Linked List: October 5, 2023

Thursday, 5 October 2023

Orion: Use an iPad as an External HDMI Display ★

Speaking of Sebastiaan de With, Lux — makers of Halide — have a new app out:

Orion is a small, fun app that helps you use your iPad as an external HDMI display for any camera, video game console, or even VHS. Just plug in one of the bajillion inexpensive adapters, and Orion handles the rest.

More fun than what Orion does is how it does it: with flair and character. You even have to “unbox” it on first launch. It’s genuinely perplexing to me how this just-for-the-sake-of-fun style of UI design has fallen so out of favor. Apple went flat and no-nonsense with iOS 7 all the way back in 2013, and the rest of the world went flat and no-nonsense ever since. That was an entire decade ago! Maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part, because I personally crave a return to depth and texture and whimsy in UI design, but the pendulum has to swing back toward skeuomorphism eventually. Orion is definitely a step back in the direction of that ethos.

(It’s not all gimmickry either — Orion’s CRT emulation modes should make retro video games look much more like how they were originally intended to look.)

Sebastiaan de With’s iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Review ★

Sebastiaan de With:

I will not quit until I have shown you an inordinate amount of comparisons between the main camera and its new, long 5× telephoto counterpart. Not because it’s just fun to see how much it zooms, but also to show you how differently you have to look at the world around you. [...]

This has a funny psychological effect: once I shoot at 5× for a while, the Main lens feels... wider somehow. I’ve had to double-check a few times if I am not accidentally shooting at 0.5×. I suspect that this is what led to Apple adding the 28- and 35mm “lenses” to the camera — once you are going between such extreme ranges, the change is just a bit jarring.

Is it a great lens?

It is, hands down, the sharpest telephoto lens Apple has ever shipped. “Of course!”, you could argue. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s 2023 and technology gets better. Why wouldn’t it be sharper than the last one?”

Well, it’s a long lens. It is truly remarkable how nicely this new lens captures detail despite that length.

Illustrated with dozens of terrific photos. I had a similar experience testing the 15 Pro Max’s 5× lens: it requires an entirely different way of looking at the world. Consider my fingers crossed that this lens makes it way down to the regular-sized iPhone 16 Pro next year.

Becca Farsace’s iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Review for the Verge ★

One interesting sidenote from Farsace’s review: She attempted to shoot 4K/60 ProRes video, recording directly to an external SSD over USB, but she inadvertently did so using a USB-C cable that doesn’t support USB 3 data transfer speeds, so the footage was captured at a terribly low frame rate. The first problem is that USB-C cables are a confusing mess when it comes to data transfer and high speed charging capabilities. The second problem: the Camera app gave her no warning or indication that the connection to the SSD wasn’t fast enough.

Nour ★

They’re calling it a game but I like this description from the trailer: “an absurd food art playground”. Made by TJ Hughes and published by Panic, Nour costs $15 and is available for PlayStation, Steam, and the Epic Game Store. You can play on the Mac both from Steam and Epic’s stores, but not the App Store.