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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Instagram 1.1 Released: Now With Hashtags

Popular photo-sharing / mobile social network Instagram has released an update to their iPhone app, which reaches version 1.1 and adds a couple of interesting new features. First off, #hashtags: called “Topics” by the Instagram developers, you can now tag your photos just like you can tag a status update on Twitter, and perform a search for that specific hashtag. Thus, topics can create alternative photo albums that have their own RSS feeds you can subscribe to and to which anyone can contribute by using the same hashtag in other photos. If you’re a Twitter user, you know the drill. As in typical Instagram fashion, it’s all very easy and user-friendly.

Instagram now has a proper comment management system, too. You can manage your own comments on other people’s photos and delete inappropriate ones on yours as well. And if you really don’t like a user, you can now flag him and block him. I guess spammers found their way onto Instagram, and now we can do some cleaning. Personally, this one’s a welcome feature.

Last, the usual bug fixes, more languages and overall improvements. No new filters this time – maybe they will come with version 1.2. Instagram 1.1 is available now in the App Store.

Eric Schmidt: “Steve Jobs Is Absolutely Brilliant”→

Eric Schmidt: “Steve Jobs Is Absolutely Brilliant”

Soon-to-be-ex Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has some nice words about Apple, iOS and Steve Jobs:

Schmidt also took on Google’s competition with Apple. Google partners with Apple, he said, on search, maps and YouTube. It competes, of course, on phones. Google also might in theory compete with Apple’s Macintosh computer business with its Chrome OS hardware that Google hopes “to announce later this year,” Schmidt said.

“Steve is absolutely brilliant,” said Schmidt, referring to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, where Schmidt was a longtime board member. “(He’s) the most successful CEO in the world anywhere.” Comparing Apple’s iPhone and iPad platform to Android, he said: “They managed to build an elegant, scalable, closed system. Google is attempting to do something with a completely different approach.

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Apple & News Corp. To Hold Event on Feb. 2 To Announce The Daily

The Loop reports Apple and News Corp. will hold a media event in New York on February 2 to launch The Daily, the long rumored iPad-only digital newspaper that should rely on a new iTunes-based subscription service. This automatic billing system is rumored to be built into a new version of iOS, and we know Apple is currently testing iOS 4.3 with developers.

If the rumors are to be believed, will there be an “official” sneak peek at iOS 4.3 with subscriptions on February 2? And if The Daily will “launch” on that day, does it mean iOS 4.s3 is nearing its public release as well? Or maybe the subscription system doesn’t need to be built into iOS 4.3 at all, contrary to what the rumors suggested so far?

We will find out next week. It’s interesting that Eddy Cue, Vice President of Internet Services, will join Rupert Murdoch on stage to unveil The Daily. Perhaps these subscriptions functionalities don’t need to be baked into iOS, and could a server-side implementation on Apple’s end. It’s also worth considering that this is a News Corp. event with an Apple VP on stage – we don’t think Apple will provide an extensive preview of iOS 4.3 there.

We know that The Daily will be priced at $0.99 /week, as confirmed by News. Corp’s CEO James Murdoch.

Tapu: iPad Browser That Looks Like Chrome, Plugs Into Facebook

Looking for great alternatives to Mobile Safari, I have stumbled upon a lot browsers for the iPad. Some of them are really nice, like Grazing and Browser+; some them are the result of strange experiments gone terribly wrong, like Super Prober. Overall, the trend amongst developers seem to be that of trying to reinvent Safari by adding features over features that, without good software engineering and quality control, may end up cluttering an app, making everything barely usable. It happened with many browsers I have tested so far. Read more

Ions: Impressive Particle Visualizer for iPad

Soon after the iPad came out and Apple launched an App Store specifically meant for it, an app quickly jumped to first position of the charts: Uzu. The app, launched as free and eventually priced at $1.99, is a neat particle visualizer that supports multitouch input and allows you to create patterns with your fingers. Check our demo video here if you missed.

Ions, developed by Douglas Applewhite and available in App Store at $0.99, is an equally impressive particle visualizer that, unlike Uzu, gives you more control over the particles of light moving on screen. In fact, Ions might just be the most powerful and technically advanced particle visualizer we’ve seen on the iOS platform. The app comes with different particle light styles that you can switch at any time; you can control gravity with a slider or de-activate it from a popup menu; most of all, you can place emitters and negative fields on screen to control the movement of particles, which can go up to 20,000. Everything runs at 60fps and I haven’t noticed a single slowdown in my tests. Even with the maximum amount of emitters and fields particle were still running smoothly and fast.

