Where not to go

It’s no great secret that newsprint is dead. Within a decade even the most powerful print media – WSJ, NYT, etc. – will have ceased publication using forests of trees. eInk technology (like in the Kindle) will add color and someone will design a two button interface almost as simple as a book. All those enviroloonies should be required to help capitalize the related R&D as they do want to save trees, no? And the advent of color will also dramatically reduce the price of art books – when the screen is transilluminated and has superior definition to traditional printing on reflective materials – what’s not to like?

Which brings me to the curious case of MacWorld magazine. ‘Curious’ because it begs the question why this trashy publication survives. When I got our first Mac a decade ago a relative gave me a subscription to this rag and it helped get me into the Mac ecosystem. That was ages ago and, like a fool, I still pay for a print subscription. At least until this one expires, that is.

This is simply the very worst place to go for objective advice about Macs. The magazine started life 25 years ago with funding from Apple. If you are not already holding your nose, you should be. Now purportedly independent, it is a sycophant’s dream for anyone getting a paycheck from 1 Infinite Loop. You see, they have yet to see an Apple product they do not like. Read any of their reviews and you will quickly realize that these are little more than regurgitated press releases.

Two cases in point. The other day they had a laudatory piece on Apple’s Time Capsule back-up hardware. Only thing they forgot to mention is that you cannot boot from the TC. So what are you going to do when your Mac’s drive crashes? Pull out the original OS X discs? Try and access TC that way? Do you even know how risky and time consuming this is? It’s not called Time Capsule for nothing. As a disaster recovery tool it is almost completely useless. But it ranks a rave review from MacWorld. No mention of the booting issue, of course.

Or their piece today on external hard drives. Without so much as opening the box they laud the overpriced LaCie Rugged. I own one and yes, I have dismantled it. Not from idle curiosity but because the bottom-of-the-line Western Digital drive inside failed just after the warranty expired (good business design, if you ask me). The full scope of the ‘rugged’ moniker was then exposed. The ‘ruggedness’ is comprised of four rubber strips inside, purportedly cushioning the drive from the case. Laugh – I did when I opened the case. And, of course, a 2mm thick jolly colored rubber covering on the case. Did MacWorld open the case? Did MacWorld try dropping the drive on a hard floor? Did MacWorld refuse advertising dollars from LaCie? Well, you can figure out the answers to those questions. (Hint: Not a ‘Yes’ in sight). So for a 2mm thick casing of rubber and four rubber bumpers (aggregate cost: 2 cents) LaCie gets $160 for something you can build yourself for $85; $70 for the drive and $15 for a self-powered USB enclosure. The assembly skill is especially low – even a GM production line worker could do it, although it will take you 2 minutes, while his union will make sure it takes an hour.

Let me illustrate. The drive is a 2.5″ SATA notebook drive – available for $70 in a 320gB size. The enclosure is a $15 2.5″ SATA enclosure from Tiger Direct. That price includes a leatherette case and a nice long USB connection cable with a pass-through connector to permit ganging. Why, they even provide the two screws and the screwdriver you will use to secure the drive in the case.

Detailed assembly instructions. Free screwdriver not shown.

Did you get that?

Oh! you want to add the ‘Rugged’ feature? Heck, blow $5 on some foam rubber and do 10 drives while you are at it.

MacWorld is a great place if you want to read Apple advertising and pay for it.

However, for objective comment just check in with the Apple Discussions section of Apple.com and see just how flawed many of Apple’s much hyped products are – like Time Capsule (worthless if your internal drive fails), Back To My Mac (terminally faulty), Airport Extreme wireless routing (the signal fluctuates for unknown reasons at anything over 10 feet from the router), glossy screens (useless for real users), dying Firewire (too bad about all those FW drives you bought), perennially ‘new’ connectors which obsolete your peripherals – and this is from Apple’s own site, for goodness sake.

Skeptical? Here’s today’s front page from just the Time Capsule ‘Discussion’ – a lot of comments and views for a device that ‘just works’, no?

It just works, right?

And that’s after Apple’s (very active) censorship of its Discussions forum.

