Federico Viticci

10876 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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Apple To Sell Around 3.6 Million Macs This Quarter

At the Q1 2011 earnings call in January, Apple posted record revenue of $26.74 billion with 4.13 million Macs sold. That was a new record for the company, which sold 3.36 million Macs in the Q1 2010 quarter. Piper Jaffray’s analyst Gene Munster believes, basing on data from research market firm NPD, that in the fiscal quarter ending this month Apple will sell between 3.5 and 3.7 million Macs – somewhere below the expectations following last quarter’s results.

For January and February, Apple is trending up 16 percent over the year-ago quarter. That would put Apple at about 3.6 million Macs for the quarter. The street consensus is for Macs to be up in the 22 percent range year over year. The 16 percent gain would put Apple within, but at the low end, of Munster’s expectations of 15 percent to 25 percent.

The fact that Apple was readying its new line of MacBook Pros in February might reflect in slowdowns in sales as consumers were anticipating the new products. But, then again, that could lead to an increase in sales in March – although the figure won’t be included in this fiscal quarter’s results.

One thing is for sure: in the past quarters, Apple usually surpassed analysts’ general consensus on unit sales and revenue, especially thanks to the explosion of iOS devices outside and in the US. Whether the new MacBook Pros and Airs could lead to similar surprises is still to be seen.

Bon Jovi Hates Steve Jobs For Killing Music with iTunes

Everybody loves iTunes, right? The user-friendly experience of clicking the buy button, the huge catalogue of artists and albums available on it (with The Beatles, too), the integrated environment with iOS devices and Macs. Everybody loves iTunes.

Actually, no. Bon Jovi hates it and he thinks Steve Jobs is “personally responsible” for killing the music business. Seriously, according to Bon Jovi the man just took away the magic of buying physical records and firing up your walkman. In an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, Bon Jovi went ahead with the following statements:

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’. Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.

On a related note, Gutenberg is personally responsible for killing handwritten books. Oh, the magic of manually writing thousands of copies of the same book. And that Simjian guy? Man, he totally took the beauty of manually withdrawing cash away from me. Not to mention the insane operation by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner: with the invention of lighters, he killed the pleasure of manually lighting my cigars.

Let me tell you something, Bon Jovi. This little thing you hate is called “progress”. Yes, the same progress that allows your guitars to be amplified on stage. So perhaps next time, instead of blaming Steve Jobs for a digital market revolution that came after years of research at Apple, you’d like to think about it and consider that if some artists still manage to produce their records, it’s because of the ease of use of digital downloads. [via Cult of Mac]

Frenzy Public Beta Available: A Dropbox-based Social Network

Back in September we talked about Frenzy, nothing more than a teaser at the time that was promising to bring a “Dropbox-based social network” to the Mac. Today, Aptonic Software (makers of popular utility Dropzone) has released the first public beta of Frenzy for Mac and, indeed, it works like a private social network powered by the Dropbox backend. We took the app for a quick spin earlier today and we were impressed. Read more

iPad & Productivity: One Year Later

Instapaper developer Marco Arment makes the point on his personal blog about the iPad fitting more the entertainment category, rather than the productivity one. He thinks that, one year after its introduction, Apple hasn’t found the “sweet spot” yet for this new device:

Apple is now adapting to the market’s actual use by retreating somewhat from office productivity and pushing strongly into new territory — casual media creation — to see if that gets a stronger uptake in practice. I think it will be a lot more interesting than office productivity, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done in iOS to make it practical (especially regarding file transfers with computers).

I still don’t think Apple has found the sweet spot for the iPad’s usage: the ideal role it fills in personal computing. And I don’t think we, as developers or iPad owners, have found it, either. But I know that sweet spot exists, and for a computer category that has only existed for one year, we’re rushing towards it remarkably quickly.

Maybe it’s just me, but in this past year I’ve found a number of ways the iPad can help me be more productive to complete a series of tasks that would require a laptop otherwise. More importantly, the iPad has also created a new category of tasks that didn’t exist before. Read more

AirTuner Turns iPhones and iPads Into AirPlay Receivers

Speaking of AirPlay apps, here’s a $0.99 one that Apple’s isn’t featuring in its custom section, but should: AirTuner turns any iOS device into an AirPlay receiver that can display videos and photos coming from another device or iTunes.

