Category Archives: Photography

Apple News +

No cigar.

Capitalists share two traits. First, they want to eliminate competition for nothing is worse for margins. Second, they seek out annuity income streams because it’s less work and risk keeping what you have than creating something new.

The greatest exemplar of both traits was John D. Rockefeller who managed to accrue 91% of US crude oil refining capacity in the late 19th century, and had a like monopoly on the sale of one of the refined products, kerosene, which was used for lighting. He became the richest person the world has seen, absent maybe the murderous thug in the Kremlin. Congress for once did its job and broke up his Standard Oil Trust just as the gasoline byproduct, heretofore thrown away as useless, met Henry Ford’s Model T. At the same time demand for kerosene was falling off a cliff, thanks to Edison, Westinghouse and electricity. Rockefeller thus displayed the third trait of great capitalists, luck.

If the people at Apple read history they must be very slow readers for even your first grader will tell you that Apple has been milking the iPhone cow to the point of market saturation for several years now. They are compounding the lack of diversification with the naïve belief that they command pricing, so we get the lunacy of $1200 cell phones when $600 does the trick at the upper end. But, give them credit. Having monopolized the upper end of the cell phone market, they are now seeing revenue growth disappearing and have started making strenuous efforts to annuitize the income derived from services – music, movies, apps, books (good luck with that) and, yesterday, news.

Their enhanced news offering, Apple News +, comes with the usual hype stating that tens of thousands of dollars in monthly charges can be sidestepped by just handing Apple $10 a month for a consolidated news feed. The fact that no one actually reads all of the hundreds of magazines whence that ridiculous statistic emanates is lost on the hype merchants in Cupertino. Apple’s arrogance has them seeing their customers as dolts.


Apple News +. A glossy front for very poor content formatting and accessibility.

Nonetheless, Apple knows how to present information so I signed up for a free one month subscription to Apple News + yesterday. This dictates an OS upgrade (but of course) on iOS devices, and the use of Mojave OS 10.14 on laptops and desktops. Just be sure not to update to Mojave from something earlier if you use an Nvidia GPU later than the GTX680 (which is ancient) in your Mac Pro as Nvidia has not released OS X drivers for later cards, is unlikely to do so and your screen will go black.

It’s more important to realize what you do not get with Apple News + than with it. The two finest newspapers in the world, the NYT and the Washington Post, are not in the ecosystem, meaning you have to pay for your subscription, even if you elect to read content using the Apple News + app. What you do get is the spokespaper for cockroaches and oligarchs, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, which hardly qualifies as a newspaper any more. And if you want more than 3 days’ archival content from the WSJ (though why anyone would want anything from the Dirty Digger’s toilet paper beats me) fughedaboutit, because it ain’t there. What other paid content is included in the $10 monthly subscription? The New Yorker, which you would think is great at $18 a month for a subscription. But load a page and you get silly tiny print not easily enlarged unless you are into ‘pan and scan’, and an index page which has zero hyperlinks. You have to page through until you find what you want. Scientific American is also included in the Apple News + subscription, but with the same limitations as The New Yorker. So you get a shiny, clean précis of headlines and then zero effort to make the contents readable. Apple has somehow managed to sacrifice random access to sequential access on the altar of sloth. A sham. I prefer reading both free at my local library, the hard copies allowing me to jump to any page of choice.

Photography? Yes, there’s a news channel but it beats me how the content is selected. And the best photography news site, DP Review, is naturally missing because, you know, that nasty Mr. Bezos owns it. Pass.

But, worst of all, and this is a disabling issue for me, none of your ad blockers will work on content delivered through Apple News +. So if you like articles interspersed at seemingly every paragraph break with ads for your scummy banker or insurer, have at it. Read those stories on the papers’ web sites with the ad blocker enabled and you get a lovely blank space where your soon to be foreclosed mortgage is otherwise advertised as the bargain of the year.

Apple has learned little from John D. Rockefeller. They forgot to annuitize their revenue streams, placed all their eggs in one basket and I’m afraid it’s way too late for them to fix all of that. A shining example of what astronomers call a white dwarf. A star whose brightness has peaked and is waiting to die.

MacBook 2017/2018

A fine replacement for the 11″ MacBook Air.


The 11″ MacBook Air at left next to the 12″ MacBook.

My son and I have long been aficionados of the 11″ MacBook Air. Light, adequately fast and with sufficient internal chip storage for all but large video and photo catalogs, it was affordably priced. Sadly, Apple discontinued the 11″ version in 2015, and only the 13″ version continues in the line.

As my son works his way to the Ivy League he has stepped up his efforts and just scored an A+ mid-term grade in calculus, so it seemed only fair to hear his complaint about the slowness of his 2013 MacBook and procure him an upgrade. There were, however, two issues. First the closest match in size to the 11″ MBA is the 2017/18 MacBook – the specifications remained unchanged in 2018 – but the asking price of $1300 is outrageous. Second, when the current MacBook first surfaced in 2015 we tried one in the Apple Store and were very disappointed by the mushy feel of the keyboard.

