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.
@[email protected]
@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

This Week's Sponsor:

Cotypist

Smart Autocomplete for Your Whole Mac

Apple Holding Media Event on October 20th - 10.7 Lion Coming?

Apple is holding a Mac-focused media event on October 20th, Engadget just got the invitation.

The event is dubbed “Back to Mac” and…is that a lion we see in there? Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, perhaps? Or maybe this is just a teaser, and we’ll simply see new MacBook models, which usually drop in the October / November timeframe? Next Wednesday can’t come soon enough. For all your predictions and expectations, we’re awaiting in the comments below.

We’ll be discussing the event live on MacStories. Stay tuned.

Take Five: New App From The Iconfactory For When You Forget To Un-Pause Your Music

I love waking up to new apps from people I respect and admire. The Iconfactory guys are among these people: how couldn’t the makers of Twitterrific not be in the list? They’re great developers and experienced designers that don’t fail to surprise on each new app release.

Take Five is a new app for iPhone from The Iconafctory aimed at letting you remember about the music you paused and never turned back on. Admittedly, this is quite a common problem: not all iPhone apps support automatic resume after a phone call interruption (Spotify, for example) and so many times we simply forget to press the play button again. Take Five automatically fades your music back in after 5 minutes. Why didn’t we think of this before? Read more

New Gorgeous Grooveshark App Hits Cydia

The guys over at Grooveshark are going back to their roots: they have just released a brand new 2.0 version of their iPhone client in Cydia, where it all started. Grooveshark, in fact, released the first version of the music client in Cydia in 2009, when Apple didn’t want stuff like background streaming on its iPhones and iPod Touches. Last August, though, Apple revised its rules and approved the Grooveshark app - just to pull it a week later due to a complaint filed by the Universal Music Group UK.

As it turns out, the promising music streaming startup has grown tired of Apple’s rules and limitations, so they’re going back to Cydia. The app has been released for free under BigBoss’ repository. Read more

Chromium for Mac Gets Spiffy Google Instant Integration

I love Google Instant: since Google launched its new real-time updating version of the search engine last month, I’ve been using it regularly and, yeah, I like it. A lot. I know many people are out there would like to revert back to the old “type and press enter” system but hey - this is where we’re going. Sorry if you don’t like it.

For as much as I love Google Instant, when I’m in my browser I don’t really fancy manually opening Google.com every time I need to fire up a new query. My searches start from the new Omnibar instead (Google’s definition of the address bar) because the Cmd + L shortcut is just too useful and fast. For this reason, I’ve been looking forward to the Google team baking Google Instant right into the browser and finally, we Mac users can have it: the Chromium trunk channel for Mac was updated earlier today to include support for Instant right out of the box. Read more

Ten Theses on Tablets→

Ten Theses on Tablets

As cameras , tablets suck. I feel like a complete idiot brandishing these things at startled potential subjects. They need to have cameras, for augmented-reality and a few other kinds of apps, but when you say “cameraphone” you’re talking about something that fits in a jeans pocket.

I was one of those who, when the iPad arrived, dissed it as a consume-only platform, saying: For creative people, this device is nothing.

Clearly, I was at least partially wrong. There are now successful drawing and painting apps, good enough to get on magazine covers. I’ve also read pieces by bloggers I respect, saying they were able to write this or that on their iPad.

Good overview of the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab by Tim Bray. He’s the same guy that ditched the iPad back in January, so it’s good to see he’s revising his position after some “real” usage. I’m really looking forward to trying Samsung 7-inch form factor.

Permalink