Apple
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Apple’s Beats Music Celebrates Do the Right Thing‘s 25th Anniversary
Revisiting the characters and locations of Spike Lee’s classic, Do The Right Thing 25 Year Anniversary: A Beats Music Experience is a 22-minute short documentary just released under the banner of, yes, Apple’s newly acquired Beats Music. Lee, Danny Aiello, production designer Wynn Thomas and others from the film stroll its Bed-Stuy block, recalling moments, interviewing current residents, and trying to remember just which apartment Rosie Perez lived in. Unlike Lee’s recent Old Boy, it’s an official Spike Lee Joint — spirited, not too nostalgic and capped with a block party performance by Public Enemy doing “Fight the Power.” Sadly, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 15, 2014 -
Adding Motion to “Stills” with Cinemagraph Pro
Cinemagraph Pro from Flixel adds motion to a still image. In essence you shoot a sequence of video, and then indicate the area of the image that you want to see in motion – perhaps just the hands of the subject of a portrait, or the water in the lake of a scenic picture. While the masked area remains in motion, the rest of the scene is totally still; the lack of motion draws the eye to the part of the image that is moving. It’s an interesting effect, and could be useful in video or film for dream sequences, […]
by Michael Murie on Mar 13, 2014 -
The 12 Most Desired Final Cut Pro X Features
Final Cut Pro X (FCP X) was announced in April of 2011 and released in June of the same year. In the nearly three years since its release I have slowly increased the amount of work I do with it. As of this writing I am in the early stages of editing a feature-length documentary using Final Cut Pro X. I agree with the post-production masses that say Apple should have handled the launch of FCP X much better than it did. I could go on and on about what I wish they would have done differently. I won’t. That […]
by Craig Bergonzoni on Mar 4, 2014 -
Mark Cuban Blasts Patent Troll’s Movie Download Lawsuit
The absurdities of the U.S. patent system were brought into focus yesterday by Mark Cuban, whose Magnolia Pictures, along with Amazon, Apple and the Weinstein Company, has been hit by a bizarre lawsuit involving movie downloads. The title of Cuban’s blog post summarizes the suit: “So I Got Sued By A Patent Troll Who Thinks They Own Downloading Movies (only before they are released in theaters) over Cellular.” The suit has been filed in Illinois Northern District Court by Red Pine Point, a so-called patent troll, which is a company that files, holds but does not base its business around […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2014 -
Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix: the iPhone
25 New Face Kirby Ferguson extends his popular Everything is a Remix series with this latest entry on the iPhone. I wrote about the series’ original four parts back in 2011. An excerpt: Rather than push a copy-left agenda or hype the latest mash-up artist, Ferguson uses the subject of the remix to discuss the history and nature of creativity. Everything is a Remix deconstructs the idea of originality, exploring the creative but also technological and business memes that recombine from one generation to the next, making us feel that we are encountering something “new” along the way. And it […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 13, 2013 -
iOS 7 at the One-Month Mark: 18 Picks and Pans
Apple’s “polarizing” mobile operating system iOS 7, an update which stripped away the skeuomorphism (i.e., the fake leather and other real-world metaphors found in apps like Calendar and Game Center) of previous versions in favor of a “flat” design style, was unveiled by the company on June 10 at its WWDC keynote and pushed to users on September 18. And for the most of this year, the Apple media universe — the parade of blogs and podcasts that have made a mini-industry of commenting upon the Cupertino company — have spoken of little else. But now that the OS is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 18, 2013 -
The Dark Side of the iPhone: Casey Neistat Documents iPhone 5s Hysteria
Filmmaker Casey Neistat, selected as one of our “25 New Faces” in 2006, camped out at Apple’s New York City 59th Street store to make this short film about the fans who waited on line, credit cards in hand, for over a week to purchase the iPhone 5s. (Were any there for the cheaper, “unapologetically plastic” iPhone 5c? I doubt it.) He asked the Apple fans one question: Why? Watch the video above.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 22, 2013 -
Apple Announces New Mac Pro with Upgraded Editing Capabilities
Alongside a Jony Ive-helmed refresh of its iOS mobile software, a long-awaited update of Apple’s Mac Pro line was finally announced at today’s WWDC. Replacing the large cheesegrater floor model is a computer one-eighth the size that resembles the classic Braun KF 20 coffeemaker. From the Verge: The new Mac Pro will be one-eighth the size of the old 40-pound Mac Pro. The new desktop, which stands 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches wide, will ship this fall. When it does, it’ll feature a blacked-out aluminum exterior and be small enough that it can sit on most desks. Inside, it will make […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 10, 2013 -
Six Questions Apple Needs to Answer in 2013
Apple has enabled cottage industries of graphic designers, musicians and, increasingly, Apple bloggers. As someone who uses Apple products, and who owns a bit of Apple stock, I follow the company pretty closely. So, I’m reading all the tech and finance blogs, with their pre-earnings chatter about Tim Cook’s ouster (not happening), dividend hikes (probably happening), and spaceship campus cost overruns (definitely happening). But as someone who wants to see the company grow because its products are evolving, here are the six Apple questions I’d like guidance on. Forget the Apple TV, where’s the Apple TV SDK? The iPhone has […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 23, 2013 -
What’s In My Instapaper: Game of Thrones, Bitcoin, Video Game Death, Chloe Sevigny and More
Here are my weekly Sunday morning links. A sophisticated discussion of videogames and violence is contained in Adi Robertson’s “Death is Dead: How Modern Videogame Designers Killed Danger” at the Verge. The article quotes David Cage, whose Beyond: Two Souls is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this year, proclaiming, “If the character doesn’t hold a gun, designers don’t even know what to do.” That leads to a discussion about the relationship of death to videogame narrative: But unlike Cage, most of the writers giving talks at GDC don’t come into a game with complete control. They’re brought on to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2013
