Why buying a PC at retail sucks

This morning I was in the electronics section of John Lewis.  There was a large stand demonstrating Apple equipment and it could have been lifted straight from the Apple Store.  Then there was a space about 3 times that size dedicated to selling PCs from other manufacturers.  I wandered over to a Sony all in one PC.  The first thing that popped up on the screen was a message from McAfee Antivirus warning that the PC “may be at risk”.

Many computer buyers are already paranoid about this kind of thing, and with Apple vocally touting their less frequently infected wares, is it any wonder they do so well, while the rest of the PC industry is struggling with falling sales.  Seriously, I’m no sales guru but I surely it’s obvious that “this computer may be at risk” is not a good sales pitch.

I’m sure it’s not just Sony; the same would probably have happened with any machine I had picked in the store.  Of course without internet access, the anti virus programs will be out of date and complaining.  But on a display machine?  One that’s meant to generate sales?  A big D minus – must try harder.

I don’t want to live with a cow called Mabel

Daily, people are bombarded by conflicting messages.  On the one hand, we are told the economy is in a dire position and that what we need to do is get our wallets out and spend.

Conversely, we are told about the perilous situation the environment is in, and that we should stop buying things we don’t need, take fewer (long distance at least) holidays and generally go easier on the planet.

No wonder so many people seem somewhat confused and permanently stressed.

I can see both sides of the argument and to extent find myself agreeing with both of them.  However they are such conflicting objectives, such diametrically opposed ideals, that it’s hard to come to a final position on the matter.  In fact by the time your work for the day is done, and you finally have a few moments to meditate on these matters, it’s all to easy to just go for some form of escapism in TV, books or computer games.

Our economy is largely based upon people consuming things they don’t need.  We actually NEED very little.  Food, shelter, warmth, clean drinking water…that’s about it really.

You might enjoy a new car but will you actually be happier?  Probably not.

So how do we square this circle?  How do we achieve an economy that can sustainably employ people without using up every last resource Earth has to offer?

There are those who advocate a return to a pre industrial society.  This is simply not going to happen.  Yeah let’s all sleep in one big room, along with all our pigs, goats and a cow called Mabel – the ultimate in open plan living….

There must be some middle ground where we get to keep the good things which have been invented over the past 300 years, without seeing it as a catastrophe if we begin to consume less, year on year.

Your thoughts?

Queen comes within 20 feet of certain death

“This paper can exclusively reveal, that the Queen has been mere feet from almost certain death on more than one occasion in 2011.  On one occasion she was traveling with Prince Philip down a single carriageway A Road at 60mph.  Another vehicle, also traveling at 60, went past in the other direction.  With a closing speed of 120mph, an error of a few feet on the part of either driver would have spelt a grisly end for all concerned.”

This is the kind of hogwash which is pumped at us night and day and day and night by the media in Britain.  Take something perfectly ordinary, imagine the worst possible consequence of the situation, and pump out a doom mongering headline.  If possible try and link it to cancer too.  No wonder so many people have lines of stress and worry etched into their faces.

It’s not just the newspapers either.  The BBC is guilty too – if not more so.  To paraphrase a recent article, “After a period of low rain, if it continues to not rain, we will have a drought.”  No shit.  But it gives them the chance to write about DROUGHT WARNING.  Sound the alarm!!!

So. Stop reading that tripe.  Have a drink.  Be glad you live in Britain.  It really is a rather lovely place.  It’s got a Queen and everything.

I can’t stop quitting and I’m grumpy.

“What could I possibly say that’s of any interest to the world at large?” is the question I keep asking myself.  I do enjoy writing now and then but in between the fits and starts, I’m routinely overcome by the general noise of the internet.  How to say something of worth?  What can I say which hasn’t already been articulated with more skill elsewhere?

