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

MacStories Giveaway: Win A Copy Of The Incident

The Incident is an insanely awesome game from Big Bucket Software which we’ve covered a few times in the past. Addictive gameplay, pixels all over the place, a great 8-bit soundtrack composed by Cabel Sasser. With the latest 1.2 update, the developers introduced an “endless mode”, bug fixes and the possibility to control the game on your iPad directly from your iPhone.

The Incident is a great game. Here’s your chance to win a copy. Read more

iPad Makes Its Way to the Farthest Reaches of the Earth→

iPad Makes Its Way to the Farthest Reaches of the Earth

Pitcairn Island is currently home to about 60 people and is one of the most remote and inaccessible inhabited locations in the world, with its only regular physical connection to the outside world coming from a cargo and passenger ship that makes a total of eight visits per year to the island. Rare visits from cruise ships also bring occasional visitors to the island.

So color us a bit surprised when Andrew contacted us to let us know that he is now the proud owner of a 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad, the only one on Pitcairn Island. Andrew tells us that he made contact with a woman from New York who had arranged for a visit to Pitcairn Island on a cruise ship traveling from Tahiti to Easter Island and who asked if there was anything she could bring him. As an Apple fan with a 17” PowerBook and Power Mac G5 already in his possession, Andrew requested an iPad. Two months later, the visitor arrived and presented Andrew with his iPad.

Possibly the best iPad story I’ve heard so far. I mean, it’s here.

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FullScreen for Safari Brings Gestures and Fullscreen To Apple’s Browser | Cydia Store

My new favorite tweak for Mobile Safari has just been released in the Cydia Store: FullScreen for Safari, developed by the creator of Firewall IP, is a neat little app available at $1.49 (introductory price) through Big Boss repository that enables you to navigate in fullscreen and use two and three fingers multitouch gestures to surf the web faster with a lot more functionalities. Read more

Mark Read, Must-Have Tweak To Quickly Mark Mail Messages As Read | Cydia Store

Ever wake up with an inbox full of Facebook emails? Annoyed by newsletters you’re not going to read anyway? Going through all of them just to get rid of the red badge just takes too much time. This is why we invented Mark Read, an easy way to mark either your entire inbox or just the emails you want as read/unread, right within Mail.app.

Exactly: Mark Read is a useful tweak available in Cydia which helps you getting rid of that damn red badge from Mail.app in a few taps. Admittedly, going through every email in the morning is annoying, especially if you do get a lot of emails. Why didn’t Apple think of this before? All you have to do to activate Mark Read is tap on the Edit button in your inbox, then you have two options: mark all messages as read/unread, or select some manually. That’s it. Simple and effective.

Mark Read is available at $1.99 on the Cydia Store. Read more

Europe’s Trademark Office Confirms iPad Dual Dock Connectors?

We have already seen pictures of an alleged iPad 2 prototype featuring dual dock connectors, one on each side of the device. Today Patently Apple has found out that the European Trademark Office published a series of designs related to an iPad model featuring multiple 30-pin dock connectors.

The patent was filed in July 2010 and published three days ago. Both Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive are mentioned in the design credits, so maybe something’s really happening this time? I don’t know - just like every tech company, Apple files a lot of patents - but it’s interesting to notice that the design patent was filed in July, months after the release of the iPad. Perhaps Apple listened to user’s feedback? Read more

Text-to-Speech On Your iPhone With Action Menu Voice | Cydia

If there’s something great about OS X’ default text-to-speech feature is that it’s a perfect tool to scare people who don’t know anything about it. “The computer has spoken!” - something like that. I’d like to tell you about this summer’s joke with two friends of mine and some polish dudes sitting next to my computer, but not now.

What we have here is an Action Menu (the amazing tweak developed by Ryan Petrich which adds additional buttons to the standard copy & paste menu) plugin which allows your device to “read and speak” selected text. Read more

HDREnabler Brings HDR Capabilities To The iPod Touch | Cydia

The new iPod Touch is good but it’s not an iPhone 4. In fact, it hasn’t got the same Retina Display (no IPS technology for iPod Touch users) and it can’t shoot photos as well as the iPhone 4 can. Particularly, iPod Touch users have been looking for a way to enable HDR photography, and now thanks to HDREnabler (version 1.1-1) available for free in Cydia they can. Read more

FaceTime Does Work In The Middle East, With The iPod Touch

The “FaceTime in the Middle East” saga is undergoing another major development today: according to website iRamadah (Google Translation, via 9to5) Apple’s video calling system is working perfectly fine, only with an iPod Touch 4th generation. We have previously reported about the weird removal of all FaceTime images and mentions from Apple’s eastern websites, then Apple itself posted a supported document regarding the absence of FaceTime in certain Middle East countries due to problems with the carriers. Read more