Federico Viticci

10781 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

Cobra iRadar for iPhone Will Let You Avoid Speed Traps

Driving too fast for the law? You shouldn’t, seriously. But if you just like to test your car’s performances every once in a while and you want to get caught by a speed trap, we may have an app for that. The Cobra iRadar, an iPhone app you have to pair via Bluetooth with a tiny black handset, will identify commonly known speed traps, cameras and intersections for you.

The app [iTunes link] comes with a good number of control settings and, truth be told, it also looks beautiful – although we wouldn’t recommend to look at the sexy pixels while driving.

Retail price is $170, but we heard it’s available at $100 if you know where to look. Check out all the details on Cobra’s website. [via]

Free iPad GUI PSD For iOS Designers→

Free iPad GUI PSD For iOS Designers

We’ve always just created this file for ourselves and shared it freely. It takes a good deal of time to create and maintain but it saves us a lot of effort on projects and pitches – we hope it does the same for you. So, this time around we’re asking anyone who actually gets some use out of it to pay whatcha’ like. Hate it? Don’t pay anything.

Free to download, pay if you like. Go get it here.

By the way, it’s from the creators of TweetMag.

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How Soon Is Now? The Smiths *Now* On iTunes

Short version: The Smiths are now on iTunes, as reported by TUAW. Long version: no, the popular band from Manchester didn’t get the same kind of attention granted to another English band we’ve heard a certain CEO is a big fan of.

Apple’s promotion aside, yeah – you can check out The Smiths on the iTunes Store here. Seven albums are available, a bunch of music videos and before you ask: The Queen Is Dead, Meat Is Murder and The Smiths are all available for purchase. At least the band got a nice profile page.

Perhaps the Smiths’ arrival on iTunes won’t be regarded as a day we’ll never forget by Apple, but Morrissey and Marr are in there, guys. Morrissey and Marr’s band.

I’m off to download now.

Instagram Update Brings New Sharing Features, Posterous Integration

The Instagram developers have been pretty busy recently. The service – which is actually “only” an iPhone app for now – skyrocketed to 100,000 users in its first week and rumor has it 1 million people signed up in the first month. That’s quite an achievement, right? There’s more: the developers quickly released updates to improve the performances of the app and fix bugs and also got Twitter to officially support pictures shared through Instagram on Twitter.com inline media viewer.

Put simply: Instagram is doing great. And with today’s update, we bet it’ll be doing even better. Read more

MacStories Interviews: Mike Rundle

[MacStories Interviews is a new series of email interviews and conversations with with well-known developers, designers, bloggers, journalists, geeks.]

Please welcome Mike Rundle, designer and web, iOS and Mac developer. You can follow him on Twitter as @flyosity. The interview was conducted from October 12th to December 10th.

- Tell me a little about yourself: who are you, what do you do, etc…?

Hey there! I’m Mike Rundle and I do a number of different things. First, I’m a designer. I’ve been designing websites, applications, blogs and icons for many years. Second, I’m a web developer and have been writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP for a long, long time as well. Third, I’m a Mac, iPhone and iPad developer and have been learning and using Objective-C and the Cocoa APIs since around 2008. I’m the author of Beak, a Mac Twitter app that’s no longer in development, and am also the author of Digital Post, an iPad newspaper app. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of writing and am the author of a chapter on mobile interface design that’s part of the next book from Smashing Magazine. I’ve also been busy reviewing and editing iPhone and iPad books for some of the larger tech publishers.

At the moment I’m working on a project I’ve been looking forward to for awhile: a series of highly-detailed guides that will teach designers how to actually code the interfaces for iPhone and iPad apps. So many designers out there have such great visual design talent but can’t actually put an app together due to a lack of programming knowledge. I’m fortunate to have both design and programming skills so I really want to reach out to my fellow pixel pushers out there and get them in Xcode building cool apps. These guides will also be useful for developers because I go through every step of the design process as well so I hope they’ll also pick up a thing or two. Oh, and after these guides are done I’ll start in on the myriad iPhone and iPad app ideas I have, starting with a really unique puzzle game that’s been in my head for 2 years. Never a dull moment! Read more

Some MobileMe & Apple ID Passwords Expired, Genius Mixes “Disappeared”

We have got several tips today pointing us to the fact that many users are unable to log in MobileMe.com with their existing passwords. The problem, also noticed by 9to5mac and Italian blog SetteB, seems to affect users with short and non-alphanumeric passwords. Word is that Apple silently reset these passwords without telling these users that they would need to create a new one before logging in MobileMe. Read more

HP Believes In AirPrint: 6 More Printers Now iOS-Ready

As noted by MacRumors, HP issued a firmware update last night to extend AirPrint support (which as you may remember, used to work only on certain HP printers still listed on Apple’s website) to 6 more of its Officejet printers.

Thus, AirPrint is now compatible out of the box with the following models:

  • Officejet 6500A e-AiO5
  • Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO5
  • Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO5
  • Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO5
  • Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO5
  • Officejet Pro 8500A Premium e-AiO5

AirPrint used to work on any printer shared through a Mac or PC in a local network in the first OS X 10.6.6 developer betas. As 10.6.6 went public, Apple pulled the feature and made AirPrint compatible only with selected HP printers.

A few hacks have surfaced to bring the functionality back, but Steve Jobs promised Apple’s working on making AirPrint better, although they need more time to achieve stable and fast driverless printing.

First Apple Store Now A Cult For “Appleheads”

Apple’s got more than 200 retail stores worldwide now, and those stores are usually crowded with people checking out iPads, iPhones and MacBooks. Most of all, people who go to the Apple Store sometimes just want the customer care and experience granted by the super-trained Apple employees – this is true in the US, Europe, China, everywhere.

Yet, even a tech giant like Apple started small and iterated from there. The first Apple Store, opened in May 19, 2001 in the 30-year old Glendale Galleria in California has become a cult destination for Apple fans (or, “Appleheads”) in the United States, Reuters reports. Read more

MacStories’ 2010 Roundup: Top 5 iOS Music Apps

Welcome to MacStories’ 2010 Roundup! In this new series, we collect the best apps released in 2010 for the Mac, iPhone and iPad – apps we have probably already featured here on MacStories. Only the best apps, both free and paid. Apps you shouldn’t miss.

Apple’s iPod app for the iPhone and iPad is simple, effective and pretty to look at, but sometimes I want more from my music. I want up-to-date information about the artists I’m listening to, I want to discover new songs without having to search Google – I want something different than a list of music synced from my hard drive. If music’s an experience, than I want a digital music experience on iOS.

In this post, first of the MacStories 2010 Roundup series, we have collected the top 5 apps to listen to music released this year. We think they are great apps you should go install right now. We could have included more, but we wanted to bring the best of the best to your attention, not just the “pretty good” ones.

So jump after the break, and check our Top 5 list of music apps for iOS. We heard it’s also possible to listen to The Beatles with them. Read more