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

iAd for Developers Not So Effective After All?

Last month Apple launched the “iAd for Developers” program, a way for developers to advertise their application through the iAd infrastructure by enabling the users to click on a banner and get an App Store-like page, with options to download the app (from the ad itself), see screenshots and read the description.

The iAd for Developers campaign comes at $0.25 per click (unlike iAd’s standard $2 per click fee) and, according to Apple, it should be the best way to drive a huge amount of traffic to your application. Admittedly, it sounds like a great idea: you don’t have the leave the app you’re currently in to buy another app, the system is smart and targets that app based on you. For small developers, this could be a great source of revenue at a rather affordable price.

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Notified Reinvents Notifications on iOS

With iOS 4, hardcore iPhone users and bloggers (including me) expected Apple to dramatically improve Notifications. Notifications (either push or local ones) are those translucent-blue alert boxes that pop up in the middle of the screen when something happens. SMS? Alert box. Twitter DM? Chirpy notification, and so on.

Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Android or WebOS, but notifications on those operating systems are less intrusive and, at the same time, more useful than iOS’ ones. iOS notifications appear once and you have to do something to dismiss them. Once they’re gone, they’re gone: there’s no way to view all your past notifications, or undo a dismissal to get the last alert box back. As I said, they’re intrusive: a notification can get in your way when playing a game or watching a movie, and there are no settings to tweak to make notifications work for you. They’re just alerts going on and off when something happens.

Apple didn’t implement a new notification system in iOS 4, and that won’t happen in 4.1 either. There’s an app available in Cydia, though, called Notified, which is reiventing notifications on iPhones and iPods. Does Notified really bring to iOS the notifications Apple should have made? Read more

Web-based, Social iTunes Store Launching Next Week?

Now here’s an interesting rumor from All Things Digital. Apple sent invitations for a press event on September 1st to selected media outlets yesterday, and the speculation began about what Apple will announce next Wednesday. There are so many rumors and reports floating around one may think Apple is coming out with a new iPad next week. The invitation mail contains an acoustic guitar, just to confirm that - like every year - it’s a music-related event.

According to All Things D, Apple won’t launch “iTunes Cloud” next week, but a web-based version of the Store with revamped social capabilities.

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iPod Touch 4th Gen LCD Spotted In The Wild [Video]

SmartPhoneMedic is the same iPhone repair website that back in May posted a video showing the case of the rumored “iPhone 4G”. It’s a reliable source that somehow always manages to get these parts and capture them on video. This time, they have footage of the new iPod Touch assembly - front facing camera for FaceTime and slightly bigger case.

We’ll know everything in a week. At this point, though, a FaceTime enabled iPod Touch with a higher resolution display is pretty much a given. [iSpazio via RazorianFly]

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The iPhone Floating Forecaster

This is supposed to be some sort of 3d display for weather information, but I’m not really sure how it works. From what I see in the video though, there’s an iPhone running a custom application which lets you control a panel with 30 air guns and ping pong balls on it.

You touch a spot on the grid, the corresponding air gun raises a ping pong ball on the panel. Isn’t this uber-cool?

I know, I know - it’s also pretty useless. Still, we had to post this. [via TUAW]

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Stay: Train Your Windows

If you are anything like me, than at any given time you’ve got 30 windows open and at least 17 apps running at once.

The only thing that keeps me from going completely insane is my second 21” screen I have plugged into my Macbook Pro (15” screen) ninety percent of the time. Now, the extra real estate is awesome when I have all 30 windows open and organized among my spaces the way I like. It becomes cumbersome, however, when I unplug my laptop from the screen to go downstairs. My 30 windows become 30 huge billboards all trying to compete for my attention. Read more

Dunk Winners Announced

Thanks everyone who entered the Dunk for iPhone giveaway. We also want to thank the Robocat developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.

Here are the winners:

Shawn Grimes

Daniel Doyle

Umar Irshad

Oskar konstantyner

Ezequiel Lancelotti

You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few minutes. Congratulations!

Why Jailbreak Makes The iPhone 4 A Better Device: My Setup

Two months ago I wrote that jailbreak on iOS 4 still had its importance, but when JailbreakMe came out earlier this month I was very disappointed that the iPhone 4 wasn’t really supported. Sure, I could jailbreak my iPhone and install Cydia - but what for? Tweaks and apps weren’t updated for the Retina Display and new device, there was the possbility to break FaceTime and MMS and, overall, it seemed like JailbreakMe for the iPhone 4 was released just for the sake of it.

Fast forward 20 days, and I can’t imagine having a un-jailbroken iPhone 4 anymore. What happened?

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