Bad Mac advice

Hall of Shame

Where not to go

It’s no great secret that newsprint is dead. Within a decade even the most powerful print media – WSJ, NYT, etc. – will have ceased publication using forests of trees. eInk technology (like in the Kindle) will add color and someone will design a two button interface almost as simple as a book. All those enviroloonies should be required to help capitalize the related R&D as they do want to save trees, no? And the advent of color will also dramatically reduce the price of art books – when the screen is transilluminated and has superior definition to traditional printing on reflective materials – what’s not to like?

Which brings me to the curious case of MacWorld magazine. ‘Curious’ because it begs the question why this trashy publication survives. When I got our first Mac a decade ago a relative gave me a subscription to this rag and it helped get me into the Mac ecosystem. That was ages ago and, like a fool, I still pay for a print subscription. At least until this one expires, that is.

This is simply the very worst place to go for objective advice about Macs. The magazine started life 25 years ago with funding from Apple. If you are not already holding your nose, you should be. Now purportedly independent, it is a sycophant’s dream for anyone getting a paycheck from 1 Infinite Loop. You see, they have yet to see an Apple product they do not like. Read any of their reviews and you will quickly realize that these are little more than regurgitated press releases.

Two cases in point. The other day they had a laudatory piece on Apple’s Time Capsule back-up hardware. Only thing they forgot to mention is that you cannot boot from the TC. So what are you going to do when your Mac’s drive crashes? Pull out the original OS X discs? Try and access TC that way? Do you even know how risky and time consuming this is? It’s not called Time Capsule for nothing. As a disaster recovery tool it is almost completely useless. But it ranks a rave review from MacWorld. No mention of the booting issue, of course.

Or their piece today on external hard drives. Without so much as opening the box they laud the overpriced LaCie Rugged. I own one and yes, I have dismantled it. Not from idle curiosity but because the bottom-of-the-line Western Digital drive inside failed just after the warranty expired (good business design, if you ask me). The full scope of the ‘rugged’ moniker was then exposed. The ‘ruggedness’ is comprised of four rubber strips inside, purportedly cushioning the drive from the case. Laugh – I did when I opened the case. And, of course, a 2mm thick jolly colored rubber covering on the case. Did MacWorld open the case? Did MacWorld try dropping the drive on a hard floor? Did MacWorld refuse advertising dollars from LaCie? Well, you can figure out the answers to those questions. (Hint: Not a ‘Yes’ in sight). So for a 2mm thick casing of rubber and four rubber bumpers (aggregate cost: 2 cents) LaCie gets $160 for something you can build yourself for $85; $70 for the drive and $15 for a self-powered USB enclosure. The assembly skill is especially low – even a GM production line worker could do it, although it will take you 2 minutes, while his union will make sure it takes an hour.

Let me illustrate. The drive is a 2.5″ SATA notebook drive – available for $70 in a 320gB size. The enclosure is a $15 2.5″ SATA enclosure from Tiger Direct. That price includes a leatherette case and a nice long USB connection cable with a pass-through connector to permit ganging. Why, they even provide the two screws and the screwdriver you will use to secure the drive in the case.


Detailed assembly instructions. Free screwdriver not shown.

Did you get that?

Oh! you want to add the ‘Rugged’ feature? Heck, blow $5 on some foam rubber and do 10 drives while you are at it.

MacWorld is a great place if you want to read Apple advertising and pay for it.

However, for objective comment just check in with the Apple Discussions section of Apple.com and see just how flawed many of Apple’s much hyped products are – like Time Capsule (worthless if your internal drive fails), Back To My Mac (terminally faulty), Airport Extreme wireless routing (the signal fluctuates for unknown reasons at anything over 10 feet from the router), glossy screens (useless for real users), dying Firewire (too bad about all those FW drives you bought), perennially ‘new’ connectors which obsolete your peripherals – and this is from Apple’s own site, for goodness sake.

Skeptical? Here’s today’s front page from just the Time Capsule ‘Discussion’ – a lot of comments and views for a device that ‘just works’, no?


It just works, right?

And that’s after Apple’s (very active) censorship of its Discussions forum.

Before you even think about any major software upgrade (OS X upgrades and security upgrades have been the worst in this regard), wait a month, read Apple’s Discussions, then decide whether to risk it. I have long adopted this approach and it has saved me countless hours of repair otherwise caused by Apple’s policy of releasing buggy software and having unpaid users test it for them – a practice Microsoft perfected years ago. You have already paid a 30% premium for the Mac; it’s nice that critical user feedback is free and that you don’t have to pay advertisers posing as journalists at MacWorld for it. Just let the first implementers serve as your reviewer of choice.

MacWorld magazine and its staff of shills is a much overdue entrant to this journal’s Hall of Shame.

Feeling blue

Photographs

It’s just your money, that’s all

Bought for several million dollars by the State of California a couple of years ago, the Piedras Blancas motel has, needless to add, stood abandoned ever since, with a forlorn government sign warning the owners (you and me) not to trespass. Well, as I paid for a slice of this place (though no one asked me first), I can trespass all I want and proceeded to do so with impugnity yesterday during a drive up Pacific Coast Highway.


