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Search results for "glif"

The Glif: We Need This iPhone Stand & Tripod Mount

I’m not exactly an accessory guy: I’m not into cases and skins, I like my iPhone naked. I purchased a Just Mobile Xtand, though: it’s a great way to keep the iPhone at a good visible angle on my desk and, frankly, it looks great next to the iMac.

But the Glif could be a lot better: a stand/tripod mount hybrid that doesn’t suck, doesn’t look bad and, most of all, could finally help you get things done. It could be a great way to use your iPhone as a digital clock, a great camera tripod…just watch the video below. Why am I saying “could”? Because the guys behind the Glif need our help. They have created a prototype, but the manufacturing process will cost around $10.000 to be completed.

Here’s the official Kickstarter campaign for Glif. Go donate right now, we need this. [via DF] Read more


Eternal City, Modern Photography: The iPhone 11 Pro in Rome

The Colosseum at night. Shot on iPhone 11 Pro using the wide lens, with night mode enabled. Unedited. Zoom in for details.

The Colosseum at night. Shot on iPhone 11 Pro using the wide lens, with night mode enabled. Unedited. Zoom in for details.

In many ways, the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera system feels like the culmination of over a decade’s worth of judicious, relentless improvements. Not only is the device’s camera the best and smartest Apple has ever shipped, but it also affords the most photographic freedom, allowing non-professional photographers like me to produce amazing shots with minimal effort.

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    Dual Lens Switching on iPhone X

    Dan Provost of Studio Neat (makers of the excellent Glif) ran some tests to analyze the low-light performance of the iPhone X’s telephoto lens:

    Last year, when the iPhone 7 Plus was released, Glenn Fleishman wrote a terrific piece for Macworld about how the dual lens camera system works. In short, when you zoom-in to 2X, the camera does not always switch to the telephoto lens. In some cases (typically in low light scenarios), you will be presented with a cropped image from the wide angle lens instead. This was sacrilege to camera nerds, but Apple would argue that if the cropped image looks better in those low light situations, then that is the correct approach.

    Results are impressive:

    As you can see, the iPhone X required very little light before it decided to use the telephoto lens. The iPhone 7 Plus required quite a bit more. I used the app Light Meter to measure the light at each interval, which I denote in the video. The app measures the lux, which is a measure of illuminance equal to one lumen per square meter. (I measured from both devices and averaged the results, as the readings were slightly different. I wouldn’t expect an app to function as well as a true light meter, but this probably gets us in the ball park).

    Make sure to check out the video to see the lens switching in action. The difference between the iPhone 7 Plus and the X is substantial when it comes to the amount of light required for the system to pick the telephoto lens.

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    Jumping in with Both Feet

    The tagline for my MacStories Weekly column, Ongoing Development, is:

    Trying new things, seeing what works, and discarding what doesn’t.

    The description captures Ongoing Development well and I like that it’s short, but if I were to add anything to it, I’d expand the middle bit to ‘seeing what works and where it leads’ because when you find something that works, it often leads in new and unexpected directions. When I started recording short audio clips for The MacStories Lounge Telegram channel, I never expected it would lead to a WWDC interview series with developers, but it did.

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    Apple Pay in Slow Fast Slow

    Studio Neat’s Dan Provost writes about how they integrated Apple Pay in the latest version of their iPhone app, Slow Fast Slow:

    Integrating Apple Pay into the app wasn’t too difficult, but it wasn’t trivial, either. In a future post we will dive into the nuts and bolts of how we implemented Apple Pay. As far as we know, we are the first “indie” company to utilize it in an app.

    We are excited to see how this integration affects sales. In theory, it is now much easier to purchase a Glif, so hopefully sales will trend upward, even as traffic to our site moves downward. We are also offering free shipping on the Glif, if purchased with Apple Pay; to grease the wheels, as it were. If you want to check out the redesigned ad with Apple Pay integration, simply tap the S/N logo on the home screen of Slow Fast Slow. If you are on a device that doesn’t support Apple Pay, the buy button is replaced with a button to studioneat.com.

    Slow Fast Slow is an excellent app for slow-motion videos and I’m looking forward to playing with the new version (especially now that I have a new friend who will soon want to run and jump daily). I think it’s clever that Studio Neat is leveraging software to sell hardware and the experience of buying with Apple Pay in-app is intuitive and fast. I hope the experiment goes well.

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    March 2012 In Review

    March was the month of the new iPad, an updated Apple TV and the announcement of a dividend and share repurchase program. It was most certainly a ‘big’ month. If a new iPad wasn’t enough, we also got a lot of new apps (alongside all those being updated for the Retina Display) and big app updates - everything from Angry Birds Space (world productivity took a dive that week) to both iA Writer and Byword iPhone apps launching to Camera+ 3.0 and our eyes were in heaven after Instapaper was updated to support the Retina Display with some truly beautiful new fonts. On the story front, Federico tackled the issue of what was the best aspects of our favourite iOS text editors, talked about the ‘Apple Community’, Cody reviewed the new iPad and I expressed sadness and frustration with lies of Mike Daisey.

    Jump the break to get a full recap of March 2012. You can also jump back to see what happened in January and February of this year.

    The New iPad

    On March 7th, Apple held its iPad keynote - announcing the third generation iPad, simply calling it the ‘new iPad’. It featured a Retina Display, improved rear camera, quad-core GPU with the new A5X processor and support for 4G networks. We posted a review roundup, featuring the highlights from various reviews on the internet, as well as our own review by Cody. Apple announced that in its opening weekend it sold 3 million of the new iPads.

