Apple's new iPhone 13 smartphone expands with 'Hollywood' cinematography capability adding Cinematic Video and Pro Motion technology.

by Thinus Ferreira

On Tuesday night Apple unveiled the specifications of its new iPhone 13 that is expanding the smartphone's capability as a "Hollywood" cinematography device, with improvements mostly geared towards the capture and creation of video content through the addition of Cinematic Video and its Pro Motion technology.

Apple's new flagship iPhone 13 will be available as the iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Mini. 

South African pricing is not yet available but will retail in the United States for $699 (iPhone 13 Mini, 128GB), $799 (iPhone 13, 128GB), $999 (iPhone 13 Pro, 128GB), and $1099 (iPhone 13 Pro Max).

To differentiate itself from competitors, Apple is focused on enhancing the iPhone's speed and performance, most notably through improving the camera and camera capability, as well as building a brighter and better display (23% brighter), and working on even longer battery life. 

The iPhone 13 standard has a 6.1-inch screen (iPhone Max has a 6.7-inch display), with the rear lenses which have been changed positionally and are now set diagonally within the back camera bump.

Apple has added its Apple Pro Motion technology to the iPhone 13 Pro models, as well as Cinematic Video to all of the iPhone 13 models.

With "Cinematic Video" mode, users can create foreground-background blending and transitions within "scenes" where either the foreground or background comes into focus, and vice versa, based on what the filmmaker wants to focus on.

Cinematic Video is smart enough to change focus when a subject looks away from the phone, and the user can also tap on the phone's screen to manually adjust whether something in the background or foreground should be placed in focus.

Interestingly a "depth map" is also automatically built into Cinematic Video mode, enabling the filmmaker to go back and to change the focus point later, even after content has been filmed.

Apple TV+ video streaming service will be launching worldwide on 1 November at R73 per month.

Apple TV+, Apple's relaunched video streaming service, will start on 1 November 2019 in America and 100 other countries, including South Africa, at a cost of $4.99 (R73.17) per month.

Apple TV+ will be available on the Apple TV app on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, Mac and other platforms, including online at tv.apple.com in Safari, Chrome and Firefox, with a 7-day free trial.

In March 2019 Apple TV+ held a content upfront shedding light on some of the content it would offer at launch.

The launch of Apple TV+ on 1 November will come a few days before The Walt Disney Company's Disney+ streaming service that will launch on 12 November but which Disney won't be making available in South Africa or elsewhere in Africa.

Apple+ will compete in South Africa with MultiChoice's video streaming service Showmax from its Connected Video division, MultiChoice's planned streaming version of DStv it wants to launch before the end of the year, Netflix South Africa, Amazon Prime Video, the struggling and cut back Cell C black and some smaller players in an increasingly getting crowded over-the-top (OTT) digital video straight-to-consumer market.

"With Apple TV+ we are presenting all-original stories from the best, brightest and most creative minds, and we know viewers will find their new favourite show or movie on our service," says Zack Van Amburg, Apple’s head of Worldwide Video, in a statement Apple released on Tuesday evening.

"Each Apple TV+ original offers its own unique story, fresh perspective and powerful message - all meant to entertain, connect and inspire cultural conversations."

"Apple TV+ is an unprecedented global video service with an all-original slate. We look forward to giving audiences everywhere the opportunity to enjoy these compelling stories within a rich, personalized experience on all the screens they love."

At launch, most Apple TV+ series will premiere with 3 episodes, with one new episode to roll out each week, while full seasons of some series will be available all at once.

Audiences worldwide can watch Apple TV+ originals subtitled and dubbed in nearly 40 languages, including subtitles for the deaf or closed captions (CC). Apple TV+ series and movies will also be available with audio descriptions in 8 languages.

The initial new and original content on Apple TV+ will include the drama series, The Morning Show set behind-the-scenes of a troubled American morning show with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell.

See, a new drama series with Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard, is set 600 years in the future after a virus has decimated humankind and rendered the remaining population blind. When all humanity has lost the sense of sight, humans must adapt and find new ways to survive.

Dickinson will be a darkly comedic coming-of-age story, exploring the constraints of society, gender and family through the lens of rebellious young poet, Emily Dickinson.

For All Mankind, a new series from Ronald D. Moore, imagines what would have happened if the global space race never ended and the space programme remained the cultural centrepiece of America’s hopes and dreams.

The Elephant Queen is a documentary film to a species on the verge of extinction, following a majestic matriarch elephant and her herd on an epic journey of life, loss and homecoming.

