Tag: apple

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Sunday Paper, Rucksack, Magazine, Camera, Pocket Watch, Notebook, Leather, Range Finder Camera, Camera, Ruck
Photo by Kevin Mueller on Unsplash.

The New York times and leaders within the democratic party agree that facial recognition technology is dangerous to civil liberties and must be banned.

The essential and unavoidable risks of deploying these tools are becoming apparent. A majority of Americans have functionally been put in a perpetual police lineup simply for getting a driver’s license: Their D.M.V. images are turned into faceprints for government tracking with few limits. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are using facial recognition technology to scan state driver’s license databases without citizens’ knowing. Detroit aspires to use facial recognition for round-the-clock monitoring. Americans are losing due-process protections, and even law-abiding citizens cannot confidently engage in free association, free movement and free speech without fear of being tracked.Evan Selinger and Woodrow Hartzog

Cybersecurity professionals are not impressed with Google's facial recognition technology which doesn't know when you're sleeping.

"If someone can unlock your phone while you're asleep, it's a big security problem," said cyber-security expert Graham Cluley.
"Someone unauthorised - a child or partner? - could unlock the phone without your permission by putting it in front of your face while you're asleep," he told BBC News.
"I wouldn't trust it to secure the private conversations and data on my phone."Chris Fox

Well, damn it! Now I actually have to learn the langue instead of hanging my hat on Perl as I have for the last twenty-five years.

A study conducted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) put Python at the top of the list of favorite languages among such contenders as Java, JavaScript, C++, and Go.
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To gauge the popularity of different languages, the IEEE's study ranked 11 data points from eight different sources: CareerBuilder, Google, GitHub, Hacker News, the IEEE, Reddit, Stack Overflow, and Twitter. Depending on the source, the IEEE looked at such factors as searches, new repositories, posts mentioning each language, and job postings made within the last 30 days. Using this method, Python was the only language that scored a 100% ranking.Lance Whitney

Apparently, people don't want to be happy and pursuing happiness can actually make us less satisfied with life. At least according to Nobel Prize-Winning Psychologist, Daniel Kahneman.

Kahneman draws a distinction between happiness, the momentary joy we feel when we do something pleasant like eat chocolate or hang out with friends, and life satisfaction, the feeling of contentment we experience when we look back at our lives with a sense we've accomplished something consequential.
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There is such a thing as too great a focus on happiness, which can crowd out a longer-term focus on life satisfaction. That approach is also probably not going to get you where you want to be.Jessica Stillman

Redefine what blogging is by looking back at what blogging was.

So, what is blogging?

I always return to Dave Winer's "unedited voice of a person" with the caveat that it should be free from self-editing as well as external. There are always going to some things we won't, or shouldn't, put online but second guessing ourselves in order to fit an agenda or image is as much to blame for losing that spontaneity.

There is a place for focused long form but the honesty of the personal blog should not be sacrificed at its altar.Colin Walker

After the macOS Catalina update, I've noticed that my iMac slows to a crawl and freezes to the point of useless and sometimes spontaneously reboots. Not a shutdown-restart type of reboot, the sudden black screen and startup sort of reboot. The Activity Monitor and Console apps have not been helpful in troubleshooting what might be the issue. David Shayer on TidBits offers some possibilities as to what may be the cause.

iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 Catalina have been unusually buggy releases for Apple. The betas started out buggy at WWDC in June, which is not unexpected, but even after Apple removed some features from the final releases in September, more problems have forced the company to publish quick updates. Why? Based on my 18 years of experience working as an Apple software engineer, I have a few ideas.David Shayer

I am not sure what Daniel means by put your files on your iPad but assuming he is using the Files app, accessing files is as simple as accessing his iCloud account in many ways including iCloud in Finder on macOS. If he means he wants direct access to the iOS file system - never gonna happen. The apps are sandboxed and the file system is encrypted by hardware.

Once you put your files on your iPad running iPadOS 13, you will find it really hard to move them off again. Unlike Android that acts like an external hard drive when connected to a computer, iPadOS doesn’t show the files from On My iPad in Files app when you connect with a sync cable to your macOS. And transferring those files with iCloud and Dropbox is really slow, days slow. And in my case, I have an older version of macOS with AirDrop that won’t talk to the newer iPad. So my last resort after being very frustated with all my wireless options was to remember that macOS provides File Sharing and I was able to add a Server on the Files app using an SMB path to my computer. Voila! All the files are transferring over to the computer very quickly. My persistence paid off.Daniel Brinneman

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Apple iPhone 11 Pro
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I pre-ordered an iPhone 11 Pro this morning in green and immediately felt buyers remorse. The purchase feels extravagant. Surely I could have gotten by a little longer with my iPhone 7, and it's cracked screen. The screen protector I bought the last time I repaired the phone after a drop onto the parking lot floor is keeping the glass from shredding my fingers and keeps the phone usable. But Phil Schiller is a masterful weaver of the Apple Reality Distortion Field (ARDF). I wanted the iPhone 11 Pro. I haven't felt this kind of lust for an iPhone since the metal and glass iPhone 4. I still have mine in a box somewhere.

Part of that feeling that I "spent too much money" is probably because I purchased more iPhone Pro that I can use. My iPhone 7 has 128GB of storage, of which 63GB is free. I've had the iPhone 7 for over two years which I think is enough time to fill the storage with apps, music, and photos. 128GB of storage was too much, but 64GB of storage was not enough. Unfortunately the iPhone 11 Pro comes in storage sizes that created the same dilemma. The 64GB version may not be enough, but the 256GB version is undoubtedly too much. Does Apple do this on purpose?