To a certain extent, the same applies to photography.  I make a decent image now and again, with friends sometimes saying, “Wow, you’re really good.”  But friends would say that, wouldn’t they?  Even the briefest nose around Flickr or more recently 500px, however, and it puts one’s so called skills into perspective.  It’s not just the quality of the work – there have always been master artists, but the sheer quantity of it.  Tens and tens of thousands of people are churning out amazing images every day.  And I come away thinking well what’s the point of adding more third tier images to the mash?

I look at the blogs some people write and they are so upbeat and affirming.  I want to be upbeat and affirming.  They tell everyone that, yes they too can make it in their oversubscribed field of endeavour.  “Listen,” they declare, “If this boy can make it, you can too.”  Can I?  Really?  I’m not sure make make it would even mean in my own context.

I guess I have some notion that I could become a self employed artiste or some crap, sticking it to the man by telling my corporate employer I’ve had enough of his job.  For the record my job is pretty good as jobs go.  People spend a lot of time and money to do what I do.  However a decade in any industry can rub a little of the shine off, can’t it?

So I find myself contemplating ways to scale up some kind of self employed business while scaling down my “work” commitments, all the while leaving my family unaffected financially.  Then I realise that’s quite an ask, so I become despondent and quit.  Again and again.  Let’s be clear, I have no excuse at all for despondency; my lot is good.  It happens all the same.

Occasionally some event or other will spur me to write on political grounds.  I will get all fired up and send angry letters to my local MP or David Cameron.  I always get a polite reply; either of agreement, saying that what can be done is being done, or telling me I’m wrong.  Then I continue about my business as normal.

During school, I discovered that playing the guitar was a good way to attract females.  A bit of Wonderwall and they were like moths to a flame – okay maybe not, but this geeky non sportsman finally felt like he had an angle.  In the sixth form I even played in a couple of bands.  I think we mainly sucked but it was a good laugh.  To this day I still strum the same old tunes a few time a week, thinking about the career in music that wasn’t.  Of course, the fact that I never bothered to put in the time and effort to achieve a standard which would make that possible, we shall ignore.

The common thread that runs through all of these, is one of quitting.  Try a bit.  See some moderate success after limited effort.  Quit before actually failing.

If you’re expecting me to do a Stephen Fry now and round this off with some nicely crafted prose, I must disappoint you.  This was mainly a splurge of thought to keyboard.  I want to be positive.  I want to write something that will improve the day of the reader.  I don’t want to be the angry internet ranter.  I have no excuse for being so.  The fact is that right now, I’m just a bit grumpy.

Why the phone hacking suspects should be cut some slack

Rupert and James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson, various Metropolitan Police officers, Glenn Mulcaire the private detective; just a few of the names linked with the ongoing phone hacking scandal.

Whilst we have indeed been presented with some rather compelling evidence against these people, we should all pause before saddling up our high horses. These individuals are as entitled to a free and fair trial, before a jury of their peers, as anyone else. To deny them that, is to make oneself complicit in denying a person the justice they deserve.

It may well be that the justice they end up receiving is a lengthy term in prison and should that be the case, I doubt Kleenex shares will see an upsurge. However we would all do well to remember that thus far, most of the evidence against them has been presented by rivals to the Murdoch empire (for which I have no love whatsoever) and the government controlled BBC.

If we’re going to pitch our tents on Mount Moral High-ground, let’s make sure we actually have a case for being on said mount.

Will Apple ditch the pro creative market?

Before I begin I should point out that I write this as the layest of lay people.  I write with no inside knowledge of the industries concerned; these are simply my observations and reading between the line-ings.

So the question I put before the house is: “Will Apple ditch the pro creative market?”

It is oft mentioned that the Mac now only accounts for one third of Apple’s revenue, with the other two thirds consisting of iPod/iPhone/iPad sales, the iTunes music/movie store and of course the phenomenally successful App Store.

However I don’t believe there’s an equation that says consumer success = shutdown of pro departments.  If there’s profit to be made then why not keep going?  What I wish to point out is a few things that Apple HAS done which lead me to question their commitment to the pro market.

1. Glossy screens

Aside from a couple of build to order options for the MacBook Pro, Apple no longer offer any matte display options, including the stand alone cinema display.

