Federico Viticci

10804 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

My Favorite iOS 8 Keyboards So Far

Earlier today, I shared my thoughts on custom keyboards in iOS 8 and how I’ve struggled to use a custom keyboard as my primary input method on the iPhone and iPad.

I wrote:

All these limitations can be easily overcome by setting preferences in each custom keyboard and accepting the fact that iOS will often default to the system keyboard due to privacy concerns. And that is absolutely fine: I appreciate the secure model that Apple built to protect customer data as much possible and I like that Internet access needs to be granted manually to custom keyboards.

But from a user’s perspective, this lack of deep system integration, little trade-offs, and increased friction add up over time when trying to use a general-purpose custom keyboard as your only keyboard. At least in my experience, I’ve found it easier to switch to simpler custom keyboards when I needed them rather than keyboards meant to be used all the time.

In addition to the limitations I mentioned in my article, custom keyboards have taken a while to get used to for two main reasons: performance and novelty.

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Transmit for iOS 8 Review

Since I got serious about trying to get work done on an iPhone and iPad in mid–2012, I’ve constantly come across a roadblock that required me to set up complex workflows and scripts: uploading images to my server. Transmit for iOS 8, released by Panic today on the App Store, provides a solution to the problem of managing transfers to and from your own server with a feature set that, thanks to extensions and secure authentication with Touch ID, makes Transmit a first-class citizen on iOS.

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Instapaper 6.0 Review

Instapaper is an app that lets me read more. For the work that I do on this website, Relay, and, lately, a weekly newsletter, I have no shortage of links with interesting facts or opinions that I want to consume and absorb. The problem isn’t quantity; it’s attention and time. And Instapaper, thanks to a thoughtful design based on a clear focus and goal, makes me want to read more and carve out time for reading because it is designed for one element: text. Instapaper respects text and the person who reads it.

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iOS 8 Changed How I Work on My iPhone and iPad

When I reviewed iOS 7 last year, I took a different approach and tried to consider Apple’s redesigned OS from the perspective of someone who uses iPhones and iPads for work and personal tasks on a daily basis. I noted that a new structure enabled developers to make more powerful apps, and I concluded hoping that Apple would “consider revamping interoperability and communication between apps in the future”.

With today’s release of iOS 8, Apple isn’t merely improving upon iOS 7 with minor app updates and feature additions. They’re also not backtracking on the design language launched last year, which has been refined and optimized with subtle tweaks, but not fundamentally changed since its debut in June 2013.

Apple is reinventing iOS. The way apps communicate with each other and exchange functionality through extensions. How status awareness is being brought to iPhones, iPads, and Macs with Handoff and Continuity. Swift and TestFlight, giving developers new tools to build and test their apps. Custom keyboards and interactive notifications.

There are hundreds of new features in iOS 8 and the ecosystem surrounding it that signal a far-reaching reimagination of what iOS apps should be capable of, the extent of user customization on an iPhone and iPad, or the amount of usage data that app developers can collect to craft better software.

Seven years into iOS, a new beginning is afoot for Apple’s mobile OS, and, months from now, there will still be plenty to discuss. But, today, I want to elaborate on my experience with iOS 8 in a story that can be summed up with:

iOS 8 has completely changed how I work on my iPhone and iPad.

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Evernote Brings Widget, Share Extension to iOS 8

I save everything into Evernote. While I’m almost religious about plain text and Markdown for my articles, anything else goes into Evernote: PDFs, screenshots, photos with GPS information, my shared shopping list, and any other note that has a visual component (such as formatting or hyperlinks).

I started using Evernote in 2009, and it’s become an external brain where I archive everything that I need to remember but not store in my own brain. Evernote suffered in its transition to iOS devices as it couldn’t be as flexible as the Mac app: Evernote is only as good as the ways it gives you to create notes, and the iOS app couldn’t use the best one – the clipper.

This is changing today with Evernote 7.5, which adds extensions for iOS 8 to let you save anything from anywhere with just two taps.

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MyFitnessPal Adds HealthKit Support, Bringing Its Data to iOS 8’s Health App

Popular food tracker and calorie counter MyFitnessPal, available for free on the iPhone, iPad, web, and other platforms, has today introduced an update for iOS 8 users that adds support for Apple’s new Health app. I’ve been testing the updated MyFitnessPal, and I believe that Health integration has the potential to be a great way to let the app integrate with other services on iOS 8.

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