No more slot loading

Hardware

Traditional DVD drives rule.

Apple may be trying to obsolete the DVD but this user of Netflix-by-mail refuses to. The best catalog by far, with much more choice which does not come and go, unlike its streaming counterpart, is to be had by Netflix mail order.

Unfortunately, to the extent that Apple even includes DVD players with its machines they are invariably of the slot loading variety. I have suffered through no fewer than eight of these on various iBooks, MacBooks and iMacs and fully half have failed. Your choices are to have the slot loading DVD drive replaced at enormous cost or procure a used one on eBay (taking your chances with the high fraud rate there), and using the excellent pictorials at iFixit.com to do it yourself.

It is never easy. I have done it in iMacs and iBooks and you are essentially looking at almost completely gutting the machine to get at the drive. You need mechanical skill, courage, excellent organization and a good deal of luck. Those small parts and connectors you will be removing can be very fragile, which is where the luck comes in.

So when the slot loading drive in my MacMini, used as a DVD movie player, started playing up, I took it to the Apple Geniuses at the local Apple Store only to watch them blast compressed air through the DVD slot and through the ineffectual ventilation holes in the base, and the thing worked again. For a couple of weeks. So I procured my own compressed air and repeated the process with the next four failures over the past ten weeks.

After the fifth time the drive refused to come back to life, and knowing how hard it is to procure and replace, I decided I was through with this compromised design and bought an external one.

The Samsung Ultra-Slim DVD reader/writer.

It’s compact, has a proper extendable disc tray, is far cheaper at $50 than any repair could be, and fits nicely between the Mini and the Airport Express, as you can see above. It comes in a wide range of colors – I opted for white. There’s no power brick, the stated trade off being that it uses two USB sockets to derive sufficient power for operation. With my 2010 MacBook Air and 2009 Mini just inserting the larger of the two USB plugs had it working fine. That’s just as well as the two sockets on the MacBook Air are on opposite sides of the keyboard which would have necessitated a USB extension cable to connect to both sockets. Not all computers deliver sufficient power at their USB sockets, so if one does not work, use two. I was certainly not going to buy the $79 MacBook Air Superdrive which is …. you guessed it, slot loading.

Operation is plug-and-play with a Mac. No software installation is required. The empty tray is opened using a finger touch on the front or the eject key on a keyboard. I find that the eject touch key on Mobile Mouse (used on the iPad as a wireless remote keyboard) works fine too. With a disc loaded, the only way to open the drive is with a keyboard or using the eject icon in the Finder – a push on the front of the drive will not work. A bad DVD or CD which never boots can be removed by pressing in the tray for a few seconds, after which it opens, meaning you don’t have the dreaded situation you get with slot loading drives where a bad CD/DVD can render the drive useless. Sure Apple has start up key sequences which purport to force a jammed disc out, but they don’t always work. Want to guess how I know?

For anyone seeking to watch or burn DVDs for movies or photo backups, this Samsung external drive is recommended. It cannot possibly be any worse than the slot-loading drives Apple provides. The only issue encountered so far is that the unit is so light, I had to place some two sided tape on its rubber feet to stop it shifting when the tray is operated. Further, when running Carbon Copy Cloner to back-up the Mini to a USB-connected and USB-powered external drive, trying to start a DVD in the Samsung while CC was running resulted in nothing happening. The likely cause is simply an overload of the modest aggregate power available at the Mini’s USB sockets. So I simply let CCC run, restarted and all was well. It’s probably not a good idea to run other USB devices, which do not have separate power supplies, while using this DVD player.

Meanwhile, I can add another notch to my belt, testifying to the many failures of Apple’s awful hardware. Can you wonder that both my serious work machines are home grown – and ultra-reliable – Hackintoshes?

Disclosure: Long AAPL 2012 call options.

Once magazine

iPad, Photographs

A worthy iPad photo magazine.

The cover of the inaugural issue. Click the picture,

The first issue of ‘Once’ for the iPad is available as a free download from the AppStore and it’s something I suggest you get. The magazine does everything right in contrast to the BJP which does just about everything wrong.

