iPhone7

iPhone

Hurry up and wait.

The iPhone7 manages to be an exercise in three things at once: arrogance, greed and desperation.

Arrogance, as Apple has removed the traditional 3.5mm headphone socket replacing it with wireless earbuds whose poor 5 hour life and need to carry a charger manage to simultaneously break something which did not need fixing and make the result worse. “Our way or the highway”. Did the iPhone get slimmer, the rational (?) reason to pull that socket? Nope. It’s the same as the iPhone6+, but the battery life has increased. Given that the battery was already good for a day’s use (and more with the bigger model) this a solution looking for a problem. The iPhone ergonomics, meanwhile, make a kitchen knife look sophisticated, with poor placement of buttons and easy to accidentally shift modes in the camera. Yup, you have been there.

Greed, as those earbuds will run you a shocking $159 to remove that oh! so onerous earphone cable, while deleting its handy control button. This for a device which likely costs $10 to make.

Desperation, for Apple is clearly out of ideas – those went to the grave with Steve – and is trying to milk its margins with silly earpieces. Look out below.

Apple’s onanistic boasting about how they redesigned everything, with no user benefit, smacks of a loss of awareness of customer needs much as their bizarre new headquarters building smacks of a zenith in the company’s fortunes. Building castles all too frequently means you have peaked. Ask Henry VIII and the Tudors.

Meanwhile Siri voice recognition remains worthless (come on, do you know anyone who uses it?), there is still no ‘delete to the left’ (needing but one line of code) and spelling correction has zero contextual logic. iOS is an abomination, seemingly riddled with security holes. 

The other day I was in a Toyota Prius whose driver placed her Blackberry on a small shelf at the base of the console. Now I’ll admit the Prius is not everyone’s cup of tea. There are so many videos, tones and flashing lights going on that I swear the thing would drive me potty were I to stay in one over 15 minutes. But that little shelf contains an inductive charger, common to Blackberries and many Google devices which removes a cable which really needs removing – the charger cable. Not the one to your ears.

So we wait for iPhone8. Meanwhile I hope I can get the thieves at Verizon to reduce my bill as my iPhone 6 is now paid for.

Alex Webb

Photographers

Mexico understood.

It is heartwarming to see this retrospective of Alex Webb’s color images of Mexico and its towns bordering the wealthiest nation on earth.


Oaxaca.

Webb is Henri Cartier-Bresson’s spiritual successor, but with the added complexity of color masterfully handled (HC-B couldn’t take a color snap to save his life, and had no need to do so).

Click the image and just look at images 1 and 6 in the NYT’s slide show. As for a moving picture of the plight of today’s Hispanics in America, look at #8.

Matriculation Day – September 2, 2016

Bio

Winston starts at NMH.

My education was interrupted only by my schooling.
Winston Churchill.

Friday, September 2 was the best day in my son’s life. He registered at Northfield Mount Hermon School as a ninth grader and you can read the whole run up to this event here.

The school’s organization of registration day was peerless; then again, they have had a few years’ practice at this sort of thing! With many sign-ins – bookstore account, IT access, health insurance, bank account opening, dorm check-in, followed by the very moving matriculation ceremony – the potential for chaos was significant, but NMH saw to it that all went smoothly. Given how potentially stressful a first move away from home can be for a young man I am in awe at the school’s capacity for warmth, empathy and caring. Winston is in good hands.


The names of the eight Ivy League prep schools are proudly displayed in the magnificent basketball courts, used here for registration activities. Competition is fierce in all events.


Sporting a new buzz cut – one final cruelty inflicted by his mother – my son gets his IT password.


The registration packet is handed out. Just 160 new freshmen will get one, out of 1,600 applicants. (The all boys UK schools of Eton and Harrow have 1,300 and 700 pupils, compared with NMH’s 650). My son goes by his mother’s name rather than mine. After a lifetime of spelling that accident of birth I had no intention of subjecting him to a like experience.


Outside the main administration building, Holbrook Hall. Winnie is lucky that his Advisor is none other than the Deputy Dean of the school. Many buildings in like colonial architectural style dot the 1,500 acre campus on the Connecticut River.


