Over the weekend, Apple released a touching new holiday ad called "The Song," focusing on a woman who found an old record of her grandmother singing a love song to her grandfather, which she then enhanced with her own vocals and musical accompaniments using Apple's tools.
Apple has now released a second video, which offers details on how the spot was created. As explained by the musician who starred the ad, Dana Williams, and vocalist Rhiannon Giddens, a series of recordings were made with a voice-o-graph, a 1940's booth for recording short spurts of audio directly onto a record.
The voice-o-graph used in the spot was supplied by Third Man Records, which is Jack White's indie label. Giddens, voicing the grandmother, sang the "Love Is Here to Stay" audio, and it was then transferred into GarageBand for editing by Williams, who says that she uses the app for recording "basically all of her music." "Anyone who's not tech savvy like myself can just kind of find their way around it," she explains.
"The Song," which highlights both GarageBand and the iPad mini, follows in the footsteps of last year's sentimental holiday ad, "Misunderstood,", which focused on the video recording capabilities of the iPhone.
Thursday November 5, 2026 12:59 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is launching five new products on Friday, November 6, following pre-orders that opened last week, including its first touchscreen MacBook Pro models.
The following new products will be available from today:
iPad mini with OLED display and A20 Pro chip
iMac with M6 chip
14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 chip
14-inch MacBook Pro with OLED touchscreen
16-inch MacBook Pro with OLED...
Friday November 6, 2026 3:27 pm PST by Juli Clover
When the iPhone Duo launched, we shared a list of some of the fun apps developers created for the new form factor. Two weeks out, developers are continuing to come up with fresh ideas, so we thought we'd share some of our favorites.
Games
Marbles Unhinged ($2.99) - Marbles Unhinged is a marble maze designed for the Duo. When you fold it, the floor turns into a ramp. If you stand the top...
Apple plans to merge the iPhone's Action button with the Camera Control starting next year, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker claimed that a single press of the combined button would open the camera, while a long press would trigger the function assigned to the Action button. They explicitly clarified that the dedicated Action button would ...
I've come to the conclusion that everything good in the world is "hipster". The term is thrown around so often I really don't know what's not hipster anymore. But I guess if it replaces the offensive "That's gay" slur I can support the usage.
how about you lower the price to make it not such a hard decision to choose iphone over top line android competitors
Says the guy who spent $140 on Beats headphones when audio professionals I know say they aren't very good if you care about accurate sound. If you like a ton of bass, great. If you want to hear the music as it was intended, no.
Buy a used iPhone if you don't like the price of a new one.
1st of all you never mix using just one output medium. second of all i really dont think you've heard the beats solo 2. third, you can brand-name drop all you like but at the end of the day you have no idea what you're talking about. buddy.
yes, buddy is gender neutral, get your political correctness anal retention out of here.
Ok, I stand corrected. I figured if you were so worried about paying for an iPhone you probably weren't really at a professional level and buying a Beats headphone was an amateur move you should be encouraged to rethink.
P.S. Calling a woman "buddy" must be a Canadian thing because it just doesn't happen in the US, at least not in my 50 years. I'll have to ask my Canadian friend who is a professional audio engineer aboot that.
----------
In defense of the person replying to your message, it is not "stalking" when using the forum's tools to click on a user's name to see other posts. In fact, I believe it is a good idea to see who you are dealing with when posting a reply.
To get back on topic... I liked the ad, and I found the "making of" video pretty cool.
Thanks for the defense. Before responding, I pretty much always check a person's history of posts to assess their age, technical knowledge and how they tend to operate on the forums (trolling, non-Apple user just starting arguments, etc.). Then I decide whether I want to engage with them.
cool stalking there buddy. im a recording engineer. professional. I like the sound of the beats solo 2. it's one of the best if not the best on-ear headphones in existence.
look it up. inner fidelity, headfi, whathifi, whatever. if you actually know what you're talking about.
also, it's nice having earphones that everyone else will be listening on when you're mixing.
Ok, I went on Head-fi and someone asked in the forums what headphones professionals use in professional recording studios. No Beats were mentioned. Sony, Sennheiser, Beyer, AKG, others. No Beats. But if you like them, fine. As long as you never mix for cds or radio play, I'm sure that would be good enough. I would highly doubt a professional would want to mix to a distorted version of their music, burn it and then have it sound bad to someone not wearing the same headphones.
P.S. Did you assume I was a guy when you called me "buddy"? lol