First, it downloads fast and loads quickly.

Second, content is limited to three photo essays, some with nicely integrated sound clips.

Third, navigation is excellent – intuitive, direct and simple. Everything about this says “Designed for a touch tablet”.

Display quality on the iPad is as good as it gets – just like looking at Kodachrome slides on a light box.

The magazine is a sort of modern LIFE, with traditional high quality photography accompanied by excellent writing. True photojournalism. There are no advertisements and no equipment reviews. The focus is on the pictures and the story.

The first issue has articles on the dispossesed people living in the no man’s land between Russia and Georgia in the aftermath of the hostilities there; on the last suvivors of an ancient lifestyle in Greenland – this piece is quite special; and on a retirement community in Arizona. Typically these include a 5 page essay and 20 photographs. Unlike with the BJP, there is no bloat so there are no attention span issues, nor is there any frustration in finding things.

Recommended. Let’s hope it’s published more than its title suggests.

Update August 24, 2012:

Sadly, as the following email indicates, Once has folded after just 11 months:

Seems it’s pretty much impossible to make money at these things.

The Kindle Fire

iPad

A well placed offering.

At $200, the new 7″ Kindle Fire color LCD tablet is attractively priced and designed, for what it offers. However, I see limited use for photographers at this stage, and all the talk of competition for the iPad seems to miss the point of the very meaning of the word.

Click the picture.

Simply stated, you do not choose between a Porsche and a Ford when buying a car, though you may own both. The comparison between the iPad and the Fire is much the same. They can coexist in a market which has not remotely been penetrated yet one whose lower demographics have nothing to choose.

With apps like Snapseed bringing a well designed touch interface to the oft tedious job of photo processing on the iPad’s 9.7″ screen, the migration of the iPad away from a pure consumption device to a content creation one is accelerating. I often find, for example, that I create or edit blog postings using the WordPress app on my iPad, especially now that the app’s many early problems, with lots of bugs, seem to have been overcome. The latest mobile version offers most of the editing tools of the desktop variant.

The Kindle Fire is a more narrowly focused device than the iPad in its first version, but Amazon’s touting of its ingeniously designed predictive web browser, named Silk, is very promising. So, in addition to all the usual book access, now supplemented with music and videos, you will be able to browse the web for content. If the browser is fast then the Fire will make a tremendous tool for schools at all grades. And, if content is king, then the Fire is only the second tablet to hit the market not only with a full complement of content in all its guises, but also with a loyal and growing customer base.

At its attractive price, maybe our 9 year old will cease having to lug 10 lbs. of books to and from school daily, when all he needs access on any day is a page or two. Carrying 10 lbs and accessing 2 ounces really is rather silly. The Fire weighs but 15 ozs …. A touch Kindle at $200 plus lots of public domain content should be substantially cheaper than traditional hard copy while adding video and sound to the learning experience, so it’s not like the device represents an increase in operating costs. And teachers will be able to maintain dynamic curricula on the school’s servers, accessible at the touch of a screen. One can but dream, with makers of traditional – and very profitable – academic text books even now warming up their slush funds to delay the inevitable victory of digital delivery and consumption. It’s called the US taxpayer-funded abomination which is our public schooling system.

Meanwhile, until proposed screen designs which meld eInk (traditional Kindle and excellent in bright sun) and LCD (excellent in all other lighting conditions) are perfected and manufactured in volume, the Kindle Fire will have the same issues with readability as the iPad – meaning it’s unusable outdoors most of the time.

So the iPad soldiers on without any competition, all other tablet makers are in big trouble (Dead Pool: HPQ, RIMM; Two shots, back of skull: Asus, Acer, B&N Nook, Xoom, Sony) either because they are clueless drunks (Dead Pool) or overpriced with no apps or content (Two shots crowd).

For photographers, there’s little here. The Fire’s screen is small and the absence of apps, at least for now, debilitating. However, a rumored 10″ Fire in 2012 may change the competitive landscape and I most certainly hope it does. Competition is always good – have you checked you monoplistic provider’s cell phone bill recently between all your dropped calls?

