Posts tagged with "video"

Found Footage: Young Steve Jobs’ First TV Appearance

Before the “Stevenotes”, the “magical” and “wonderful” products announced at conferences streamed live worldwide, there was a kid amazed to see himself on a TV monitor for the first time. In the video below, courtesy of Electricpig, you can see Steve Jobs in his twenties getting ready for an interview on national television.

It turns out – surprise – Jobs wasn’t always confident and “arrogant” as you’ve seen him in the past few years. He’s nervous, asks for some water before the show, people adjust his hair and microphone before the interview.

Ah, the good times. Check out the video below. Fascinating. Read more

“Death Hug” Impossible Grip Affects Verizon iPhone Antennas, Third Hand Rumored To Enable Secret Features

Antennagate is over, right? Steve Jobs told everyone that just about any phone suffers from signal attenuation if you cover the antenna with your skin, and people who had issues with their iPhone 4s got a free Bumper case to resolve the “Death Grip” problem. And Apple’s 2010 numbers tell us Antennagate wasn’t really a problem for iPhone sales.

Still, someone is saying Death Grip is still alive, kicking and affecting the mythical Verizon iPhone’s antennas. Not just the 3G radio antenna, the WiFi one as well. How’s that possible? That’s the magic of the Death Hug, a new kind of grip that can be activated with two hands wrapped around the phone and its screen. Look at the video below. It’s a full-phone hand hug.  iLounge reports:

The problem with Wi-Fi reception appears when the device is held snugly in landscape orientation with two hands, a position common when playing games or using the widescreen keyboard. Prior to the Verizon iPhone 4’s launch, sources told iLounge to be on the lookout for the issue, which was being referred to as the death hug.

We’re just going to leave you with the Youtube video after the break. But let me say that, frankly, that’s one kind of grip that requires some serious skills. Honestly, we at MacStories don’t hold our phones like that. But then again, we don’t disdain hugs either. Read more

BBC iPlayer App for iPad Coming This Week

In late January we reported the official BBC iPlayer app for iPad was rumored for a February release; it now appears that the app is real, it’s launching this Thursday and it will require an active WiFi internet connection for full browsing and playback experience.

As tweeted by Interactive Operations Engineer at BBC Geoff Marshall, iPlayer for iPad won’t allow you to stream videos over 3G. Marshall also confirms the UK Radio Player was set to launch this week, but it’s been pushed back to March. It is very likely that the initial version of iPlayer for iPad will be available to UK users only, although some rumors point to BBC Worldwide planning a subscription-based international version for all App Store. The native iPlayer app is expected to bring a much smoother and stable experience to iPad owners who have relied on Mobile Safari for months now.

We will keep you posted as soon as iPlayer for iPad shows up in the App Store.

Mac App Store: Miro Converts Videos for iOS, For Free

Available for free in the Mac App Store, Miro Video Converter is a little utility that converts almost any kind of video to formats compatible with iOS and other Apple devices, Android handsets, WebM, Theora and a variety of other platforms. As you can guess, Miro Video Converter comes from the creators of Miro, video player and torrent downloader.

The app doesn’t offer all the control and customization possibilities seen, for example, in the popular Handbrake video conversion tool, but it’s got a nice and simple interface where all you have to do is drop a file, select the output and hit Convert.

Miro Video Converter is available here. Check out the list of supported formats and devices below. Read more

See-Through Springboard Coming to iPhone Via Jailbreak

A new tweak developed by Limenos, coming soon to Cydia, will enable users to activate the iPhone’s camera directly on the Springboard, and see the results in real-time as a live updating wallpaper. This tweak, which supports Activator gestures to come in the foreground inside a popup menu, will also let users set a picture as the Springboard’s background without opening the Photos app – something that’s pretty neat if you’re into that kind of backgrounds. CameraWallpaper can record videos and take photos with the rear and front-facing cameras and activate the iPhone’s flashlight, too.

More importantly, with CameraWallpaper it will be possible to achieve some sort of see-through Springboard that can come quite in handy if you’re walking and looking at your iPhone at the same time. We think it looks really interesting, so make sure to check out the demo video below. [Youtube via iSpazio] Read more

Macworld 2011: The Future of the Mac [Video]

Here’s a 48-minute video for your typical Sunday morning: at Macworld Expo 2011, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, Macworld’s Jason Snell and Dan Moren and Tidbits’ Adam Engst talk about the future of the Mac, the Mac App Store as the biggest innovation happening to the platform, the iOS influences on OS X and much more.

One argument that really made me think after watching the video is the idea of two kinds of Macs in the future: a “simplified Mac” with a closed system similar to iOS, and a Mac for advanced users. I don’t know how I would react to a closed, straightforward and really  simple Mac personally, but I do know that I would appreciate a new system for managing and deleting apps. Perhaps Launchpad will bring some fresh air on Lion. But then again, should Apple just make the Mac as simple as possible and let “power users” enable the features they want (like, say, the Finder) in the machine’s preferences? And how does the Mac App Store fit in all this? Great discussion in the video above.

Ions: Impressive Particle Visualizer for iPad

Soon after the iPad came out and Apple launched an App Store specifically meant for it, an app quickly jumped to first position of the charts: Uzu. The app, launched as free and eventually priced at $1.99, is a neat particle visualizer that supports multitouch input and allows you to create patterns with your fingers. Check our demo video here if you missed.

Ions, developed by Douglas Applewhite and available in App Store at $0.99, is an equally impressive particle visualizer that, unlike Uzu, gives you more control over the particles of light moving on screen. In fact, Ions might just be the most powerful and technically advanced particle visualizer we’ve seen on the iOS platform. The app comes with different particle light styles that you can switch at any time; you can control gravity with a slider or de-activate it from a popup menu; most of all, you can place emitters and negative fields on screen to control the movement of particles, which can go up to 20,000. Everything runs at 60fps and I haven’t noticed a single slowdown in my tests. Even with the maximum amount of emitters and fields particle were still running smoothly and fast.

You can also control the amount of particles released by an emitter, adjust the orientation and speed of the flow. Once you’ve achieved an interesting layout, you can save it and load it later to show it to your friends.

Go download Ions here. Demo video after the break. Really impressive. Read more

BBC iPlayer App for iOS Launching Next Month?

In December, a series of reports suggested that BBC was working on a subscription-based version of the popular iPlayer streaming service for iPad, targeting a mid-2011 release only in “certain markets” with both free and paid versions.

According to PaidContent, the BBC iPlayer app for iPhone and iPad is now nearing final release and should be available by the end of February, ahead of BBC’s technology director Erik Huggers departure to Intel.

The service’s web-native version already works on iPhone and iPad, to a fashion. Executable app versions are likely to work a lot better. Some Android users have complained about lack of plans for their smartphones.

The service will be available only in the UK, though BBC Worldwide is planning an international, subscription iPlayer containing different shows.

The iPlayer service registered a record 145 million requests in December 2010, with users making 4% percent of those requests through mobile browsers. A native iPlayer iOS app could bring more features than simple streaming via Mobile Safari, like social integration, support for AirPlay, a better UI and a faster navigation system.