What do you get when you cross Spike Jonze, FKA twigs, and a HomePod? A beautiful, strangely surreal short film called "Welcome Home" that incorporates all three with a classic Apple feel and flare.

Now, Adweek has a behind-the-scenes look at the ad that showcases its incredible practical effects, Spike Jonze dancing, light shows, and more, with AdWeek calling the new footage "the most engaging, comprehensive and flat-out best BTS video we've seen for an advertisement".

The film uses bright and captivating colors and sharp movements from TKA twigs bringing the beauty of the HomePod to life; the behind-the-scenes video is no different. Long story short: this video is awesome.

Check out Welcome Home down below, and check out Adweek's story for the behind-the-scenes documentary!

I love it. This is iPad. It's not a laptop replacement, whatever that means, but it's a laptop alternative that an incredibly diverse array of people will find more mobile, more flexible, and more accessible than any laptop.

It's the combination of ludicrously powerful Apple silicon with dazzling beautiful ProMotion display and the approachable but increasingly sophisticated capabilities of iOS that let iPad Pro be more things to more people.

"What's a Computer?" features a day-in-the-life of a young lady who picks her iPad Pro up off the floor in the morning and doesn't stop until she puts it back down at night. It travels with her in her backpack. It pops out the Smart Keyboard for her to type with in an alley, on a counter, and in the yard. It becomes a canvas for her Apple Pencil drawings and slides. And it lets her game as she busses around town.

It's exactly what an iPad Pro commercial needs to be — a window into what we can accomplish with a computing appliance that can not only lasts all day but can come with us almost everywhere, for almost everything, throughout the day.

I still switch back and forth between my Mac and iPad Pro, partly because I'm old and the trackpad and multiwindow paradigm is muscle memory for me now, and partly because Apple doesn't yet completely support the workflows I need for things like multi-header podcasting on iOS.

But I'm increasingly taking iPad Pro with me when I go out because it's already ready, always connected, and has the fastest time-to-use of any computing device I've ever owned. (iPhone notwithstanding.)

I do wish Apple would better address having and taking an Apple Pencil along for the ride — the new sleeve just doesn't do it for me — but other than that, when you add in the new camera capabilities, iPad Pro really starts to show that laptops aren't the only answer and certainly aren't even the best answer for everyone.

More like this, please.

New Apple Watch Series 2 ad from Apple. It focuses on the Activity app, specifically closing your stand, exercise, and movement rings.

I love the Activity Rings on my Apple Watch. I find them incredibly motivational and I'll often do everything I can to fill them. I've only missed one day in the last four months. It ties in nicely to Apple's fitness focus for Series 2 as well. This ad shows the value of all those things but, most importantly, makes it fun and dynamic. The bullet-time combined with ring graphics just work.

I really liked the first Series 2 ad, Go Time, and I really like this one as well. What do you think?

Apple is celebrating Mother's Day, as captured through the eyes of friends and family and the lens of iPhone.

The video compiles photographs of mothers young and old, new and storied, in black and white, posed and candid. It compiles life and care and love and compassion for and from all of us.

It's not a slick commercial production — it's a collection of real photos from real iPhone owners. More importantly, it's something any of us could make at home with our memories and for our mothers.

Cracking open iMovie now...

Apple is partnering with Los Angeles-based Rubicon Project on a new program for its iAds division that will offer a way for companies to purchase space on Apple's mobile app advertising network through a more automated process, rather than dealing directly with Apple's sales team.

Rubicon says:

Source: Rubicon Project

Game of War: Fire Age is one of the most popular free-to-play fantasy RPGs for the iPhone and iPad, but apparently its publisher Machine Zone thinks it needs Kate Upton to generate some more attention for the game. Yes, you read that right; supermodel Upton, best known for her Sports Illustrated magazine covers, is the star of a new live action TV ad campaign for Game of War: Fire Age.

Ad Week reports that Machine Zone is spending $40 million on a new global advertising campaign featuring Upton, who in her first ad for Game of War just walks around a massive fantasy battle (complete with a dragon) wearing a white flowing dress and says things like, "Come play with me" directly to the camera. Yep, it's that kind of commercial.

• Free with in app purchases - Download now

Source: Ad Week

Apple has won an Emmy Award for the category of outstanding commercial in 2014 for its Misunderstood ad. The commercial debuted late last year in the 2013 Holiday season and shows how the iPhone can be used to capture and record, edit, and share memories for the holidays.

The Misunderstood campaign shows how Apple products work together, showcasing a misunderstood teen who sits by his lonesome apart from the family holiday festivities using his iPhone 5s. What his family doesn't understand until he shares with them on the Apple TV using AirPlay technology, was that he was filming these memories and editing them into a wonderful family keepsake movie.

