad –rather, as these apps already use WebDAV, you’re given the option to at least save to Dropbox. That’s something.

The first version of DropDAV, launched a few months ago, became so popular that the developers had to rethink the service from the ground-up and rewrite the whole engine to support the latest WebDAV standards, offer more speed and reliability, and find a pricing model that would keep operations going. DropDAV 1.0, in fact, was free if you were connecting to a free 2 GB Dropbox account, and asked you to pay only if you had a paid Dropbox account. With version 2.0, officially announced two days ago, gone is the freemium model and the differentiation between free and paid Dropbox accounts: DropDAV now has a 14-day free trial, and after that it’s $5 per month. Simple. The developers explain they’ve completely rebuilt DropDAV to be faster, more compliant to standards and less prone to server-side errors; by integrating with the powerful Dropbox API, DropDAV still allows you to virtually export to WebDAV from any app that supports the protocol, and have documents actually offloaded to Dropbox. It works really, really well and, from what I can tell after a quick test (I’m a subscriber), it’s seriously faster and improved. From a technical standpoint, the devs write:

We identified inconsistencies in the way PHP and the OAuth Pear plugin worked with UTF-8 strings. We created a taxonomy of WebDAV clients, sorting out which ones behaved similarly. We integrated in support for WebDAV locking to comply with the Class 2 specifications.

In the end, we bridged our legacy implementations of WebDAV’s hairier functions (written in PHP) with the native UTF-8 support and better Dropbox client in Python. We settled on an implementation that includes extensible request parsing in PHP, communication with Dropbox in Python, then extensible response formatting back in PHP. It’s a lot cleaner than it sounds, and it works really, really well for the entire UTF-8 character set and XML Special characters.

Class 2 support is still a work in progress. In truth, it’s somewhat of a hack in that Dropbox doesn’t support locking, so we could only create the illusion of locking for our WebDAV clients. We think we’ve done that well enough to roll out and will continue improving it to eventually pass the Litmus test in the coming weeks.

If you haven’t checked out DropDAV already, here’s your chance to start a free trial and connect the service to your Dropbox. It works great with the iWork suite, The Omni Group’s apps and a variety of file managers for OS X and iOS (such as iFiles), and it’s probably the best shot you have if you don’t want to go insane with Pages and exporting files in iTunes.

Apple “iTV” Prototype Shows Up on eBay

As noted by MacRumors, a prototype “iTV” of the device that eventually shipped as the first-generation Apple TV is now available on eBay for a “Buy Now” price of $350. The device, resembling the original Apple TV with only an Apple logo on top but lacking the “TV” branding, is still functional and also managed to receive Apple TV software updates throughout the years, in spite of its internal and not-for-release nature that would suggest the device is not capable of running the latest software. However, the iTV is apparently working correctly and showing the 3.0 software update from 2007. The seller on eBay claims the pictures are the best description he can provide, and admittedly the device seems in good conditions.

The photos also show the device booted up and displaying the stock photo screensaver, although it is not connected to the Internet and the item’s description indicates that it has not been fully tested for functionality.

The iTV also has a couple of labels on its back, depicting the DVT (device verification test) status and the “Apple Development Team” that originally owned it and somehow gave it to someone else. Overall, the device looks like a genuine hardware verification unit that eventually shipped with a different logo, but still retains all the functionalities of the original Apple TV. Check it out here before it’s too late.

PhotoForge 2 Released, Brings Powerful Image Editing to iOS

Announced last week as a successor to the popular lightweight image editing software for iPhone and iPad PhotoForge (which we reviewed here), PhotoForge 2 is a complete rewrite of the original app, sporting a completely new UI, more image editing features, new export options and a faster engine to bring semi-professional editing to the iPhone. In spite of the iPad version being advertised in the launch promo video, PhotoForge 2 is available today at $0.99 on the iPhone, with the iPad version coming in the next weeks as a Universal update. The GhostBird Software developers have decided to make PhotoForge 2 a standalone app, as the App Store doesn’t come with an upgrade policy and they felt that version 2.0 was worth paying a separate price. Indeed, the app sports several new functionalities and paying $0.99 now with the promise of an iPad update for free relatively soon sounds like a great deal. Plus, once the iPad update comes out the app will be priced at $2.99 for the remainder of May, although the full retail price is $4.99. That means you can get the app now and save $4, or wait for the iPad update and still save $2. The app has started propagating this morning in iTunes and is available here.

