Media

The making of Apple’s 1.24.14 film

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This is a behind the scenes video that tells the story of the making of Apple’s beautiful film, a film celebrating 30 years of Macintosh and 30 years of people doing amazing things with Apple technology.

Apple’s awesome old iPod ads

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Great post on TUAW featuring background on a series of ads that ran on Apple’s web site back when the iPod was still new and the iTunes Music Store first opened its doors.

My favorite is below. I don’t remember any of these and I bought an iPod on day one. Very cool!

Great save

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Why I love hockey, part 17. Not sure that puck would have made it into the net, but still, one helluvan (coining new word) effort.

Sony to launch tablet mount for its lens-style camera

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I like the idea of Sony’s “mostly lens” camera system. The QX10 and QX100 are lenses that contain all the smarts and communicate with your smart phone via WiFi. 3.6x optical zoom, 5472 x 3648 image size, and Carl Zeiss f/1.8 lens. But the available mounting bracket is limited to 75mm, big enough for a smart phone but not big enough for a tablet.

This new SPA-TA1 tablet attachment will solve that problem, catering for devices between 85mm and 190mm in width.

Turkish Prime Minister gives speech via 10-foot hologram

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The ability to project a large holographic image has been around for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard it being used by a high ranking politician or head of state. Pretty cool.

Jurassic Park velociraptor cage up for auction

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This prop is from one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, the opening of Jurassic Park. As of this post, 153 people have bid (on eBay) and the current price is $99,900.10.

Just unearthed: Steve Jobs’ first public demo of Mac

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This is not the video we published this past Friday. That one was about five minutes long. This one is Steve Jobs presenting to a much more technical audience, the Boston Computer Society.

The video is about an hour and thirty six minutes long. It includes Steve talking about the Mac technology, then doing his “pull the Mac out of the bag” demo. But there’s so much more. There’s the 1984 commercial, along with a series of other commercials that ran at the time. There’s a slide show showing the Mac culture and marketing plans. There’s Steve pitching low cost networking, printing, compatibility with mainframes, file servers, and even Unix compatibility. Fascinating.

Alternative stock photo sites

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Tired of the usual suspects, stock photo sites with no grit, no edge? Check out this list. There’s some good material on these alternative sites. Pass this along.

David Muir’s one-on-one interview with Tim Cook

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The interview opened up with this quote from Steve Jobs, a quote which is prominently displayed at Apple’s One Infinite Loop headquarters:

“If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it too long. Just figure out what’s next.”

Muir started with a focus on the new Mac Pro, stressing the fact that the Mac Pro is manufactured in Austin, Texas. Tim mentioned that the Mac Pro was just the start, in terms of on-shore manufacturing, briefly touching on the sapphire glass effort starting up in Phoenix.

There were glimpses of the 1984 SuperBowl commercial, and of Steve Jobs’ original Mac rollout.

Next, a brief discussion of secrecy (locked doors, black drapes over unannounced products) segued into the topic of the NSA and surveillance. To me, this was the most interesting part of the interview.

Bill Gates, the Gates Letter, and Jimmy Fallon’s MacBook Pro

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Bill Gates is on a PR tour to promote the latest edition of the Gates Letter, the annual missive from the Gates Foundation detailing the current focus of the foundation. This year’s letter is called “3 myths that block progress for the poor”. Take a few minutes to read it. No matter your opinion of Bill Gates and Microsoft, this stage of his life is being well spent, in service to others.

One of his recent appearances was on Jimmy Fallon’s show. He spoke about his foundation, about ridding the world of diseases like polio, then Bill started talking about his vision for the future of computing. At some point (about 1:30 in the video if you want to skip ahead), Bill got a little distracted by something on Jimmy’s desk. Something not made by Microsoft. Pretty funny.

Heroic bro saves skunk with cup stuck on its head

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I wish this video was better quality and I wish it was shot landscape instead of portrait. But soldier on, it’s a great little story. You’ll be rooting for both the bro and the skunk by the end.

What the Aereo Supreme Court case means for the future of TV

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The US Supreme Court will consider an appeal of a lawsuit brought by the four major US broadcast networks against Aereo, Inc.. Aereo uses antennae to capture the local broadcast signals of the major networks, then places the recorded programs on-line.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to consider a lawsuit brought by the nation’s largest TV broadcasters against Aereo, the upstart streaming video service, lays the foundation for a landmark verdict that could have important implications for Internet streaming, cloud computing, and the future of the TV industry itself. Aereo has infuriated the major broadcasters because the two-year-old startup pays nothing to pick up their free, over-the-air TV signals, which it then sends to its customers over the Internet.

Aereo, which launched in February 2012 after raising more than $20 million from media mogul Barry Diller’s Internet conglomerate IAC, uses thousands of tiny, dime-sized antennas to pick up free, over-the-air TV signals, which it sends to customers via the Internet for $8 to $12 per month. Aereo’s users technically lease the tiny antennas, which are housed in nearby “antenna farms.” In New York, Aereo’s antennas are located in a warehouse in Brooklyn with a direct line of sight to the Empire State Building, the city’s tallest broadcast transmission tower.

Shortly after it launched, Aereo was sued by the major broadcasting titans, including NBC, FOX, ABC and CBS. The broadcasters say that Aereo’s service amounts to blatant theft, because the company doesn’t pay retransmission fees. Federal courts in New York and Boston, however, have thus far agreed with Aereo’s argument that it is transmitting “private performances” to individual users over their own leased antennas, not copyright-protected “public performances.”

Here’s Aereo’s side of the story.

Your Mac’s built-in screen recorder

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Not sure when this feature got added, but since this was new to me, thought this was worth sharing.

Launch QuickTime Player (it’s in your Applications folder). Now select New Screen Recording from the File menu, or type control-command-N.