When you bought your first DSLR, you probably got it with a kit lens. These lenses are cheap, and not really top-notch quality. If you bought a prime or a high-end zoom later, you know a kit lens can’t beat it. However, there are still some reasons to use a kit lens. They may not always be the best choice, but they certainly have their purpose.
I tell my students to NOT buy a new lens when they buy their first, beginner DSLR. There’s no point. The kit lens is “good enough” for beginners until they learn how to use the camera and create great images with it. Only once you know what kind of photographer you are should you start looking to buy replacement lenses.
As of today, Pocket is joining forces with Mozilla.
Pocket will continue on as a wholly-owned, independent subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation. We’ll be staying in our office, and our name will still be on the wall. Our team isn’t changing and our existing roadmap has been reinforced and is clearer than ever. In fact, we have a few major updates up our sleeves that we are really excited to get into your hands in the coming months.
I hope this is good news for the Pocket team. I’ve been a huge fan (and, apparently a heavy user – according to Pocket, I’m in the top 1% of readers for the past four years!) and really like the service.
The Billy bookcase is perhaps the archetypal Ikea product. It was dreamed up in 1978 by an Ikea designer called Gillis Lundgren who sketched it on the back of a napkin, worried that he would forget it. Now there are 60-odd million in the world, nearly one for every 100 people – not bad for a humble bookcase.
In fact, so ubiquitous are they, Bloomberg uses them to compare purchasing power across the world.
These may be the only truly disposable furniture I’ve ever owned. While they are cheap, easy to assemble bookcases, they always seem pretty flimsy. Whenever I’ve moved, I’ve always just thrown out the old Billy and bought a new one.
Only a handful of cities can afford the two-week-long, über-expensive bonanza. Unless something changes, angry citizens who don’t want to pay for a bunch of useless stadiums are going to force the IOC to decide on a semi-permanent set of hosts.
I’d be sad to see the Olympics disappear but it would make economic sense if they did. They don’t provide nearly the benefits the IOC or organizing committees promise. There’s been talk the last few years of having a “permanent host city” (Vancouver comes up often because of it’s existing infrastructure and suitable weather for both Summer and Winter Olympics) or to even do one of the suggestions in the article – separate events in separate cities.
> Every phonemaker on the planet has been gunning for Apple for a decade (and a bunch of them are no longer in business). Apple’s speedy and continuous reinvention has kept the competition at bay. New features, new materials, and new designs are cranked out like clockwork, year after year, and at a scale that has become truly astounding. The difficulty of the engineering, manufacturing, and marketing integration required is hard to overstate. And each year, Apple’s products get better.
Well stated. Apple’s products continue to raise the bar. At the same time they continue to get more complex, more sophisticated.
And with that rise in complexity comes cracks in the process. As Dan Moren points out in Adventures in Siri failures, inconsistency is an issue that bedevils Siri.
But to me, this is not a slam at Apple. It is more a statement about the nature of complexity. If today’s Siri was a beta release, you would marvel at the performance, at Siri’s ability to turn your spoken words into text, then translate that text into commands. Siri does a solid job at both of those things, able to do them via a device on your wrist.
Where the frayed edges show is in the bleeding edge, where Siri is asked to infer context, to walk the tree of commands into unknown territory.
When I say “Remind me at xxx to do yyy”, Siri inevitably gets it right (barring a bad net connection, overloaded server, or background noise). Some syntax is bulletproof.
The stumbles come when Siri is asked to tackle more complex contextual parsing. Try telling Siri, “Remind me when the moon is full to do the laundry”. Siri will gladly create that reminder, but not knowing that “when the moon is full” refers to an event, the whole thing is posted as a dateless generic reminder. For more on laundry needs, contact 2ULaundry for assistance.
Is that Siri’s fault? Are we right to complain when the cracks show? Should Apple play it safe and only have Siri respond to bulletproof syntax?
My two cents? I enjoy puzzling along with Siri, trying to figure out a way to get Siri to understand the more complex queries. But I also know enough to know what Siri does well, to stick with the reliable when I need to get something done.
