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

Due 1.2 Alerts You It’s The Best Reminder App for iPhone

Back in September I reviewed Due, an interesting new app to quickly create reminders and set up timers on your iPhone. The first version of the app featured a cool UI and a good set of functionalities, allowing you to easily switch between the reminder and timer window. Most of all, the best thing about Due was that it looked great and enabled you to just forget about the app once reminders were set.

It’s really simple: once you enter a new item you can choose a due date & time, but there are some handy shortcuts in the same screen. If you find yourself constantly using some reminders as countdowns, you can create a timer. That’s it. The interface is clean and polished, and the app doesn’t even need an internet connection to work as it’s based on iOS 4′s local notification system.

The new 1.2 version, which was approved yesterday and I have been beta testing for a while, adds terrific new features to an already great package. If you tap on a reminder in the main screen, for instance, you’ll be presented a bar containing shortcuts to turn snooze on and off, set the reminder as repeating, reschedule the whole thing to 10 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day later. Useful. The developer added reminder management (something many fans hoped they would not, in order to keep the app simple) but by stuffing it in a bar you’ll only see after a tap, they didn’t clutter anything. It feels good.

Due for iPhone is available at $2.99 in the App Store. Check out the huge changelog with all the new features and more screenshots below. Read more

New York Times Uses Hipstamatic Photos For Front Page Story→

New York Times Uses Hipstamatic Photos For Front Page Story

When NYT photog Damon Winter went to northern Afghanistan to catalog the efforts of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division, he took all the fancy camera equipment you would expect. He’d shoot video of firefights with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, sure. But he also grabbed still photos using Hipstamatic, an app that lets you choose among a huge selection of filters.

Front page photo here. Impressive.

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iOS 4.2.1 RAM Usage Visualized

iOS 4.2 is a major new update for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – built on the strong foundation of iOS 4 – which introduces many new features, fixes and overall performance improvements. If you ever wondered how much iOS 4.2 improved the experience from a memory usage standpoint, take a look at the graph below, compiled by the guys over at iPadevice.

The graph doesn’t come with a provided scale, but it gives you a quick idea of the performance improvements Apple focused on for the release of iOS 4.2 for iPad.

SBSettings Now iOS 4.2.1-Ready | Cydia

Good news keep coming for early iOS 4.2.1 jailbreakers: if you installed Cydia on your newly updated device this morning using redsn0w, you might want to fire up Cydia again and check for updates. SBSettings, the popular utility to access iPhone and iPad functionalities such as respring, reboot and a variety of shortcuts, is now fully compatible with iOS 4.2.1.

The new 3.2.1 update fixes a statusbar free memory issue, the date display on iOS 4.2.1 and permissions on SBSettings data storage folder. It’s available now in Cydia.

Beatles In iTunes: 2 Million Songs Sold, 450,000 Album Downloads

Unless you’ve been living in a yellow submarine for the past three weeks, I guess you heard about the Beatles coming to iTunes. In fact, Apple thought the day the Beatles’ library was released in iTunes would be a day we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

Life-changing event or not, the Beatles in iTunes have sold over 2 million songs so far and generated 450,000 album downloads, Billboard reports.

In US the best-selling album was Abbey Road and best-selling song was Here Comes the Sun.

Backed by a strong advertising campaign which also happens to promote iTunes, it looks like there was room for The Beatles in people’s music libraries, after all. One could argue whether 2 million songs sold with all that campaign are much or not, we’re just going to wait for Billboard to provide additional numbers and information before judging.

Apple TV 4.1 Update Addresses FreeType and PNG Vulnerabilities→

Apple TV 4.1 Update Addresses FreeType and PNG Vulnerabilities

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in FreeType, the most serious of which may lead to arbitrary code execution when processing a maliciously crafted font. These issues are addressed by updating FreeType to version 2.4.2.

With a support document posted a few hours ago, Apple confirmed that the latest 4.1 update for the 2nd gen Apple TV also includes fixes for vulnerabilities found in FreeType and the libpng library. Both of them could have lead to arbitrary code execution, much like this summer’s JailbreakMe security hole.

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Steve Jobs Says They’re Taking A “Giant Leap To Driverless Printing”

Ok, so AirPrint’s removal from OS X 10.6.5 left a few people disappointed. Users were expecting to be able to print from iOS 4.2 to any printer shared through a Mac or PC, but the feature didn’t make the cut in the final version of 10.6.5. Sure, you can achieve the same functionality using 3rd party tools like Printopia, but unofficial tweaks – even if well developed and stable – are never quite like Apple’s own implementation. In the case of AirPrint, mostly because it takes huge resources and teams to achieve stable and fast driverless printing.

That is exactly what Steve Jobs allegedly told a MacRumors forum member in a recent email exchange. Apple is doing the best they can to re-introduce the feature in the next iterations of OS X, and we have to wait. Read more