Filed under: Found Footage

In the tradition of the "30 years of Apple in 2 minutes" video we recently featured, here's a well-photographed, albeit incomplete, look at some of Apple's best designs. It starts off with the "beige angles" of the Apple II, Lisa and Macintosh before progressing to the "dark portables" (Apple QuickTake and PowerCD) and "translucent colors" (eMate and G3 iMac).

It ends with "glass and aluminum," showing off the current-generation iMac, iPhone 4 and iPad. It's well shot and that ethereal music makes me feel like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are going to pop up at any moment. Well done, Matt's Macintosh! You obviously love your machines, and we can't blame you.

So, you have an iPhone 4, but you're missing all of that Cydia love? Well, in a recent interview with Make It Work, Jay Freeman (known to the jailbreak world as Saurik) talked about the iPhone 4 jailbreak. But wait, there's more -- he also showed the Cydia store on his iPhone 4, which is the App Store replacement found on jailbroken iOS devices.

An extended interview will air tomorrow on KNX 1070 Newsradio in LA from 1 - 2 PM PDT, and in San Francisco on KSFO 560 between 3 - 4 PM PDT.

Ever since the iPad hit the market, my visits to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Opera Colorado, and the Central City Opera have been frustrating. Why? I think about my iPad, and I see a great way to display sheet music. On stage, however, I see the same old paper sheet music that's been prevalent for hundreds of years.

Why not go digital, then? There's only one problem -- a musician would still need to use his or her hand to swipe at the sheet music and turn a page.

A company called Airturn has developed the BT-105, a Bluetooth foot switch for turning pages on the iPad forward and backward using a tap of a foot. As Hugh Sung explains in the video above, it allows instrumentalists who are busy with both hands to use a toe to tap one of the two switches to move through the score easily.

I'm not sure what Airturn is going to do with percussionists and pianists, who are often busy with both hands and at least one foot. Perhaps the next generation device will listen to the music and anticipate when to turn the page.

The BT-105 is still in the prototype stage, but should be available later this year.

[via Wired]

The idea of connecting Darth Vader and the iPhone 4 has become a meme. Videos abound on the topic, like the ones found here, here, here, and even here. The newest one comes from Russell Arch. It has its moments, especially the idea of the Death Star being run on a first generation iMac and OS 9. Take a look and see what you think.

This cinematic masterpiece is well beyond any comment or explanation we can provide, but I'll try. 3D animated re-enactments of the news are popular in Taiwan, and several top stories from the past few months have broken out as viral videos. In this case, the animators decided to give visual life to Steve Jobs' legendary Reality Distortion Field as the power of the dark side of the Force, complete with Darth Vader's trademark helmet (earned in single combat with another tech legend).

From eager buyers in a line for 'iCrap,' to Darth Steve force-choking a certain blogger, to a rather permanent lightsaber-based solution to the iPhone 4's antenna issues -- this one's got it all. Enjoy.

[via Daring Fireball]

Sure, you may be working 80 hour weeks, sleeping at your desk, and be completely stressed out from working on a series of secret projects, but at least Apple is providing you with free beer and a band on-site to relieve a bit of the stress.

And it's not just any neighborhood garage band (no pun intended) -- it's Maroon 5. The video above, posted by goulartem on YouTube, was one of many posted by Apple workers who attended a company beer bash on Friday, July 9th.

The Apple employees in the crowd seem to be having a great time, with a lot of iPhones being waved around capturing the free mini-concert. See if you can spot what looks like a white iPhone 4 on the right side of the crowd near the front.

The iPhone 4's insides are no secret anymore. The folks at iFixit alone have done a stellar job of documenting its every bit and bob. Still, the video above is worth watching. Created by repair firm Techrestore and composed of over 1,700 still photos, it's a highly entertaining stop-motion disassembly of Apple's latest gadget.

The sound effects are a bit cheesy, but we're willing to let that go since the rest of show is so good. For more on the iPhone 4, check out our full coverage. If you're interested in the device's internal workings, check out this unofficial repair guide put together by iFixit.

[via 9to5Mac]

Thanks to Obama Pacman, here's a neat (audio muted) video comparison of web browsing speed over 3G on an iPhone 4 (shown on the left) and an iPhone 3GS (shown on the right).

The test was done using only mobile 3G with Wi-Fi turned off, and it shows a variety of sites using Safari in a head to head comparison. In almost all the tests, the iPhone 4 was much faster in Web browsing.

When you look under the hood at the iPhone 4's 3G performance, the improved browsing speed is not much of a surprise; CNET benchmarked the 4 against the 3G (not the 3GS) and found dramatic improvement across the board. Even against the more recent 3GS, the iPhone 4 delivered stronger download performance in Andy Ihnatko and John Gruber's tests.

The processor is obviously kicked up a notch as well. MacRumors, running benchmark tests, found the iPhone 4 processor to be 31% faster than the 3GS using Geekbench 2.1. The iPhone 4 came in with a 2.514 score across routine tests like memory allocation and view drawing, easily besting the 3GS at 2.298. Both were tested under iOS 4.

Benchmark tests are not really analogous to real life usage, of course, but they do give a basic indication for comparison purposes. So although it probably takes more muscle to paint the screen using the iPhone 4's high-resolution Retina Display, the faster A4 chip combined with the improved network throughput (when you've got all your bars, that is) seems more than up to the task.

Artists are taking to the iPad like ducks to water. The device seems to be a natural tool for many artists to use, and the public is now starting to see the fruits of the relationship in the form of some startling and beautiful digital art.

