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Looking for the video of the first iPad

O

Oscarmatox

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 28, 2011
5
0
Paris, France
Hi all,

I am looking for the video that appeared on Apple's site when the first iPad was released. You know, the one that started with Jon Ive saying "It's true that when something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical."

Actually what I'm looking for is a reasonably stable URL pointing to a reasonably serious-looking page containing this video.

As for why, here it is: I'm quoting the above sentence in my PhD thesis, and as for any quote in a thesis, I need to provide a bibliographical reference. In this case, a URL is ok. However, it should be stable enough to still work when I defend my PhD. Also, I'd like to avoid YouTube pages that contain too much junk. All in all, a proper reference should be affiliated with Apple somehow. But if can't find one, I'll go with anything decent.

So if anyone around here can point me to something helpful, well... thanks a lot!
 
1) Many citation styles indicate 'date accessed' because people know web pages change or end up defunct

2) Did you try archive.org?

3) Did you contact Apple directly? They may provide you with the video, a link, or information which can be cited; and they may be more likely to do this if they know you're an actual researcher and not some wag with an e-mail account and a thing for Ive.
 
Thanks Carouser for these hints.

I did contact Apple, mentioning my status and a link to my academic home page. No answer so far, but it wasn't that long ago either.

I had not tried archive.org. I will investigate this.

And yes, the "Page accessed on..." mention is definitely valuable. I'll use it.

Thanks again.
 
Oscarmatox said:
I am looking for the video that appeared on Apple's site when the first iPad was released. You know, the one that started with Jon Ive saying "It's true that when something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical."

Actually what I'm looking for is a reasonably stable URL pointing to a reasonably serious-looking page containing this video.
Click to expand...

I believe that what you're describing was included in the SJ keynote. You'll have to watch it to verify and get the timestamp.

The URL for the podcast where Apple archives their Keynotes on iTunes is http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/apple-keynotes/id275834665 . After you get to that page, someone wishing to hear the presentation can subscribe to the podcast then download the 1/27/10 episode "Apple Announces iPad". That's cumbersome, but quite reliable. The podcast URL is stable, and you'll never get any ads.

There may be a way to get the URL for that .m4v file, but I don't know how.
 
darngooddesign said:
What about downloading the video and placing it somewhere you control. Doesn't dropbox provide urls to the files hosted with them?
Click to expand...

The purpose of a reference in an academic paper is to provide a means for a reader to verify the information presented in the paper (or perhaps to identify the location to do more research on the source material). The URL should be from the publisher of the material: apple.com in this case. Downloading the 1.2GB video and re-posting it through another website would be a far worse reference (and probably a violation of copyright).
 
FloatingBones said:
The purpose of a reference in an academic paper is to provide a means for a reader to verify the information presented in the paper (or perhaps to identify the location to do more research on the source material). The URL should be from the publisher of the material: apple.com in this case. Downloading the 1.2GB video and re-posting it through another website would be a far worse reference (and probably a violation of copyright).
Click to expand...

Good to know. I went to art school so im unfamiliar with such details.

I didn't know if a video kept enough integrity on it's own, regardless of where its hosted, as opposed to just copying some HTML text. Kind of like xeroxing source material and providing that as information. Would it be wise to do so in case the cited source pulls the video, or changes it's URL, at som point?
 
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darngooddesign said:
I didn't know if a video kept enough integrity on it's own, regardless of where its hosted, as opposed to just copying some HTML text. Kind of like xeroxing source material and providing that as information. Would it be wise to do so in case the cited source pulls the video, or changes it's URL, at som point?
Click to expand...

You have described in a nutshell the problems that a multimedia internet presents for academic papers.

Apple does have an RSS feed of video presentations. If you click on the "Read more" links of the most recent presentations, you can download and play them in your browser. The January 7, 2010 presentation is no longer accessible from that source. Apple is clearly not thinking that these announcements could be used as sources in academic research; there's no good reason for them to not maintain the archive. They are keeping much older presentations in their archive on iTunes; I hope they keep doing that.

For external references, the Wikipedia lists the URLs and the last time that each reference was verified for its existence.

For the OP, I'd recommend pulling down the full video, trimming to the pertinent section, annotating the source video (and timestamp into the source video), and the speaker, and archiving a copy of that trimmed video. I'd also provide a transcript of the pertinent information in the paper itself. That trimmed video should be a pass for fair use.

Ideally, such videos would be bound to the research papers. This problem goes beyond multimedia archives: Wolfram research has announced the Computable Document Format, a means for readers of documents to view and interact with computer simulations on their personal computers. The free CDF Player has the full power of the Mathematica engine behind it. Those visualizations allow readers to understand and visualize technical content in a way that is impossible with only a print document. There needs to be a reliable way for readers of the papers to find and access those supplementary files.

Side note: CDF players are available for Windows PCs, Linux PCs, and Macs. This page notes that Android and iOS support for CDF players will be available soon. Woo hoo! I think that the CDF Player will be the next "killer app" for tablet machines; Wolfram is finding some fabulous ways to actually use the tremendous computational resources in modern computers.

Finally, the whole academic publishing industry is highly balkanized. Subscriptions to individual scientific journals are quite expensive, and access to individual articles usually costs an absurd $20 - $40 per article. Some journals are freely available online, and some researchers or third parties just put published papers on their website. University libraries provide access to both their physical books/journals and to their subscription services to research journals.

Academia has been slow to respond to the information age. Far too much stuff is siloed away. Unless one is willing to violate copyright, it's very difficult for research papers go "go viral". That's a shame, and I hope it changes over time.
 
Thanks all for these hints. I'm still awaiting an answer from Apple, but with the archive.org idea, the iTunes archive, the RSS feed of presentations, plus all the last-resort options mentioned in this thread, I should be able to give a decent reference.
 
Summary

For those interested:

- it is featured at 1:21:00 in Apple's iPad introduction keynote, which is available from Apple's Keynotes podcast at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/apple-announces-ipad/id275834665?i=80469507

- the video can be found (with some patience) on archive.org at http://web.archive.org/web/20110426...rs/apple-ipad-video-us-20100127_r640-9cie.mov

- and it so happens that the video is still present at http://movies.apple.com/media/us/ipad/2010/tours/apple-ipad-video-us-20100127_r640-9cie.mov (that is, the URL archived by archive.org).

I will use this last reference in my thesis. As the quote is somewhat anecdotical in my case, I will not implement the download+trim+host scheme.

Thanks to all contributors.
 
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Oscarmatox said:
- and it so happens that the video is still present at http://movies.apple.com/media/us/ipad/2010/tours/apple-ipad-video-us-20100127_r640-9cie.mov (that is, the URL archived by archive.org).
I will use this last reference in my thesis. As the quote is somewhat anecdotical in my case, I will not implement the download+trim+host scheme.
Thanks to all contributors.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting a summary of the responses to your question. Researchers with a similar question can now use your example to back-trace online material and hopefully find their own sources.

You've got us a bit curious now. :) If your thesis is published online and it's not too far off-topic for MR, please revisit this thread and post a link to it. Thanks!
 
FloatingBones said:
You've got us a bit curious now. :) If your thesis is published online and it's not too far off-topic for MR, please revisit this thread and post a link to it. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Well, I don't whether it will be online. However, I already can tell it's quite off-topic for MR. :eek:
Here's my academic home page (with pointers to my publications so far) for the ones interested: http://swt.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/staff/berstel
 
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