Ghostwriter is a reinvention of the beloved original series, following 4 kids who are brought together by a mysterious ghost in a neighbourhood bookstore and who must team up to release fictional characters from works of literature.

Oprah Winfrey will join the world’s most compelling authors in conversation as she builds a vibrant, global book club community and other projects to connect with people around the world and share meaningful ways to create positive change.


Upcoming content
Apple says that it will continue to add Apple TV+ Originals monthly after the initial burst of new content at launch. This will include:

Servant, a new psychological thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, following a Philadelphia couple in mourning after an unspeakable tragedy creates a rift in their marriage and opens the door for a mysterious force to enter their home.

Truth Be Told will be a new series starring Octavia Spencer and Aaron Paul, exploring America’s obsession with true crime podcasts and navigating urgent concerns about privacy, media and race.

Little America will bring to life the funny, romantic, heartfelt, inspiring and surprising stories of immigrants in America.

The Banker is a feature film, inspired by a true story, starring Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson as two black American entrepreneurs who try to circumvent the racial limitations of the 1950s and quietly provide housing loans to the black community in Jim Crow Texas.

Hala is a film that follows a high school student struggling to balance being a suburban teenager with her traditional Muslim upbringing.

Apple ends iTunes.

Apple has announced that it’s ending iTunes which it will be replacing with Apple Music, Apple TV and Apple Podcasts.

iTunes that Apple launched in 2001, will survive on Windows platforms, with downloads for iTunes that will continue to be available in a sidebar on the Apple Music app for Macs.

Apple made the announcement at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Jose where America’s technology giants unveil what their respective software plans and updates are for the upcoming year.

The demise of the iconic iTunes is largely due to the rise in streaming services with seismic changes the past two decades for the global music industry, with Apple that is ending iTunes in favour of its three better apps already found on Apple’s iPhones and iPads.

Consumers’ existing music purchases and music libraries won’t disappear or be wiped out but will fold into each of the new Apple apps on Macs.

Unlike iTunes where Apple doesn’t make money until a consumer buys a song or an album Apple charges a monthly fee for the Apple Music app, ensuring more constant revenue as the video and music content industry globally is gearing up and expanding their efforts in digital subscription and streaming on-demand services.

"The future of iTunes is not one app, it's three – Apple Music, ApplePodcasts and Apple TV," said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, at WWDC 2019.

Apple plans to launch Apple TV+ internationally as its new streaming service with original shows and films later this year.

Apple set to join the video streaming TV wars as it gets ready to announce its original content plans at Monday's 'Show Time' event.

Apple is finally set to join the video streaming TV wars as Apple Inc. gets ready to announce its original content plans on Monday at its "Show Time" event.

Apple Inc. is joining the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) race that will add yet another option for video content consumers globally and in a market like South Africa and Africa where video streaming services like MultiChoice's Showmax, Netflix South Africa, Amazon Prime Video,Viu, Cell C black, Acorn TV, TV2GO and others are battling it out to attract subscribers, with more waiting in the wings like Disney+

Apple sent out invitations to the press for a "special event" on 25 March it calls "Show Time" that will take place inside its Steve Jobs Theater at its Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California, strongly hinting that it will be about Apple's video content service.

Please join us for an Apple special event
at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino.

March 25, 2019
10:00 a.m.

The email played a short film reel countdown animation on opening. pic.twitter.com/a2COFjMIpA

— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) March 11, 2019

Monday morning's event at 10:00 in California will be live-streamed globally from 19:00 South African time.

Apple has invested over $1 billion the past year in commissioning original TV shows, chasing Netflix and Amazon Studios is ramping up the production of TV series and attaching big name producers from Steven Spielberg to Oprah Winfrey.

Apple has already announced projects and investments in a flurry of over 20 brand-new scripted TV shows that will add to the avalanche of content on existing SVOD services and the TV channels carried on the services of traditional pay-TV operators.

Nobody knows exactly what Apple's video content streaming strategy is and whether Apple will announce a Netflix-like service for Apple TV or a pay-TV service, whether TV shows will be made available for free for users of Apple devices, or how its distribution will work - through its own apps or using existing pay-TV services and platforms.

If Apple is launching it's own streaming service, what will it look like, and how much will it cost?