Kyle Lambert is a perfect example of an artist who has quickly adapted to the iPad as an art creation tool. The Cheshire, England based portrait artist recently spent six hours painting an astoundingly good portrait of performer Beyonce using an iPad, his finger, and the Brushes iPad app (US$7.99).

Lambert makes time-lapse movies of his creation process, and it's fascinating to see the details of Beyonce's face emerge from the digital canvas in the movie above. We'd also like to see what other professional artists are accomplishing with the iPad, so if you have a work that was created on the iPad or iPhone, let us know by clicking or tapping that Send a Tip link at the top of the page.

Thanks to Paul Kent for the tip!

If you're afraid of heights, do not watch this video. A few guys in Los Angeles convinced a friend to loan them his new iPhone 4 for a risky little experiment: A balloon-powered flight into the air, tethered by kite string, with the video camera recording the whole time.

Yeah, we're also wondering what kind of leverage they had on this guy to make him give up the iPhone.

Aside from the relative wisdom of rigging the phone and flying it near a working radio tower, the video is actually quite compelling -- there's also a behind-the-scenes clip showing the extended process of building and flying the rig.

Thanks Jimmy!

Adam Kontras, a comedian who claims to have the longest running video blog ever, has updated his comedy act for the iPad and is now The iPad Comic. Adam's act used to include four TV's that he interacted with. This was sort of video ventriloquism, timing everything perfectly so the screens would seamlessly speak with him on stage. He's now ditched the four TVs and changed his act over to talking with himself on an iPad. Getting the timing right must have been quite difficult, but it really works. His act is not only clever, but pretty funny. This shows a new use for the iPad: performance comedy. Adam is probably the first one to do this, but I'm sure he won't be the last since the idea is a really good one.

Enjoy the video. I thought it was pretty impressive and his delivery is just about perfect.

[thanks to Jeremiah Rich for sending this in]

I've been looking for an iPad RSS news reader for a while, and was totally underwhelmed by what was out there. Fortunately, a reader pointed me to a video demonstrating Pulse News Reader (US$3.99), a new RSS reader from a couple of Stanford grad students.

Ankit Gupta and Akshay Kothari have created an RSS reader that makes traditional readers look like, well, cluttered inboxes. If you're one of those folks who follows a few hundred RSS feeds, you may not like Pulse -- the current version has a limit of 20 feeds. The app makes it drop-dead simple to add feeds by searching keywords, and then picking feeds from the search results. The feeds show up as a series of tabbed rows of articles with the newest posts on the far left, oldest on the far right. Navigating posts is done by flicking left or right, and you can read the full post by tapping on the large post icon.

Pulse 1.1 still needs some work -- the current version doesn't support video, so the post icon for this article would appear as text only. Still, it looks great and is easily one of the most usable news readers I've seen. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that TUAW is one of their featured sources in the app...

We'll have a more thorough TUAW review of Pulse News Reader soon. Thanks to Graham for the tip!

[via Cult of Mac]

When space-age technology meets magical and revolutionary, the results are quite delightful. Jesse Rosten produced this video combining his love of the iPad with the power of everyone's favorite hook-and-loop fastener, and I have to say it's a sticky combination.

Jesse notes that this is an exploration of what's possible, not a recommendation for every iPad owner. I'm not sure I would trust Velcro to hold my iPad solidly in a moving vehicle, but certainly the window or photoframe applications would work pretty well.

Thanks Flint!

In what is sure to raise a ruckus, comedian / filmmaker / app developer Emery Emery recorded a phone call with an Apple App Store rep when his iSlam Muhammad app was pulled from the App Store after one day. The highly entertaining conversation in its entirety can be heard by watching the "video" above.

iSlam Muhammad apparently depicted images of the prophet Muhammad (forbidden by Islam) and outlined disturbing passages from the Qur'an. It's surprisingly similar to BibleThumper, a Christian-bashing app that remains in the App Store.

This act of Apple censorship coincides with International Draw Muhammad Day, an Internet event designed to demonstrate how radical Islamic factions are causing traditional news outlets to self-censor themselves in fear of violent retaliation. This event has resulted in the country of Pakistan banning Facebook and YouTube, both of which have a number of pages that are touting the event.

What's disappointing is that this points out Apple's lack of consistency in approval of apps, as well as their inability to provide recourse to developers who have had apps rejected for seemingly weak reasons. Now, let the comments begin! Be civil.

Video from Vimeo. Click link for iPad/iPhone version.

When it comes to unexpected functionality on Apple devices, the current leader is the iPad's Camera Connection Kit. The USB adapter dongle has been found to work with plenty of unsupported peripherals, from audio headsets to external storage. Keyboards, in particular, are popular partners; not all of them will work, but quite a few do.

We can now add "entire separate computer" to the list of working keyboards, as the video above demonstrates. Eolake Stobblehouse (who was the benefactor behind TidBITS' staff getting iPads) figured out that his Alphasmart Neo behaves just like a powered external keyboard when connected to the iPad. The Neo is the spiritual descendant of one of the original 'tablet' computers, the legendary Tandy Model 100 series. A week's worth of battery life on a few AA batteries! Those were the days.

Granted, it may seem a bit weird to carry a second machine along just to type into your tablet, but to each their own. Now, if we could get an import utility that would take text files from the Neo and put them on the iPad... Update: Thanks to commenters who point out that the Neo's 'Send' function will work with any iPad app that supports text input.

Direct link to the video for iPhone/iPad is here. This video (not produced by us) is hosted on Vimeo, which supports HTML5 playback on their site but does not support embedding.

Thanks to Peter for the tip.