Apple wins a technical Emmy for its breakthrough video compression format

By

FireWire lands Apple its first Emmy.
No, it's not for any of the shows on Apple TV+.
Image: The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences/Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple has won another Emmy Award — but, no, it’s not for any of the great shows you’ll find on Apple TV+. Instead, on Thursday Apple was awarded an Engineering Emmy Award for its ProRes video codec, the high quality video compression format Apple developed — which is now standard issue in the movie business.

The award was given to Greg Wallace, director of video apps engineering at Apple. The awards show also featured a short video from Apple engineers Peter Chou and Mitchell Oslick. Check out the video below.

Apple’s award comes at around the 13 minute mark.

Apple’s technical Emmy history

This is far from the first time Apple’s been celebrated for its contribution to technology with an Emmy. As a company that, as Steve Jobs often said, bridges the worlds of technology and the liberal arts, Apple has long helped cross over these two fields.

Apple’s first Emmy was in 2001 for its role developing FireWire, the high-speed serial port that allows users to transfer data quickly between a Macintosh and another device, such as a digital camera. In 2017, it also won an Emmy for Siri. This was for a “Contextual Voice Navigation for Discovering and Interacting with TV Content”. That referred to the use of Siri to find TV shows on Apple TV.

In the time since then, Apple’s Emmy-seeking efforts have largely been centered on Apple TV+. Apple has put together a team dedicated to help Apple win awards with its original shows. In September 2020, actor Billy Crudup won an Emmy for his role in The Morning Show.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.