Apple September 9th event

[Eug]

I don't see memory capacity mentioned in your link. Did Adobe remove it?

They removed it. This is what it used to say:

During Apple's keynote, we also demonstrated the extraordinary speed and precision of Adobe's Creative Cloud mobile apps on Apple's new iPad Pro. iPad Pro is great for creative workflows with a high res 12.9-inch touch screen display at 2732 x 2048 pixels, A9X chip, and 4GB RAM.

 

[Ichinisan]

I hope Microsoft Remote Desktop gets updated to better support iPads.

I've been attempting to use it on my iPad Air 2 as sort of a laptop replacement for Remote Desktop along with my ThinkOutside portable Bluetooth keyboard, but the interface for this app is quirky.

It treats the iPad's screen as one giant trackpad, not as a touchscreen. So there is a mouse pointer, but if you touch somewhere on screen it just activates the mouse pointer where it was before, and doesn't make it jump to the new spot. So say if the point is on the left of the screen, and you touch the right of the screen, the pointer stays on the left of the screen. To make it go to the right of the screen, you then have to drag it the right. Just like a touchpad. Unfortunately, this is not how we usually use tablets, so it's very off-putting.

This alone would may the iPad Pro a non-starter for me for hybrid type use in the work setting. A MacBook or a Surface Pro 3 would be a better option.

Huh? The default mode for RDC is exactly the opposite. When you connect to a Win8 or Win10 host, it behaves like you're holding a Surface Tablet.

Change your mode and try it.

That said, I always use the mouse pointer / trackpad mode.

 

[Eug]

Huh? The default mode for RDC is exactly the opposite. When you connect to a Win8 or Win10 host, it behaves like you're holding a Surface Tablet.

Change your mode and try it.

That said, I always use the mouse pointer / trackpad mode.

I don't have this mode option. I don't see it in the settings. Could it be the host? Because the host is XP.

What about Win 7? Cuz we won't be getting Win 8 or Win 10 for a very, very long time. We are getting new computers this fall, but they will be all Win 7.

 

[Ichinisan]

I don't have this mode option. I don't see it in the settings. Could it be the host? Because the host is XP.

What about Win 7? Cuz we won't be getting Win 8 or Win 10 for a very, very long time. We are getting new computers this fall, but they will be all Win 7.

Oh well. I don't think you can do it without the touch APIs of Win8 or Win10.

I remember confusing my nephew a couple years ago when he got a Surface tablet. With 2 taps, I showed him my "Surface" iPad. Using touch, I scrolled through the Start screen tiles and launched Jetpack Joyride. He was pretty confused until I told him.

 

[Eug]

OK that makes sense, but it sucks. I guess I'll have to continue lugging around my Win 10 laptop or MacBook Pro to work.

We have specific software that we pay for on a per seat licence basis. Thus, it's not available on all the machines, and a lot of the machines aren't in convenient places anyway for my work. Furthermore, we can't get this software installed on our personal machines even if we wanted it.

However, they do let us bring our personal laptops in and access our main machines via Remote Desktop. I was hoping to be just be able to use my iPad but nope. This iPad-is-a-giant-trackpad interface is a deal killer for me for this task.

At least we're finally moving on from XP though... A lot of software is no longer supporting XP so that was becoming a real PITA.

 

[Aikouka]

Hm, I only need to pay Verizon $40 to trade in my phone, or I could just pay off the $420 that I still owe and sell it on eBay for $600-700 (depending on how prices fluctuate over the next few weeks). Although, it's trying to sell my 4th generation iPad that has me a bit wary about going the eBay route. Essentially, my iPad, which is in great condition, just isn't selling. I haven't even received a single Best Offer for it, which is just ludicrous. I'd normally get a few offers for 50% less than asking by now.

I never use Siri on my phone, but the event demo was pretty impressive. I'm surprised you dont have to use commands to manage the searches. The way the presenter refined the search was neat, but I would think there would be some way to let Siri know you are refining vs starting a new search. Maybe I didnt pick up on what it was.

I use Siri quite often when I cook/bake. It's quite nice to just say "Set the timer for 7 minutes" or something like that. The always-on Siri sounds like it could be interesting in the 6S. The biggest thing for me is that I don't normally use a headset when I'll listen to music, so I don't have access to Siri unless I take my phone out. However, if I can just say, "Change to song bla-bla", when I've got my hands all mucked up while baking or working in the garage, that would be awesome.

 

[mmntech]

The closest thing you'll get to a file system in iOS is the new iCloud Drive, but... iCloud (meaning syncing and monthly fees, no other connotations).