Before you even think about any major software upgrade (OS X upgrades and security upgrades have been the worst in this regard), wait a month, read Apple’s Discussions, then decide whether to risk it. I have long adopted this approach and it has saved me countless hours of repair otherwise caused by Apple’s policy of releasing buggy software and having unpaid users test it for them – a practice Microsoft perfected years ago. You have already paid a 30% premium for the Mac; it’s nice that critical user feedback is free and that you don’t have to pay advertisers posing as journalists at MacWorld for it. Just let the first implementers serve as your reviewer of choice.

MacWorld magazine and its staff of shills is a much overdue entrant to this journal’s Hall of Shame.

It just (mostly) works.

Much as I detest his products and will go out of my way to avoid them, I have tremendous admiration for Bill Gates and Microsoft. He is the greatest capitalist of our time and has created millions of jobs and thousands of millionaires.

What Gates realized was that it’s not a good product which sells well. Rather, it has to be a cheap product, no matter how poor. A related dictate in this marketing strategy is that first you have to wipe out the competition, much as Carnegie did with rival steel makers or Rockefeller accomplished with crude oil mining. All three were skilled monopolists. Carnegie and Rockefeller, though, made high quality products. Microsoft does not.

So astute was Gates in realizing where the path to riches lay that he didn’t even write the original DOS – it was purchased from a small company named Seatlle Computer for $50,000. The deal of the century. Why do it yourself when buying it is cheaper?

The mass consumer has, for decades, preferred cheap and execrable to good at a higher price. But he’s learning that lifetime ownership costs are far more important than the entry price. He twigged Detroit twenty years ago and started buying Japanese. He twigged Windows two years ago and started buying Macs. Why save a dollar or two when your most precious commodity – time – is wasted on the Microsoft product?

But, ironically, Gates has left behind the very seeds of Microsoft’s destruction. It’s called Vista and is so resounding a failure that Microsoft has felt it necessary to reneg on its promise to obsolete Windows XP and is now once more offering it as an option with PCs. Meanwhile Mac sales are up 39% year-on-year versus 12% for the industry as a whole. Apple can thank Vista for that.

It is still a mystery to me why any self-respecting photographer who values his time uses Microsoft computers. Given that the art of picture processing depends on uninterrupted focus on the image, not the technology, why would you use something perennially on the verge of failure?

With last week’s announcement that Beastmaster Bill has moved on, I reassure myself that I never got one of these when running my QC-challenged Apple hardware this past year:

Here it is updated for Vista:

And here is the Blue Screen Of Death in Coverflow – Apple makes it possible to scroll though your various BSODs:

So the greatest monopolist since J D Rockefeller has now moved on to fixing world hunger and disease. Now given that poverty is primarily a function of one thing – an absence of democratic institutions – you would think Bill Gates’s fortune would be better spent on overthrowing various and sundry African and Middle Eastern dictators, an effort which would cost a few $billion at most. But no. What does he do but try and fix world disease by buying medicines for the oppressed, when all they need is a vote? The fact that you were the best businessman of the last few decades does not confer intelligence in unrelated fields of endeavor.

On sad occasions I must admit to being a Windows XP user – on my MacBook with Parallels. I use XP – the least bad Microsoft operating system – which is required for certain investment management applications not available in native Mac form. Maybe one day Apple will realize there are many users of their Macs who actually have money to manage? Meanwhile, Parallels makes sure all those BSODs and nasty viruses remain locked up in their own little prison on my MacBook, never to pollute the happy world of my photographs. Like so, on my machine:

If you like Coverflow in Leopard, be assured it works great with 5D RAW originals too (it reads the JPG sidecar file so it is very fast). The CR2 files are from my Canon 5D:

Meanwhile, any photographer looking to shake the BSOD once and for all need only blow $1,100 on a bottom of the line MacBook, install his foul Windows garbage thereon, and gradually wean himself from a life of misery and dread.

What, you say, Vista is BSOD-proof? Watch and learn – appropriately this demo is on a Mac – it’s a remake of Gates’s rollout of Windows 95 years ago, right down to the words:

Meanwhile Microsoft pathetically tries to overpay for a broken Yahoo, seemingly forgetting the first rule of investment banking. “If you tie two rocks together, they still sink”. Too funny. Remain assured, Ballmer will cock-it up.

