Federico Viticci

10878 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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Gift Plan: Shopping Lists Just Got Sexy

I knew the guys at Glasshouse Apps made great apps. After all, they’re the folks behind Barista, Cellar and The Early Edition for iPad. They’ve always cared about delivering beautiful pieces of software packed with information and functionalities. But their latest adventure on the iPhone, Gift Plan?

It’s hot. It’s a gorgeous app that not only makes it easy to check on upcoming occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas) but it also serves as a nice shopping list / gift manager that helps you keep track of your friends tastes and stuff you’ve gifted them in the past. Pretty pixels are all over the place – so is a highly custom user interface – and I’m not even sure I’ll use this app regularly in the future, but I’m willing to give a try. Read more

Business Insider: Ping One Of The Biggest Flops of 2010→

Business Insider: Ping One Of The Biggest Flops of 2010

It’s not just Google that can’t master social. Apple also struggles. Ping was launched to much fanfare, but it has utterly failed to gain traction.

Ping was launched in September. It recently became available on the iPad. It also got Twitter integration a few weeks ago. I don’t use it and I don’t see many of my friends using it, but I still think a Ping for apps would be great.

Apps aren’t just for geeks anymore. Will Apple ever deploy its own social app discovery platform?

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Old Macs Still Rock→

Old Macs Still Rock

Of course, using Tiger means I personally couldn’t use a lot of the apps I require, like Espresso, nor could I manage Photoshop or InDesign with such a small visual canvas. I can’t stand notebooks anyway. But the intended audience wasn’t me. I chose Tiger over Leopard because it was intended on being used by people in an office environment, who needed word processing, internet, and email. And this is what most people use a computer for. They’ve been using the iBook for the past week, day-in day-out, and I’ve received no complaints so far — they have no clue that the brushed metal UI is ugly, even though they also have a Snow Leopard Mac mini running.

Techno-lust can lead to a flawed vision, making it difficult to see the true value in things.

Such a re-discovery wouldn’t be possible on iOS. You can’t download old versions of apps, and if you run the latest version most likely you’ll end up frustrated by the lack of optimization on older units.

You’ve got to play the update game with iOS.

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That “Official” Apple Twitter Account? Suspended.

I guess Apple cares about Twitter, after all. Steve Jobs may be out of the tweeting game, but Phil Schiller seems to be enjoying the fact that since he went public (and verified) with his Twitter account he can reply to users and fans, troubleshoot and even advise against jailbreaking. He also posted his personal email address on Twitter and got spam in his inbox. Nice.

VP of iOS Scott Forstall hasn’t tweeted yet, but we’re ready to bet he will start posting messages and Instagram pictures pretty soon. Read more

aTV Flash Available: Supercharge Your Apple TV Now

aTV Flash, the first alternative browser and multimedia center for the new Apple TV, is out and available for purchase. We have covered aTV Flash in the past week, and we saw the app it’s capable of bringing several new features to the 2nd gen Apple TV, such as HTML5 playback via a custom browser or weather information.

The first public version of the app is available for $19.95 during the beta (or pre-order) phase here. Read more

360 Panorama: Simple Real-Time Panoramic Photos for iPhone

One of the apps I was really looking forward to just showed up in the App Store: Occipital’s 360 Panorama 3.0 for iPhone has been released, and it rocks. This app allows you to take panoramic photos using your iPhone or iPod Touch camera, but unlike many other similar apps available, 360 Panorama doesn’t force you to take multiple shots, stop, take another shot, stop again and then merge all the photos you took.

Occipital’s app does all that in the background and adds an Augmented Reality layer to the iPhone’s camera, meaning that you’ll see a 360° grid on screen and you’ll just have to slowly move the camera around you to build your panorama. It’s almost magical. Read more

I Finally Closed My Google Reader Tab. Reeder for Mac Is That Good.

RSS readers for Mac have been ignored for too long. After an enormous, and maybe initially unexpected, success on the iPhone and iPad, developer Silvio Rizzi set out to create the best new desktop RSS reader. A very simple goal. Perhaps the most difficult to accomplish.

See, they say RSS is dead. Some claim saying “something is dead” is dead. Truth is, Twitter users, Instapaper lovers and Foursquare dwellers don’t know what “dead” means anymore. Especially when it comes down to apps and services, everything can be dead or excellent in a matter of a few weeks. Just take a look at Instragram’s numbers. RSS isn’t for my father or my average non-tech savvy friends, but it definitely isn’t dead. It was just looking for a new desktop house to spend his retirement days in.

Here comes Reeder for Mac to redefine the rules, conventions, UI decisions and navigation schemes of RSS on the desktop.  Read more

John Carmack On iOS Performances→

John Carmack On iOS Performances

From Ars Technica’s interview with John Carmack:

Whether the iOS devices will reach that same level of performance before the next console generation ships is quite an interesting question. There are some very different designs for power consumption considerations that go into their hardware design, and cranking things up to give that level of power but gets burning hot in your hands and uses up the battery in 30 minutes is absolutely possible with the form factor right now, but it’s probably not the right decision from the standpoint of what the device really is and is supposed to be. But even at the same power draw, they’re going to be doubling and doubling again the performance level.

In the not-too-distant future, we’re going to be seeing multicore on mobiles, and I’m very interested in when the transition to 64-bit addresses is going to come in the mobile space.

If there’s one thing that’s holding developers from creating full-featured game experiences on iOS, that would be battery life.

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