Former CEO of Northrop Grumman Ron Sugar Joins Apple’s Board of Directors

By Federico Viticci

Today Apple appointed a new member of the Board of Directors: Ron Sugar, former CEO of Northrop Grumman Corp. “Dr. Sugar will serve as the Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee”, the press release reports. He takes the spot left by Jerry York, who passed away in March.

Steve Jobs is very happy about the decisions, as “Ron is an engineer at heart, who then became a very successful business leader” that has been involved in the development “of some very sophisticated technology.” Being Apple an engineering-driven company, it’s no surprise Ron Sugar is a new member of the Board of Directors. Press release follows below. Read more

Internet’s Apple Concepts →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Internet’s Apple Concepts

Whatever the answer to the question of what is Apple announcing tomorrow, I’m sure it lies somewhere in my archive of The Internet’s Apple Concepts. It’s a real folder, with hundreds of more-and-less goofy mockups gathered from various rumor sites, forums, and blogs. God bless their ambitious souls.

Where is the iTunes Machine, Apple?

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Create PDFs From Any iOS Device →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Create PDFs From Any iOS Device

I’ve decided to take it a step further for those who want to “print” but remain paperless: Print to a PDF. And not only print to a PDF, but then immediately have that PDF accessible to the same device.

Great tip over at TUAW. Not only you’ll be able to create PDFs inside apps that support AirPrint, you’ll end up having the document available in Dropbox with just one tap.

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Twitter App Updated with Push Notifications, Improved iPad Interface, iOS 4.2 Compatibility

By Federico Viticci

As I wrote earlier today, an update to the official Twitter app for iPhone and iPad was one of the updates I was really looking forward to. We knew the new version had been approved by Apple, and it was just waiting to go live in iTunes. The update, version 3.2, is finally available here.

As announced on the official Twitter blog, push notifications for messages and mentions have been enabled in the app. They’re available only on the iPhone counterpart for now:

When you’re out and about, your phone probably isn’t always in front of you. It might be in your pocket or purse or on a table – perhaps with the screen off. We want to make sure you see important Tweets even when you’re not looking at Twitter at the moment. To help with that, today we’re launching push notifications for mentions.

In addition to mentions, we’re also bringing push notifications for Messages to Twitter for iPhone, as we’ve already done with SMS and Twitter for Blackberry.

The update also brings more Retina graphics to the iPhone and geotagging with “one tap”. But the real deal’s on the iPad: we’re installing the updated version right now, but looking at the changelog we see Loren Brichter has been working on bringing inline media to the app, together with lots of UI improvements, iOS 4.2 fixes and saved search management.

These improvements include a simpler way to dismiss “panels” opened while navigating between users and links, more intuitive behavior for the aforementioned panels and various fixes to improve the user experience. It’s easier to navigate back to the first panel (or, the “timeline”) now, the animation of inline web previews has been slightly tweaked to “bounce” more when swiping and you can swipe on the inline media viewer, too. The effect is cool, but I wonder what’s the purpose. Try it by yourself with any twitpic or yfrog link.

As for iOS 4.2 support, the app correctly saves states and the login error that affected the previous version on iOS 4.2 has been fixed.

Check out the full changelog and additional screenshots below. Read more

gDocuments: Open and Create Google Docs On Your iPhone and iPad

By Federico Viticci

The Imagam developers are the guys behind iFiles, one of my favorite apps for iPhone and iPad I use on a daily basis to create and move files between my iOS devices, the internet and my computer. In case you haven’t tried it yet, you can find out more about iFiles here. gDocuments is a new universal app by Imagam that allows you to check on your Google Docs, but unlike many other Google Docs client currently available in the App Store this one comes with write capabilities, a neat interface and the feature set you’d expect from the folks who created iFiles. Read more

360|MacDev Conference, 15% Off Registration Price

By Federico Viticci

The 360|MacDev is a new conference aimed at OS X developers and the whole Apple developer community. Although I won’t be able to attend the event, I have talked with the folks behind it and it’s surely one of this year’s events you don’t want to miss. The conference will take place in Denver, Colorado at the Crowne Plaza Downtown on Dec. 10 and Dec. 11. You can check out the full schedule here.

From the official website:

We’re a conference company, focused on develoepr community. Our goal is to bring the best and brightest in the developer community together for 2 days of incredible sessions, awesome parties, good times, and learning. If you don’t leave Saturday night (Or sunday night if you take in a day of skiing), with more ideas than you know what to do with, we’re not doing our jobs!

This winter you can get your fill of Cocoa development awesomeness, and even some skiing if you’re up for it! We’ll be bringing together the best of the community . Join us in Denver, CO.

The discount code “MacStories15” will take 15% off the registration price. You can also check out the list of speakers here. If you’re a developer and you want to attend a great event to get in touch with the community and fellow OS X developers, the 360|MacDev conference is the perfect place to start.

Official Google Voice App for iPhone Now Available

By Federico Viticci

After months of wait, rejections, government’s involvement and third party applications, the official Google Voice app for iPhone is now available. You can find it here, and it’s free. We saw this coming after Apple published the updated App Store Review Guidelines.

The client basically allows you to access your Google Voice account right from your iPhone, and it allows you to make calls through the standard phone app. You can receive push notifications for text and voicemail messages, listen to voicemails and read Google’s transcripts or just manage your whole Google Voice inbox. Read more

Names You Need To Know In 2011: Scott Forstall →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Names You Need To Know In 2011: Scott Forstall

Keep an eye on Scott Forstall, the engineer who came to Apple from NeXT with Jobs, and who runs Apple’s iOS group, which now power more than 100 million iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

Forstall was one of the original architects of OS X, the operating system that saved the company earlier this decade.

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MacStories Interviews: Alex Payne

By Federico Viticci

[MacStories Interviews is a new series of email interviews and conversations with with well-known developers, bloggers, journalists, geeks.]

Please welcome Alex Payne, cofounder and CTO of BankSimple. You can follow him on Twitter as @al3x. The interview was conducted from October 11th to November 15th.

- Tell me a little about yourself: who are you, what do you do, etc…?

My name is Alex Payne. I’m 27, and I’m the CTO and cofounder of BankSimple, a startup combining modern technology with extraordinary customer service to enable a seamless, worry-free banking experience. Before joining BankSimple in May of this year, I was one of the first engineers at Twitter, where I worked for 3.5 years. Last year I coauthored “Programming Scala” for O’Reilly with Dean Wampler. I’m deeply interested in programming language design and implementation, minimalist art, cocktails and spirits, and all sorts of other things. My wife and I just moved to Portland, Oregon a few months ago, and just recently moved into our first house. Read more