We think Apple will win an Oscar in the next five years. That’s how long it will take for Apple to scale its original content spend from less than $200m today to $5-7b. The reason why expect $5-7b in Apple original content spend in five years is because Apple must catch up to Netflix and Amazon, the former of which will likely be spending more than $10b per year at that point.
Wait, what? Apple? An Oscar?
Not such an outlandish claim, actually. Apple is still dipping their toes in the original content waters. But once that wheel starts turning, they’ll make deals with quality content creators, in the same was as Netflix and Amazon. This is the new studio system.
The New York Times does a nice play-by-play on what exactly went down last night.
If you have not yet seen the flub, here’s the video. Once you read the New York Times story, watch the video again. It will make a lot more sense.
WATCH: 'La La Land' announced as #Oscars Best Picture winner, but only until a mistake is realized with 'Moonlight' being the real winner. pic.twitter.com/wYsUngcdwe
In 2010, Steve Jobs introduced the first iPad as a new product category between the smartphone and notebook. It ended up dramatically shifting demand in the PC industry, but sales have since plateaued. Here’s what Apple can do, has done and is doing to build iPad into the Post-PC future of computing.
And:
The reason Apple is now increasingly targeting PCs in its iPad advertising–rather than other tablets–is that there’s little value left in the outside “tablet market” to grab. Not even the second place tablet maker Samsung is doing well in tablets.
Interesting, thoughtful piece. A bit of a long read, but if you are interested in the business side of the iPad and Mac, worth your time.
When I picked up a pair of Apple’s wireless AirPods a few weeks ago, I thought the included charging case was a clever touch.
But the case wound up being so useful that it spoiled me for Apple’s other wireless earbuds, the BeatsX. After two weeks of testing a pair of BeatsX headphones, I’ve found they also fall short of the AirPods in one make-or-break area: battery life.
And there are other drawbacks, too, The AirPods case, with its satisfying clasp, is an instant Apple design classic, whereas the included BeatsX silicone case doesn’t always completely protect your headphones — sometimes parts of the cable end up sticking out. And it gathers lint. Just look at it.
If you are trying to decide between BeatsX and AirPods, this take is worth reading. The difference between the two carrying cases is just one small piece of a larger puzzle, just a taste of each respective product’s approach to design, but in my opinion, a telling taste.
If nothing else, take a look at the image of the BeatsX case in the linked post, then imagine wrestling a rubbery, springy, coiled BeatsX headset into that case. Compare to the plop, plop of dropping your AirPods into their case. Then add in the take on battery life.
If that matters to you, you’re likely an AirPods customer.
The unique nature of the Academy Awards extends to its carpet: It isn’t even a traditional red.
Instead, the carpet is closer to burgundy and has been for the last 15 years. The exclusive shade — called Academy Red — is supposed to flatter the A-list actors who are photographed and filmed walking on it. It’s a secret color, one whose precise specifications the show’s organizers won’t reveal for fear of copycats.
The secrecy surrounding the carpet illustrates the exacting nature of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the annual awards show. And it’s just one quirk of the custom carpet.
I just learned more than I ever thought I would about the carpet at the Oscars.
iPhones that have undergone any third-party screen repair now qualify for warranty coverage, as long as the issue being fixed does not relate to the display itself, according to an internal memo distributed by Apple today. MacRumors confirmed the memo’s authenticity with multiple sources.
This is great news for those of you who have had your screens replaced.
Fifteen years ago, Tim Pyle was animating spaceships for Invader Zim on Nickelodeon. These days, he illustrates exoplanets orbiting stars in the Milky Way.
This week, Pyle watched from the office he shares with Robert Hurt on the Caltech campus in Pasadena as the internet exploded over their latest artwork. NASA announced on Wednesday the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets around a star called TRAPPIST-1 nearly 40 light-years away, some of which orbit in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist. Pyle and Hurt provided the illustrations that came with the news, artistic renderings of unknowable worlds that only show up in data as tiny blips.
The artist renderings of what these new planets might look like are fascinating.