You can also control the amount of particles released by an emitter, adjust the orientation and speed of the flow. Once you’ve achieved an interesting layout, you can save it and load it later to show it to your friends.

Go download Ions here. Demo video after the break. Really impressive. Read more

Pixelsync Transfers Photos Between Aperture and iPad

Professional photographers who own an iPad and have seen that lightweight photo editing is possible on the tablet have been asking for a portable version of Apple’s Aperture software for quite some time now. While there’s no evidence that Apple is working on a native iPad version of Aperture with focus on the OS X audience and the Mac App Store (where Aperture is being sold at a nice discounted price), third-party developers have set out to create alternatives to the most popular “pro” Apple apps like Final Cut and, indeed, Aperture.

Pixelsync, previously known as “Tagalicious”, is a new app by developer Bart Jacobs that can sync Aperture photos between the iPad and the Mac. With a minimal and elegant interface (that’s dramatically improved since the first version of the app which, frankly, was quite ugly) that resembles the default Photos app, Pixelsync needs to communicate with a “helper” software users will have to install on their OS X machine running Aperture. Pixelsync Helper will than make it possible for the iPad app to fetch photos from the desktop application.

In Pixelsync for iPad you can’t edit photos, but you can play around with the metadata. Put simply, you can rate photos and assign color labels. Once projects and / or albums have been imported, you can edit and organize these data on the iPad and then sync back to Aperture. It all happens wirelessly with no USB cable required.

At $5.99 in the App Store, Pixelsync might be a little too pricey; still, Aperture users who have been looking for a lightweight iPad companion should give it a try.

This Copter Is Controlled By An iPhone [Video]

Is there anything the iPhone can’t do these days? People come up with the greatest and, at the same time, weirdest accessories to extend the capabilities of Apple’s shiny smartphone. From the black diamond that brings apps to life or the iPhone-based steering wheel to the 8x optical zoom and heart monitor, you might think “we have seen enough”. Luckily for us, no.

Meet the iPhone-controlled copter by AppToyz. It’s a copter (RC car coming soon) that’s entirely controlled by an iPhone running a special app and plugged into a receiver dongle that fits into the headphone jack and can let the copter communicate with the device. You can fly the copter away, play real sound FX – you can’t shoot.

These toys will be available in April starting at $80. Epic demo video after the break. Read more

BBC iPlayer App for iOS Launching Next Month?

In December, a series of reports suggested that BBC was working on a subscription-based version of the popular iPlayer streaming service for iPad, targeting a mid-2011 release only in “certain markets” with both free and paid versions.

According to PaidContent, the BBC iPlayer app for iPhone and iPad is now nearing final release and should be available by the end of February, ahead of BBC’s technology director Erik Huggers departure to Intel.

The service’s web-native version already works on iPhone and iPad, to a fashion. Executable app versions are likely to work a lot better. Some Android users have complained about lack of plans for their smartphones.

The service will be available only in the UK, though BBC Worldwide is planning an international, subscription iPlayer containing different shows.

The iPlayer service registered a record 145 million requests in December 2010, with users making 4% percent of those requests through mobile browsers. A native iPlayer iOS app could bring more features than simple streaming via Mobile Safari, like social integration, support for AirPlay, a better UI and a faster navigation system.

AT&T Q4 Earnings: 4.1 Million iPhone Activations and 442,000 iPads & Tablets

US-based carrier AT&T has announced its quarterly results for Q4 2010, and there are some interesting numbers in there worth to be considered. The company reported 4.1 million iPhone activations in Q4, the last quarter as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the United States. On February 10, Verizon Wireless will begin selling a CDMA version of the iPhone 4, with pre-order sales starting February 3rd.

Mentioning “continued expansion in new wireless growth areas”, AT&T also announced they added 1.5 million “connected devices” including 442,000 iPads and Android tablets. AT&T started selling the iPad WiFi + 3G model in its retail stores on October 28th, 2010.

AT&T also reported 9.9% growth in wireless revenues and consolidated revenues of $31.4 billion in the fourth quarter. Full press releases embedded below. Read more