Media

VIDEO: Hands on with the new Apple Watch Series 4

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[VIDEO] Warning: Rene Ritchie’s enthusiasm for the brand new Apple Watch Series 4 is contagious. That new display is just gorgeous. See the video, embedded in the main Loop post.

The leap from Series 3 to Series 4 reminds me of the earlier leaps in iPhone technology. For example, the jump from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 was like night and day. Though the case looks very similar, the case size (thinner, larger), display, internals, and sensors are a huge leap forward.

Nice job by Rene Ritchie laying all this out so quickly.

Paul McCartney, Jimmy Fallon pranking tourists

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[VIDEO] These two clearly have a friendship, as well as a shared enjoyment of a good prank or two. Funny stuff. Video embedded in main Loop post.

On that first one, watch the reaction to Jimmy, then the bigger one to Paul. Just right.

911 day time lapse, traveling around the world, no shaving

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[VIDEO] Tell me, by the end of this video (embedded in the main Loop post), you don’t see Jim Dalrymple-like results.

And do stick around to the end (even if you jump there), to see the map showing their travels.

Apple Park construction time-lapse, and a bit of map wandering

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[VIDEO] Came across this Apple Park construction time-lapse video yesterday (embedded in the main Loop post). The video is from last year, is relatively high resolution, but jumpy. Obviously, this is as many frame grabs as the source data allowed. It did make me wish for both an even higher resolution, and enough images to create a single smooth animation.

Pulled me down a bit of a rabbit hole. First, I went to Google Maps and searched for Apple Park, checked out that satellite imagery. I then searched for Googleplex, to check out the satellite imagery of Google’s headquarters.

Of course, I then had to do the same thing on Apple Maps. As you’d expect, the satellite captures were from different dates, but the image resolution was relatively high. As I explored, I also realized how much of the satellite and Google street view imagery continues to be updated.

To get a better sense of this, I took a look at a giant construction project that is still underway, a building in Philadelphia that will be the tallest building in the US outside of New York and Chicago. To find it, search for:

1800 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA

In Google Maps, you can see the building underway, already pretty tall. In Apple Maps, the site is still a parking map, the building not yet begun.

Not a slam at Apple Maps. I’m sure if I kept looking, I’d find major construction projects where the reverse was true. I just found this interesting.

Now that’s the way to polish a rusty knife

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[VIDEO] If you have even the slightest interest in cooking and/or knives, watch the video embedded in the main Loop post. This is just one example from the outstanding JunsKitchen YouTube channel, a rabbit hole of excellence.

There’s a lot to watch for here. Start with the reclamation project, but stay for the incredible knife technique. I am a big fan.

Long lost original demo of Imagine by John Lennon

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[VIDEO] Jason Kottke:

While sifting through boxes upon boxes of the original tapes for Yoko Ono, engineer Rob Stevens discovered something truly remarkable that had gone unnoticed all these years. “Early 2016, during the gestation period of this project, I’m in the Lennon archives with my people going through tape boxes that have labeling that’s unclear, misleading, or missing entirely”, says Stevens. “There’s a one-inch eight-track that says nothing more on the ‘Ascot Sound’ label than John Lennon, the date, and the engineer (Phil McDonald), with DEMO on the spine. No indication of what material was on the tape. One delicate transfer to digital later, the “Imagine” demo, subsequently enhanced superbly by Paul Hicks, appears within this comprehensive set. It was true serendipity.”

Listen for yourself. Video embedded in main Loop post.

The most popular song of each year, from 1940-2017

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[VIDEO] This is a terrific edit (embedded in the main Loop post), taking you from 1940 through today in a single stream. The list was made up of songs that spent the most time at number one on the Billboard charts.

That means, you won’t see Michael Jackson, Nirvana or Queen, even though each has songs that make any list of top 100 songs of all time. That quibble aside, this was a fun listen.

If you liked this, you might also check out the UK version.

Phil Schiller, stuntman

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[VIDEO] This (video embedded in main Loop post) was filmed at the New York Macworld Expo, back in 1999. I find this simply amazing. Phil Schiller, taking one for the team. That is courage!

The 23 best movies of the 2000s

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This is an excellent list. Nitpick away, but I’m betting there’s something new and delightful for you here.

My three favorites from the list:

  • Spirited Away: If you’ve never experienced a Studio Ghibli film, this is a great starting point. On my personal list of all-time great films. From the writeup:

Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki seems unable to make anything but masterpieces; still, this epic tale of a young girl separated from her parents and thrust into a magical world, stands as his greatest — not only for its transporting visuals but for its bracing sense of adventure, terror, resilience and heroism.

  • Michael Clayton: Talking truth to power, personal growth, with just a sprinkling of a “caper” film, this is George Clooney at his best. From the writeup:

If movies can be evaluated as sums of their parts — script, performance, design, editing and sound — then this legal thriller is sheer perfection.

