Taiwanese Animators Turn Apple Fingerprint Rumor Into News Video In An Instant

Yesterday, I wrote about evidence that iOS investigator Hamsa Sood had found in the fourth beta release about the use of a fingerprint scanner in the next iPhone. Today, there is an animated "news" clip of the scanner in action thanks to the speedy work of animators at TomoNews in Taiwan (see above.)

Does a video make the rumor any more credible? Nope. But the speed of visualization of these rumors has just ratcheted up another notch. The beautiful 3D renders of fictional Apple products was just a start. Now were in for enactment's of new user interaction features almost as soon as they are leaked.

Jamie Cheng of Next Media Animation in Taiwan (the company behind TomoNews) tells me that, "we churn out these animations pretty quickly. For example, the ones that you see are typically pumped out in 1.5 hours, from story board to modeling to animation to sound & editing." That's pretty fast for a 72 seconds of iPhone rumor video. Cheng describes TomoNews as "basically a new types of news where we use animation to fill in the gaps that footage may be lacking. We sometimes add a touch of spice and sarcasm to our pieces." There is a robotic, detached humor, reminiscent of Xtranormal and Telligami, to their delivery. Whether it's funny or bad, credible or suspect has to do with how you scope the levels of irony and how you parse the validity of the underlying information.

TomoNews is trying to sell videos to sites looking for news "content," yes, but they are also trying to boost the visibility of the creative animation scene in Taiwan, "the place where your gadgets come from," as they say in a parody of JayZ's "New York State of Mind," aptly titled "Taiwan State of Mind."

The problem, of course, from a news media perspective, is that as the barrier for video visualization becomes lower, the amount of completely unvetted, unhinged and just plain wrong stuff to flood YouTube will increase—and some people will be fooled. So keep your eyes on TomoNews for emergent viral videos and off-color fun, but don't expect it to be the news!

Note: As pointed out at the end of this video, Apple watchers are also raising the possibility that the fingerprint scanner will be implemented in the iPhone 6 due in June of 2014 instead of this Fall's iPhone 5S.

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