Is there room for a little more iPhone ad analyzation?
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
Just when you thought everything that could be discussed about the iPhone ads had been dissected and debated, faithful Macenstein reader Adam had to go and throw his 2 cents in. Adam pointed out that when watching the HD version of the 4th iPhone ad, titled “Watered Down“, he noticed that the date on the NY Times website being shown is October of 2006 (October 2nd, to be exact).
Now, we have all read reports that AT&T”s web browsing on the iPhone may not be the fastest, but an [8 month] delay is pushing it.
What this seems to imply, in our muddled minds, at any rate, is that all of the cool animations and scrolling and eye-candy we are seeing in the iPhone commercials are all added in in CG to mimic the iPhone’s operation. None of what we are seeing is actually shot from an actual iPhone, with perhaps the exception of the opening and closing seconds of each ad (these seems to be the only time the finger hitting the screen ever casts a reflection on the screen itself). This of course makes sense, as actually filming an iPhone without camera/lighting reflections and finger smudges would be almost impossible.
So the bigger implication is, we hate to admit, that the mysterious 12th application theory is more and more looking to be nothing more than some mistake at the graphics post house or agency that did the ad.
[Update:] Faithful Macenstein reader magicjohnson writes:
“I decided to check the ad for myself and then cross ref with the NYTimes. Two articles on the iPhone exist – but the date the NYTimes reported it was the 3rd of October, not the 2nd. The iPhone can read the future. That is the 12 app. I am the biggest geek for doing this.”
We like to think we’re geekier, but you’re right up there, magic.
[UPDATE 2:] Faithful Macenstein reader deependfish points out the finger casts a reflection on the iPhone’s glass on the 12th icon shot, perhaps indicating it is real. (see below).
Above: The finger reflection adds a bit of authentication to the 12th icon shot.” 
I thought this all along. I wonder if they used Shake to motion track all that.
So what. It just shows that Safari on the iPhone can do offline browsing.
Sixteen months. Someone can’t count. It’s been only 8 months since October 2006!
Whoops.
Sorry about that DeltaNick. Edited.
🙂
-The Doc
That’s WAAAAY offline browsing, Chris.
Analyzation? What kind of word is that? And in the title of all places.
also if u look closely at the top when the phone is flipped on its side, the user is using a free 14 day trial (i think) and the username is ‘blackholesun’…looked for blackholesun on flickr and was some guy with 1 photo posted in aug ’06, and found another indian guy on last.fm but not much else…maybe i’m reading too much into it 😛
hmm apparently on searching for blackholesun and iphone people are saying it’s the user blackholesun just browsing the archives of nytimes.com so no biggie. so yes its live, just not current.
The “mysterious 12th application theory” was idiotic to begin with.
An`a`ly`za´tion
n. 1. The act of analyzing, or separating into constituent parts; analysis.
Seems perfectly cromulent to me.
Watch Steve’s iPhone keynote closely.
His iPhone seems to control the large screen presentation but you can notice some sporadic delays. There’s no reason for sporadic delays with S-video.
Chris,
While we agree the iPhone may be able to do offline browsing, the URL in the URL field is http://www.nytimes.com. If it were truly accessing an archived page from many months ago, the URL would be different. So what we’re saying is that the commercial’s artists mocked up that page, and likely all the screens in the ads.
-The Doc
But note that most of the NYTimes front page articles for Oct 3rd appear around 9pm on Oct 2nd on their web site.
You know, it could be that NY Times keeps articles up on their website from the past and the date they were published stays on their.
could be, but that isn’t a specific article, it’s the whole front page.
Will the iPhone be compatible with Skype on Wi-Fi?