This is still my main reason for jailbreaking. My pet peeve with iOS from day one was that you had to use iTunes for file management. iFile makes things so much easier. Especially with the ye olde camera kit. Can load up a ton of movies on a SD card without having to clutter up my internal storage.

Cloud storage is okay for smaller files, if you're not on cellular data or if you're not storing anything sensitive.

 

[smackababy]

For me that's the Xbox One. I'd like to see them make the kinect voice control more fluid, however. IF ATV's voice control is as seamless and easy as they made it appear, that's pretty awesome.

This is why I am not as interested in the Apple TV. The Xbox One and it's integration into my cable provider (Comcast in the USA) is amazing. The Kinect integration is a little clunky, but still works much better than anything I've used before.

I never use Siri on my phone, but the event demo was pretty impressive. I'm surprised you dont have to use commands to manage the searches. The way the presenter refined the search was neat, but I would think there would be some way to let Siri know you are refining vs starting a new search. Maybe I didnt pick up on what it was.

I only use Siri when I am driving and need GPS directions without much manual input on the phone. The presentation was really nice looking though. One only hopes it works as good as advertised.

 

[Eug]

The new iPhones' video recording is 130 MB for 1080p30, but almost 3x that for 4K video, at 375 MB per minutes.

Also, it is using h.264, not h.265.

 

[Ichinisan]

9to5mac is suggesting that the MaxiPad is getting an Apple keyboard case.

P.S.

I translated that. It that spells "Gotcha 1". Doh!

BTW, there are several of these messages. Just say "Give me a hint, Siri" into the phone.

Siri has still been giving me the same old responses today.

 

[IronWing]

I really was hoping for capacity bump for the iPod Touch. Maybe in October.

 

[Eug]

I really was hoping for capacity bump for the iPod Touch. Maybe in October.

The rumour sites are claiming there is no October event, if that's what you're talking about.

 

[Eug]

More like a burst mode photo set, no?

It is indeed not a video format in the traditional sense. It's a series of still photos based on the JPEG format, but they do add audio as well.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/11/live-photos-twice-space/

File size is roughly twice normal size.

It will be interesting to see the specific details of this new file format, as it is kind of in between burst mode stills and video.

 

[Essence_of_War]

It is indeed not a video format in the traditional sense. It's a series of still photos

At the risk of being overly pedantic, isn't that precisely a video in the traditional sense?

 

[JAG87]

At the risk of being overly pedantic, isn't that precisely a video in the traditional sense?

Add to that the fact the there is audio too, and how can you NOT call that a video? This is quite literally Apple putting a new spin on something you could already do.

I guess it's nice that you can now set it as your wallpaper.... lol

 

[Eug]

At the risk of being overly pedantic, isn't that precisely a video in the traditional sense?

I guess so, but perhaps what I should say is that it's not packaged up as any traditional video format. It's a JPEG, which then has and added sidecar file which contains the "video" data. Maybe someone can translate this page for us:

https://developer.apple.com/library...es/General/WhatsNewIniOS/Articles/iOS9_1.html

I don't know how the motion is encoded either, but it sounds like it won't be just a standard 1080p video file. Higher resolution that matches the original JPEG? Motion JPEG 2000? H.265?

Too bad there doesn't seem to be a way to embed such video inside a JPEG without breaking compatibility with legacy JPEG decoders. I'd prefer to have that, as I personally dislike sidecar files.

And the comment by some that Apple didn't choose by accident that little cute kid to demonstrate Live Photos is very appropriate. Parents of young kids are going to love this feature. My wife literally cried when she saw the demo of this feature. (And by "literally", I mean literally, not figuratively.)

BTW, this makes me wonder if iMessage is going to maintain support for Live Photos, or if it will only send over the primary JPEG. This is important because I think the main benefit of iMessage (besides avoiding text charges) is to improve multimedia support. It would be a major letdown if the motion in Live Photos didn't survive iMessaging.

Right now we're still on regular texts because of bugs with iMessage and missed iMessages in the past, but full rez Live Photos over iMessage would be enough to make me switch to iMessage on our devices permanently.

Oh and it seems iMesssage still buggy, judging by my one test this morning. I just tried activating iMessage with text forwarding on on my wife's iPhone 5 and the text forwarding option is completely missing. I've been reading online that it's not just a problem with the iOS 9 betas, but was also commonly seen in iOS 8.4.1 for example. However, apparently if you reset a few things you can get that text forwarding option back.

 

[Red Storm]

I assume Live Photos will not work once backed up to something like Google Photos. If so it makes it entirely useless, same as slow mo videos no longer being slow mo when backed up elsewhere.