My wife and I talked about it, and she will inherit our eldest child's iPhone 6S, which is an upgrade from her now end-of-life iPhone 5 SE. She's not happy about the larger sized iPhones. The eldest child will take my iPhone 7 after we get the screen repaired. It's not much of an upgrade from an iPhone 6S. Our youngest already has a newer iPhone 8 we bought this spring, a college graduation gift. We don't expect to be making any more large Apple purchases for the next few years. I thought that would help me reduce that sting of my purchase but it was only by a little.

Most people use the word professional to mean something different than the dictionary definition. The phrase professional refers to someone whose primary source of income is derived from a specific activity. A professional carpenter makes money doing carpentry. A professional photographer makes money selling their photography services. Nowhere in the definition is the skill of the person pertinent. There are skilled professionals, and as anyone who has hired a lousy plumber knows, there are shitty professionals.

For some people, when they use the word professional, it is meant as a compliment. They see your art - your photography or painting or bookshelf you made - and they something ridiculous like "this is professional work". What I think they want to say is "your craft is excellent". I wish they would say that so that I don't have to say, "No. I don't do this for a living. This is a hobby".

Of course, others think that since professionals use specific tools, that if you use that tool, you must be a professional. Often people will see my Fuji X-T2 and comment, "I like your camera. I shoot a lot on my iPhone, but I want to get a professional camera like yours". There is no such thing as a professional camera, just like there is no such thing as a professional basketball shoe or professional saw or hammer. But many companies make millions of dollars selling people on that notion.

I am sure that there are people who make money using their iPhones. Some probably make money selling iPhone photos. But I think the Pro designation on this camera is just marketing signalling for "This is the best iPhone we make". It has nothing to do with professionalism.

The iPhone 11 is the capable, all-around iPhone. Apple started from there and is suggesting that if you want to go super deluxe, you can choose the more expensive and feature-packed iPhone 11 Pro. It's smart marketing.

So why did I decide I wanted an iPhone 11 Pro? Why not just upgrade to an iPhone XR or XS which are both available at reduced prices? The ARDF has convinced me that the cameras and computational photography features of the iPhone 11 Pro have value and are worth the expense. I certainly hope so, and I hope I can extract all of that value.

On many occasions, I have taken my Fujifilm X-T2 on a family outing for dinner or field trip in Philadelphia or New York City and regretted it. The Fujifilm camera is excellent for a dedicated photography field trip but gets in the way, especially on a dining table, when out on personal trips, trips where a capable point-n-shoot camera, something small enough to get out of the way when not in use, would be a better fit.

The new wide-angle lenses have a field of view (FOV) of 120º, which in 35mm full-frame terms is about 13mm. That's wider than the wide end of my Fujinon 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR which at 16mm has a FOV of about 74º. The 120º FOV is excellent for capturing expansive city views of parks, pavilions, bridges, etc. I can imagine the cityscape and the bridges at DUMBO around golden hour, sunset, and blue hour. A pocket Manfrotto tripod, and my iPhone 11 Pro would be the smallest kit I would need. If the Night Mode feature and battery life are as good as Apple claims, the iPhone 11 Pro would be a great day-trip walk-about camera kit for me.

The standard camera on the iPhone 11 Pro has a FOV of about 65º, which provide a 26mm full-frame equivalent FOV. That FOV is excellent for street photography and small group portraits, the kind you take when you are out with another couple at dinner or with your adult kids when you visit them on campus.

I take few self-portraits or portraits in general, but the 52mm full-frame FOV equivalent lens would be useful for photos of my beer glass when I visit craft ale breweries. It almost nearly matches the FOV of the traditional 35mm format nifty-fifty 50mm lens.

Yeah, I know, that sounds frivolous to me too. But what I do now is weird. I bring my Fujifilm X-T2 and Fujinon XF16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR lens with me to bars and craft ale taprooms so that I can get shots for my Untappd check-ins. I am a regular at a few local places, and the breweries and several patrons know me as the guy with the "serious" camera. They only see me taking photos of beer glasses. I sometimes get weird looks from patrons who don't understand.

I have some ideas for how I might use the "slow fire" - I hate the word already - feature. At the end of a recent movie, some of the actors were filmed in slow motion with water balloons bursting against their faces. I think that would be a cool thing to capture with the slow fire feature. Also, little slow fires of my young nephews doing goofy things.

When my kids were younger, we would spend a day at Great Adventure. I recorded a lot of photos and video on my iPhone from those and other trips. Then I stopped. Perhaps because editing anything longer than just a few seconds on iMovie on the iPhone was challenging and would drain the battery. Maybe I'll start doing more video again. Maybe. I don't know.

Before the iPhone 11 Pro announcement, I had considered purchasing a second camera, a Fuji X100F, as a second camera. It would be for those personal trips into Philly or "The City" where the Fuji X-T2 would be too cumbersome. But the X100F is expensive, and I debated with myself whether the purchase was prudent. The iPhone 11 Pro is costly also. But if it fits the "want" for a capable walk-about camera, perhaps in time I'll feel better about the purchase. I'll know in October when my phone is delivered.

Apple iPhone 11 Pro
Media Image Provided by Apple Co.