More signing up. Winnie opens his first bank account with a local bank. Yup, the boy is a leftie.


Moving in. I delegated packhorse duties to the boy. The smile on Winston’s face says it all.


Unpacking. We shipped all of 21 boxes to the school. How did we survive pre-Amazon?


Like father, like son. We are both twits. Winnie got the idea for the lined winter hat from the Coen Brothers’ ‘Fargo’.


In the dining hall. NMH food is renowned as the best in any new England prep school or college – vegan, vegetarian, salads, meat, sushi, you name it. A very smart policy by the administration. After all, the pupil will be eating here for four years.


Winnie went missing over lunch and on wandering outside the dining hall I found him busy at a game of frisbee with his newest friends. The open minds of kids are something to aspire to. He is on the right. The Memorial Chapel is in the back.


The Memorial Chapel. The matriculation ceremony found us singing ‘Jerusalem’ (40 years since I did that at my English prep school!) while freshmen signed the pledge in the school’s book, promising to agree with its principles.


The matriculation pledge, issued to each freshman, and signed by the Dean of School and the Dean of Students. Honor and decency are not dead.

A Day of Days, perfect in every way.

All snaps taken with the iPhone6.


At the conclusion of Convocation, September 6, 2016. Winston with the new freshmen in his dorm. My boy’s tie tying technique is more suggestive of a future on Wall Street than in the State Department! Photo by the Deputy Dean, Charlie Tierney III.

* * * * *

Click here for an index of all the Biographical pieces.

Deerfield

Photographs

History writ large.

Situated in the Connecticut River Valley, Deerfield dates back to 1673 when the first colonists arrived. The dastardly French hooked up with the Indians (none of whom had B1 visas) to sack the town and kill the colonists in 1704. Mercifully, this state of affairs did not last as the Indians were soon put back in their place, the frogs sent packing and civilization and commerce took their place.

Deerfield Academy remains in the center of Old Deerfield, much of a muchness when it comes to colonial architecture, having been founded in 1797 after the redcoats had been issued one way tickets home. Along with my son’s choice – Northfield Mount Hermon nearby – it is one of the eight Ivy League prep schools which means you are either poor and bright or you chose your parents well when it came to admission. Sometimes you get both smarts and luck in the gene pool.

Driving into Old Deerfield’s Old Main Street is to be transported back to the eighteenth century. Traffic here consists of a couple of locals walking their golden retrievers (limp wristed shi tzu owners need not apply), and the setting defines bucolic. I had a fine, extended chat with a local Visla, a magnificent Hungarian hunting dog. The only dismay was that my son and I did not encounter Katherine Hepburn at the Deerfield Inn where we stayed, pending his start at NMH nearby. Doubtless her ghost haunts the place.


The Deerfield Inn dates to 1884.


Our room at the Inn testifies to the history of the place.


The Post Office dates to 1910 and remains in use, being on the register of historic places.


There are no mail deliveries. You access your PO box using these letter coded dials – just 132 combinations possible!


The old fire station remains in operation.


Old pumper truck.


Deerfield Academy, one of America’s finest prep schools.


The school’s beautiful architecture is repeated in its many buildings.


The Wells-Thorn House, built in 1747 and first painted blue in 1802. Yes, it really does sag in the middle!


The view from Champney’s Restaurant inside the Inn.

A visit to western Massachusetts is highly recommended.

All snaps on the iPhone6.

At the JFK Library

Photographs

Elegant understatement.

My son and I stopped by the JFK Presidential Library in Boston on the way to his new school in western Massachusetts, where he starts ninth grade on Friday.

The Library, designed by I.M. Pei, is a masterpiece of understated architecture, the exhibits spare and elegant. The small gallery dealing with that awful day in Dallas in November, 1963, is low key and very moving.

But it’s the last image which will resonate with Winston’s many friends who know what he went through this past year and the obstacles he had to overcome in securing his future.



At Columbia Point.

Snapped on the iPhone 6.