Category Archives: Hardware

Stuff

iPad Pro

iPad

Bigger and better.

The rumor that Apple will make a 12.9″ iPad for early 2015 sale is welcome indeed.

This will hopefully speed the migration of art and photography books to something of reasonable weight. Case in point, I’m reading Pierluigi De Vecchi’s splendid monograph on Rapahel and while the production values could not be improved upon, just lifting this tome to rest on one’s knees gives pause. It must come in at some 10 lbs.

Given the immense reduction in weight the iPad Air offers over previous versions, Apple should be able to offer generous battery life in the iPad Pro with little weight increase over the Air and the integrated touch screens coming to these devices will offer further weight savings. Price? My guess is under $1000 for the base model.

It may not be ‘think different’ but in this case ‘thing bigger’ definitely works.

6TB drives

Hardware

Capacities increase again.

Western Digital just announced 5 and 6TB capacity HDDs, the latter just $300.

Expect to see 10TB before long as new technologies achieve the heretofore impossible. The HDD is far from dead.

How to blow $7bn in 3 months

Computing

Monkey Boy rules!
All of the CEOs of Microsoft.

Microsoft closed its acquisition of a near-dead Nokia for $7bn in April, 2014.

Yesterday it announced 18,000 layoffs, mostly from the 25,000 Nokia workforce, cementing Ballmer’s achievement of perhaps the greatest waste of money in corporate history. And you thought the US military was a spendthrift?

New CEO Satya Nadella has a dream job. After all, how could anyone be worse than Ballmer?

Wall Street loved the move, naturally:

No need to get excited about anything MSFT makes. Yet. Excel is fine. Otherwise, fughedaboutit.

As for Ballmer, with a net worth of $18bn, he’s living proof of the dictum that has it “It’s who you know, not what you know”. Or should that be “Screw up and go up”?

Dirt cheap

Hardware

How much further can prices fall?

These seem to be falling faster in price than the Deutschemark in the Weimar Republic.

When I built the home theater in the vineyard home eight years ago, the 100″ screen with the overhead projector likely cost twice as much ….

There’s one born every minute

Lenses

A fool and his money ….


Click the image for Lomography’s site and hang on to your wallet.

Lomography specializes in selling plastic crap cameras to photographers idiots who desire to take crap pictures. It’s a winning combination, one must admit. The two are made for one another, proving yet again that not only is a fool and his money easily parted, but also that there are lots of fools.

Now the ‘anything to be different’ crowd who need technology, even if distinctly retro, to excuse their total lack of creativity and imagination can blow $600 on a lens first designed in 1840. This comes complete with the most ghastly rendering of OOF areas, dizzyingly bad, and with a set of drop in aperture stops because, let’s face it, for that sum of money who could possibly expect an adjustable iris diaphragm. (“Hang on love, gotta stop down. Dang, just dropped the stop in the cow patty.”)

Of course, if you dare use this on your digital Canon or Nikon, the self-combust device kicks in and your prized DSLR melts. You understand this is intended for film users only? But of course.