Category Archives: Photography

Vogue’s 120th

Photography

Norman Jean Roy at his very best.

Vogue’s 2012 September issue arrived – err, crashed – on my doorstep the other day, all 931 pages. The issue celebrates 120 years of Vogue in a special pictorial by Norman Jean Roy with photography to die for. It’s unfair to choose but for sheer drama and beauty this is my favorite:

Riccardo Tisci and Rooney Mara. Click to watch the video.

Riccardo Tisci is the Italian star designer for Givenchy; Rooney Mara is an American actress.

Norman Jean Roy is a devout adherent of film and in the video on Vogue’s site you will see him using a variety of medium format film gear such as the Fuji GX690 and the monster Mamiya RB67. His work is simply beyond compare and the brief video will give you some sense of just how much hard work goes into art direction of these efforts. Look for the related slideshow here.

For those interested, Lauren Hutton leads the cover count with no fewer than 26 appearances, but Dovima remains my all time favorite.

The iPad Mini

iPad

Coming before Xmas.

Supply chain rumors are now firming up and you can expect the iPad Mini to be here in time for (not so mini) Christmas stockings. Sporting a 7.8″ 4:3 aspect ratio display and iPad1 definition – perfectly adequate – here are my predictions on what this new tool will be. Weight? 11 ounces, meaning almost half that of the iPad3.

Apple will likely want to limit the number of versions, and keep the price as low as possible to compete with Nexus 7 and new Fire(s) though you might reasonably argue that the simply terrible line of Amazon’s Kindles/Fires is not a competitor at any price, including free. And if you are holding out for Microsoft’s Surface (why?), you are making the assumption that the world’s worst run tech company (OK, second worst after HP), the one with a chimpanzee in the corner office (HP has a dog in the rôle), will suddenly do something right. Good luck with that.

I would think that anyone would pay $50 more for a Mini than for a competitor’s offering, to buy into the ecosystem and superior UI, not to mention better usable life, one conformed OS across all mobile devices unlike the half-dozen or so versions of Android, robust anti-virus design and excellent resale value. Anyone using a non-iPad tablet invites ridicule on a variety of grounds, ranging from poor judgment to plain nuttiness.

So $250 (16GB) and $300 (32GB) compares to $200/250 for the Nexus 7, with an alloy back, unlike the chintzy plastic one on the Nexus pretending to be carbon fiber. That price will allow AAPL to preserve its 35% margin on the new device. Wifi mandatory as we all move to the cloud. Same screen definition as iPad1 – no Retina Display (cost and production limitations). The current premium is $130 for cellular, but they can easily get that down to $80 with the new 28nM Qualcomm comms chip. The new comms chips from Qualcomm and Broadcom will see to it that battery life remains high as they use far less power than current designs. The 4:3 aspect ratio, shared with the big iPads, will mean that no changes need be made to apps for them to work out of the box …. err, iCloud.

So my guess is (wifi/cellular):

  • 16GB – $249/$329
  • 32GB – $299/$379

Two cellular versions as now – AT&T and VZ, but the new Qualcomm chip which will be shared with iPhone 5 (due September 12) is multi-band, so no increase in production costs – it’s a software switch only. The ARM CPU (a rare example of Britain doing something really well) will be at least as fast as the one in iPad2. Start-up costs on that have been recovered ages ago. And that multi-band QCOM chip should even accommodate all three Chinese carriers (I expect AAPL to add China Mobile – 50% of that market – in early 2013), all European carriers (if Europe continues to exist, that is) not to mention losers like Sprint.

Decent front and rear-facing cameras will likely be included and a microphone of course.

But what will really move the needle is that this device will be snapped up by impecunious schools worldwide, because an iPad can do a heck of a better job of teaching than the joke that passes for ‘teachers’ in US public schools who couldn’t get a real job.

Disclosure: Long AAPL, QCOM, BRCM.

Buck’s

Dining

Center of the deal world.

It’s probably fair to state that more Silicon Valley venture capital deals have been mooted and closed here than any other place on earth. Buck’s is an eatery in the heart of Woodside, beloved of the entrepreneurs, dreamers, financiers and deal makers of northern California.

I swung by with my son the other day and took a few snaps on the iPhone (Android is very much not accepted here).

Soggy fries.

While he powered down a giant quesadilla – allegedly the kids’ size, which makes you wonder what adults get – I couldn’t resist trying one of his fries, which turned out to be soggy and flavorless. I ordered the bowl of chili and promptly had to return it for proper preparation. Cold chili is not especially tasty. However, as Winston was wearing his Skyrim T shirt, we got excellent seating and service.