  • Children of Men: This was made in 2006, but it might well be talking about today. From the writeup:

Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of the P.D. James novel evinced the perfect balance of technical prowess, propulsive storytelling, complex character development and timeliness when it was released in 2006. But its depiction of a dystopian near-future – what we ruefully now call the present — has proved to be not just visionary but prophetic. Its predictive value aside, it stands as a flawless movie — a masterwork of cinematic values at their purest, with each frame delivering emotion and information in equally compelling measure.

I love this list, not just for the movies it surfaces, but for the descriptions. Well done.

Outfoxing iMovie to set a default movie resolution

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Josh Centers, TidBITS:

We’ve been trying to incorporate screencasts into more of our articles here at TidBITS—there are times when a short video conveys some point better than any number of screenshots. As far as tools go, ScreenFlow is the gold standard, but QuickTime Player can record screen actions and iMovie is a decent video editor. And both come with all Macs for free, so that’s where we’re starting.

But I recently stumbled across an infuriating problem: no matter what I did with my original screen recordings, I couldn’t use File > Share > File in iMovie to save a video file at a resolution higher than 720p.

Solid detective work by Josh Centers, as he works out a kludge to get a better iMovie resolution. But even better, his bit of hackery stuck and he now has reset the default iMovie resolution to something much more usable.

Even if you don’t use iMovie, you never know when the need will arise. Take a read through this, just to get a sense of the technique.

And:

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, since iMovie is an impressive tool to be bundled with the Mac for free, but hacks like this shouldn’t be necessary.

Yup.

Apple’s best media moves

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Dan Moren, writing for Macworld, digs into the Apple TV’s TV app, the Movies Anywhere service, and Apple’s Apple Books rewrite.

The whole piece is worth reading, but a few nuggets:

The big question mark hanging over it all is what exactly will happen when Apple’s own video streaming service launches. Will it take over the [TV] app, pushing the rest of your content aside? Or will it be content to share a place on equal footing with the other partners? For customers’ sake, I certainly hope for the latter.

I use my Apple TV all the time, but never use the TV app, mostly because of the lack of Netflix integration. If Apple can get Netflix buy-in, and avoid overwhelming the TV app when they fold in their own Apple-branded content, the TV app will become my first stop when I switch to my Apple TV.

At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled a major overhaul to its ebook platform, including a graphical update to the reading apps, a better store experience, and reading features that take aim at Amazon’s own Goodreads service.

That’s good because Amazon does continue to dominate the market and has little in the way of competition, and Apple is one of the few companies big enough to seriously challenge it. The real question is if Apple can do anything compelling enough to draw market share from Amazon.

I’ve long been an Amazon Kindle reader. I buy all my books from the Kindle store, do most of my reading on my iPad. But this new version of Apple Books has my attention. A central issue for me is the ability to share books with my family, something Amazon only recent started offering. Apple’s deal is much simpler, is already in place for me, and the Apple deal has none of Amazon’s limits.

Using Photos to sync photos of an event from different sources

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Jason Snell, Six Colors:

I went to a wedding in London over the summer, and as you might expect at an event full of techy people, I ended up with hundreds of photos of the event from numerous sources—at least six. I imported them all into my Photos library and then discovered that they were all mixed up—the bride walking down the aisle, immediately followed by dancing at the reception, followed by the exchanging of vows.

This happens to me every time I get photos from other folks and try to mix them with my own photos of the same event. This is especially true when I travel with a group, and we each have our own view of the same series of locations.

The issue, for the most part, is the time stamps and device clocks:

Most cameras embed time data on every file they take, which is great, but whenever I try to mix photos from multiple sources in one place, I end up discovering all the ways that the clocks don’t match. For some of them, the clock is right but the time zone is wrong. For others (especially non-cellular devices that rely on a human to set their clock correctly) there are a few minutes of drift. For still others, there’s a time but not a time zone embedded.

Though this is less and less an issue as more and more photos are taken with clocks set by servers, there are still time zone issues, as well as photos taken using regular cameras.

Take the time to make your way through Jason’s post. If nothing else, I appreciate the walkthrough of smart albums and what they can do for you. Great stuff.

Super Duper advanced Mac tricks!

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[VIDEO] The title put me off, but I dove in anyway (the video, per usual, is embedded in the main Loop post). And it was worth it.

There’s a lot goin on in this video. Sometimes the value is not in the tip itself, but in the journey, the exploration, the techniques involved in bringing the tip to life. A lot of little nuggets here. Worth your time.

Maniac

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[VIDEO] Maniac is a new series coming from Netflix, reuniting Emma Stone and Jonah Hill (you have seen SuperBad, right?)

This looks brilliant to me, full of promise, a painting of a future that seems plausible and, perhaps, even likely. Watch the trailer, embedded in the main Loop post.

Sir Patrick Stewart revealing he’s returning to Star Trek

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[VIDEO] The news broke a few days ago that Sir Patrick Stewart was bringing Captain Jean-Luc Picard back to life in a new Star Trek series (details here).

I’m a big fan of SirPatStew, thrilled to see him continue this journey. Check out the video embedded in the main Loop post for that moment when he revealed the news to some of his biggest fans.

