Skip to main content

Do you OOO? New iOS music video app aims to make zooming fun

This is OOO
A new app from Brooklyn-based This Also isn’t designed to help you take better videos — it’s designed to make videos a little more fun with something as simple as zoom.

OOO uses Force Touch or a slider to zoom in and out, adding in some original soundtracks to create whimsical music videos. The app allows users to zoom in a little or a lot and at varying speeds. With Force Touch, the harder you press, the faster the zoom, though earlier iOS devices can still use the apps with a slider or by presetting the zoom speed and reach.

Recommended Videos

While the app is meant to turn the smartphone camera into a toy, creators Brett Bergeron and and Brian Baker say there’s a few high-end features hidden inside. The app uses stabilization — and can tell if you’re wearing headphones and adjust the audio automatically.

The app is a sort of one-trick pony, designed to take fun zoom videos and only fun zoom videos. But the app’s developers say future enhancements could allow the zoom to be controlled by the audio level in the scene.

OOO, meant to play with the long “oo” sound in zoom, much like the app plays with actual zoom, is the first full self-funded project from This Also, though the group has also worked on projects for Google, Xbox, Spotify and start-ups. All of the available tracks were created in-house by the team.

OOO is designed as more of a camera toy than a high-quality video app — except for the iPhone 7 Plus, iPhones only have digital zoom, so as the zoom moves in, you’ll see the quality decrease. The app also includes controls for muting or leaving the audio intact, as well as reversing the video and adding stabilization.

OOO is available for free on the App Store for devices running iOS 10.0 or later.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
There’s an easy way to follow election results on your iPhone. Here’s how
Screenshot of Apple News on an iPhone.

It’s Election Day in the U.S., and Apple is making it easier for people to check real-time results. The Apple News app will have a Live Activity feature that starts displaying results on your device as they come in tonight. The Live Activity on iPhone will appear on the Dynamic Island (if your iPhone has it) and the lock screen.

For the election, the Live Activity feature will provide up-to-date information, eliminating the need to refresh the Apple News app. You can expect results for the presidential, Senate, and House races to be posted.

Read more
iOS 18.2 just took another step toward its official release
iOS 18 logo on the iPhone 16 Pro

Yet another iOS update is ready, and this one is important. The iOS 18.2 beta 2 update is live, and it's a big deal for a couple of reasons. It's available to more people than the previous beta, and it indicates another step toward iOS 18.2's public launch.

The first version of this beta was only available to people whose phones supported Apple Intelligence, but this latest version works with any phone that can update to iOS 18. Addditionally, iOS 18.2 beta 2 is only available to developer beta testers. There isn't a public beta at the moment, and we have no word on when one might release. Still, it's good to see that more people are included this time around.

Read more
iOS 18’s best AI tools arrive in December, but Siri has a longer wait
Apple Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro.

The Apple Intelligence toolkit has witnessed a staggered mix of delayed features and underwhelming perks. But it seems that the most promising set of those AI tools that Apple revealed at WWDC earlier this year is right around the corner.

In the latest edition of his PowerOn newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes that the iOS 18.2 update will start rolling out via the stable channel in the first week of December.

Read more