Category Archives: Photography

Neil Armstrong

Photography

A fine man passes.

Neil Armstong died the other day, leaving two legacies.

In an age of celebrity culture where selling out for a quick buck is the accepted norm, Armstrong conducted his life with discretion and humility. His greatest legacy is the character of the man which said only the very best about what it means to be an American. Unlike that other Armstrong, a common liar and cheat adulated by many, Neil Armstrong was a real man.

His second legacy, and no lesser than the first, is that he took the most wonderful photograph of the twentieth century. In that turbulent decade of the 1960s, watching men walk on the moon was the most thrilling confirmation of my belief in the greatness of America to which I immigrated some 8 years later, easily the smartest thing I ever did.

Buzz Aldrin, photographed by Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969.

You can read about Armstrong’s gear here and, yes, it’s still available, free. You just have to get to the moon to retrieve it.

Quack, quack, quack.

iPhone

Obviousness.

Considering how all the pundits claim that the stock market is stacked against the ‘little guy’, it continues to offer up no-lose opportunities with startling frequency.

In the past quarter alone, had you loaded up on Apple and shorted Facebook and Hewlett Packard, you would now be substantially wealthier. Apple makes things which Asians steal. Facebook is a fraud aimed at impecunious teenagers. And Hewlett Packard has Miss Piggy at the helm. Shareholders must rue her loss in the CA gubernatorial election. Gee, you don’t need a spreadsheet to analyze that lot.

And Friday’s patent decision by a jury in Silicon Valley rightly concluded, despite an arrogant judge who made the error of thinking the jurors were stupid, that theft is punishable by law. At least by American law. The jurors needed no advanced degrees in patent law. A 132 page ‘How to Steal’ Samsung document and sheer obviousness led them to speedily conclude that if it quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

Obviousness.

If, like me, you shelled out $500 for iPhone v1 5 years ago on the day it went on sale, the prevailing memory of that day is of your crashing jaw. Rubberbanding, pinch to zoom, tap to fill, multitouch, icons, the internet in your pocket. All had the same effect on this user’s jaw. And all were faithfully copied by Samsung.

There is a body of opinion out there which has it that this verdict will stifle innovation. The writers, of course, are journalists who flunked Econ 101. The explosion in innovation which will result as cheaters are forced to become designers will astonish and delight.

Meanwhile, do the obvious and make some coin. And your iPhone comes with a great camera, too, soon to get even better, so take some snaps while you are at it.

As for the Apple haters reading this, ask yourself which you hate more. AAPL or $$$$?

By the way, a piece I wrote four years ago which attracted record amounts of hate mail, has just been updated. Like I said, obviousness is a reliable guide.

With the Trinovids, looking into the future. iPhone 4S snap by my son.

Disclosure: Long AAPL, QCOM, BRCM; short FB.

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.