Today Maxon announced the return of Autograph, a modern compositing and motion graphics tool. Autograph is incredibly powerful, and it’s been a thrill to work with the original creators to fold it into the Maxon and Red Giant ecosystem. Even more exciting: Autograph is completely free for individuals. You can download it today and start discovering how powerful and fast it is. If you have a Universe or Red Giant subscription, you’ll see some familiar tools in there as well. Learn More & Get Autograph

Log your nog with Drinking Buddy. I made an app! A real, native iPhone app coded in Swift and SwiftUI. It’s a thing of beauty. I love it and use it every day. But I can’t share it with you, because Apple rejected it from the App Store due to “Physical Harm.” Don’t worry, I figured out a workaround. That’s how determined I am to harm you. Everyone, Finally, Can Code — by Not Coding I created this app by “vibe-coding” it — prompting it into existence via AI — using an iPhone app called Bitrig. Bitrig is the brainchild of some folks who helped create the Swift programing language that Apple now favors for all iOS/iPadOS development. There are many AI-assisted app creation platforms out there, but Bitrig has two (currently) unique value propositions: It creates native iPhone apps, and it works on your phone. Building iPhone apps right on your phone is fun! And, of course, maddening, because AI — but when it works, it’s delightful and rather amazing. On Vibe Coding, Briefly Kevlin Henney (via John Siracusa): The act of describing a program in unambiguous detail and the act of programming are one and the same. I have complex feelings about AI and creativity, but this quote feels right to me — I created this app using AI, even though I didn’t write one line of code. If you’ve tried anything like this you know that the process is a mix of the miraculous and the infuriating. You’ll get a working prototype up and running in minutes, and then argue with a cheerful robot for 15 fruitless prompts about the color of a button. Complex features come together with ease, while a bug fix might take dozens of attempts to fix, and risk reverting previous fixes. It’s a bit like building an app by talking to a polite and well-meaning tech support agent on the phone — only their computer is down and they can’t test the app themselves. But power through it, and you have an app. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that in the future, but let’s get on to what my app is, and why Apple rejected it. The Many Lives of Drinking Buddy The Drinking Buddy Shortcut, before iOS 26 made Shortcuts menus absolutely hideous. In 2018 I released a Shortcut called Drinking Buddy that helps you keep track of your alcohol consumption. I mostly share the tools and automations I create to support creative work, but here I was sharing something personal. I enjoy a drink from time to time, and I wanted a tool to help me be thoughtful and intentional about that. Drinking Buddy does this by showing how many drinks you’ve had in the last seven days (a question your doctor might ask), and by estimating your current Blood Alcohol Level based on your recent drinks. This estimation is done using the Widmark Formula, which has been around since the 1930s. It’s a simple equation that uses your gender and body weight to model how you metabolize alcohol over time. I’ve updated Drinking Buddy many times in the seven years since I first shared it. It’s a shining/ridiculous example of how I’ve pushed Shortcuts past the point that any reasonable person would consider sane. I wanted to create an app-like experience, but I was always fighting the limitations of a tool designed primarily for simple automations. Drinking Buddy: The App This is the version of Drinking Buddy that I created using Bitrig: The App Store page that will never be. Use the big buttons to log drinks. Your estimated BAC appears on the left, in a fun little gauge that animates when it changes. Your weekly drinks are charted on the right, as well as a rolling weekly average of drinks/day. What started as my first real vibe-coding experiment took me down a rabbit hole of refining this design, tweaking the user experience, and, unfortunately, liking the results enough to want to share them. Apple Holds the Keys In 2016 Apple formalized its distaste for dubious health-related apps with strengthened guidelines. Although section 1.4, called Physical Harm, doesn’t specifically call out blood alcohol calculators, the language in my App Store rejection did: To ensure users' safety, only blood alcohol content calculator apps that pair with hardware capable of offering accurate blood alcohol content measurements are appropriate. Apps that rely solely on software, Widmark formulas, or other mechanisms to calculate blood alcohol content are not appropriate. Consistency is the Hobgoblin of, Well, Not the App Store One reason I thought I might be able to get Drinking Buddy onto the App Store is that there are many BAC calculators currently available there. I won’t link them here,1 as I don’t feel it’s my place to rat them out, but their abundance led me to believe it might be possible