If you’re a fan of stunning aerial footage around Apple Park, DJI just made it easier to capture your own with the Mavic 2. Our sister-site DroneDJ is on location at DJI’s latest product unveiling in New York City where the drone maker is launching two new consumer quadcopters with some serious specs.

Mavic 2 Zoom (DJI, Amazon) packs a 2x optical zoom lens for capturing hard-to-reach scenes from the sky. If optics are your focus, Mavic 2 Pro (DJI, Amazon) touts an onboard Hasselblad L1D-20c camera with a 20 MP shooter and 10-bit HDR video capture.

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A drone pilot who has been making regular flights over Apple Park says he believes that the company is tracking all flights over the campus, and thinks it’s only a matter of time before counter-measures are used to block future flights …

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iPhones are significantly cheaper in Hong Kong than mainland China, and it’s not unusual to find people smuggling them across the border. But while the record for smuggling them under clothing is around $150k, that’s nothing compared to the $79.8M worth transported with the help of drones …

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One of the downsides of living in a city is that opportunities to fly your drone tend to be limited. Where I live is well inside the massive chunk of drone-free air over London. Indeed, I’m inside both controlled airspace for my nearest airport (London City, less than five miles away) and a separate Restricted Area above central London.

So if I want to reach clear airspace, it’s either a car ride or train journey away – which means I only really do it when I have a specific reason or project in mind. That makes it hard to build on, or even maintain, my flying skills.

DJI of course has its own drone simulator built into the DJI Go app, but it’s more of a conceptual implementation than an accurate simulation of real-world physics. Which is why I decided to try Zephyr, a simulator for the Mac and Windows that claims to accurately model the actual flight characteristics of the drones it covers …

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An augmented reality drone simulator powered by Apple’s ARKit allows users to fly a virtual quadrocopter wherever they are.

“ARKit is a game-changer,” says Taylor Moore, co-founder of CircleSquare Entertainment. “We were actually working very hard on a drone racing game – but dropped everything when we realized that we could offer iOS users the kind of augmented reality no one has ever seen before. DroneTopolis AR is like having a Drone in your Pocket.”

You can fly your virtual drone in places the real thing wouldn’t be allowed, fly through virtual ‘hoops’ and record and stream your flights to share with friends …

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Flying a drone manually is fun, but there are some manoeuvres that are virtually impossible to fly smoothly. Circling an object or person, for example. You’d need to constantly change the balance of forward/backward and left/right inputs to fly the circle in the first place, then simultaneously keep rotating the camera by just the right amount to keep it pointed at the centre of the circle. Anyone who can do that perfectly is either a drone genius or has way more than the usual number of hands.

The DJI Go app offers a range of intelligent flight modes – aka autonomous flying. But a third-party app, Litchi, goes even further: it allows you to program your flight path in Google Earth before you even leave home. As soon as you arrive on site, just load the pre-programmed flight and hit Start.

I decided to give it a go with my ultraportable drone, the DJI Mavic Pro I reviewed last month …

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I’ve been keeping a watching brief on drones for some time. They had immediate and obvious gadget appeal. I mean, proper drones are both radio-controlled flying vehicles and high-end cameras – what’s not to love?

But decent ones are expensive, and I feared that they might be one of those things I’d find fun for a short time before the novelty wore off. I didn’t want to spend a four-figure sum on something that would soon be relegated to a cupboard.

Then a few family members got together to buy my father a DJI Phantom for his birthday, which gave me some hands-on experience. I was starting to get the itch, but still resisting. After all, what would I actually do with it?

Travel was the only situation I could think of where I might make use of one, but small ones were poor quality and high quality ones weren’t exactly compatible with my handbaggage-only approach to travel. Then along came the DJI Mavic Pro – a folding drone whose spec was virtually identical to the Phantom 4 but with a folded size so small it was almost pocketable …

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In the latest drone flyover video of Apple’s under-construction Campus 2, this one sent in by Matthew Roberts, we get a close-up look at progress made in recent weeks on the new Apple headquarters set to open early next year.

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Apple’s under construction Campus 2 building in Cupertino is rapidly taking shape as this latest flyover video from Duncan Sinfield shows. expand full story

Today we get one of the best looks yet at Apple’s under construction “Campus 2” in Cupertino with a drone flyover video courtesy of Emory Peterson and aerial photography company Above Reno.

The video, shot in 4K over Labor Day weekend earlier this month, gets us up close with Apple’s rapidly progressing Campus 2 project scheduled for completion in late 2016. Above Reno notes the video was “filmed at or below 400 feet above ground level with clearance from the local FAA office.” expand full story

Apple has continued making lots of progress at its under construction Campus 2 site in Cupertino ahead of plans to move in late next year, evident by this latest drone flyover courtesy of our friend MyithZ. expand full story

A new flyover of Apple’s under construction Campus 2 project in Cupertino, California gives us one of our closest look yet at the site. We also get our first detailed look at work started on Apple’s new auditorium on the campus where it plans to host events when the project is complete.

The video below comes courtesy of MyithZ who was able to get these shots from just 120ft up, much closer than previous drone flyovers and Apple’s own aerial shots.

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[youtube https://youtu.be/9vy6M3qXbdQ]

The latest drone flyover of Apple’s under construction Campus 2 gives us our closest look yet at the site. expand full story

The latest 4K flyover video showing construction progress on Apple’s Campus 2 has just arrived in our inbox. Thanks to our good friend MyithZ, we see that the full internal structure has now been started including all the way to the roof in one part of the video.

The full drone flyover is available in full 4K video below: expand full story

Our bi-monthly drone flight over Apple’s Campus 2 doesn’t reveal anything huge but things are definitely moving along from last time, especially in the foundation. Check the YouTube below and thanks again to Myithz, our eye in the sky. expand full story

It appears that most of the foundation is laid now in an update from a video taken by a drone two weeks ago.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called Apple’s Campus 2 the ‘Greenest in the World’. The controversial structure which will house 12,000 staff in 2.8M square feet on 176 acres and is estimated to be completed in 2016. Interestingly, even though Apple is covering the construction site with a high green wall, it is updating the 3D flyover of the location in Apple Maps somewhat frequently. The latest looks like it was taken earlier this summer.

An official updated aerial shot from Apple was also posted on the City of Cupertino’s website:

You can follow the progress in our Campus 2 story line here. We’re going to try to get a new video every few weeks so stay tuned.

Yesterday we gave you our hands-on demo video of the latest MiniDrone quadricopter from Parrot, and today we got a demo of the new Parrot Jumping Sumo: a Wi-Fi connected “insect robot” toy that can turn on a dime and jump up to 30 inches.It’s controlled via an iOS app, packs in a gyroscope and accelerometer, and can roll and turn 90 degrees with quite impressive precision. expand full story

Parrot, the company best known for its AR Drone quadricopter, today unveiled a few of its latest iOS controlled vehicles including a smaller quadricopter called ‘MiniDrone’. We shot the videos above and below tonight during the official CES Unveiled press event and were quite impressed with the MiniDrone’s agility. Unlike its bigger brother, Parrot’s new drone sports removable wheels on either side allowing it to run smoothly along the floor, wall, or ceiling before taking off again into mid-air. It’s also extremely agile thanks to a number of built-in sensors, an auto-pilot mode, and a super lightweight design, as you’ll see in the video below. expand full story