Steve Jobs 1997 WWDC fireside chat

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[VIDEO] Steve is sitting on stage, taking questions from the audience of developers (video embedded in main Loop post).

The whole thing is great but, if your time is short, jump to 4:30, where the questions start. The first one, “What about OpenDoc?”, is a perfect opener. OpenDoc was a much ballyhooed architecture that Apple sold hard. When Steve came back, well, just watch the video.

What makes this song great: Roundabout by Yes

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[VIDEO] Fan of the Yes song Roundabout? This is a wonderful video (embedded in the main Loop post). Rick Beato does what he does best, taking apart a song, piece by piece, exposing all the complexities and helping you appreciate Roundabout at a whole new level.

Live spider inside an iMac screen

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[VIDEO] Can’t believe this is real (video embedded in the main Loop post). How did that little critter get inside the screen?

I vote for Timothy to take the machine to the Apple Store and just record everything that goes on.

UPDATE: From Jason Snell’s similar spidey experience, posted last September [H/T Matthew Cassinelli]:

Yep. That’s a teeny, tiny spider, wedged between the screen and the glass. 1600 pixels from the right edge of the screen, 840 pixels down. The size of one of the red/yellow/green stoplight buttons on the left side of my window’s title bars. A 20-by-20 pixel area covered by the body of a spider.

And:

You may be saying to yourself, how bad is it, really? Can’t you live with a spider in your display at all times? The answer, after one week, is… no, I don’t think I can. Not if I can avoid it.

Jump to Jason’s post for a picture. And no, I couldn’t live with this either. No chance.

All of the changes to notifications in iOS 12

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[VIDEO] If you are not yet running iOS 12, or if you’ve never dug into the new Notification Manager, this is worth your time. Jump to the article if you prefer reading through the changes or watch the video embedded in the main Loop post.

A glider that flies forever, as long as you walk behind it

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[VIDEO] Sometime today, John Collins, the so-called Paper Airplane Guy, is going to try to set the world record for paper airplane flight.

Cool. But to me, even cooler, is this video (embedded in the main Loop post) Collins made about follow-foils. Around since the 1950s, follow-foils roll in mid-air, riding on an updraft you create simply by walking along with a piece of cardboard. If you’ve never seen one, watch the video. Fun.

Apple Music posts new trailer for Ed Sheeran’s “Songwriter” documentary

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[VIDEO] From the writeup:

‘Songwriter’ is an intimate and personal look into the writing process of one of the world’s biggest artists – Ed Sheeran. Filmed by Murray Cummings, ‘Songwriter’ details the creation of Sheeran’s third studio album ‘÷’ and gives authentic insight into his life through never-before-seen home videos. Witness his creativity firsthand, from the very first chord to the finishing touch – the sounds become the songs on August 28, exclusively on Apple Music.

I love videos that show a song being written, then produced. This video (embedded on main Loop post) looks like it gives a good sense of the entire process.

If this interests you, you’ll love this post from back in April.

Samsung’s latest snarky swipe at Apple

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[VIDEO] Samsung’s latest ad continues their tradition of focusing on iPhone, rather than on their own product, typically with a heaping helping of snark.

This ad, embedded in the main Loop post, is no different. The core statement is:

“So the ten doesn’t have the fastest download speeds”

That swipe at the iPhone X is based on this Samsung press release, with the headline New Data from Ookla Shows the Galaxy S9 and S9+ are the Fastest Phones Ever.

From the release:

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ are the fastest smartphones on the market, with download speeds that are up to 42% faster than the closest competitor’s newest devices, according to Ookla®, a leading mobile data speed analyst.

And from the fine print:

Analysis by Ookla® of Speedtest Intelligence® data for iPhone X/8/7 for Feb–April 2018 comparing mean download speeds weighted averages on major nationwide carriers’ 4G LTE network results.

Not sure how scientifically rigorous the comparisons are, but I definitely agree that Samsung has the snarkiest marketing, by far.

Apple’s pursuit of the Emmy Award

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HBO has an amazing, 17-year-long streak of getting the most Emmy Award nominations. But that streak is now busted, a sign of the changing times.

In this year’s nominations, announced last week, HBO got 108 awards, but Netflix got 112. In the streaming video space, that’s major news, a real changing of the guard.

When I first tweeted about this, I wondered when Apple would get their first non-technical award. Turns out, Apple has several awards/nominations in the bank already.

Check the main Loop post for the link. Ping me if you know of any Apple nominations or wins that I’ve missed. […]

ARKit used to reenact famous horror scene from The Ring

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First things first, The Ring is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. I read the book (translated from Japanese into English), then saw the movie. Loved both.

In case the title doesn’t click for you, this is the movie where the girl with long black hair obscuring her face crawls out of the TV set. Still with me? Here’s the tweet with embedded video.

There’s something beyond a simple video reenactment here. Imagine apps that let you enter a world previously limited to the pages of a book or movie screen. You could roam the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, spy on a meeting between Cercei and Tyrion Lannister, or hitchhike the galaxies with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect.

Looking forward to more of this sort of thing.