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

Color Splash Gives A “Dramatic Look” To Your Photos

I downloaded this app last week, but it turns out it’s been around for quite some months in the App Store. Color Splash by Pocket Pixels is a simple iPhone app (iPad version is available, too) that allows you to highlight areas of a photo to make them black & white, or make the entire photo black & white and only set certain areas to be colored.

It’s a very cool effect that it’s made easy by iOS multi-touch technology and would otherwise be a rather difficult task for the average user on Adobe’s Photoshop. Read more

BlackBerry vs. iPhone: What’s In Your Pocket?→

BlackBerry vs. iPhone: What’s In Your Pocket?

Apple says the iPhone is more than a mere appliance for sending e-mail. The device, with its sleek touch screen and ability to run hundreds of thousands of Web-connected applications, games and utilities, can be used for nearly any purpose, business or personal, a line that Apple hopes to blur out of existence.

“Most people now want to use a single device to handle both their personal and professional lives,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros. “That’s what Apple’s really good at — and now RIM is playing catch-up.”

I guess the question is: can they even catch up at this point? 275,000 apps is no small difference. [via]

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iPad Gift Cards Spotted at Apple Stores

As noted by iLounge, Apple has started selling “iPad Gift Cards” in its retail stores right ahead of Christmas. The cards aren’t anything special – actually, they’re just standard Apple gift cards wrapped inside a nice iPad-specific package.

What’s interesting is that, apparently, Apple updated its iPad purchase policies to include support for discounts through the aforementioned gift cards. Until a few weeks ago, Apple only allowed customers to buy an iPad via a debit or credit card.

Now you don’t have excuses anymore: your wife wants an iPad. You know what to do.

“The iPad Is Not Newspaper With Moving Words”→

“The iPad Is Not Newspaper With Moving Words”

The problem for anybody wanting to believe that the iPad is a newspaper or magazine replacement is that it is not. It’s a digital device, which means people will get easily distracted and start playing Scrabble, or listening to music or whatever else one can get up to on a crowded carriage.

It’s also still too easy to jump from one news source to another, because digital has fundamentally changed people’s relationship with printed news sources. Once, a newspaper was not just a source of information, but a statement of identity, where most buyers would not dream of picking up a competing title.

Paid Content also cites a report from Screen Digest according to which the average iPad user downloads 60 apps a year – but only 6 are paid apps. Where did they get these numbers? I’m curious.

Perhaps the problem with the publishing industry on the iPad is that most newspaper / magazine apps suck? [via Brooks Review]

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Slow Down: An App That Will Make You Slow Down Your Car, With Music

This is an app I’m completely supporting, as it’s been developed and promoted by the Belgian organization OVK, Parents of Children Killed in Road Accidents. Slow Down, available for free in the App Store, will make you slow down your car by slowing down the music you’re listening to while driving.

Thanks to a combination of GPS to retrieve a road’s driving speed limit and access to the iPod library on your iPhone, Slow Down will remind you when you need to slow by slowing down a song or completely stop its playback. Simple and genius at the same time, as as I said – a concept I’m seriously rooting for.

Go download the app here. Then use it.[Engadget via OVK] Read more

Fring Update: Full-Screen Video Calling, “Dynamic Video Quality”

Fring, a popular VoIP service that allows you make regular phone calls, video calls and chat, released an update to their official iPhone client today which brings a number of new features and fixes.

First off, fring is introducing a new video calling technology called DVQ (Dynamic Video Quality) that automatically adjusts the quality of a video calling session according to your bandwidth in order to provide an always-good experience. I’m testing it on 3G and, admittedly, it works pretty well. There’s also a new video quality indicator that enables you to check on the quality of the connection in real-time. Neat. Read more

How To: Install and Run iMovie On The iPad [Tutorial]

The current version of iMovie available in the App Store can’t run on the iPad. Apple specifically built it for the iPhone, and there’s no way to install it on the tablet. iTunes returns an error when trying to do so. As you can guess though, it would be great to be able to edit and manage videos on the iPad: thanks to its larger screen, multi-touch video editing would turn out to be much more comfortable.

Luckily for us, the folks over at iPadevice (Italian) have found a way to install and run iMovie on the iPad, but a jailbroken device is required. If you happen to have a jailbroken iPad running iOS 4.2 and you’ve always wanted to run iMovie on it, check out the tutorial below. Read more