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MacStories Unwind: Federico Visits Medium Ben

This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico and I discuss how Apple crushed it at its iPad event, and Federico lets loose in London.



Crushing It

Federico Lets Loose in London

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Stu Maschwitz on the Filming of Apple’s Let Loose Event

This week’s “Let Loose” Apple event was filmed on the iPhone and edited on the Mac and iPad. During the event, filmmaker Stu Maschwitz noticed that some scenes featured a shallower depth of field than is possible with the iPhone’s cameras. Although he doesn’t cite a source, Maschwitz says he figured out how Apple got those shots:

“Let Loose” was shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max, and for several shots where a shallow depth-of-field was desired, Panavision lenses were attached to the iPhones using a Panavision-developed mount called the “Lens Relay System.” This rig is publicly available for rent from Panavision today, although not currently listed on their website.

As he further explains:

With Panavision’s new system, the iPhone’s own lens captures the areal image created by any Panavision lens you like. The iPhone provides the image capture, in ProRes Apple Log, of course.

In fact, “Let Loose” is the first Apple Event finished and streamed in HDR, pushing the iPhone’s capture abilities even further than “Scary Fast.”

The wildest part of all is the seamlessness of it all:

Or think of it this way: Apple confidently intercut footage shot with the most elite cinema lenses available with footage shot with unadorned iPhone lenses.

I appreciate Maschwitz’s perspective on the capabilities of the iPhone’s cameras. Having rewatched this week’s event a couple of nights ago, I would never have suspected it was shot on a mobile phone if I didn’t know to look for the note at the end of the video.

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Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs Explains the iPad Pro’s Tandem OLED Screen and the M4 Chip

Tandem OLED display panels were new to me when Apple mentioned them during the “Let Loose” event yesterday. I figured it was another marketing term like Ultra Retina XDR, but it’s not.

As Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs explains in his excellent video, tandem OLED is a technology that stacks two OLED displays on top of each other, creating more light, greater electrical efficiency, and longer-lasting displays. The catch is that tandem OLED displays are hard to make without losing a lot of the light they generate. There have been multiple proposed solutions as Quinn explains, but it’s not clear how Apple has solved the issue with the new iPad Pros. What is clear, though, is that the technology is a big deal.

Quinn also explains the differences between TSMC’s 3-nanometer chip processes and why the M4 ‘…is a necessary strategic leap. It’s not a computational leap.’ The entire video is worth watching a couple of times to understand the nerdiest bits and why they hold so much promise for Apple’s future hardware releases.

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Magic Rays of Light: Dark Matter and the iPad Let Loose

This week on Magic Rays of Light, Sigmund and Devon break down all of the announcements from Apple’s Let Loose event, grade their event predictions, and highlight this week’s release of sci-fi series Dark Matter.



Show Notes


Send us a voice message all week via iMessage or email to magic@macstories.net.

Sigmund Judge | Follow Sigmund on X, Mastodon, or Threads

Devon Dundee | Follow Devon on Mastodon or Threads

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AppStories, Episode 382 – A Roomful of Suits: AltStore and Delta with Riley Testut

This week on AppStories, we are joined by Riley Testut for a conversation about the history of AltStore from side-loaded app to official alternative app marketplace in the EU and Delta’s dominance of the Top Free App chart in the US and elsewhere..


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An Interview with Riley Testut


On AppStories+, I propose an optimistic perspective on iOS gaming.

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Magic Rays of Light: A Return to Acapulco, Let Loose Predictions, and Constellation

This week on Magic Rays of Light, Sigmund and Devon make their long-awaited return to Las Colinas with Acapulco season three, share their predictions for Apple’s upcoming Let Loose event, and recap Constellation.



Show Notes


Send us a voice message all week via iMessage or email to magic@macstories.net.

Sigmund Judge | Follow Sigmund on X, Mastodon, or Threads

Devon Dundee | Follow Devon on Mastodon or Threads

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Emulate All the Things

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors about the arrival of emulators on the App Store:

So where do we go from here? While Apple’s acceptance of emulators in the App Store is groundbreaking, and should delight many fans of retro gaming consoles, it’s an extremely limited change. Nobody really knows how Apple defines any of the words in that phrase. How old is retro? Is an old computer on which you can play games a console?

I grew up playing games on early computers, including the Apple IIe. Does the ability to open a spreadsheet in AppleWorks disqualify an Apple II emulator that would otherwise let me play Lode Runner and Choplifter? And if so, why?

I continue to be perplexed by Apple’s (intentionally?) vague designation of “retro” consoles for emulators. Perhaps the company is waiting for the market to figure itself out without having to intervene by selectively banning certain types of emulators? Perhaps rejecting requests to use JIT recompilers is Apple’s way of implicitly drawing the “retro” line?

Jason mentions another interesting point: what about emulating old computers that also happened to have games on them, or emulating old iOS games that are no longer compatible with modern iPhones? There are some precedents for old computers on the App Store: a Sinclair ZX80 emulator was recently updated with the ability to load external ROMs, and there appear or be some Commodore 64 emulators too (some of them with… questionable features). In the age of entire vintage OSes running inside a web browser, I think it’d only make sense for Apple to approve them on the App Store too.

As for old iOS games, while I agree with Jason, I’d be very surprised if Apple went down that path rather than cutting deals with developers to remaster old games for Apple Arcade. I’ve always cared about game and app preservation on the App Store, but I’m afraid that ship has sailed.

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The Talk Show, Episode 399: ‘I Decapitated the MacBook Air’ with Federico Viticci

This week, Federico joined John Gruber on The Talk Show for a wide-ranging conversation about:

It’s a terrific episode from two people who have witnessed the evolution of blogging firsthand and Apple’s struggle to find a comfortable place for the iPad in its product lineup. That makes it the perfect warmup for next week’s Apple event.

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AppStories, Episode 381 – Apple’s Swift Student Challenge

This week on AppStories, we are joined by Susan Prescott, vice president of developer relations, education, and enterprise at Apple, along with 2024 Swift Student Challenge winners Harshitha Rajesh and Roscoe Rubin-Rottenberg to talk about the challenge and the students’ projects. Then, I interview Finn Voorhees and Ellie O’Sullivan, past winners of the Swift Student Challenge who share their advice about participating in the program and getting started with Swift.


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Student Interviews with Susan Prescott, Harshitha Rajesh, and Roscoe Rubin-Rottenberg

Interviews with Past Swift Student Challenge Winners


On AppStories+, we discuss a wild iPad rumor that Federico found on Reddit.

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