Well, both issues have been happily resolved. First, B&H in New York had a special on the 2017 MacBook a few days ago, slashing the price by $500 to $800, albeit available in gold finish only. No big deal – it looks OK, even if silver would have been preferred. Second, Apple redesigned the keyboard in 2017 and the feel is now superb. The keys are crisp and light and every bit as good as those in the MBA.

Memory is doubled to 8gB and speed is now up to 1867MHz. The latest integrated Intel GPU sees to speedy screen response of the Retina display and data storage is now 256gB of quick RAM compared with 128gB in the 2013 MBA. The CPU is Intel’s Core m3 with a Geekbench score of 6643 compared with 4974 for the 2013 MBA despite the slower clock speed of 1.2gHz vs. 1.3gHz in the older laptop. That’s 33% faster. (The last 11″ MBA made, the 2015, scored 5568).

Display pixels? 1366 x 768 in the MBA compared with 2304 x 1440 for the MacBook with retina Display, or almost three times as many pixels per unit area. My son reports that the Retina Display in the MacBook is noticeably sharper than the regular one in the MBA.

Testifying to continued improvement in engineering the MacBook weighs in at a scant 2.0 lbs compared with 2.4lbs for the 2013 MBA, yet the screen is 19% larger in the MacBook. Wonderful. Battery life is a claimed 10 hrs, presumably measured in a dark room with minimum screen brightness and no activity ….

What’s not to like. Well, yet another connector switch with the MacBook using USB C at both the laptop and power brick ends. And because the laptop has only one USB C socket for power and data (the MBA has two USB A sockets and a power socket) this means that an adapter will be required if, say, you want to use the laptop with an external display while simultaneously charging it. Not great.

Transfer of apps and data from the old MBA was a breeze as my son backs up everything automatically to iCloud. While Apple really should include a progress bar when recovery to the new laptop is in progress – the screen display just remains static and you have no idea if anything is happening – the whole process took but 10 minutes. Very nicely done, Apple.

The old 2013 MBA will sell for $400 or so on Swappa making the net upgrade outlay just $400. Now that’s what I call a bargain, given the six years of hard use my son got from the machine. Be sure to wait for the B&H discount to reappear as the $1300 full retail price is way too high.

NYC in the snow

Some superb old images.


Click the image for the article.

It’s an image worthy of Manet at his finest, at once realistic and impressionistic in its rendering.

The New York Times has started digitizing all its images back to inception in 1851. Early fruit of its labors is on show in the linked article – click the image above – and is from pre-WW1 New York City, and while the photographers are unknown the images are startling in their beauty and immediacy. And yes, I can confirm that the crossing at Broadway on the north side of the Flatiron Building is still windy as heck to this day.

Panasonic FF mirrorless imminent

A new FF entrant.

DP Review has an interesting interview with a Panasonic representative, talking about the forthcoming full frame S1 (24mp) and S1R (47mp) bodies.

While Panny is coy about the maker of the sensors, meaning it’s not Panny, that hardly matters. Panny and Nikon no more make all the parts in their hardware than Mercedes and BMW do in their cars, where everything from shocks, wheel, electronics, brakes, windows, seats, etc. is sub-contracted. That does not stop them from making good products.


The Panasonic S1R.

Panny’s timing is perfect. With Nikon having just introduced the mirrorless Z6/Z7, bodies which really dictate a move to the new compact lens line, Panny will be identically priced. The new user will have to pay for a body and lens and you can bet that if Panny wants decent market share that prices will be identical to Nikon’s. Best of all the bodies will hit the market with a large range of lenses from Panny (the MFT optics are excellent), Leica ($$$) and Sigma, the latter for those who do not care about bulk, weight and poor auto focusing. The target market is stated as being the working pro. I would wager that the bodies will take adapted MFT lenses with full functionality, restricting the sensor size to that of MFT. Not nuclear physics and nice to have, the 47mp sensor becoming 12mp, perfectly adequate for all but mural sized prints.

It is heartwarming to read of Panny’s experiments with ergonomics described in the article, something very reminiscent of Leica’s approach in designing the landmark M3 in the early 1950s, the best handling camera of the time. Panny also puts significant stress on the quality of the EVF and the camera’s durability, both required if they are to compete with Nikon. Further, given the high quality video implementation in Panny’s high end MFT bodies it seems the video maker has much to look forward to here. Panny really knows video.

From a hardware perspective there has never been a better time to be a photographer, even if the cell phone revolution has saturated the world with execrable photography.

Electronic surprises in 2018

Some great devices.

