Category Archives: Photography

An inexpensive Mac Pro mouse

Mac Pro

This one is a winner

My desktop Mac Pro, a 2010 model upgraded with dual 3.47GHz Intel 12-core CPUs and 96GB of memory, has long enjoyed the company of a Logitech G500 gaming mouse, which remains available. As I have better things to do with my time than destroy brain cells I do not game, but that mouse, after almost a decade’s use, remains a perfect performer. It’s wired and tracks and clicks perfectly, showing no signs of deterioration after over 3,000 days of daily use.

But the other Mac Pro, which is my movie server, is a different story. That 2009 machine, again with upgraded CPUs, controls over 40TB (!) of disk storage on which reside all sorts of DVD and BluRay movies, all instantly accessible at the click of a mouse using DVDpedia. Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement. For years I have been using an RF Microsoft mouse, one of those with a dongle attached to a USB port, and things have gone from bad to worse. First, in this application, you must have wireless so that there are no wires to trip over. Second, scrolling must be dead smooth if you are to page through a lot of movies on those evenings when there is nothing else to do. And while the pointing and clicking functions of that mouse are as good as it gets, scrolling has gone from bad to unusable over the years, so much so that I resolved to explore alternatives.

I settled on a MacAlly bluetooth mouse – no dongle. It paired instantly and using the adjustable scrolling speed setting in the relevant System Preferences window, it points, clicks and scrolls perfectly. The mouse-to-Mac Pro distance is some 10 feet, with the TV screen hiding the computer. The Microsoft mouse has been relegated to the box in the corner of the garage with the black beetles, perennially in search of cheese. I should throw it out but we have developed a relationship over the years, and it’s not like it’s a disposable ex-spouse. The Mac Pro uses a dated bluetooth card which peaks at 802.11n and that’s all that is needed.


The MacAlly bluetooth mouse.

The MacAlly mouse uses two (included) AAA batteries. I use it on a brown wooden semi-matt finish coffee table, as above, no mouse pad, without issues. Unlike the Logitech G500 – no lefties – the MacAlly is ambidextrous. The small rectangular button below the tilting (sideways scrolling) and very smooth scroll wheel switches sensitivity between 800/1200/1600 DPI and I have found that the 1600 setting provides the smoothest pointer movement in my setting. Plus, you can get it in white finish, in addition to the usual black.

Be aware that this mouse is not very tall, unlike the gaming mouse linked in the first paragraph, so all day use may not be that comfortable. But for occasional use with my movie sever it’s fine.

Recommended, and at $20, what’s not to like?

A note on improving Bluetooth reception: If your Bluetooth reception is marginal, characterized by a delayed response of the cursor to mouse movement, a Bluetooth receiver like this helps. Because my Mac Pro is hidden behind the TV screen, the internal Bluetooth receiver receives a weak signal. I simply attached that external $10 Bluetooth receiver to a USB cable and routed it to the base of my amplifier which is in line of sight of the mouse. Problem solved. For $5 more the receiver even comes in a 5.0 version (the cheap one is 4.0) which confers enhanced sensitivity if needed.


The Bluetooth receiver on a USB extension cord.

A handy Apple ProRAW converter for the iPhone

iPhone, Technique

Getting Apple ProRAW into Lightroom.

One of the nice features of recent iPhones is the option of taking pictures in Apple ProRAW, Apple’s uncompressed and relatively unmanipulated photo format.

What prompts this piece is the excessive default sharpening of JPG images by the iPhone. As a colleague has pointed out, this has been worse and worse since iPhone 4.

The snag is that my Lightroom is version 6.4, and as I have no need for later ‘enhancements’ or the annuity toll they bring, I have not ‘upgraded’. Nor do I need a cloud-resident version of LR open to Adobe’s potential piracy and fee extortion. My LR is bought and paid for – once. But it cannot import Apple ProRAW files from the iPhone.

Wanting to compare the Apple ProRAW files with JPG I needed to get the former into Lightroom, and found that one way of doing this quickly is to connect the iPhone to my Mac Pro, logging on to iCloud Photos. That’s at iCloud.com, not Photos on your local drive.

After selecting the desired image, click and hold the mouse pointer on the file to be downloaded and you will see:


Downloading a RAW as DNG.

The resulting DNG file can now be imported into Lightroom. In my case the JPG was 4mb and the DNG (which is an uncompressed version of the RAW file) came in at 26mb. But, heck, storage is cheap.

The differences in compression and the related artifacts are very noticeable. First the DNG file needed +1.4 stops of exposure increase to match the JPG. Here are enlarged center sections:


JPG on the left.

You can do this in batches in iCloud Photos. Highlight selected files using the shift or control key and download as above.

The DNG files can now be sharpened as deemed necessary in Lightroom, avoiding the excessive native sharpening in the iPhone for JPG images.

Jony Ive on Steve Jobs

iPhone

A sad anniversary.

Steve Jobs died ten years ago today.

Here’s the tribute from his chief designer, Jony Ive:



The power of curiosity, the desire to learn rather than to be right, the willingness to take risk. All the dictates for a successful life are there.

You can see my picture taken on the last day of the life of a great man here.

AirTags

Photography

Clever.