PhotoForge 2 is a full-featured image editing app for iOS, perhaps the most powerful available on the App Store. Whilst I can’t go through all the features now as I’ve played with the iPhone app for less than an hour (but we’ll make sure to have a full review once the iPad app is released), I can say there’s a notable difference when using the PhotoForge 1 and this 2.0 update. PhotoForge 2.0 has got a whole new interface revolving around the concept of “docks” (like the standard OS X one) that are basically a list of icons and buttons to navigate through the various image editing functions. Once you load a photo from your Camera Roll and start a new project,  you can tap on the FX button in the bottom toolbar to scroll through a series of effects to apply to your photo in real-time, most of them being similar to the ones offered in apps like Instagram and Camera+. In PhotoForge 2.0, photos fit to screen by default, but you can double-tap them to edit them at full resolution looking at all pixels on screen. As I said effects are applied in real-time, with a loading bar at the top showing progress – on the iPhone 4, everything is quite smooth and responsive, though I expect the iPad 2 version to be a little snappier given the A5 processor. There’s lot of stuff to play with in PhotoForge 2.0, including layers, exposure control, brightness and contrast, or standard RGB levels. It feels like a mini Photoshop version, ported to a smaller screen with controls rewritten for multi-touch. Of course, you can’t expect all the functionalities of Photoshop to be available in PhotoForge 2.0, but this thing does undoubtedly have more options and settings than the average iOS photo editor. You can tweak opacity and blend modes, create and duplicate layers or fill a new one with color, copy and paste masks or apply sharpening and noise reduction.

Because the feature list is huge and I’ve only been playing with the app this morning, here’s a list of functionalities for comparison’s sake:

  • Curves & Levels with RGB, CMYK and LAB colorspaces.
  • Sharpening & Noise Reduction
  • HSL & Channel Mixer controls
  • Brightness & Contrast, Exposure, Vibrance
  • White Balance, Shadows & Highlights
  • Auto Exposure & Auto White Balance
  • Precise Image Cropping and Resizing
  • Customize your film, lens, flash and much more to create amazing looking photographs with the Pop! Cam add-on
  • Great Black & White and Sepia filters
  • Lomo, Gothic, Dreamy and 3D
  • Crystallize, Pointallize and Impressionist.
  • Bulge, Pinch & Twirl

PhotoForge 2.0 is meant for both for professional and casual users (thanks to an intuitive interface), and I have a feeling the iPad counterpart, with larger real screen estate, will make image editing even better as I’ve noticed editing on the iPhone can be sometimes a little frustrating because of the smaller screen – meaning, when applying some effects or setting other options there’s a chance you won’t see the full image in front of you, and the iPad should fix this issue. However, I was impressed by the sharing functionalities of PhotoForge 2.0, which include Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter sharing, FTP and Dropbox uploading, or standard emailing and saving to the Camera Roll. The selection of services is really impressive and the Dropbox addition quite welcome, though I’d like to see direct CloudApp integration as well.

As it stands now, I think PhotoForge 2.0 is the most powerful and beautiful image editor for iPhone. The iPad version is something I’m really looking forward to, and while you wait you should get the app here at $0.99. It’s simply a great update.

DropIn Enhances Dropbox with Menubar Drag & Drop, Filters, Previews

I rely on Dropbox on a daily basis to sync files between computers, my iTunes music library and have access to folders shared with the MacStories team or my friends. In fact, Dropbox is the first app I install on every new Mac or fresh installation of OS X, being the service that stores my most important data, app libraries, and more. But for as much as I love Dropbox and couldn’t work without it anymore, I loathe the desktop Mac app. Not the syncing service that displays a badge next to my files or folders, or the preference panel that (in the latest version) allows me to set up selective sync: I can’t stand the menubar utility, which is an icon that does nothing but displaying my available space on Dropbox and changing its looks depending on whether Dropbox is syncing or not. It doesn’t do anything else, and more importantly it sits in the menubar but it doesn’t let me drag files onto it for quick uploading.

Meet DropIn, a $1.99 utility from the Mac App Store that enhances your local Dropbox installation by letting you drag files in the menubar, browse recent files, set up notifications and filters. Sure, it’s another icon in the menubar, but at least it lets me do a bunch of things the official app can’t. DropIn has two main functionalities: it displays a preview of recently changed files and enables you to create filters for the files you want to see in there; it comes with a Droplet feature that allows you to move files to Dropbox by dragging them onto the menubar, avoiding the Finder altogether. In DropIn’s preferences I told the app to simply copy files into my Dropbox main directory, but you can choose sub-folders as well or enter your account ID to upload files to the public folder and get a link in your clipboard automatically. This one’s a feature I’ve been looking forward to have on my Mac because I dislike stacks in my dock, and I’d rather have an icon in my menubar instead of having to open a new Finder window every time. And it works great in DropIn.

As for recently changed files and notifications, this is something you can do with the official Dropbox app and Growl, but DropIn lets you set up the number of updated files to display in the dropdown menu and it’s also got inline previews and a button to reveal a file in the Finder. Furthermore, you can set up advanced rules in the Filters section to show / hide specific files and make sure you’re only being notified about things you care about, and not those info.plist files from iTunes.