Here is what Apple has already poured money into - and up until this point, Apple has not publicly released a single on-set still, show publicity photo, image teaser trailer or a second of footage of any of these TV series in development and in production:

Amazing Stories: A new reboot of the science fiction anthology series, again with Steven Spielberg as executive producers.
Are You Sleeping?: A crime series about podcasts of true crime cases with Octavia Spencer and with Reese Witherspoon as executive producers.
Calls: An adaptation of a short-form French series where the emphasis is on audio storytelling.
Central Park: An animated musical comedy.
Defending Jacob: A thriller-adaptation of William Landay's novel with Chris Evans.
Dickson: A growing-up series about the life of the poet Emily Dickinson, with Hailee Steinfeld.
For All Mankind: A science fiction series set in space from Ronald D. Moore.
Foundation: A science fiction series based on the novel series of Isaac Asimov, produced by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman.
Home: A documentary series about exceptional homes.
Little America: An anthology series revolving around immigrants.
Little Voice: A romantic dramedy series with J.J. Abrams as executive producer.
Losing Earth: A series based on the story of Nathaniel Rich published in The New York Times magazine and as a book about the history of climate activism.
Magic Hour: A mystery series loosely based on the real-life story of Hilde Lysiak.
My Glory Was I Had Such Friends: Jennifer Garner and J.J. Abrams reteam for the first time after Alias for this series based on the life of Amy Silverstein.
Pachinko: A series spanning several generations following a Korean family, based on the novel by Min Jin Lee.
See: A science fiction drama series.
Shantaram: A series based on Gregory David Robert's novel about a man's life in Bombay.
Swagger: A drama series inspired by the life of basketball player Kevin Durant.
The Morning Show: A backstage drama series set behind-the-scenes at a fictional American morning show with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell.
Time Bandits: A reboot of the classic film by Terry Gilliam.
Untitled Brie Larson series: A drama series based on the life of the undercover CIA-agent Amaryllis Fox.
Untitled Colleen McGuinness series: A comedy series based on Curtis Sittenfeld's You Think It, I'll Say It short story collection.
Untitled Damien Chazelle series.
Untitled M. Night Shyamalan series: M. Night Shyamalan is the executive producer and will be writing the first episode of this thriller-series that will undoubtedly incorporate weird twists.
Untitled Oprah projects: Oprah Winfrey closed a multi-year partnership with Apple to produce an array of original content.
Untitled Snoopy series: Short-form animation series based on the dog character from Peanuts.
Untitled Richard Gere series: A drama series based on the Israeli show Nevelot.
Untitled Rob McElhenny and Charlie Day series: A comedy series revolving around a worker at a video game studio.
Untitled Simon Kinberg and David Weil series: A science fiction series.

BREAKING. Apple gives a series order for a science fiction TV drama based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation books.

Apple has given a series order for a science fiction TV drama based on author Isaac Asimov's sprawling Foundation book series.

Apple gave a straight-to-series order for the long-gestating project that Skydance Television brought to Apple in April this year.

Apple gave Skydance a development deal earlier this year for a possible straight-to-series Foundation pick-up and will now proceed to make an entire first season.

David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman will be the executive producers and showrunners of Foundation, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross who will also be executive producers.

Skydance Television that is also responsible for the first season of Altered Carbon that became available on Netflix and Netflix South Africa in March, will produce a 10-episode first season of the as-yet-untitled Foundation series.

The official logline from Apple about Foundation is that "the series will revolve around the thousand year saga of the Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it".

The fascinating Foundation story is set far into mankind's future when humanity has spread out across the galaxy inhabiting millions of worlds (without ever finding extra-terrestrial life) spans across several millennia and dozens of characters.

Mathematician Hari Seldon invents psychohistory which can broadly "predict" human behaviour and behavioural patters on a massive scale, and he constructs a plan to shorten the predicted new "dark age" of the Galactic Empire by setting up the "Foundation".

The mesmerising story, filled with major twists and dramatic, unexpected turns, concludes with a few books detailing a highly adventurous journey of an intrepid group trying to find the origins of humanity, apparently a place called Earth.

Apple the latest to try and adapt Isaac Asimov's sprawling Foundation science fiction saga as a TV drama series.

The long-gestating TV development looking for a possible series pick-up of Isaac Asimov's sprawling science fiction saga, Foundation, has finally found a home Apple.

In 2014 HBO and Warner Bros. TV tried to work together to bring the groundbreaking and massive science fiction saga of Isaac Asimov's Foundation book series to television which would have been written and produced by Jonathan Nolan - but nothing came of it.

For years - just like with George R.R. Martin's sprawling fantasy Game of Thrones series, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (now to be made into an at least 5 season series by Amazon), and George Lucas' Star Wars as a possible TV series (now to be made a TV drama series by Disney), Asimov's Foundation was considered simply too big and complex in scope to be made into a TV series given budget and special effect constraints.