If you're interested in seeing Apple take home the Emmy, the award show will happen on August 25th.

The commercial was produced by Apple ad agency partner TBWA. While there have been rumors of a rift between Apple and TBWA, the Emmy shows that this long-time partnership has resulted in some outstanding campaigns, with Misunderstood being one of the latest.

And if you're interested in learning more about how to use AirPlay, be sure to read our guide here at iMore!

How do you like Misunderstdood? Let us know in the comments.

Source: 9to5 Mac

Apple has debuted their first iPhone 5s commercial, called Metal Mastered, and not surprisingly it focuses on gold. Based on the video originally shown off during the WWDC 2013, it uses Terminator 2-style liquid metal morphing FX to literally pour the gold iPhone out onto the screen. Here's the caption:

Typically Apple would show off new features like the improved iSight camera, Touch ID, or iOS 7, and indeed they've already made videos for all of those things, just not commercials. Like the iPhone 5c's first commercial, they seem to want to start with materials this time, specifically the new gold metallic finish.

It's far more brand-centric, and almost more fashion-centric. Is this a new direction, or simply an introduction with the rest to follow?

Google has released a new ad for their Samsung-built Nexus 10 tablet called "New Baby". It shows the kind of deft polish and product packaging Google's able to put together now -- far, far better stuff than the off-key, borderline creepy ads of the past, and almost Apple-calibur in its quality and content. It's close to the early iPad 2 ads in feel -- very human, very resonant, and very experiential.

For their part, Apple has switched from experiential, Peter Coyote voiced spots to a lighter, funner, almost iPod-esque style for their latest ads, showing keywords and first- and third-party apps off at an almost blipvert pace.

To be fair, Google still suffers from a daunting paucity of tablet-class apps, so they may simply not have much to show when it comes to big apps for the big screen, at least not anything approaching the tens of thousands of great tablet apps available for the iPad.

To their credit, however, Google does show Nexus 10 features unavailable on the iPad, like multiple user accounts and multiple window environments. I don't know if they show them off well enough -- the glimpses are fleeting and the importance of the differentiation isn't always clear -- but they do show them off. These are often high-up on some pro-user/greek want lists, but every time they've been used as differentiation to compete with the iPad, they've failed. Hard.

One line of thinking is that mainstream iPad customers don't want desktop-like experiences. The added complexity is actually off-putting, intimidating, confusing, or otherwise unwelcome on the even more personal post-PC. The other is that they simply haven't, to date, been made or marketed well.

The Nexus 10 is made well, and if this ad is any indication, Google seems to have learned to market it better, so could we finally start to see if people really want more desktop-like tablets, or if part of the iPad's appeal is that it's decidedly not a desktop?

Check out both Google's "New Baby" and Apple's latest "Together" spot below, as well as Apple's classic "We believe" and let me know what you think. Which type of ad to you prefer, and which feature set is more compellingly shown off?

Source: Android Central

Samsung reportedly sent out an early review copy of their new Galaxy S3 vs. iPhone 5 advert, probably to get some attention amid the hype of the iPhone 5 launch. If the ad is real, and really does come from Samsung (and sometimes these things aren't what they seem), it's unfortunate. Instead of trying to educate consumers as to the real advantages of Samsung's phone -- of which there are many -- they created more of a parody or farce. Steve Kovach of Business Insider has the story:

Sadly, the tag line is -- "it doesn't take a genius". And Samsung is right. It doesn't take a genius at all to see this ad as totally off the mark... and maybe just a little desperate.

Both Rene Ritchie on iMore and Jerry Hildenbrand on Android Central wrote great, informative, factual comparisons.

Again, it might not be what it seems, but if it is, lucky for Samsung, their phones are better than their marketing departments.

Source: Business Insider

If you are feeling nostalgic or just have some time to kill, you can now re-live every single advert that Apple has made for its iPhone device.  The iPhone was first introduced back in 2007 and the first advert to hit our screens was called “Hello”. It made its first appearance during the night of the  Oscars and featured scenes with famous actors all on the phone. Apple has continued to produce some great ads for the iPhone and that number has now reached a staggering 84 to date.

Adweek has put together a gallery featuring every one of these fantastic ads; they are all in order of air date and each set of ads has a bit of background. If you have some time to kill, make sure to check them out. We have the original “Hello” ad for you below, just to whet your appetite.

Source: Adweek

Apple has made a couple of adjustments to its iAd mobile advertising platform for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, including significantly lowering the buy-in price to $100,000 -- down from $500,000, which was already down from $1,000,000 -- and to increasing developer revenue sharing to 70 percent -- up from 60 precent. iAd was supposed to allow developers who made free apps earn some extra revenue through in-app advertising, but Apple has been facing a lot of challenges getting the program off the ground. iAds were supposed to be both lucrative for developers and effective for advertisers, while delighting users with better presented, more engaging content than your average punch-the-monkey web banner.

