QuickTime

Yosemite’s QuickTime cleans up iOS status bar when screencasting so you don’t have to

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 7, 2014

The vast majority of Apple bloggers who grab screenshots of iPhone and iPad applications don't seem to be ashamed by the low or no cellular signal strength showing right in their status bar, or incomplete Wi-Fi or - worse of all - low battery.

And who could blame them?

Touching up the images to have the status bar show full cellular/Wi-Fi signal and 100 percent battery takes time and a great deal of effort to get it right.

I've seen folks like MacStories editor Federico Viticci obsess over the issue and even write scripts and devise complex workflows in order to correct the messed up status bar on their iOS screenshots. Having been constantly pressed for time, I'm not that particular about my screenshots.

Luckily, QuickTime in Yosemite includes a nifty little feature which automatically cleans up the status bar when capturing an iOS device's screen, so your screencasts look professional...

Apple inexplicably pulling movie trailer downloads

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 27, 2013

A movie buff like myself has always been a big fan of Apple's QuickTime movie trailers web site. I've especially enjoyed the ability to download my favorite trailers in their full-resolution 1080p glory, useful for times when I'm without or on a slow Internet connection.

Unfortunately - and in a rather surprising move - Apple seems to have started removing the download option from both past and upcoming submissions. Worse, the company appears to have effectively eliminated 1080p trailer availability, meaning people accessing the QuickTime movie trailers web site from their computer can now only stream those videos in either 480p or 720p...

Apple will also live stream today’s iPad mini event via its home page

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Apple earlier today updated the Apple TV interface with a new Apple Events section which contains a link to a live stream of today's iPad mini press conference. The move prompting somewhat unusual speculation that the company will only provide a live stream as a courtesy to Apple TV owners. We provided some workaround solution at the bottom of this post and now Apple has made it official: you will be able to enjoy the live stream on either your Apple TV or by opening a page on Apple's web site using the Safari browser on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Mac or Windows PC...

MPEG drafts bandwidth-efficient H.265 standard with support for 8K resolution

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 25, 2016

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) announced today a draft of the new video compression standard called H.265 and also known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and MPEG-H Part 2. As the name suggests, it delivers the same video quality in half the bandwidth of the current (nearly a decade old) H.264 standard, which is adopted across Apple's iOS and OS X platforms...