to pepper one’s app with enough warnings and admonitions that it would be considered “safe.” So I appealed my rejection, and it was upheld in no uncertain terms. A Solution so Sweet Drinking Buddy lives, as a web app. The Forecast view and Custom Drinks are new features never implemented in the native iOS version. Aside from assuming precedent means anything on the App Store, the big mistake I made in this process was diving deep into the “sweating the details” part of building my app before I’d tested Apple’s commitment to keeping you safe by forbidding simple math. 2 But the time and effort I put into the native Drinking Buddy did not go to waste. I turned my attention to Loveable (a turnkey web app vibe-coding platform), where I was able to rapidly build a near-clone of my SwiftUI app. I had the complete spec already and several screenshots to guide the process, and my experience with Bitrig had given me a good idea of where I was likely to bump into issues. This greatly sped up the process, and I had a working version in less than a day. A week later, after some beta feedback, I arrived at something even more powerful and feature-rich than the iOS-native version. So now Drinking Buddy is a Progressive Web App — a web page that can be added to the Home Screen of your Apple or Android phone, where it will behave very much like a native app, even when offline. Your sensitive boozing data stays local and private, but it will be up to you to back up and restore your logs if you lose or replace your phone. After All This, You Know What I Need? Cheers. If you’d like to try Drinking Buddy, it’s free, and works on any device you’re likely to have. But one is literally called “OK to Drive”. Obviously I understand of Apple’s concerns here. Some 99-cent app says your BAC was at zero an hour ago, so you get behind the wheel of a car and crash into an orphanage. At Apple’s scale, the liability is unmeasurable. While my app is well-intentioned, the App Store is genuinely besieged by bad actors of all kinds. I support Apple’s right to dictate what can and can’t be on their own store. I also believe that Apple would be in a lot less regulatory trouble (and community disfavor) if iOS and iPadOS worked more like the Mac, where apps not suitable for Apple’s explicit endorsement can be installed through other avenues.

Still from Apple’s “Let Loose” video. Apple unveiled their new line of iPads yesterday in a pre-recorded video titled “Let Loose.” As with the previous “Scary Fast” MacBook Pro launch video, “Let Loose” ends with a tag proclaiming “Shot on iPhone” — this time adding “Edited on Mac and iPad,” and the fine print: “All presenters, locations, and aerial footage shot on iPhone.” During the live stream I actively wondered if the iPhone acquisition of “Scary Fast” had been a one-time thing. “Let Loose” looks great, as all Apple videos do, but some shots featured a shallower depth-of-field than is possible with an iPhone-sized lens and sensor combo. At the end of the event, I wondered publicly on Threads about this. Replies speculated about additional lens rigs, some improved version of Cinematic Mode, or maybe blurring the background in post. Panavision Lens Relay System After Apple released a behind-the-scenes video about the production of “Scary Fast,” the Internet did its internet thing and questioned the “Shot on iPhone” claim, as if “Shot on iPhone” inherently means “shot with zero other gear besides an iPhone.” These takes were dumb and bad and some even included assertions that Apple added additional lensing to the phones, which they did not. But for “Let Loose,” they did. “Let Loose” was shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max, and for several shots where a shallow depth-of-field was desired, Panavision lenses were attached to the iPhones using a Panavision-developed mount called the “Lens Relay System.” This rig is publicly available for rent from Panavision today, although not currently listed on their website. There’s just enough shallow focus in these shots to make me wonder how they could be shot on iPhone Cinematic Mode could never. What’s a “lens relay system?” Think of a telescope. Instead of focusing an image on a plane of film or a sensor, it creates what’s known as an “aerial image” that you capture with another lens system — your eye. If you’ve ever smashed your phone up to a pair of binoculars successfully, you’ve made a lens relay system. I used a Frasier lens relay system from Panavision to get small lenses into tight spaces for a Ruby Tuesday commercial I directed. The Frasier is a pericope lens, one physical unit that contains both the taking lens and the capture lens. With Panavision’s new system, the iPhone’s own lens captures the areal image created by any Panavision lens you like. The iPhone provides the image capture, in ProRes Apple Log, of course. There are, of course, many systems for mounting lenses to iPhone (Beastgrip is working on a new one), but it’s certainly notable that Panavision made one, as they exclusively serve a market of serious professional filmmakers. Why Lenses? If “Scary Fast” could be shot without add-on lenses, what does