However, Apple has had some trouble getting it off the ground, and competing with Google's AdMob. iAd is basically fighting a battle on two fronts. First, trying to get more advertisers on board with iAd. Second, trying to get developers to show the ads they do manage to sell. Higher revenue should sweetens the pot for developer, hopefully creating a bigger target for Apple to sell advertisers. That's also where the significant decrease in iAd price comes in.

Apple has struggled with adoption among advertisers since Steve Jobs introduced the program back in 2010. When first announced, Apple required participants to fork over $1 million to get started, which they've since realized was far too high an amount given the lack of participation after the program launched. Apple has been experimenting with the buy-in amount from the get-go, cutting the price in half to $500,000 a year ago.

These changes should no doubt encourage more advertisers to participate, but whether or not iAd will ultimately become what Apple envisioned is yet to be determined.

Source: Apple, TheLoop

Samsung has aired another of their good-natured iPhone attack ads, which should be an occasion for merriment and ego-deflating good fun. Yet once again the commercial feels like it missed it's mark. Rather, the whole series of commercials still seem awkwardly in search of a mark. This one stars the latest in Samsung's broad-range of devices, each separate by a different Galaxy monicker and roughly 0.25-inches of screen size, the Galaxy Note. It's something that can't quite make up it's mind between being a phone and a tablet -- I'm not going to call it a phablet -- and that's either the best of both worlds... or the worst. The jury is still out. How big is it? 5.3-inches of HD Super AMOLED big, baby. (Yes, that's exactly inverse the iPhone's traditional 3.5-inches.)

It's also got a stylus.

Now, I'm not religiously opposed to a stylus -- I'm an artist by trade and I've used several types of stylus on the iPad since it came out. However, a stylus by itself is not a differentiator. It's what you can do with it that's a differentiator. It's all about the software. I'm also not going to deny that, for some things, a bigger screen is not just bigger, it's better. Hey, I've got a 9.7-inch iPad and Steve Jobs spent over an hour in 2010 telling us what that meant in terms of the type of apps it could run.

But Samsung never makes the case for either in their Galaxy Note commercial. They never show off a lick of innovative, compelling software in the whole damn ad. They're too busy, once again, making fun of iPhone users. (Not iPhones, mind you. iPhone users.)

This time we're giddily missing the Super Bowl (presumably on the west coast because it's still light outside) by standing in line for an iPhone launch (which never happens any time near Super Bowl time), and the massive size and pen-ly charm of the Galaxy Note makes us break out into the worst Van Halen-meets-the-Simpsons-style tribute number. Ever.

They're copying the spirit of the old Get a Mac ads without any of the substance. Shocking, really, given their history.

Samsung couldn't have used any of those multi-million dollar minutes to show us the advantages of the Galaxy Note having such a big screen? To show us how absolutely killer a stylus makes the mobile experience? They flashed some photos, doodled on the screen, and did the equivalent of a FaceTime call. The motorcycle jump got almost as much screen time as the software.

And that's disappointing. Google's Galaxy Nexus commercial showed you can highlight Android hardware and software features in a compelling way. Samsung shows you can mock iPhone users, call us baristas, and convert us to the world's biggest ass phone just by waving it at us.

The girl in the commercial sums it up best when she says, "I don't know what to believe anymore." As much as Samsung bashes the iPhone, they give no reason to believe in the Galaxy Note.

If you want to court iPhone users, don't do it by making fun of us or insulting our intelligence. Do it by making us jealous of your phone... er... tablet... er... phone.

Interesting new ad/tactic from Samsung, painting those devoted Apple users who line up from the iPhone 4S as fanboy hipster sheep whose faces are stuck to the blogs -- reading about battery life issues and lack of design changes -- until a giant-screened, 4G powered, Galaxy S II tears them away.

Also interesting that Samsung only focuses on the size of the screen and speed of the radio -- and not at all about the Android operating system that runs it.

Make anyone want to dump their new iPhone for a Galaxy S II?

Source: YouTube via Daring Fireball

Technology blog *All Things D" reports that Andy Miller, VP of Apple's iAd mobile advertising division, is leaving to join venture capital firm, Highland Capital.

Miller came to Apple as part of the Quatro Wireless acquisition, which Apple purchased after losing out on AdMob to Google. He reported directly to Steve Jobs. iAd, however, has faced a number of issues and hasn't exactly set the mobile ad world on fire.

No word yet on who will replace him.

[AllThingsD]

Apple has released a new commercial for the iPad 2 called We Believe. In what feels like a sequel to the first iPad commercial, What is iPad?, it focuses on Apple's belief that "Technology Is Not Enough", and that you have to go beyond the technology (and specs!), to make the experience, more delightful (and dare we say it -- magical).

