Apple can’t catch a break in China lately. The Chinese state run press has been targeting Apple in a series of increasingly vicious attack pieces, while Apple simultaneously defends itself in court against allegations of patent violation. Now, China’s oldest animation studio is accusing Apple of stealing their movies and selling them on the iTunes store, without paying a cent.
LiveClock, a tweak from Ryan Petrich that animates the Clock app’s icon to show the time, was once one of the first tweaks I would install after jailbreaking my iPhone. But after installing iOS 5, I had to live without it — because it just wasn’t compatible. Now, nine months after iOS 5 made its debut, it is!
Take some iPhones (or iPod touches), a few tiny pico projectors and a whole lot of hard work and talent, mix with a Canon 5D and an HD cam, and you might end up with something resembling The Speed of Light, an mazing animation by The Theory.
Remember those funny animated videos from Taiwan, one of which depicted Steve Jobs as a throwing-star toting ninja? The videos were always silly yet slightly informative, but recent news about the company behind them says they might be a thing of the past. Next Media Ltd is trying to sell off their animation division for $500million after suffering heavy cash losses over the past year or so, which may spell an end to funny animated news.
Don’t you wish your iOS device would do something a little more spectacular when you use that “slide to unlock” button? Well UnlockFX from Filippo Biga might be the answer. It’s a tweak that offers all kinds of fancy effects designed to transform the unlock animation on your jailbroken iOS device from boring to beautiful.
iOS devices receive a lot of criticism for their static app icons, which, although often pretty, are a little boring to look at. Other than the Newsstand icon, which changes depending on which publications you have installed within, iOS icons do nothing.
If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone, however, you can make them a little more exciting. Motion is a nifty tweak available from within Cydia, which will animate the app icons on your home screen with all sorts of fancy effects.
Back in the web’s Dark Ages, before anyone even dreamed of creating a logo for a markup language, and when messing around with default link colors was adventurous web design, the closest thing anyone had to online video was the animated GIF.
It was just a small series of still image files glued together, but when played in sequence they looked like movement. A million “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” animated signs bloomed across the early web.
Since then, the animated GIF has gone out of fashion. You don’t see them so much. But you might see more soon, and enjoy making your own, thanks to a new photo toy for iPhone called GIFvid.