I really thought Apple was going to match Google Photos' free storage option, that would really make all their photo and video features actually worth using. But they didn't, so people like my wife and my mom are gonna stick with normal photos and videos.

 

[Eug]

I assume Live Photos will not work once backed up to something like Google Photos. If so it makes it entirely useless, same as slow mo videos no longer being slow mo when backed up elsewhere.

I really thought Apple was going to match Google Photos' free storage option, that would really make all their photo and video features actually worth using. But they didn't, so people like my wife and my mom are gonna stick with normal photos and videos.

You'd have to back up both the photo and the sidecar file to some sort of other cloud storage.

I'm hoping it will work with iCloud. That's what we use, for convenience and integration.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I guess so, but perhaps what I should say is that it's not packaged up as any traditional video format. It's a JPEG, which then has and added sidecar file which contains the "video" data. Maybe someone can translate this page for us:

That's fine, I'm just saying that it's not like it's a hologram. It's a short piece of video, it's a sequence of still images. I'm not sure I understand what a traditional video format means, or what that has to do with it. Do you mean that the files it produces are not mp4 containers with some video and audio stream inside of it?

 

[Eug]

That's fine, I'm just saying that it's not like it's a hologram. It's a short piece of video, it's a sequence of still images. I'm not sure I understand what a traditional video format means, or what that has to do with it. Do you mean that the files it produces are not mp4 containers with some video and audio stream inside of it?

It's a sidecar file, one likely that most software won't recognize as a video file. Who knows if internally it's just another mp4 container, but I presume the file extension wouldn't be the same, as it's supposed to be associated with a JPEG as a sidecar, not an independent video file.

Also, I'm guessing there will be other data in there as well, such as editing changes. For example, in iOS 8 and OS X, there are AAE sidecar files that contain non-destructive editing information. Perhaps they'll reuse that AAE file extension and expand its function to include video, or maybe they'll change the name to say AAV or something to include both edits and video.

 

[Kaido]

Currently leaning towards a 128gb iPhone 6S (through Apple with AppleCare) & a 64gb AppleTV for gaming. Upgrading from my 5S. Super anxious to test out 4K shooting!

 

[Jmegapac]

That's fine, I'm just saying that it's not like it's a hologram. It's a short piece of video, it's a sequence of still images. I'm not sure I understand what a traditional video format means, or what that has to do with it. Do you mean that the files it produces are not mp4 containers with some video and audio stream inside of it?

Traditional video format encodes video frames in such a way that a single frame is used as a reference frame for future/subsequent frames. So if you were to take a video and take out a single frame, you're likely to get a garbled frame.

The live photos feature sounds like it takes shots moments before and after the photo that's taken as individual images and stores them in a single file. This way, you'd get individual photos out of the "live photo" unlike a typical video file.

 

[Eug]

In his defence, Motion JPEG is considered video, and the frames are independent. It is also popular for surveillance purposes (presumably since most embedded solutions for that don't have the best interframe quality when using H.264).

But of course this isn't really Motion JPEG either, since it's incorporated as a sidecar file. Maybe it's MJPEG inside?

BTW, I'm no video person. I'm just kind of interested in this, both because it's actually something I'd use (unlike so/mo) and because I'm wondering about how well this will carry over through iCloud and iMessage, so I'd like to learn more about it. This interests me much more than say GPU performance on the iPad Pro.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I'd guess it could just be as simple as referencing the sidecar in the JPG's metadata, and the video really is just a simple video, regardless whatever custom container format is used. The 200% number is probably just an average. Some files with more motion could be larger, other calm scenes could be smaller. 3 seconds of frames potentially contains a fair amount of redundant data that modern video codecs do well with discarding, allowing a lower bitrate without much quality loss. Same goes for audio. Judging by the vids I've seen of the live photo with the kid, I think they may also reduce the framerate. Put together, I find it believable that the whole package could consume only 200% the space, on average, of a photo.

 

[Ichinisan]

Traditional video format encodes video frames in such a way that a single frame is used as a reference frame for future/subsequent frames. So if you were to take a video and take out a single frame, you're likely to get a garbled frame.

The live photos feature sounds like it takes shots moments before and after the photo that's taken as individual images and stores them in a single file. This way, you'd get individual photos out of the "live photo" unlike a typical video file.

Traditional video has lots of "key frames" that are basically full shots, not dependent on previous frames, but a fixed number of frames after a key frame depend on that key frame.

I doubt Live Photos have more than a few key frames (one of them would be your main shot).