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

Just Ahead Of Thanksgiving, Games Take Over The App Store

Frankly, I saw this coming: with all the offers and deals that have started to pop up in the App Store since last week, the rapid arise of games in the App Store charts doesn’t come as a surprise at all. Still, the results and numbers are noteworthy: while counting all the games in the App Store is nearly impossible (at least basing on official data, which Apple doesn’t provide), we can simply take a look at the “Top Paid Apps” and “Top Grossing Apps” charts to see what happened.

Games are dominating the Thanksgiving week in the App Store. Especially on the iPhone App Store, where at the moment of writing this only 26 apps out of the top 100 are non-games apps. The fact that we refer to them as “non-games apps” also tells a lot about the environment Apple created. The situation is slightly different on the iPad App Store (“only” 40,000 apps, newer platform) but the trend is just about the same on both the stores. Games are selling like hotcakes, huge discounts or not. Read more

iOS 4.2 Improves Support For Web Fonts→

iOS 4.2 Improves Support For Web Fonts

With yesterday’s release of iOS 4.2, a frustrating Mobile Safari bug has been resolved: previously, Mobile Safari would crash if more than one weight or style of a font was loaded. This bug has been repaired in iOS 4.2, so that users of the iPhone, iPod, or iPad who update their device will no longer experience crashing.

Web designers rejoice.

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Sir Richard Branson To Unveil A Magazine App for iPad On Tuesday

Word’s on the street that Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, will announce a magazine app for the iPad called “Project” (nice name) on Tuesday. Several European media outlets have apparently received invitations for a special event, but it’s unclear whether Branson will announce the launch of the app or just offer a preview. Actually, no one ever heard of Branson’s iPad “Project” before.

If Branson’s really working on a magazine app for iPad, it’d be interesting to know if Virgin is involved in anyway with Apple’s plans to launch app subscriptions for iOS. Will we see Branson, Murdoch and Jobs on stage at the rumored December 9th event?

NoMute for iPad Brings The Orientation Lock Button Back to iOS 4.2

Speaking of things we don’t like about iOS 4.2 for iPad: Apple changed the orientation lock button and made it a mute switch. Then, they put the orientation lock in the multitasking tray, which you can access with a single swipe to the right. Many users – MS staff included – asked: why? Why putting a mute switch on the iPad when you can get the volume down to zero by simply holding the volume key for a second? Why changing the behavior of that button when the iPad is clearly more a reading device and reading on a tablet requires orientation adjustment all the time? Read more

Keyboard Issues On iOS 4.2.1 for iPad

Everybody’s loving iOS 4.2 for iPad: it brought multitasking to the tablet, folders, AirPlay (sort of) and, ehm, AirPrint. Limitations aside, iOS 4.2 was needed. We have already talked about this. As more users upgrade to the new OS every day though, more issues Apple didn’t discover in the early developer betas and GM seeds start to appear. Read more

The Current Status Of iOS 4.2.1 Jailbreak for iPad [Cydia Apps, Compatibility List]

Even if I suggested waiting before trying to jailbreak your iPad running iOS 4.2.1 using redsn0w, I decided to go ahead to report back for all those who might be on the edge and don’t know if jailbreaking iOS 4.2.1 on the tablet is worth yet.

So is it worth it? If you depend on a very few tweaks and apps, the ones that are working right now, you can go ahead and jailbreak the iPad. The biggest obstacle, of course, is that this is a tethered jailbreak, meaning that every time the iPad will need a reboot or its battery will die, you’ll need to boot it into a jailbroken state using redsn0w from your computer. Sure, you can also boot in “normal mode” without resdn0w, but Safari and Cydia won’t work. The tweaks and apps you installed from Cydia won’t work, either.

With this is mind, I took a look at the current state of jailbreak on iOS 4.2.1 for iPad. Read more

Secrets Of Apple TV 4.1→

Secrets Of Apple TV 4.1

We note up front that there is some confusion as to what the actual version of the Apple TV update is, since the version numbers are not entirely consistent. The second-generation Apple TV was released as “Software Version” 4.0 but actually ran “OS Build Version” 4.1 (8M89). The OS build version can be viewed by going into the “About” screen on the Apple TV and pressing the center button on the remote which will cycle through Software Version, Software Build and OS Build Version.

The latest update follows this same numbering convention, with the Software Version appearing as 4.1 and the OS Build Version appearing as 4.2 (8C150). It’s also worth noting that iOS 4.2 released for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is build 8C148.

Good roundup of what’s new in the latest Apple TV update over at iLounge.

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Enable AirPlay for Video In Third-Party Apps

Disappointed Apple didn’t enable AirPlay streaming for video on all apps on iOS 4.2.1 for iPhone and iPad? Well, we are too. We thought we’d be able to stream just about anything from our iDevices to the new Apple TV, but it turns out you can only stream video using AirPlay from Apple’s native apps. Streaming video in Safari isn’t enabled, nor is it in 3rd party apps and Apple’s own camera roll. Bummer.

Fortunately, TUAW’s Erica Sadun has done some good hacking to find out what exactly is going on under the hood. She decompiled the frameworks and got ahold of Apple’s APIs and, without entering the most technical details, it seems like the whole concept is still a little bit rough for the average developer.

So caveat hackteur – this isn’t going to be appropriate for the casual developer. Yet.

Having gotten this proof of concept working, there’s still a lot left to get done to transform this into a stable solution that works with general applications. Keep in mind that you’ll be working with unpublished APIs, so the above classes and code are not App Store Safe. That’s why we have a jailbreak world, after all.

Head over the video below and see what Erica got working on her iPad. AirPlay for video in 3rd party apps isn’t impossible, I guess we just need to wait for Apple to officially enable it. Maybe in iOS 4.3? Read more