Microsoft – you are the prime and founding member of the Hall of Shame.

Disclosure: In Mac-land the BSOD is known as a kernel panic. Number of kernel panics suffered by this OS X user in the past five years: One. Four years ago. Also, variously long and short AAPL and MSFT over the years.

Vive La France!

Unless you are a collector, it’s a solid practice to check that closet full of photo gear annually and sell anything untouched since you last looked. That especially applies to film gear which will very shortly become a genre for collectors only, as there will be no more film. Dump it now!

The very worst place to sell anything is eBay. You are selling to an ethically challenged audience though an auctioneer who disclaims any liability for anything. eBay is like the gun dealer who holds himself innocent because, after all, he did not pull the trigger. (Please, no lectures on the Second Amendment – any modern, civil society which permits handgun ownership is anything but a civil society).

Mercifully the French (no way the US tort-owned legal system would ever do this) have seen through this little game, as the WSJ reported yesterday:

In the US there are many amateur photo oriented sites which cater to classified ads, and you will not have to pay 15% in fees to eBay/PayPal in the process. My experience with these has been consistently good. They include:

• Fredmiranda.com – if you can ever get them to actually post your ad. Lots of Canon DSLR gear, much of it higher end
• Photo.net – some of the dumbest chat boards ever (Nikon v Canon garbage predominates), but sales are easy
• Your local Craigslist.com – cheap (free!) and easy, but less photo oriented, obviously
• Rff.com – mostly Leica and RF gear

Doubtless there are many others. Sure, they don’t offer fraud insurance but, then again, ask yourself why eBay feels the need to offer this.

A couple of years back when I sold all my film gear (phew! prices have crashed since) I did much of that on eBay because that’s all there really was. The alternatives did not have sufficient followings to constitute a broad market opportunity. That is changing.

In the meanwhile, if you must list on eBay, here are some of the steps I took to avoid being trapped by the ethically challenged:

• No sales to foreigners – yes, that includes Canadians and the UK. (To make Canadians and Englishmen feel better, the same rule applies at your end). Dispute resolution is doubly difficult, multiple legal systems come in to play and you really want to do all those custom forms and constantly be asked to under-declare value, making you a felon? Eastern Europe? Don’t make me laugh. That’s where you go for illicit anything. Stick with the US and forget AK and HI where you will always lose money on fixed postage estimates. The US contains 100 million of the world’s most affluent consumers. What’s not to like?
• Mail all packages UPS insured and make it clear in your ad that any damage in transit is the buyer’s responsibility and that the buyer must file the insurance claim with UPS. UPS makes this optional and you do not want to be the one filing the claim.
• Overpack. Bubble wrap is cheap. “It arrived damaged” is Scam #1.
• Keep and provide UPS tracking information – “I never received it” is Scam #2.
• When listing make an extra effort to take the highest quality pictures and be fastidious about illustrating any dings, defects, etc. “You didn’t tell me about the ding, etc.” is Scam #3.
• No returns. Ever. You want to loan your gear to a crook? “I need to return it” is Scam #4, and means the buyer got remorse (the spouse found out, likely as not) or used the camera for the weekend wedding and now wants his money back.
• Don’t list for $1 hoping for the best. Set a realistic minimum selling price, make the listing for 7 days and make sure it ends on a Sunday afternoon. That’s when most buyers have time to look at their computers, which enhances the possibilities of a last minute bidding war. You will get fewer bids, but then an opening bid of $1 is not a bid (unless you are really unlucky and it sells for that!). Multiple bids do not correlate with the best selling price. One good one will do. Still, if you like excitement, list at $1 and keep your fingers crossed. You will not do as well as I will.
• Don’t use price reserves. Would you bid on something whose price is unknown? Plus, reserves cost extra. Use minimum selling prices as described above.
• Be realistic about setting a minimum bid price. I generally look at completed auctions (active listings are useless as the price is not known), check a few other sites and set the starting price at 80% of the expected selling price. My failure rate (meaning no sale) was 5% using this approach, based on 40 listings.
• If selling a camera or lens, include some snaps taken with the gear. That says you are a user, not a clueless dealer, and sincere about the function of the equipment.
• Don’t waste money on listing enhancements like bold face and color. Educated buyers search by description, not listing appearance.
• If you start your listing at 80%, add a ‘Buy It Now’ option at 110%. This will attract buyers who really want your item and do not want the bidding war risk. Fully 40% of my auctions sold for the ‘Buy It Now’ price, generally within 24 hours of listing.
• Forget about making a killing. Price discovery in the market for used cameras is perfect, unless you are selling Oscar Barnack’s original Leica, in which case you need to use the higher class crooks at Sotheby’s and Christies.
• Don’t ever leave bad feedback. You will get in a time wasting argument and do nothing for your sale prospects down the road (because I guarantee that you will get retaliatory bad feedback, and good luck trying to get eBay to remove it), even if you were right. Saying nothing and swallowing your pride is the path to success here. Though, come to think of it, I just checked today and guess what?
  