Almost everyone working in the professional photo or video sectors, where colour accuracy is critical, will tell you they prefer a matte screen to a glossy one.  Glossy screens look great in a shop and certainly give one’s photos a good deal of punch.  However they also tend to crush dark greys into black and are not suitable for people who need to know that what’s on the screen is what’s going to come out of the printer.  Indeed on his website’s gear section, well known photographer, Chase Jarvis says this about the glossy display:

“We’re up to 4 of these and they are slowly growing on us [Dartanyon at least]. The glossy display takes a little getting used to, but we are finding a place for Apple’s latest display.”

As a normally vocal proponent of Apple products who can be found marketing Apple’s Aperture software here, it is hardly a glowing recommendation.  Ironically in that video, you actually see him and his team working with the old school matte Cinema Display.

2. Discontinuation of XServe

With the discontinuation of the XServe server product, Apple have left a hole in many a production house’s IT strategy.  Their suggestion that one can use either a Mac Mini or Mac Pro running OS X Server (which is soon to be integrated into OS X Lion) is a little optimistic.  The Mac Mini is a consumer device with neither the robustness nor the performance to run high I/O mission critical functions.  The Mac Pro on the other hand is not rack mountable and does not feature server basics such as multiple power supplies.

Again I make no pretence at being a server expert of system admin but Apple used to provide a one stop shop for all your creative editing needs.  Now X Serve users will be forced to look elsewhere.  Referring to Chase Jarvis once again:

“The venerable XServe is now off of Apple’s menu … discontinued. We’ve got 2 running our XSan network. Dartanyon hasn’t quite figured out what we’ll be doing going forward.”

3. Final Cut Pro X

Anyone with quarter of an ear to the ground in the video editing scene will know the stink that Apple has created with the release of this product.  Briefly, after several years in development, the latest version of Final Cut Pro lacks so many basic elements considered essential by pro editors, whilst simultaneously dumping elements of Final Cut Studio such as “Color”, not to mention Final Cut Server.

A brief search will give you more detail (and indeed accuracy) than I ever could about the specifics, but suffice it say that a common feeling is that it should be called iMove Pro.  It’s unclear whether this was a genuine attempt by Apple to foist a reinvented wheel upon pro video editors or whether they are in fact deliberately dumbing down the product with a view to appealing to more of a mass audience.

Either way they must have known that this would never sit well with existing pros; doing away with the “Color” component of Final Cut Studio has left people who made careers out of colour correction high and dry.  Unless something which looks and feels more professional finds its way out of Cupertino soon, Adobe and Avid will soon find themselves with an increase in trade.

4. iOS effect on OSX

OSX Lion is set to adopt quite a few iOS like features.  From the (imho pointless) Launchpad app launcher, which mimics the icon grid seen on iOS devices, to the Mac App Store, OSX and iOS will continue to look more and more similar.  (Anyone who wants to know what OS11 will look like should keep an eye on iOS over the next few years – it is only a matter of time before the two systems are one and the same.)  A nice little grid of icons may be fine on a mobile phone but on a high end number crunching computer it represents nothing more than a massive dumbing down – a reduction of the system to the lowest common denominator of user competence.

Indeed OSX Lion itself and FCPX are only to be available as downloads from the Mac App Store.  This is fine from a consumer perspective but what about pro studios with 50 machines, some of which need to be kept offline?  Why is Apple so unforthcoming with support for this segment – the segment which created the halo effect on which so much subsequent success has been based.

5. War on the file system

For details on this, see my previous post on the very topic.  Doing away with the file system may be an idea for those who have no clue about computers, and for day to day personal use I’m sure auto syncing of documents to the cloud will be great.  However I fail to see how any of this will help creative professionals or indeed any other sector which has to wrangle 10′s if not 100′s of terabytes of data.

Again this is but a series of observations which others and I have made of late.  I don’t claim to know what they mean when taken as a whole but I have my suspicions.  It would be interesting to hear from those who, amongst all of the above, can argue for Apple’s continued commitment to the pro market.  Personally I’m just not seeing it.

