iPhone 4 Not So Great At Grilling Contest

By Federico Viticci

iOS, Windows Phone 7, Android…each one of them comes with its pros and cons, advantages and shortcomings. It is up to a user’s perspective and needs to find the best platform and device. So from the video you can watch below, it appears that grilling is a priority for this user, who decided to see which device between a T-Mobile G2, HTC Surround and iPhone 4 would survice the terrific grilling contest he set up.

The iPhone 4 doesn’t win. There’s no app for that. The result, however, might surprise you. Check out the video below.

Apple Seeds Xcode 4 Preview 5 To Developers

By Federico Viticci

A few minutes ago Apple released the fifth developer preview of Xcode 4 to developers. It’s available in the Mac and iOS Dev Center. The release comes a month after the fourth developer preview.

This is a pre-release version of Xcode 4, a major new release of Xcode for both Mac and iOS development. This release requires Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and includes the iOS SDK 4.2 GM seed, to develop apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

As for this very specific build, new features for tabs, editors panes and alerts are introduced:

This preview introduces new features and enhancements for tabs, editor panes, and alerts. These features are designed to scale the single window interface of Xcode 4 to more effectively use available screen real estate, from the 11” MacBook Air, up to Macs equipped with multiple monitors. Please experiment with these new features to see how Xcode 4 can speed up your daily development tasks.

OmniFocus for iPad Updated for iOS 4.2 Multitasking

By Federico Viticci

OmniFocus, my GTD app of choice on OS X and iOS, is now compatible with multitasking on the iPad. Although iOS 4.2 isn’t officially out and it looks like it won’t be at least until sometime next week, users running the latest iOS 4.2 GM can enjoy fast app switching, background sync and local notifications in OmniFocus for iPad.

The latest 1.2 update, released a few minutes ago in iTunes, adds a bunch of new features and lots of improvements, too. The changelog is really huge, so I suggest you go check it out below. Notable new features include the possibility to receive local notifications without the need of a sync server, seven new languages, a revamped editing panel and more geolocation functionalities.

Seriously, great update. The one users already on iOS 4.2 have been waiting for. Go get it. Then read why we love OmniFocus. Read more

From Apple’s Newton to Evernote →

Linked By Federico Viticci

From Apple’s Newton to Evernote

The company was founded by Stepan Pachikov, who was kind of this brilliant mad scientist from Russia. He and his team were behind a lot of the pioneering work that went into the Apple Newton, fifteen years ago. The handwriting recognition engine was built by these guys. They had a company called ParaGraph, which Apple licensed.
So the original idea really started in the Newton days.

Evernote for iOS also got a nice update today with iOS 4.2 support, audio note improvements and printing.

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Hide and Disable Ping in iTunes 10.1

By Federico Viticci

iTunes 10.1, launched a few hours ago, introduced two new options to hide Ping from the sidebar and disable it completely using parental controls. First, check out our previous post detailing how you can hide Ping’s dropdown menu using a Terminal hack.

If you want to hide the Ping element from iTunes’ sidebar, open iTunes’ preferences, hit the General tab and deselect Ping in the “Show” section. That will remove it from the sidebar.

Microsoft Targets Mac’s Lack Of Blu-Ray Support In Latest Windows 7 Ad

By Federico Viticci

I haven’t really ever felt like needing to watch a Blu-Ray movie on my MacBook Pro, but apparently the folks down at Redmond think it’s worth producing an ad focused on it. In order to promote entertainment on Windows 7 machines versus Mac machines through the support of Blu-Ray disks, the video we’re referring to shows a Mac and a PC on flight, watching Avatar on the PC’s screen.

It’s nice and well-realized, overall. Check it out below. Read more

MacStories Weekly Game: Robokill

By Federico Viticci

This week’s featured game is the latest effort by Wandake, Robokill. See, Robokill on the surface may look a lot like other games available in the App Store such as Minigore or Age of Zombies. You control this robot, with a bird’s eye view, and you have to face enemies coming from all sides of the screen. Unlike Minigore, though, Robokill provides a greater attention to details in level design and enemy attack patterns.

For instance, Robokill’s droids are smart, while Minigore’s monsters just care about running against you. Enemies in Robokill shoot, cover, attack, back up. That’s not bad a simple action game for iPad. Plus, once you clear levels in the game your character will evolve and become able to equip new weapons and shields. With more than 450 levels and 13 missions, that’s quite an inventory to build. You can also collect cash and hidden loot to purchase upgrades through a virtual store – which is always welcome. I like this RPG-like side of Robokill, something the aforementioned similar games surely don’t provide. Not like in Robokill. Read more

Tweet Library 1.1 Brings iOS 4.2 Support, More Filters, Lots Of Fixes

By Federico Viticci

Tweet Library is an excellent app by Riverfold Software which allows you to “curate tweets”. You can create collection of tweets and publish them online, keep an offline cache of your tweets and favorites, filter your timeline and sort tweets by date. It’s a great companion to your default Twitter client. From my review:

Tweet Library is an app meant for letting you archive, collect and filter tweets. It’s great for conference tweeting, it’s a good tool for blogger when a new iOS beta comes out and they need to group tweets about new features, it’s a great app for users wondering “what happened to that tweet?”. Tweet Library is a searchable local archive of your Twitter activity.

The new 1.1 update brings full support for iOS 4.2, meaning multitasking and persistent state. It works perfectly. The app now also contains a bunch of additional filters for pictures shared on flic.kr, instagr.am, and plixi.com. The developer also introduced lots of performance improvements and fixes.

Tweet Library is available at $9.99. If you use Twitter on a daily basis and you care about keeping a personal record of your tweets, it’s well worth it. Check out the full changelog below. Read more

Apple Releases New iOS 4.2 GM Build For iPad (8C134b)

By Federico Viticci

As we previously reported, Apple just released a second GM build of iOS 4.2 for iPad to deal with the WiFi issues. It’s available in the iOS Developer Center. Build number is 8C134b, and it’s a 551MB download.

This build is meant to address the WiFi issues experienced by several users. From what we’re hearing, Apple wants to get testing done as fast as possible – iOS 4.2 might drop next week.

Apple didn’t change the date of the original GM build, you’ll still see “November 1” on the dev center. The iPad build, however, is new.