But no more. As premium broadcasters and streaming services are upping the ante on each other and splurging on mega TV projects in the medium's Peak TV era, all of those formerly "undoable" are now being chased and produced for the viewership, subscriber growth and revenue, prestige, and reams of press coverage they bring in.

Now Apple has grabbed a TV series adaptation of Foundation that will be produced by Skydance Television, with Apple that has given Skydance a development deal for a possible straight-to-series Foundation pick-up.

David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman will be the executive producers and showrunners of Foundation, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross who will also be executive producers.

Skydance Television is also responsible for the first season of Altered Carbon that became available on Netflix and Netflix South Africa last month.

The fascinating Foundation story is set far into mankind's future when humanity has spread out across the galaxy inhabiting millions of worlds (without ever finding extra-terrestrial life) spans across several millenia and dozens of characters.

Mathematician Hari Seldon invents psychohistory which can broadly "predict" human behaviour and behavioural patters on a massive scale, and he constructs a plan to shorten the predicted new "dark age" of the Galactic Empire by setting up the "Foundation".

The mesmerising story, filled with major twists and dramatic, unexpected turns, concludes with a few books detailing a highly adventurous journey of an intrepid group trying to find the origins of humanity, apparently a place called Earth. 

Another little Apple TV improvement as it unveils upgraded Apple TV 4K and finally adds Amazon Prime Video.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook has finally unveiled the long-anticipated new Apple TV 4K HDR on Tuesday night South African time in another of the "church of Apple"'s consumer theatre spectacles that also saw the iPhone X being introduced.

Apple's "revelation" of the newer, and improved Apple TV, as well as all the other Apple products like the iPhone X were all once again underwhelming, incremental changes with nothing revolutionary, game-changing or transformative within the TV industry or the smartphone business.

The Apple TV 4K HDR announcement as well as the other Apple products came at the 10th anniversary of the iPhone and was done from the Steve Jobs Theatre at Apple's revamped Cupertino campus and was streamed online worldwide.

Tim Cook called the roll-out of 4K television "an inflection point" in the history of television, finally bringing real cinema quality TV into ordinary consumers and TV viewers' homes.

As opposed to America, in South Africa the adoption of 4K television quality is barely non-existent with no TV channels available in 4K and neither MultiChoice's DStv, the Chinese StarTimes Media SA's StarSat, Platco Digital's OpenView HD or any of the streaming services like Netflix, Showmax, Amazon Prime Video or DEOD offering 4K content.

The Apple 4K HDR supports both 4K and HDV, as well as HD-10 and DolbyVision with a display resolution of 3 840 x 2 160 and 60fps.

With a 10x Fusion chip in the new Apple TV 4K, and Apple will automatically upgrade films to 4K but price it at the high definition (HD) cost. The Apple TV 4K box is 35 x 98 x 98 mm and weighs 425g.

The user interface (UI) of Apple TV has been redesigned and optimized for 4K resolution, including the screensavers that play when the device isn't being used, and the Siri remote control has also bee revamped and upgraded.

Apple said that both Netflix and Amazon video streaming services in 4K will be added to the Apple TV 4K "soon" and is finally adding Amazon Prime Video to Apple TV.

The Apple TV 4K will start selling from 15 September and start to ship from 22 September.

iTunes South Africa now offers movies for rent and to buy as nascent internet video-on-demand services finally starts expanding.

iTunes South Africa has started making movies available for rent and for sale to South African consumers, although no TV shows are available for viewing yet.

iTunes South Africa's soft launch of films to consumers follows a week after Apple's online music store started selling music in the country.

iTunes South Africa now joins pay-TV provider MultiChoice's DStv BoxOffice as a service where, over the internet, broadband limited South Africans can access video in the form of commercial films for a fee. SouthTel which promised a similar video-on-demand (VOD) service which the company said would start a year ago, has failed to commercially implement the service for South Africans and gave no new starting date.

iTunes Movies includes a selection of South African films such as Semi-Soet and Liefling which can be rent or bought.

As iTunes South Africa starts clearing rights for video-on-demand (VOD), it's expected that the movie selection will grow and that television shows - first library titles "box sets" and then newer shows and episodes will be added as has been Apple's modus operandi for iTunes in other countries.

iTunes South Africa makes movies available in either high definition (HD) or standard definition (SD) and can be rented for different prices on both, ranging between R30 (SD) to R40 (HD). Movies can also be bought. Users get 30 days to start watching a movie once rented on iTunes, as opposed to DStv BoxOffice's 48 hours, although DStv BoxOffice movies are R5 cheaper where the same movie is available on both VOD services.