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

Single-Station Radio Apps Are The New Fart Apps: Banned

Remember the App Store Review Guidelines Apple published a few months ago? They’re available for you to read here, although an Apple Developer account is needed. Basically, Apple opened up to many more kinds of apps and frameworks with the publicly available Review Guidelines, but took a clear position on some kinds of apps as well. Namely, fart apps:

We have over 250,000 apps in the App Store. We don’t need any more Fart apps. If your app doesn’t do something useful or provide some form of lasting entertainment, it may not be accepted.

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Apple Goes Back To Where The Woz Started with HP Campus Purchase

The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Apple has made a 98-acre land purchase in Cupertino to double the capacity of its original campus. The new location is the historic Hewlett-Packard campus, the same where Steve Wozniak was working when he and Steve Jobs were working on the first Apple computer in the 70s.

HP is in the middle of an operation to consolidate its headquarters in Palo Alto, and Apple apparently secured the old HP campus in an effort to expand Cupertino’s Infinite Loop. Put simply, Apple needs more room. Read more

Office for Mac 2011: 26% Off→

Office for Mac 2011: 26% Off

Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 includes Mac versions of Word 2011, Excel 2011, and PowerPoint 2011; the most familiar and trusted productivity applications used around the world at home, school, and business.

Home & Student single license pack, save 30 bucks. If you need the most recent version of Office for Mac, this is a good time to buy it.

You can also save $40 on the Family Pack.

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Just Ahead Of Thanksgiving, Games Take Over The App Store

Frankly, I saw this coming: with all the offers and deals that have started to pop up in the App Store since last week, the rapid arise of games in the App Store charts doesn’t come as a surprise at all. Still, the results and numbers are noteworthy: while counting all the games in the App Store is nearly impossible (at least basing on official data, which Apple doesn’t provide), we can simply take a look at the “Top Paid Apps” and “Top Grossing Apps” charts to see what happened.

Games are dominating the Thanksgiving week in the App Store. Especially on the iPhone App Store, where at the moment of writing this only 26 apps out of the top 100 are non-games apps. The fact that we refer to them as “non-games apps” also tells a lot about the environment Apple created. The situation is slightly different on the iPad App Store (“only” 40,000 apps, newer platform) but the trend is just about the same on both the stores. Games are selling like hotcakes, huge discounts or not. Read more

iOS 4.2 Improves Support For Web Fonts→

iOS 4.2 Improves Support For Web Fonts

With yesterday’s release of iOS 4.2, a frustrating Mobile Safari bug has been resolved: previously, Mobile Safari would crash if more than one weight or style of a font was loaded. This bug has been repaired in iOS 4.2, so that users of the iPhone, iPod, or iPad who update their device will no longer experience crashing.

Web designers rejoice.

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Sir Richard Branson To Unveil A Magazine App for iPad On Tuesday

Word’s on the street that Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, will announce a magazine app for the iPad called “Project” (nice name) on Tuesday. Several European media outlets have apparently received invitations for a special event, but it’s unclear whether Branson will announce the launch of the app or just offer a preview. Actually, no one ever heard of Branson’s iPad “Project” before.

If Branson’s really working on a magazine app for iPad, it’d be interesting to know if Virgin is involved in anyway with Apple’s plans to launch app subscriptions for iOS. Will we see Branson, Murdoch and Jobs on stage at the rumored December 9th event?

NoMute for iPad Brings The Orientation Lock Button Back to iOS 4.2

Speaking of things we don’t like about iOS 4.2 for iPad: Apple changed the orientation lock button and made it a mute switch. Then, they put the orientation lock in the multitasking tray, which you can access with a single swipe to the right. Many users – MS staff included – asked: why? Why putting a mute switch on the iPad when you can get the volume down to zero by simply holding the volume key for a second? Why changing the behavior of that button when the iPad is clearly more a reading device and reading on a tablet requires orientation adjustment all the time? Read more