Holding the glass, holding the line
Person · Journalist · Founder
Federico
Federico
Viticci
He turned “I do everything on my iPad” from a punchline into a fifteen-year career.
Holding the glass, holding the line
He turned “I do everything on my iPad” from a punchline into a fifteen-year career.
It is summer in Italy and Federico Viticci is doing what he does every summer: locking himself into a beta version of Apple’s newest software and writing a review so long it reads like a small reference book. In 2025 it was iOS and iPadOS 26, which he called “a new era for Apple’s software.” The piece was the size of a paperback. People read every word.
This is the strange, specific thing about Viticci. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, an independent Apple publication he runs out of Viterbo, an old city north of Rome rather than anywhere near Silicon Valley. He is also the person Apple chose, in June 2025, when its software chief Craig Federighi wanted to sit down for thirty minutes and explain what the iPad is actually for. The interview happened because Viticci had spent more than a decade arguing, in public, that you could run a media company from a tablet, and then proving it.
The proof is the point. Long before the iPad had a windowing system or a menu bar, Viticci was bending it into a writing machine, building the workflows nobody else had patience for. The Apple community returned the favor by turning his name into a unit of measurement. People would describe their own setups and add, almost apologetically, “but I’m no Federico Viticci.”
After 12 years of using the iPad as my main computer, I can finally use it for everything I do on a daily basis.
The MacStories story starts with a layoff. Viticci was 21, freshly out of a job, and instead of sending out resumes he published a blog post on April 20, 2009. The idea was modest and slightly stubborn: a place where Apple users could get detailed, well-investigated writing instead of the same recycled news churning through every other tech blog.
It worked because he refused to treat depth as a luxury. A personal blog became a site with contributors. The site became a brand. Somewhere along the way the writing about apps got so thorough that developers, readers, and eventually Apple itself started paying attention. In 2015 John Voorhees joined, became Managing Editor, and by 2020 a business partner. The two of them have run the place ever since.
Each summer he drafts a novel-length guide to Apple’s new OS before it ships. The iOS 12 review alone carried a Shortcuts chapter built from hundreds of hours of work.
A free, growing library of personal-automation recipes — past 230 and counting — that taught a generation of iPhone owners that their phone could run errands for them.
A subscriber community with newsletters, perks, and AppStories+ — an early, ad-free, high-bitrate cut of the flagship show. Independent journalism, funded by the people who read it.
For years, “I work on an iPad” was a thing people said and didn’t mean. Viticci meant it. He kept pushing the tablet past where it wanted to go — writing, editing, publishing, automating — and he documented every limitation he ran into, then every workaround he found. His efforts gained notoriety precisely because they were so unusual. Nobody else was trying to live on the device this completely.
The reward arrived in 2025, when Federighi described the iPad to him as “a magical piece of glass” and walked through the journey to a real windowing system and menu bar — the exact features Viticci had spent years asking for in print. It was, in a way, a fifteen-year argument finally getting its reply.
“Here is how Shortcuts is a game changer for personal automation.”
“I’ve been working on this for 3 months, and here it is: my iOS review.”
“I poured hundreds of hours into this.”
In 2017 MacStories launched its first podcast, AppStories, co-hosted with John Voorhees — a weekly tour through the best new apps and the culture forming around them. He found the medium through Myke Hurley, Stephen Hackett, and the Relay FM family, where he also turns up on Connected, the long-running panel show about Apple and the way technology seeps into daily life. Then there is NPC: Next Portable Console, his show about the handheld-gaming revival, proof that the obsession with great hardware doesn’t stop at Apple’s logo.
When AppStories graduated to YouTube, he finally got to do the thing audio never allowed: hold up the hardware. Reviewing the iPad mini, he could turn it in his hands on camera instead of describing it into a microphone.
► Watch: iOS, iPadOS & macOS 26 — The MacStories Reviews (AppStories on YouTube)
Publishes the first MacStories post on April 20 from Viterbo, Italy, at 21, days after losing a job.
Starts experimenting with the iPad as a portable work machine and builds the iOS-first workflows that make his name.
John Voorhees joins, later becoming Managing Editor and the partner who runs the site alongside him.
Launches AppStories, the first MacStories podcast, opening a new front in the app-coverage empire.
Ships a landmark iOS 12 review with a deep Shortcuts chapter, hundreds of hours in the making.
Voorhees becomes a business partner; Club MacStories grows with AppStories+ for members.
Interviews Craig Federighi on the iPad’s essence and publishes an in-depth iOS & iPadOS 26 review.
Where to find the writing, the podcasts, and the rest of the iPad evangelism.