At $1.99, DropIn is a great addition to Dropbox, if only for the drag & drop functionality that makes it incredibly easy to move anything to your personal cloud. You can get the app from the Mac App Store here. Check out more screenshots below. Read more

Patent Reveals How Apple’s New Music Service Could Work

A new patent application published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week and discovered by AppleInsider today seems to provide some details about Apple’s rumored cloud-based music service, and how iTunes on the desktop and mobile devices like an iPhone could manage to improve streaming quality and speed by locally syncing snippets of songs. The patent, entitled ”Local Storage of a Portion of Streamed Media Items”, notes how most streaming services allow users to access an online library of music and cache contents locally on device to enable playback when an Internet connection is not available. This happens in popular service Spotify, which enables users to keep a local cache of albums and songs so they won’t be forced to always be connected to the Internet to listen to music. Whilst Spotify’s cache action has to be triggered manually by the user, other cloud music services automatically cache a song in the background once a user starts listening to it. Apple’s proposed solution is different, and it involves a new menu in iTunes (for the desktop) that syncs via USB “partial music” to an iOS device – that is, small snippets of a song, with the remaining parts available online.

Unlike cache, partial local sync has the advantage of letting users start listening to music immediately without waiting times. Because cache in other services is still obtained with an Internet connection, users have to wait for the caching process to finish before they can start playback. And if the song is not cached, users have to wait for the remote server to begin streaming – when quickly jumping between artists and songs (as most users do on iPods and iPhones), having to wait a few seconds for streaming to begin can be annoying. Assuming a user is syncing music that’s available both locally (on a Mac or PC) and in the cloud (the music service), Apple’s proposed solution skips cache and waiting times entirely by saving locally a first snippet of a song, and then fetching the rest remotely. This way, iTunes doesn’t have to sync full content (thus cutting syncing times) and a mobile device doesn’t have to stream the first seconds of a song. The benefit for users is that playback will start immediately regardless of how fast they’ll switch between songs; the obvious downside is that something will still have to be synced locally. AppleInsider also posts more details from the patent:

The application suggests that the remotely stored content could be a user’s own library, which they have streamed from a home computer or a remote server. Or, it could be streamed from a large “content source,” such as the iTunes Music Store. The described system would also utilize authentication methods, such as with an iTunes account username and password, to ensure that the user has purchased the items and has the right to stream them.

If this patent is of any indication, it could lend some credence to the reports that claimed Apple’s cloud music service was being set up in a way that users could both stream their own music libraries (by uploading them first) and music they didn’t purchase, with a subscription model similar to Spotify. The method described above would clearly require an update to the iTunes application, and it’s unclear whether Apple could also provide a way to “always stream”, avoiding partial sync and relying exclusively on a remote connection. Apple is expected to unveil iOS 5 with new cloud-based features at the WWDC, which kicks off in San Francisco on June 6.

Phone, Tablet Owners Willing to Pay for Media Subscription Services

With rumors floating around about Apple’s upcoming cloud music service (especially after last night’s report on the company signing a deal with EMI) and others like Google and Amazon moving forward on the streaming bandwagon with products to upload and stream music at any time with smartphones, tablets and desktop web browsers, subscription-based payment systems are often seen as the only feasible solution to guarantee a continuos cloud service without interruptions, always available anywhere you go. Just like Spotify and Rdio let users stream large collections of music they don’t necessarily own by paying a monthly or annual fee, Apple is rumored to extend the iTunes subscription system it created for magazines to music, movies, and a combination of both for the ultimate iTunes Store cloud experience. But just how much are phone and tablet people willing to pay for these new cloud services based on subscriptions? That’s what research firm Nielsen takes a look at in its latest survey, asking users of “connected devices” how much they would pay for media subscriptions that would give them access to a variety of content on their mobile devices.

It turns out, music, movies, magazines, books and TV shows are something people would pay for – sure, there are different results, but take a look at the graph above and you’ll see that these 5 categories are the ones with less orange, which stands for “not willing to pay.” On the other side, sports content, streaming radio and news are something people would be less prone to subscribe to. Overall, the sweet spot for subscriptions seems to be around $4.99 - $9.99 per month, which is what most cloud services ask for these days. There’s an interesting difference about music, however: people would pay for “downloaded music”, and not for “streaming radio.” Assuming “downloaded music” stands for “music you own”, and people care about having online access to music that’s ultimately theirs, services like Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta should be exactly what people are looking for, as they let you upload your own music to the cloud. Also assuming Apple is working on a similar solution, this survey suggests the company should allow for both uploads and Spotify-like streaming, enabling users to lock their own collections in the cloud, and get access to stuff they didn’t buy as well. Maybe that’s what these deals with music labels are all about.

Tablet and smartphone owners with proper Internet access on the go are willing to pay for online media available through apps, and if that’s their own media, there’s an incentive to subscribe. A report in the past weeks suggested Apple was considering offering a free initial trial for its new cloud music service, with a $20 yearly subscription once the demo is over.