At the recent WWDC conference Apple continually referred to the “Post PC” era.  (increasingly referring to the Mac as a PC when previously they had used PC as a derogatory term for Windows machines.)  In the professional arena however, the PC – as in large powerful lump of a machine, is not going anywhere soon.  Perhaps rather than this being a Post PC era, it’s that Apple Inc. is a Post PC company?

Apple, Microsoft and the filesystem

Something of a dividing line seems to have been drawn recently by Microsoft and Apple although I have not heard anyone mention it as yet.  The two companies have come down on opposite sides of a philosophical argument about the future of computing.  The topic in question – the filesystem.

By this I don’t mean NTFS vs HFS+, I mean the question of whether the user should be aware of the filesystem at all?

In the recent WWDC11 keynote presentation, Steve Jobs placed Apple’s flag in the sand when he said, and I paraphrase, that Apple had been working for years to get rid of the filesystem.  In the future, we should expect to access our files from the App which pertains to that file type.  The physical location of the file is not really relevant – indeed one should expunge such thoughts from the mind.

This approach can be seen in the way that programs such as iPhoto and Aperture attempt to prevent the user from interacting directly with the photos stored on their computer; they should instead be accessed only via the application itself.

Conversely, in a recent video about the forthcoming Windows 8, Microsoft specifically said, “Because it’s a PC, it has a filesystem.”  They continue to allow, nay encourage us, to use the filesystem but seem also to be working on making it easier to access files wherever they reside on the system.

In the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs talked about the learning curve of a filesystem and how new users find it very hard to understand.  My own parents were quite happy working with MS-DOS and command line interfaces, while children get on and use whatever is placed before them, seemingly without effort of any description, so I’m left to wonder who exactly finds the file system so incomprehensible?

Of course, Apple can’t magically do away with the need for their devices to have an underlying filesystem.  It’s just that they don’t want the user to be aware of or have access to it.

But if I can’t see my files on the disk, how do I move them between my devices?  Enter iCloud, Apple’s exceedingly slick looking service which is intended to store all the documents you create and send them to all your other devices without any user intervention.

This is great if you live in a location where high speed internet access is pervasive.  However, what about third world countries, or indeed rural England where such luxuries do not exist?  One could of course argue that many people in the Third World cannot afford Apple products (nor can many in the First World for that matter) but that detracts from the central point about Apple’s medium term goal to do away with the filesystem.

Personally my preference is for the Microsoft approach.  I’m all for easy access to files from within applications, and indeed for seamless synching between devices, but at the end of the day, my files are my files and I want access to them at an operating system level.  I am not a fan of kiosk computing where the user is banished from seeing the beating heart of his machine.

Of course I’m not a computing visionary, I’m just someone arguing for the status quo.  However, by reducing computing to the lowest common denominator of user competence, Apple are in effect leaving behind the people who made them successful in the first place.  Their first ever computer let’s not forget was a self assembly kit!

I guess this is to be expected though; in 2007 they changed their name from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. signaling that computers are no longer their main focus.  They are now a consumer electronics company with a big finger in the music/media pie.  Indeed the Mac now accounts for only about 1/3 of their revenue.

They will no doubt continue to produce devices of beguiling slickness and shininess which do the things most people want to do with minimum fuss.  However for anyone with a genuine interest in computing itself I won’t be surprised if before the decade is out, Apple are products are as relevant as a Sony Walkman or a DVD player.

Call of Duty: Black Ops – the final straw

Okay, first-world rant coming up.  On the stage of life, it really doesn’t feature much more than a freckle on an elephant’s arse but anyway here goes:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was, in my opinion, an excellent mulitplayer game.  It took a little time to grow accustomed to the matchmaking system but after a couple of days I was enjoying it.  That was until the cheating got way out of control.  I lost count of the number of times I watched replays of myself being shot when there were two walls between myself and the gun in question, with no line of sight at all.  It seemed there was a hack for everything.