The digital world marches on and much as I fight the tide with a solid adherence to an analog, mechanical universe, there’s no denying that digital technology is superior in every way, despite having the personality and charisma of a washing machine.

One of the costliest additions to the digital household at the beginning of the year was a 65″ LG OLED TV. Thinner than an iPhone it starts very quickly, delivers blacks the likes of which were heretofore unobtainable on a television and, unsurprisingly, is reliable as a refrigerator. While I confess to being slightly discombobulated with the occasional exhortation on turn-on to update the operating system, the device is a delight to use. We are rapidly approaching the day where that 100″ projection screen setup I installed in the vineyard home will become affordable in a big screen TV. The price one year ago was $2,697. The set now retails for $2,349, a modest drop of 13% reflecting the difficulty of making fault free large OLED panels. And did I mention it’s thinner than an iPhone?


The 65″ LG OLED TV.

That big screen TV was accompanied by a pair of special electrostatic loudspeakers, as capable of rendering shoot-’em-up action as they are in plumbing the depths of Horowitz’s Steinway. There is a lot of overpriced trash in the high end speaker sector. Martin Logan has been around for ever and appears financially stable.


A very special loudspeaker – the Martin Logan ESL.

And because those electrostatic panels are not that good at moving the large volumes of air dictated by low bass notes, the main speakers are accompanied by the desirable adjunct of a powered sub-woofer.


The Martin Logan Dynamo 700 subwoofer. Low notes are rendered correctly.

But it’s always something and both the main speakers and sub-woofer demand lots of clean power so the Parasound stereo amplifier, 5 year warranty and all, joined the team:


The Parasound integrated stereo amplifier.

This outfit has quickly become second nature, taken for granted like a good camera and lens.

And speaking of cameras and the analog world, what could be more analog than film? I blame two friends for my film rediscovery this year, the one a film fanatic and prof at CalTech, the other an AV technologist in Boston with a fine eye who sent me some rolls of Kodak’s Ektar. I went about the hardware discovery process in the best American tradition. I threw money at it. So I snapped up a Nikon FE, A Nikon N90S and a Nikon F100, to see which spoke to me loudest. The FE was lovely but I really missed AF as my eyes are not what they were. The N90S came in a lovely compact package but refused to speak to my old chipped MF Nikkors on those increasingly rare occasions where I brave manual focus. But the F100 proved to be the bee’s knees, a perfect melding of digital technology (AF, auto exposure) and film. Money? Film bodies are so inexpensive that after selling the FE and N90S I was but $150 out of pocket.


The finest film camera made. The Nikon F100.

Not least of the F100’s beauty is that the controls and layout are almost identical to those of the D700, Nikon’s first FF DSLR and one I reverted to after selling the big and clunky D3x. Sure the D3x delivered 24 sharp megapixels, but I really did not need those, any more than I needed the truck-like weight. The D700 boasts but 12 high quality megapixels and boy do they ever work.


The Nikon D700 – available for very little in mint condition.

Finally, long time readers will know that I am a confessed long time motorcycling addict. My 1975 BMW R90/6 is now in its 29th year with me and absent newer shocks remains pretty much in original condition, right down to the antique but perfectly capable mechanical points ignition. The sole nod the BMW makes to the electronic world is a couple of $1 relays to preclude frying of the wiring harness when the 120dB Italian FIAMM horns are worked to alert left-turning morons in cars that a two wheeled human being is headed their way.


My 1975 BMW R90/6. A product very much of the mechanical age, with awful instrument lighting.

But this year the miserably weak instrument lighting, a small sub-chassis containing a myriad of minuscule incandescent light bulbs prone to failure and hell to access for replacement, gave way to an LED harness. This was invented by a lady rider who had grown mightily frustrated with the constant failure of her stock lighting harness, not least the fact that if the generator bulb fails that it takes the whole ignition system with it. Who thought that up? Anyway, that frustrated lady rider happens to have a spouse who is expert in CAD/CAM and he came up with an LED bulb chassis which is a drop in replacement for the stock one, is so bright that I can finally, after 29 years, see my high beam indicator in bright sunlight, and which will certainly outlast me and the bike.


The stock and KatDash LED lighting harness for the BMW Airhead.

And while I am mixing analog and digital, you should know that both my tachometer and speedometer failed within weeks of one another at 63,000 miles, expertly repaired by the geniuses at Palo Alto Speedometer at considerable expense. At least I will not have to crack the instrument housing again. For all their charm and charisma, no one could accuse analog devices of coming with low maintenance costs.

iPhone you ask? Why yes, I was forced to upgrade my iPhone 6 by a felonious maker who made it so slow with software ‘upgrades’ as to be useless. I switched to a used iPhone 7 for a net cost of $300, thus denying said felon my money while reclaiming the lost speed at reasonable cost. No more new iPhones for me.