Meanwhile, deal making continued apace to our left, under the watchful eye of the movie maker on the wall:

“It pops up when you open the app ….”

To our far left a mother was merrily playing cards with her child and, judging from his technique, he was wiping the floor with her:

Cardsharp. Civil War era swords in the wall.

Near the exit, deals were being hashed out at one table and locals were at the other. At least I think they were locals for the beauty of a place like Buck’s is that there’s no telling whether you are seated next to a billionaire or the hired hand tending horses at one of the many estates nearby:

Deals and meals. Note the cowboy hat lampshades.

Maybe Buck’s was just having a bad day and our food was undeservedly lousy, but here’s the lunch menu:

If you go, leave your Wincrap computer behind unless you want to be laughed at and seated in the corner where the bulb is out. It’s a fun place with trophies including winning unpowered four wheelers from the annual Silicon Valley race, an astronaut doing a space walk, a giant anaconda skin, models of wooden racing boats, and so on. There’s something to delight all ages. Just don’t go there for the food.

AppleTV Mark III

Photography

Now with 1080p.

I wrote about the new AppleTV (AppleTV2) at considerable length a couple of years ago, seeing it as a transformative device for living room entertainment.

And so it is proving. Any image or video on an iPad can be viewed on your big screen TV and with the latest OS X Mountain Lion upgrade the same can now be said for your laptop or desktop Mac or Hack, as long as it is a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPU model with an integrated GPU. The latter is used by the mirroring technology, which does not run through discrete GPUs as used in older Macs. You can check in ‘About this Mac->More Info->System Report->Graphics/Displays’; if ‘Bus:’ does not say ‘Built-In’ mirroring will not work.

Mirroring in use on the MBA 2012.

Apple quietly refreshed the AppleTV a few weeks ago upgrading it from 720p to 1080p definition (AppleTV3). If your TV, like ours, is 720p that’s not a problem. AppleTV3 will render a 720p image. However, if your TV is 1080p then an upgrade to the latest AppleTV3 will use the full definition of the LCD screen. In practice I cannot tell the difference betwen 720p and 1080p until the screen size exceeds 50″ diagonally, but the device remains priced at $99 and works well with all flat panel displays with an HDMI socket. For those with overhead projectors with large display screens, the upgrade is a meaningful enhancement if the projector supports 1080p.

The 720p version was quickly hacked by enthusiasts many of whom want to add XBMC (Xbox 360) functionality to their AppleTV2. Obviously it will be a cold day in hell before Apple does anything to help Microsoft, so hacking is the natural response. At this time, best as I can tell, no one is working on hacking AppleTV3, so if you want the added functionality of a hacked AppleTV2, stick with it, even if it means you are not exploiting the maximum possible definition of a 1080p display.

However, if you like your AppleTV2 as it is, and I do, I recommend upgrading for the simple reason that AppleTV2, when sold on US eBay, averages a selling price of $160, or $60 more than an AppleTV3. The premium results from the devices ‘hackability’. So, even if your TV is only 720p, it’s a free, nay, better than free, upgrade for the day you move to 1080p.

One very notable addition to AppleTV (2 or 3 – just do a software upgrade) is the addition of Hulu Plus, a low ad content TV service. That does not thrill me especially, for even one ad is one too many and I rarely watch TV, but along with your $8/month (you can cancel at will) subscription comes access to all of the extraordinary Criterion Collection of movies. That is very much worth it to this movie buff, when most Criterion DVDs run $20-40. The catalog includes some of the great classics of the cinema, and you can see the complete list by clicking the picture below.

Click the picture to view.

The size, shape and remote codes (for those programming their universal remote) for AppleTV3 are identical to those for AppleTV2, as is the new price. Should Apple market a TV set, you can bet that the functionality of AppleTV will be included, maybe enhanced with voice controls or soemthing like Kinect which recognizes motions.

British humor

Photography

At its best.

I stand corrected on my column the other day bemoaning the miserable, humorless, crass commercialism of the Olympic Games.

There was one happy moment in which the BBC excelled itself with this humorous video though, being the BBC, it remains unavailable in the US in clean form. An English friend graciously converted it for me and here it is.

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Click arrow to view.

The glory of London seen from the air is well shown, and the whole thing, right down to the Monty Python moment, is outstanding.