Federico Viticci

906 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.
@viticci@macstories.net
@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

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Reeder, The New Best RSS Reader for iPhone

I tried many RSS readers for iPhone, and by “many” I mean more than 20. The problem is, there are thousands of RSS readers out in the AppStore and as you can guess, it’s pretty difficult to discover good apps when there are 3.000 apps in that Category. But anyway, I tried many and in the end the best were the most popular: Byline, NetNewsWire, Newsstand.

Now, among these three ones my final choice until a month ago was Newsstand: features rich, great interface, stable and fast. But you know, things change fast.

Step down from the throne Newsstand, we have a new king.

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Nintendo Admits “Dark” Future. The Return of Hardcore Gamers?

AppleInsider link

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, is reportedly an Apple fan who uses an iPhone and Mac laptop. He also denied that there is a rivalry between his company and Apple, noting that attempts to create one makes him “uncomfortable.” But Iwata also allegedly sees the iPhone as enough of a threat that Nintendo must work to stand out from it and devices like it.

“If we can’t make clear why customers pay a lot of money to play games on Nintendo hardware and Nintendo software and differentiate ourselves from games on the mobile phone or iPhone, then our future is dark” .


Now, I’m quite curious to know how Nintendo will move. I’m a fan of Nintendo since 15 years, I have almost every Nintendo console ever released, but this time I’m very skeptical about the future.

How are they gonna explain to their customers that they should play $40 for a game when they can have a game on the iPhone at $5? Well, hardcore gamers know the difference between a full featured console game and an AppStore.

But  casual gamers, those who bought the Nintendo DS and Wii like bread 2 years ago, are slowly switching to Apple’s iPhone as their mobile gaming platform. Nintendo is in a very difficult position: should they start a new marketing campaign aimed at casual gamers and explain them why consoles are different from mobile devices, or should they finally release products for hardcore gamers? But again, the problem is that many hardcore gamers switched to Microsoft’s Xbox years ago, and I don’t believe they’d like to change console again.

This is a big mess Nintendo. When we told you shouldn’t only think about casual users, this is what we were talking about.

Clever miniMail Plugin For Mail.app Re-Released

HawkWings Link

“miniMail 2.0 retains all the goodness of the original–the ability to minimize Mail.app’s interface like you can in iTunes–but adds more features and flexibility.

The minimised interface is elegant and efficient, as you would expect from the developer of MailTags.

It is also fully integrated with Mail Act-on, allowing you to use the same keystrokes to file messages away quickly.”

Seems very interesting, though I’d like to see how it compares to Herald (which is compatible with 10.6.2, don’t worry).

Manage Flickr from Your Mac Desktop with Flickery. Review and Giveaway!

There are many applications both on Mas and iPhone which let you manage your Flickr account without accessing the web interface. Because you know, I don’t like Flickr web app so much: sure, it’s better than Facebook and Twitter, but compared to any good Mac application, it doesn’t make it. But I think this is common problem to many webapps out there.

Anyway, I’ve been wondering for months whether there was a Mac app to entirely manage my Flickr account from my desktop. Then, I met Flickery.

In this article I will outline the great features Flickery has, and how it could become one of your favorite Mac apps.

And guess what, we even got 5 copies to give away.

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7 Great Ways to Discover New Mac Applications

Everyone is always looking for new, better applications. I think that’s a given. At least, every Mac / Pc / Whatever passionate I’ve met in my life was always open to suggestions regarding new, noteworthy applications.

Now, that of discovering and testing new Mac apps is a hard subject. I mean, since Apple opened up the AppStore, many things have changed: people are most likely to be given new apps (you know, the AppStore, Genius, “People also bought”) rather than spend 4 hours looking for some new solutions. Then, there’s the “indie” software problem: sometimes an indipedent developer can’t do big advertising campaigns, for this reason his app will remain unknown and only the “elitè” will use it. By elitè I mean nerds.

Anyway, I think there’s still a few number of users / nerds / call them how you want it who actually spend hours looking for the next big thing. Or there wouldn’t be indie Mac apps anymore.

Which are the best places to find new stuff? Keep on reading guys.

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