Find my tortoise

If your tortoise displays a curious bent, meaning he wanders off into the blue beyond now and then, a spot of epoxy and an Apple AirTag will see him found in record time, unless he just happened to be crossing the road at the same time as that Mack truck came trundling along.


Size and weight.

It’s not as if aforesaid tortoise is going to struggle too much under the weight, but perhaps a more useful application is to deter theft of expensive toys. Like cars and cameras.

I recall years ago some buyers of high end cameras would have them engraved with their Social Security Numbers. It’s hard to conceive of a dumber idea. The thief is not about to stop his thieving ways because you engraved the camera, is not about to report it to anyone when he sees it and will use your SSN to loot your credit card, destroy your credit score, etc.

But if you could find some way of building this into your camera where it could not be removed, then you have a winner. Apple says the replaceable battery lasts 12 months. It looks like AirTags need an iPhone 11 or later to work in ‘high precision’ finding mode, or an iPhone SE, 6S or later for regular accuracy.

Pricing is $29 or four for $99, and you can read more here. And you can forget those megabuck installations in your car which claim the cops can find it once it’s been pinched. An AirTag does the trick. Bring your own gun. The cops are busy killing innocents with theirs.

The billion node network:

To avoid high power consumption, AirTags do not use GPS but rather depend on the worldwide one billion iPhone base of users to transmit location data using Bluetooth. Brilliant and not invasive.

The three day warning:

If your AirTag is out of range of your iPhone for 8-24 hours (this was originally three days or more, but Apple subsequently reduced it), the AirTag will emit a recurring beep. Does this not destroy its value as a theft tracker? Not at all. You should notice someone has stolen your $10,000 Schwinn before three days have elapsed, or you have more money than sense. Come to think of it, if you spend that much on a push bike you do have more money than sense.

Silencing the AirTag – update on Feb 4, 2022:

The AirTag is easily silenced if you are prepared to open it and remove the speaker. Most break the tabs holding the body together, and have to glue it back together. Not a process likely to enhance the Airtag’s water sealing. You can see a way of opening the back with no damage to the tabs here. I used this method and confirm that the AirTag continues to show its location properly but emits no sound. I used a very fine bladed Xacto knife to minimize scarring to the casing, which is invisible in use. The key is to identify the tab locations correctly.


An Xacto knife is used.


Tab locations are marked. The knife blade is inserted
immediately adjacent to the grey snap in ring.


The three tabbed cover is removed, as in the linked video, above.


The speaker is popped out.


Back side of the cover with unmolested tabs – it snaps back on easily.

Update June 15, 2023:

My iPhone just alerted me to change the battery, meaning the original CR2032 lasted 14 months. It’s in my (easily stolen) scooter and yes, it’s silenced.

Louche Long

Hall of Shame, Macintosh

Taste and money rarely mix.

Apple has had several justly famous advertising campaigns, from the ‘1984’ ad where an athlete hurls a sledgehammer at a movie screen in a theater filled with automatons, to the ‘Think Different’ series which adulated original thinkers. But maybe the most beloved was the long running ‘I’m a Mac and I’m a PC’ with the comedian John Hodgman as the nerdy and lovable PC-using klutz and, well, Justin Long. Long portrayed the oh! so cool Mac user and his smarmy, condescending, hipster presence did nothing to endear prospects to the Apple brand, for it was Hodgman viewers tuned in to view. One of the best known ads had PC swathed in bandages head to toe, explaining that his multiple crashes were the cause. Another had him on the shrink’s couch relating how unloved he was. Hodgman simply nailed it.


Nerd and hipster.

Before examining the new Intel ads claiming their CPUs are superior to Apple’s new M1 – a CPU which is universally lauded as redefining the realms of possibility in Macs – it bears to relate Apple’s history with CPU makers. The Motorola 68000 family in early Apple ][ computers could not hold it own, Motorola falling behind the performance game, and gave way to the IBM G3/4/5 series. Capable performers, these suffered from high heat output and, when Steve Jobs asked for a cool running successor to the G3 in the fabulous Powerbook notebook, IBM gave him the G4 which did a more than passable imitation of a toaster. It ran that hot. So Steve started the team working on converting the product line to Intel’s CPUs and did so successfully until …. Intel started repeating the errors of Motorola and IBM. Slow development cycles, loss of competitive position, we had seen it all before. But Apple, as always looking down the road, had an answer, having been sub-contracting design and development of its iPhone and iPad CPUs to ARM with whom the company increasingly adopted a tailored approach, not willing to rest on the laurels of a commodity product suitable for all.

This exercise culminated last year in Apple going whole hog and developing its own M1 CPU which not only derived from the state-of-the-art A14 in the iPhone, it also spanked the competition on performance (high) and power use and heat output (low). It was such a success that Apple has started migrating its notebooks and the Mac Mini to the M1 and later this year will do the same for the iMac and Mac Pro.

So Intel, always a day late and an idea short, felt it had to strike back and hired the louche Long, ever willing to prostitute his C-list Hollywood credentials, to talk up the advantages of Intel’s latest (very late) and (not so) greatest CPUs. And they got it so wrong, it’s comical to behold. Not only is Long still smarmy and condescending – characteristics as tied to the actor as the sneer is to Donald Sutherland – it’s really quite unclear what he is going on about.


See what I mean about Long?

For the whole story, capably reported by Apple Insider, click here.