Panavision’s rig bring to the table? Apple Log allows the iPhone to capture highly-mailable, 10-bit ProRes footage that fits into a professional pipeline alongside footage from high-end cinema cameras, but the one thing it can’t do is capture the shallow depth-of-field that we associate with high-end productions. The look of “Let Loose” is a collaboration between the iPhone’s clean capture, the focus control of the Panavision lenses, and top-tier color grading. Don’t You Start Internet So is it fair to say “Let Loose” was “Shot on iPhone” if it was done with the help of gear the average iPhone owner could never afford? Of course it is. Feel free to re-read this: What Does and Doesn't Matter about Apple Shooting their October Event on iPhone 15 Pro Max — but in short, the fact that Apple can drop an iPhone into an otherwise-unaltered professional film production and match the look of their previous videos without anyone even noticing is meaningful. In fact, “Let Loose” is the first Apple Event finished and streamed in HDR, pushing the iPhone’s capture abilities even further than “Scary Fast.” You don’t need to add cinema lenses to the iPhone to make great-looking images, but the fact that you can is cool. You also don’t need to twist yourself into knots wondering why you might choose an iPhone over a professional cinema camera when you have a Panavision lens budget. Personally, I’m more excited about the run-and-gun possibilities — and a vote of confidence from the most elite cinema rental house only bolsters the story of iPhone as professional video camera. Or think of it this way: Apple confidently intercut footage shot with the most elite cinema lenses available with footage shot with unadorned iPhone lenses. Panavision for sure. But I;m betting no Panavision here. The Real Story Here is Apple Log None of this would be possible without Apple having adding Log ProRes recording to the iPhone 15 Pro. Log is to video what raw is to still photography, and the story of how Apple Log transforms the definition of “Shot on iPhone” from a dalliance to a responsible, even desirable strategy for filmmaking is still ongoing. Truly “pro” features like color-accurate OLED screens on iPads and ProRes Log on phones don’t just sell a few devices to a few filmmakers. They preserve and elevate Apple’s reputation as the choice of creative professionals in all fields. Apple hardware is vastly overpowered for most of its customer’s uses, so as Apple looks around for folks in need of their very best, they find the Zbrush artist, the Redshift renderer, and now, improbably-but-deservedly, the professional cinematographer.

Still frame from Hello! by Goro Fujita, created in VR using Quill Today’s the day to pre-order Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s first “spatial computing” device. It’s an expensive VR headset that either represents an opportunity to beta-test the future, or double down on past failings of VR promises. I’m a VR skeptic in many ways. I don’t want anything to do with “the metaverse,” and I’m beyond annoyed by fake demos of people pretending to do creative work by waving their hands around like a wannabe Tony Stark. But I’ve owned several Oculus/Meta headsets, and I’ve had some experiences in VR that keep me coming back. Will Apple Vision Pro become an indispensable productivity tool? I have no idea. But I do have a short list of experiences that I’d like to have with it. Tranquil Games that Reward Acrophilia My favorite game on Meta Quest is Daedalus from Vertical Robot. In it, you loft yourself through massive brutalist architectural spaces, with lightweight puzzles standing between you and the end of each level. There’s just enough problem-solving to keep you occupied, and a wonderful sense of flying through beautiful spaces. I’ve played through it twice and look forward to playing it again. Daedalus Land’s End was an early VR game from UsTwo Games, famously the creators of Monument Valley, maybe my all-time favorite iOS/iPadOS game. Land’s End was designed to require no controllers, offering a unique gaze-based interaction model that would be a good fit for the controller-free Vision Pro. These games are not photo-realistic, or action-packed. They don’t have any people in them, or any elaborate effects. In fact, both were designed for early VR systems with limited graphics, controllers, and range of motion. But they create a profound sense of place with their elegant graphics and sound. And they both play with the fun sensation of vertigo — maybe VR’s best party trick. I think of them as places I enjoyed visiting, and to which I’d like to return. Just Toot Around Blade Runner a Bit I’ve never “played” Aircar, but just look at it. There was a Blade Runner 2049 promotional app for the Oculus Go that was never ported to the Quest line, and I still miss it in all its clunky glory. Who doesn’t want to fly around aimlessly through a stormy cyberpunk cityscape? Aircar by Giant Form Entertainment Be In Star Wars Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic has done some great work in VR out of their ILM Immersive group (formerly ILMxLAB). Vader Immortal is a three-part series