You can find the full advert after the break, and let us know what you think.

[Apple on YouTube]

Apple has cut the minimum purchase price for advertisers on its mobile iAd network from $1 million to $500,000 in an effort to appeal to smaller companies and help broaden the mobile advertising platform, according to All Things Digital.

When Apple introduced iAds last year they thought it would be a huge success despite some believing it would be a flop, and although Apple is claiming over 60 successful iAd campaings so far they're also seeing low fill rates and other developer complaints.

Cutting the initial asking price in half should allow more eligible parties to participate in the iAd program, but do you think it will be enough to make iAds a full success for Apple? Let us know in the comments!

[Digital Daily]

It looks as if Motorola is trying to build some hype around their upcoming tablet which will be announced at CES 2011. This ad also pretty much confirms the fact that it will be running Honeycomb as well. The current teaser ad is quite humorous as it compares famous tablets through the centuries such as the Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian Hieroglyphic tablet, the Mayan calendar tablet, and you guessed it - the iPad. The video basically spans hundreds of years and weighs out the pros and cons of each tablet.

When the video reaches the iPad, it's only described as -

It then proceeds to pan out and look at the Galaxy Tab, which they list running a mobile OS as a con. The whole campaign is quite intriguing. Do you guys think the iPad is like a giant iPhone or do you think that's just the best Motorola could come up with? I still think a better comparison (read: fair) will be able to be made when the iPad 2 is announced.

Hit the jump to watch the ad for yourself!

(http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/20/motorolas-tablet-evolution-video-teases-some-honeycomb-at-ces/)

Apple is keeping up the transition from "app for that" to showing how the iPhone makes its users lives better with three new TV commercials -- Family Man, Dog Lover, and Backpacker

• Family man showcases the built-in Photo app with a video of a child's birthday, the App Store and purchasing Jamie Oliver's 20 minute meals [$7.99 - iTunes link] for cooking, and Elmo's Monster Maker [$3.99 - iTunes link] for the kids on a car trip, and Viper SmartStart [free - iTunes link] for opening the car trunk.
• Dog lover highlight PetFinder.com [free- iTunes link] to help find that perfect dog, Facebook [free - iTunes link] to share the picture with friends, Hey Walkies [free - iTunes link] to find a place to run, and iCam [$4.99 - iTunes link] to stream the whole thing.
• Backpacker kicks off a trip to spain by finding a place to stay HostelWorld.com [free - iTunes link], sending back pictures with the built-in Photo and Email apps, and using the App Store to download Jibbigo speech translator English to Spanish [$24.99 - iTunes link] for automagic communication.

(Unfortunately, we don't think there's an app for the bill that would come from all that roaming data...)

BusinessWeek is reporting that, according to the cliched "source familiar with the situation", Apple CES Steve Jobs thinks "mobile ads suck" in their current form (oh, hai, Google!) and intends to do for them what he did for music with iTunes and mobile with the iPhone -- revolutionize it.

If the present belongs to Google and desktop-based web search advertising, but the future is mobile and it looks like that battle ground is going to be contested, and by Apple of all companies.

Do they have a shot?

[Thanks to the Reptile for the tip!]

The Advertising Standards Authority, which we at TiPb are going to (foolishly) assume is the executive power of advertisements across the pond, has deemed an iPhone Advertisement as misleading in the UK. The sticking point? When Apple said:

And well, we know that isn't exactly true. We still don't have Flash or Java support on our iPhone and Flash and Java are a pretty big part of the internet. Apple claims that the advertisement implied the availability of webpages, rather than their specific appearance. Which honestly sounds like a cop out to us. But still, pulling the advertisement seems a bit excessive.

We think to please the guvnuhs on the other side, Apple will probably throw in one of them fine prints across the bottom of the page that specifies on what technology you 'really' do get. Does anyone know if Apple makes the same claim on the US commercials? Methinks yes.

Thanks Lee Richards!

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24 hours. 7 days a week. 365 1/4 days a year.

That's how often the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York City is open. Don't know which one I'm talking about? The big glass cube on the most expensive street in the world! This flagship store is perhaps the brightest jewel in Apple Retail, often hosting performances from the likes of Maroon 5 & Linkin Park and becoming a new landmark for tourists to visit in the city that never sleeps. It's open all day, everyday.

Well, if you don't count today.

The Apple Store on 5th Ave. is closed from Thursday, May 29 3:00 p.m. to Friday, May 30 9:00 a.m. Apple Store Employees have been telling customers that a commercial is being filmed and reports are floating around saying its a 3G iPhone commercial. Remember, Apple doesn't close this store for any old reason, the only times it has been closed before: the original iPhone launch and the release of Leopard. Hmm..

What do you think?

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