Disclosure: Long AMZN stock and long AAPL 2012 call options.

The deserted city

Photographs

Amid the bustle.

While my snaps of cities are invariably taken during the hustle and bustle of a busy day, I tend to seek out silence and maybe a lone figure, to better show the beauty of a scene. Here are two examples. The first is near Mission Street:

In the spirit of Ambrose Bierce a friend writes:

“I can almost smell that big city, late afternoon, breezy smell, with that old immense highrise feel shrinking you down to size. Shadows and dazzling edifices reaching for the sky…..and, at the bottom, a boutique dress shop and the Wing Yap Noodle Factory.”

Ambrose Bierce Street, SF, named after the American satirist. Also known as Aldrich Street.
Looking south toward Annie Street. G3, kit lens @17mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 320.

The second is on lovely Leidesdorff Street in the Business District:

G3, kit lens @ 42mm, 1/400, f/5.6, ISO 320.

The G3’s sensor does a lovely job here, rendering an especially full, creamy tonal range.

City Hall SF

Architecture

Beyond impressive.

I finally corrected a major omission in my visual history of San Francisco. At last I went inside City Hall and I must say the experience was simply overwhelming. While the present 1915 structure is smaller than the original which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, its proportions are far more pleasing. The dome is one of the largest in the world and, as befits America’s most productive state, the building is taller than the Capitol in Washington DC. The floor space is some 500,000 square feet; Buckingham Palace, by comparison, is over 800,000 square feet. It looks like several marble quarries were called into service in its construction and the quality and condition of the building are breathtaking.

As befits a great democracy, access is amazingly easy. You have your bag checked and pass through an airport-style scanner and that’s it. You are free to wander wherever you want and no one hassles you if you take pictures. As luck would have it someone was having a marriage celebration during my visit, and the sound of Vivaldi lofting into the great cupola while I gazed on in awe made for a wonderful visit. I made my way up many back staircases and engaged several City employees in discussion, finding them to be invariably helpful and as thrilled to be there as was I.

All the interior snaps were made on the Panny G3 at ISO 1600 in RAW format. The G3 has two incredibly useful click-stop settings on its mode dial – C1 and C2. I have both set for aperture priority with C1 at ISO320 and C2 at 1600, making switching simplicity itself. No need to dive into fiddly LCD menus. Compared with the G1’s sensor I estimate the G3 is not one but two stops finer grained – ISO 1600 is close, as regards noise, to ISO 400 on the G1, which is pretty amazing. I switched on that auto dynamic range control in the G3’s menu (a feature not available in the G1) and it did a fine job of taming some of the extreme contrasts on what was a very sunny day, with sunlight pouring through the windows. No need to mess with multiple exposures and HDR techniques. The following snaps are mostly straight from the camera, converted from RAW to JPG in Lightroom 3.5 RC.

Beaux Arts magnificence.

Looking down into the main hall.

Gorgeous light on one of the second floor landings.

A third floor corridor. Acres of marble.

Looking down on the grand staircase from the first floor landing.

A view across the main hall.

All ages come to visit.

Lovely architectural details which even Piranesi would admire.

Rear of a second floor landing, light streaming in.

Marriage ceremony on the second floor balcony, opposite the main staircase.

Memorializing the visit.

One of the staircases.

All snapped on the G3 with the 14-45mm kit lens at ISO 1600 (except for the exterior which was at ISO 320), all interiors at full aperture and handheld.

If you find yourself in San Francisco, take some time to visit this special building.

Other domes of western civilization worth a visit? Start at the top – Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City – Bernini’s spherical original stretched just so by a wizard, transmuting the ordinary into the magical. Brunelleschi’s Cathedral in Florence – was anything more perfect ever built? One of the great meldings of art and engineering. Then the Pantheon, I suppose, if bigness is your thing. And St. Paul’s in London, remarkable for its light airiness from a nation more given to the lugubrious in its architecture. And, frankly, it would be unfair to exclude City Hall from that short list.

Original City Hall destroyed in 1906. Note the ungainly proportions.