  So now, even if your buyer assaults you, he remains a good guy. Great system, huh?

• If you have high value outfits, it generally makes better sense to sell them piecemeal (body, lens, etc.) than as a kit. You will get better aggregate proceeds. Kits attract what I call the ‘kit discount’. Easier to sell as a kit, sure, but it’s your money.
• I sold some 40 items over one year and it took a while to learn the above. Since then the only complaint I have is the egregious fees charged by eBay and PayPal (which is owned by, you guessed it, eBay. Based on prior fines, PayPal is the place to launder your illicit drug proceeds – it’s nothing more than a poorly regulated bank, though in the US I suppose ‘poorly’ is axiomatic when it comes to the methadone cases who are bank regulators here).

In summary, if you start with the premise that you will be cheated and follow the steps above you will greatly mitigate the risks. Above all, be scrupulously honest in your listing.

Here’s an extract from my recent listing which applies the above rules:

No problem. The camera was as described, the buyer honest.

If you know a little HTML you can have hyperlinks to your detailed slideshow at your ISP – as above – avoiding eBay’s additional fees and securing a better presentation in the process. The pictures also serve as a perfect record in the event a fraudster alleges damage or other non-existent faults.

Now here’s the one for the lens:

Note the use of a free lens hood teaser if the buyer elects ‘Buy It Now’. The buyer of that one left me perfect feedback ….

…. then filed a claim with UPS alleging the goods were damaged. UPS paid him $300 and he got to keep the lens – see what I mean?

But, best of all, if you have fake gear to sell, list it on eBay because the US legal system will never do anything about it. And then you will be just another typical eBay seller.

And meanwhile, eBay and PayPal, I am pleased to add you to the Hall of Shame – a destination at which you arrived years ago.

Imitating the Great Liar

That infamous master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, remarked that if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Generations of politicians, lawyers and marketers (many of these know all about lying, of course) have taken that to heart, none more than Canon in their advertisement for their latest consumer grade DSLR. This sells for $750. Doubtless a competent and effective tool and you can see their slick ad here.

But that’s not the point. Clearly the TV ad is advertising their inexpensive mass market camera body.

No. What gets my goat is that there’s another video wherein Canon prides itself on explaining just how the ad was made – the second one of the choices on the right. A minute or so into it and we are told that no fewer than ten Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III cameras were used by the pros to take the snaps in the ad video. Last I checked those run $7,800 a pop or some ten times the cost of the featured product.

So how, pray, do pictures taken on a $7,800 camera end up misrepresented as having been taken on a consumer DSLR one tenth of the cost? And why, if the new cheap model is so good, was it not used to take the snaps in the ad? Never mind the carefully chosen words in the above (“….real photographs taken by Canon digital SLR cameras….”) the opening shot of the ad shows Mrs. Housewife clearly using the consumer DSLR, immediately cutting to the snaps taken by pros using the top of the line $8k honker. Not that you would know, of course. Anyone watching the ad would conclude exactly what Canon and its sleazy US management and lawyers intend – that all the pictures you see were taken on the camera shown.

Shame on you, Canon.