    The (updated) Apple TV, iOS 5.1,  iPhoto for iOS and more from Apple’s iPad event

    Alongside the new iPad, Apple also released an updated Apple TV with support for 1080p content as well as new UI that was also released for the existing Apple TV. Co-inciding with the release of the new iPad was the release of iOS 5.1 which included some bugfixes and new features such as an improved activation method to use the lockscreen camera. Apple also announced the iOS version of iPhoto which was made available for $4.99 a short time later.

    More minor announcements included the availability for AppleCare+ for the new iPad, iTunes 10.6 and the release of the “Apple Configurator” app after the event. Apple also bumped the over-the-air download limit from 20 MB to 50 MB to reflect larger app sizes due to Universal apps that included graphics for the Retina iPad and iPhone - as well as larger download caps that exist today. Finally, you saw Apple update a whole bunch of their own apps for the new iPad and Retina Display.

    We also posted a complete round-up of the event and a bunch of minor details about the event that you may have missed. You can also watch the recording of the event here.

    25 billion apps downloaded

    On March 3rd, Apple announced that 25 billion apps had been downloaded from the App Store. To mark the milestone it revealed a new “All-Time Top Apps” section on the App Store. A few days later, Apple revealed that the 25 billionth app downloaded was ‘Where’s My Water? Free’ by Chunli Fu who is from  Qingdao, China - she won a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

    Apple announces dividend and share repurchase program

    Somewhat out of the blue, Apple announced on a Sunday afternoon that it would be holding a conference call early the next day (Monday) to announce the result of discussions by Apple’s board on what it would do with Apple’s cash balance. As was widely expected, Apple announced it would begin issuing quarterly dividends of $2.65 per share. It also announced a $10 billion share repurchase program to begin in FY2013.

    Fair Labor Association releases preliminary report on Foxconn conditions

    The Fair Labor Association released a preliminary report on its findings from inspections at Foxconn that were conducted earlier this year. In what now seems like planned positive PR ahead of the report’s release, Tim Cook visited Foxconn a few days before the report was published and photographs were distributed to media of the visit.

    Angry Birds Space

    Rovio this month released Angry Birds Space, the fourth in the series (after the original, Rio and Seasons). Unsurprisingly, the game did incredibly well and managed to receive over 10 million downloads in less than 3 days. Particularly awesome was this analysis of the physics used by the game, a great follow-up to the original investigation into Angry Birds physics.

    Everything Else

     

    The Really Big Reviews

    Everything Else

    March Quick Reviews

    Retina & Universal

    iPhoto for iOS Review

    The Essence of a Name

    On Reviewing Apps

    Getting Your iPad App Ready for the new iPad

    Comparing My Favorite iOS Text Editors

    Daisey’s Lies Take Us Two Steps Backwards

    iPad (3) Review: You Won’t Believe It Until You See It

    The Apple Community, Part II

    Regarding Apple’s Edge and the new Apple TV Interface

    A Series of Clicks

    The (Semi)Skeuomorphism

    MacStories Reading Lists

    MacStories Reading List: February 26 – March 4

    MacStories Reading List: New iPad Special Edition


    You can Totally Snap iPhone Photos with your Headphones

    I still take photographs the old fashioned way, but photographers with a tripod and mount will love this tip. From the Why Didn’t I Try This department, OS X Hints shares that you can use the volume up button on the included Apple headphones to snap a picture. Photographers who don’t want to be hands on with their iPhones when taking photographs will appreciate having free remote bundled in with their iPhones — those headphones don’t need to be in your ear after all.

    Perhaps the best part is that this can be paired with Bluetooth devices! I’m not sure if every headset with volume controls will work (as the buttons need to map correctly to the iPhone), but if a Bluetooth headset can increase the iPhone’s volume it should work.

    You can turn your bluetooth headset into an instant wireless remote.

    A steady photograph is ultimately a cleaner photograph. You can reduce a lot of camera noise, improve the quality of the picture, and take better night photographs by simply steadying your iPhone. If you have the kit available to prop your iPhone for photographs, then getting even more hands off will really help make the different between a good photograph and a great one. The iPhone 4S camera is among the best in class for smartphones, and what better way to utilize as a semi-professional device than to use what we already have available as a remote shutter release? It’s an excellent tip, and if you hadn’t already tried this, consider it a worthy addition to your knowledge noggin.

    Quick note: Camera+ recently got its volume-snap back, and it works here too. Don’t forget about the GLIF (shown above) for easy iPhone mounting to your favorite tripod.

    [OS X Tips via Macgasm]

    Note: We published this tip in our initial iOS 5 tips roundup, but none-the-less it’s a great reminder for new iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S owners.


    iPhone 4: A Retrospective, One Year Since It Launched

    Today is June 24, 2011. Believe it or not, it has already been one year since the iPhone 4 went on sale across the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan to literally millions of people who eagerly waited in line to get their hands on the latest and greatest iPhone yet. The history of the iPhone 4 has been remarkable, controversial and fascinating, filled with prototype leaks, criminal investigations, amazing technology, scandals, mystical white unicorns, new carrier allegiances and more. Come along with me as we mark the one-year anniversary of the iPhone 4 with a walk down memory lane.

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    Kickstarter Project - The Cosmonaut: A Wide-Grip Stylus for Touch Screens

    Last year before everyone was using Kickstarter, a new iPhone accessory showed up on the site and was a phenomenal success. It was “The Glif” - a tripod mount / stand. We’ve covered it’s rise to popularity here on MacStories. The creators of The Glif, Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt, are back with a new project, named The Cosmonaut.

    The Cosmonaut is a minimal, wide-grip capacitive stylus for touch screen devices (not just the iPad). They modeled this new product after a dry-erase marker since it makes more sense on an iPad than a small stylus that people use on smartphones.

    Video after the break. Read more