that promises a virtual lightsaber duel with the Sith himself, but delivers far more than that, especially in its quieter moments. VR is very good at imparting scale, and Star Wars is full of big, cool stuff. Seeing a full-sized Star Destroyer fly over your head brings the scope of the Star Wars universe to life in a simple but powerful way. As a lifelong Star Wars fan, of all the rides and experiences at Disneyland Park in California, my favorite thing to do is just be in “Galaxy's Edge” — the official name for what I always just call “Star Wars Land.” There’s a full-sized Millennium Falcon there, and just being near it is better than any ride. I’ll grab a snack and sit where I can see it, and just be in Star Wars for a bit. It’s lovely. In ILM Immersive’s follow-up Star Wars title Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, there’s a moment where you’re in that exact fictional spaceport, but seeing it from a vantage not afforded at Disneyland. It’s a neat bit of world-building, and also a nice semi-direct comparison of experiences. I can only go to Disneyland so often — but with a VR headset, I can just be in Star Wars, standing near the Millennium Falcon, any time I want. That’s me eating my Ronto Wrap in the background. But honestly, one of my favorite moments is a simple and stupid one that comes early in the game. You’re walking down a hallway of a rusty space freighter, looking out the window at the massive planet below. A sound brings your gaze down to see that a “Gonk Droid” has brushed past you. I went from marveling at the scope of the world to giggling with delight at seeing this dear old friend from my childhood, who has about 20 seconds of screen time in A New Hope, and probably an original series soon on Disney Plus. For all the effort ILM Immersive has put into Vader Immortal and Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, I would actually just love a “Star Wars Studio Tour” app. Let me walk through virtual editions of the sets from the original trilogy — and then wave my hand and have them seamlessly become the fully-fleshed-out fictional settings. Be Real (High) Places BRINK Traveler. It’s great. Save Money on Contractors with Sketchup I went too far. We recently remodeled a bathroom in my house, and of course I built the whole thing in Sketchup, then imported it into Cinema 4D and rendered it in Redshift. What I kept wanting to do, however was walk through the space in VR. Pretty much the day we finished construction, Sketchup released a VR viewer app. It’s not even that great, but it’s great. In fact, I used it to create an interactive maze “game” for my family. Nothing moves or happens in it, but it’s a cool little experience that was easy to create. Movies, Sure, But Not Many 3D Movies 3D movies will be amazing on Vision Pro, they say. Finally we can watch 3D movies without any of the technical limitations of uncomfortable glasses or dim projection. Except we have to watch them alone, with heavy goggles. 3D doesn’t make movies more immersive. It’s usually distracting and dumb, and most filmmakers do it wrong. Eliminating the technical presentation issues won’t change that. But I’ll definitely watch some regular old movies on this thing. $4,000 is cheap for a home theater — even one you have to use alone. Appreciate (and Maybe Make?) Immersive Art I’m not interested in VR as a filmmaker. I love movies the way they are, and every experience I’ve had with narrative VR video has reinforced that opinion. But when 360º storytelling is taken seriously as its own art form, more akin to interactive theater than to movies or games, it can be quite compelling. An artist I admire in this arena is Goro Fujita. He’s done some beautiful pieces using the Quill app, which is was briefly owned by Meta. In the early days of the Meta Quest, Quill Theater was a neat was to see fresh, fun creative expression in your headset on a regular basis. As with the games I mentioned above, many of the Quill pieces I’ve experienced stick with me to a surprising degree. My memory treats them like places I’ve visited, and occasionally calls me to return. Rusty Ships by Goro Fujita Now that Quill is once again in the hands of its original developer, I hope it, or something like it, can thrive on Apple Vision Pro. I’d like to create with it, but I’m also excited to see what others make. If there’s a fresh, compelling immersive experience created by an artist, not a mega-brand, awaiting me every time I put on the Vision Pro, I’ll reach for it every day. Curious to learn more? Fujita gave a long and excellent talkhttps://youtu.be/7YVUqcIJU6w (seemingly conducted in VR) on interactive storytelling. The Biggest Smallest Product Release in Apple History The Vision Pro is too expensive to be popular, and too important not to command our attention. Major companies are opting out — for now. Indie developers are jumping in. It could wind up feeling like the early days of the iPad, where we all figure out how we want to use this new thing together. I’m excited to have some memorable experiences in Apple Vision Pro. But the creative tools have to be there to make these experiences personal.