Security fasteners for AirTags

Photography

Keeping it secured.

I updated my recent piece on Apple’s AirTag tracking device here, showing how to remove the internal speaker which announces the AirTag’s location after it has been removed to a location remote from the owner’s iPhone. (No preaching, please. This information is in the public domain).

The AirTag announces that it has been moved in two ways. First, 8-24 hrs after being relocated it beeps. Second, it will broadcast an “AirTag moving with you” message to the thief’s iPhone, if he has one. Disabling the beeping takes away the more obvious of these two warning mechanisms. Why does Apple not provide a software switch to disable the beeper? Because then all the creeps and perverts out there would avail themselves of this functionality for illicit stalking of the innocent.

Once the beeper is disabled, the thief (with an iPhone) will have the challenge of finding the AirTag once its proximity is announced to him. That means a well hidden AirTag will delay detection for long enough, hopefully, for the owner to get a location fix and call the cops.

I have one AirTag installed in my Honda scooter in a location easily located by me, but it would be hard for a thief to find in under several hours. And he has better things to do with his time – like more thieving. Scooters are very easy to steal and readily resold in large cities. (Ads with “no title” in the description are common).

Now while I do not own an exotic, costly bicycle, an AirTag would seem an essential on such a machine. Easily stolen, easily sold, no registered title. The problem is where to locate it? Tests disclose that location inside a metal tube – down tube, handlebar, seat post – kills the transmission, so you want to either install the device in a carbon fiber component (if your machine has any) or securely attached to the frame. But secure attachment with regular fasteners is time and effort wasted for obvious reasons. What is needed is a security fastener, and you will not find a better selection than at McMaster Carr:


Beat this selection. Click the image for the site.

Use one of these with an appropriate holder, along with the matching fastening/removal tool, and you will make the bike thief’s job that much harder.

Leica M11

Cameras

Gorgeous.


A beautiful thing.

As a once upon a time (a long time ago) Leica M enthusiast, it’s hard not to look at the new M11 and come away impressed with the sheer physical beauty of the machine.

While the entry price – reckon north of $20,000 for a body with three aspherical Leica lenses to do justice to the monster sensor – is ridiculous, and the absence of IS and AF makes the tool anachronistic, it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

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.