Enter CoD: Black Ops which I thought should alleviate the cheating problem somewhat due to its use of dedicated servers, policed by admins with kick privileges.  Whether it has had that effect I shall never know because within the first half hour I was pretty well stonewalled by something else; a downside to dedicated servers – server rules.  No grenade launcher.  No flame thrower.  No sniping.  No this no that blah blah blah.  Certainly no playing the game as it was originally intended.  It’s worse than being in school.

I was kicked from one server because I had the temerity to moan about their “no running” rule.  NO RUNNING???!!?  I mean there aren’t expletives that do it justice.

I started gaming on Doom and Quake.  My mates would lug their full desktop PCs round to my house and we’d do all night LAN parties.  That was in the day (damn right I’m saying “In my day”) when networking was hard and you needed some technical nous to play at all.  And once it was working we had the best time that’s ever been had with computer games.  In the week we might also try and steal an hour or two on BT’s Wireplay service at 1p/minute on dialup with 250ms pings.

The overriding thing was that it was fun.  Really fun.  Everyone was there for a good time.  Sure we used to talk smack with copious jokes about other people’s mothers but it was nothing more than banter.  Now the PC servers are overrun by these specimens, whose role model seems to be Heinrich Himmler, and whose idea of banter is an instruction (said with venom) to cease living.

I am, as you can tell, disappointed.  The fact that my old gaming laptop achieves lower frame rates and poorer quality visuals in Black Ops than in MW2 doesn’t help.  However that’s not the real issue.  My mates and I were online gaming right at the very crest of the wave, long before it was cool.  It’s like this “thing” we had has just been ruined by a bunch of imbecilic tools, who with no brainpower or skill, have been able to plug in and play.

I guess I should stop trying to recapture some mythical golden moment of gaming, keep the £39.99 in my wallet and move on.  The industry certainly has.

I have engaged the Aperture 3.1 autopilot

Ever since I purchased Aperture 3, I have struggled with performance issues on what I’ve always felt was a perfectly adequate iMac.  It seems that I was right in that regard because since the latest 3.1 update, Aperture has been a different application.  Whereas I used to love its interface but lament its slowness (so much so I almost moved to Lightroom 3), it is now fast and responsive.

Previously I had only been running it with very small libraries but was still having issues.  The 3.1 update has made so much of a difference to speed and reliability, I have finally moved my entire iPhoto library across to Aperture.  It is great to have all my photos in one location without the top heaviness of trying to work between applications.

Also, Apple obviously spent a long time working on the whole managed file system that Aperture offers.  For a long time though, I’ve thought that I know better, so have been using a referenced file approach but in quite a haphazard fashion. This has lead to some Masters being in the Aperture library, some referenced, and some in iPhoto.  As someone who likes his ducks in a row, this was driving me nuts.

So given the ease with which Aperture 3 allows you to relocate masters if you wish, I have decided to give it carte blanche to store my files how it wants.  A fully managed library.  No meddling, no tinkering with physical file locations.  My photo management is now running on autopilot.  It scares me just a teensy bit, and as such I do have backups but if it works, the time and hassle saving will be well worth it.

Fingers crossed!

Struggling with focus while shooting action

This blog post is going to be something of a cry for help.  Today I went down to the local Motocross track hoping to capture some great action images.  I had a limited amount of success but too many of the pictures were out of focus.

I tried a variety of shutter speeds, ranging from 1/30 (which was always going to be blurry) to 1/1000.  Even at 1/1000 it seemed to be really hit and miss as to whether I could nail the focus.  Sometimes nothing was in focus and other times the focus was on the wrong part of the image.  I never managed to achieve a razor sharp lock on the rider’s helmet which is what I was after.

The gear in question was a Nikon D90 with both the 18-105mm 3.5-5.6 and also 135mm F2.

I tried autofocus with panning, and also manually focusing on a predetermined point in the frame and waiting for the riders to drive into position.

What techniques can I try in future, or is this a problem with the AF speed on the D90?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

Gavin