Entirely hardware-accelerated and based on the same interface design Apple uses for AirPlay, AirTuner is universal for iPhones and iPads and in my tests worked perfectly with the Youtube and Photos apps, iTunes, Safari and other third-party applications thanks to the improved AirPlay support in iOS 4.3. For what it’s worth, the app’s icon is also nice on your homescreen.

With the iPad 2 featuring two cameras, it makes more sense now to be able to instantly stream photos and videos from one iOS device to another. Imagine checking out some photos on your iPad 2, and also have the possibility to beam them to your friend’s iPad. AirTuner is a $0.99 download here.

Apple Using New Headphone Jack in iPad 2?

An Apple patent published in September 2010 revealed the company was working on a new headphone jack design that would allow to place significantly smaller headphone jacks in future iPhones and iPods. According to Kevin Fox at Fury.com, Apple might have implemented the new design in the iPad 2, which features a headphone jack to fit the iPad’s smaller form factor and it’s set “in to a steep curve”.

The original iPhone also placed the headphone jack on a curved exterior surface, but did so by insetting it, with the disastrous side-effect that only headphone plugs that strictly adhered to the spec would fit deep enough into the recessed space to complete the connection.

This time however it looks like there’s no recession at all. In fact, the opposite seems to be true: A plug fully inserted into the jack will have a surprisingly large portion of its ground ring (the outermost metal band) exposed to the elements.

Read more

AT&T iPad 1 Owners Experiencing Issues with iPad 2 Upgrade

iLounge reports of a series of data activation issues experienced by original iPad owners when trying to upgrade the AT&T service for the iPad 2. As noted by the iLounge staff, an iPad 2 registered with a an existing, fully paid AT&T data service failed to activate; the second iPad 2 unit, set up with a new account, activated “almost immediately”. AT&T is offering two data plans for the iPad with the first one starting at 250 MB (at $14.99 per month) and a second tier with 2 GB traffic at $25 per month.

iLounge details the two issues original iPad owners may run into:

First, the iPad 2 will not activate. Second, the user will either have to manually swap the Micro-SIM cards between the iPad and iPad 2 units, or AT&T will disable the iPad’s Micro-SIM in order to allow the iPad 2’s Micro-SIM to work. The AT&T representative claimed that a user who chooses the latter option will have to buy a replacement card should they want to restore 3G service to the older model, as the first Micro-SIM will no longer be usable.

To enable the service on multiple iPads, AT&T customers will need to set up different accounts as the carrier’s system isn’t able to register two devices at once. While Apple didn’t make any specific mention of iPad 2 WiFi + 3G upgrade plans for iPad 1 owners, many expected the procedure to be simple and easy as swapping the SIM cards at any time with the same account on multiple devices.

Apple: Demand for iPad 2 Is “Amazing”→

Apple: Demand for iPad 2 Is “Amazing”

Speaking to The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller said the consumers’ demand for the iPad is “amazing”.

Demand for the next generation iPad 2 has been amazing,” Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller, told The Loop. “We are working hard to get iPad 2 into the hands of every customer who wants one as quickly as possible.”

Apple would not say exactly how many iPad 2s were sold over the weekend.

The launch of the iPad 2 saw long lines at Apple Stores across the US, delayed shipping times on Apple’s website and several retail stores sold out of units. A survey revealed 70% of iPad 2s are being sold to new customers, and an analyst predicted Apple would sell 600,000 copies over the launch weekend alone.

At this point, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see an Apple press release announcing 1 million iPads sold later this week.

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Byword: Distraction-less Writing App For Mac

Byword, a new app by Metaclassy, aims at bringing a minimal, focused writing environment to the Mac. The OS X platform isn’t new to this kind of applications that want to take the distraction away from your writing experience: Ommwriter for Mac tried to provide an uncluttered background for your text that, eventually, turned into a distracting experience for many due to the use of sounds and animations; the usual Text Edit, on the other hand, still maintains a strong hold on users with its minimal UI and powerful text editing features. When combined with apps like Think, Text Edit can become the ultimate writing app for the Mac.

Byword, however, wants to step up the game with a really minimal interface made of no toolbars, and just text on a light background. You can run the app in its own window, but Byword is meant for distraction-less fullscreen mode that will feel just right on Lion, but works well on Snow Leopard as well. When you’re writing in Byword, nothing else is on screen. Just you and the cursor. Read more