Government at work. 5D, 24-105mm, ISO 250

You can see a QTVR of the old motel I made 30 months ago here. It does not look any different today, though the crooks in Sacramento have added a sign telling everyone they bought the place with money stolen from taxpayers to ‘preserve the pristine views’ or some such rot. Strange how there’s another 75 miles of better views to be had free on the way to Carmel from Cambria as you leave the now blighted motel.

More sordid data on the extent of this theft of taxpayers’ money appear here.

Here’s another – and I’ll bet you in 10 years time it will look far worse:


The State of California’s idea of a $10mm residence. 5D, 24-105mm, ISO 250

A simple reminder of the nine most dangerous words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

Wind Surfing

Photographs

Not exactly planned

I was driving up California’s finest road today, in search of elephant seals, but was distracted by a bunch (covey? clan? cult?) of wind surfers intent on doing their thing on this blustery afternoon. Given that the Pacific rarely gets above 60F, all these chaps come equipped with rubber suits. Indeed, some look as if they were born in them!


5D, 24-105mm at 55mm, 1/6000, f/6.7, ISO 250

I approached the beach where the surfers were only to find it covered with elephant seals. You make your own luck. A couple of quick snaps of the rubber-suited set (keeping the exposure short to preserve the highlights) and then a far friendlier ‘hullo’ to the somewhat chubbier lot lolling on the beach. I guess 65F is paradise for these denizens of the Pacific.


5D, 24-105mm at 105mm, 1/2000, f/6.7, ISO 250

As my 5D and a few lenses are always in the trunk, there’s no need to remember to ‘always carry a camera’. The surfer snaps reminded me that I must clean the 5D’s sensor – a rare bugaboo in a near perfect tool. The blobs in the huge expanse of sky were retouched in LR2 before publication. You can just see the internal reflection in the sky, as the lens was aimed almost directly into the sun.

Back when

Photographs

Remembering the old days

With the season-opening Australian Formula One race today, it seems only appropriate to celebrate the ‘business end’ of some 80 years ago, in the shape of the dash and wheel on a classic Bugatti.


5D, 100mm Macro, ring flash, 1/200, f/11, ISO 160

Made back in the days when men were men …. and women were men!

The brakes were no less refined and just as beautiful:


5D, 100mm Macro, ring flash, 1/200, f/9.5, ISO 160

And in case you thought pre-selector gearboxes were the latest and greatest in racing technology, Bugatti had that down in 1930 ….


Gear ‘lever’ on Bugatti’s pre-selector gearbox

Tomorrow’s viewfinder

Cameras

Well overdue

Take any consumer or better DSLR and you will find it comes with a more than decent lens. Computer design and mass manufacture has made these multi-element wonders but distant relatives of their generally awful forbears.

So worrying about the lens is not the primary matter of concern for the buyer of a good camera.

Ease of use is the decider, I suspect.

And as Apple testifies with its ghastly glossy monitors, first impressions are key to a sale, be it of computers, cars or cameras. No matter that the thing appalls you after a week of ownership. Like that over bright AV system, it looked good in the store.

With cameras, as with people, the eyes are the mirror of the soul, and for a photographer that means the first real feel he gets for a camera is by peering through the viewfinder. Mercifully, with full frame DSLRs, the view is every bit as big and bright as it was through your Nikon F of yore. However, the tradeoff for the (D)SLRs excellent viewfinding is greatly increased bulk, weight and noise, the latter due to the flapping mirror mandated by the design.

This user is cursed with mediocre eyesight. Thus it’s hardly any wonder that some 30 years of my life were spent pressing the button on a Leica M. All it took was one look through the magnificent finder of the M3, or even better, the M2, and you were sold. And the only place you can enjoy a like experience in today’s world is with the M8, at egregious cost. Even if you are Bill Gates, the thought of dropping a $7k camera+lens is going to inhibit your use. It’s the same reason no one drives his Ferrari in anger. So these jewels get little use in the real world.

That’s why I think whoever gets the viewfinder right – the sharp end of the user’s decision process – will be on to a good thing. It will not be Leica – they lack both the electronic skills and the necessary money.

I do think that company will be Panasonic. Recall the press release I referenced here. You have to realize that the Japanese, those masters of modern design, adulate the Leica rangefinder camera. They are leading collectors of the marque and it’s no wonder that a nation with such a refined sense of style and design would find the Leica M as something to look up to. And the Japanese are too smart to deny that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. As much is obvious to a between-the-lines reading of that Panasonic spokesman’s quote.

So, Panasonic, make that electronic viewfinder bright, blur free and with that fabulous suspended frame defining the field of view floating freely in space. And leave a bit of room around the frame so that the user can literally see what’s coming. Then we will have the best of all worlds. A zoom EVF with suspended brightlines, a slim and small mirror-free body, an offset eyepiece for added stability, no viewfinder hump and nothing more than a whisper when the button is pressed. Then the M2’s sublime design will have come full circle, though its replacement will be a mere fraction of the cost. Heck, give the thing a manual wind-on lever. That will stop gratuitous snapping if nothing else will.


The Leica M2 finder – Panasonic’s design brief. The best yet