Communications experts describe “um,” “aah,” “you know” and similar expressions as discourse markers, interjections or verbal pauses.
They often occur when we are trying to think of the next thing we are going to say, Susan Mackey-Kallis, an associate professor at Villanova University who teaches public speaking, said in an email.
When stakes are high or we are nervous — in a job or media interview, or during a speech, presentation or conference call — we tend not to breathe as much and we talk faster, so our words get ahead of our thoughts
With the explosion of podcasting comes an equal explosion of people not trained in public speaking. The funny thing is the fix is easy but hard to do. I used to have a really bad stutter until a family friend explained why I did it and gave me a couple of simple exercises. One was, “Don’t say anything until you know what you’re going to say” and the other was, “just stop talking and think about what to say next”. Now, 99% of the time, I no longer stutter.
Unlike traditional video cameras, which capture whatever is happening in front of them, 360 cameras capture everything happening in every direction, offering a full spherical view of the surroundings.
Each of these all-seeing mechanical eyes is different. The best ones are truly omnidirectional—meaning they capture their full surroundings instead of a truncated portion of the scene. The most convenient cameras also produce videos that can be edited and shared with simple software tools and don’t require any laborious stitching or post-processing. For the purposes of this article, we’ll look at the cameras that hit those points: 360 degrees of capture with an easy path to editing and sharing.
With Ar/VR “on the horizon”, more and more 360 video is showing up. If you’d like to start creating your own content, this is a good primer to help you get started. I’ve been using a Ricoh Theta S 360 camera and, while it doesn’t work for every situation, it can create some interesting images and video.
Here’s a 360 photo of my photography group last Saturday.
As always, our group really appreciates the great staff and hospitality at @MahonyAndSons! We had a great time! – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
In the months leading up to the Oscars, we tossed out dozens of ideas for Ellen to try out. The one she liked had her simply tweeting a selfie from the stage, with the audience behind her. On an impulse, during the rehearsals for the show on Saturday afternoon, she spotted the seating card for Meryl Streep, who would be on the aisle in the third row. Ellen rehearsed going down and taking a selfie with Meryl, just as an option.
As it happens, Samsung had paid a lot of money that year to be a sponsor of the Oscars… a LOT of money. Some representatives of Samsung were at the rehearsal, watching Ellen practice this great moment… with her iPhone. They were a little… concerned.
We all know that selfie wasn’t a spontaneous moment so it’s interesting to see how it came about.
On Saturday, Third Man Pressing finally opens for business.
On the Tuesday before opening day, Third Man Pressing is alive with activity. Blackwell is in good spirits because a new hire has told him this is the best job he’s ever had. Machines are whirring; Detroit rock is blasting overhead. Not a single detail is left untouched: from the stacks of lilac-purple vinyl to the red-splashed walls, the prevalence of the bold Third Man color palette is almost dizzying.
We will never again have a format so wonderfully tactile as vinyl. I have nothing to play records on anymore and have no vinyl but I still have a fondness for the physicality of holding a record.
When text messaging was simple, SMS worked beautifully. You could send 160 characters to anyone with a cellphone, and they’d receive it the same way they would a phone call. In the age of flip phones and nine-key texting, that was all anyone needed. But when texting gave way to group messaging, video calls, and (Sent with Fireworks), the SMS standard just couldn’t keep up anymore.
And so users ran to solutions like WhatsApp, which grew huge audiences on the back of one simple idea: it’s like texting, only better and free. Apple built a huge devoted fanbase for iMessage by adding features right on top of texting. SMS squandered its tremendous inherent advantage—it’s built into your phone, so everyone has it—by steadfastly refusing to evolve. It raises a fascinating hypothetical: if carriers had stopped charging for texts and added in new tech like group chats and stickers, would the likes of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and GroupMe even exist?
It’s hard to overstate how convenient I find iMessage. On the rare occasions I “see the green” when I text someone, it’s really deflating.
If you look at the front and rear bumpers on many new cars, you’ll notice little squares and circles about the size of potato chips sitting right there in the plastic bumper covers. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know why they’re there! I’m about to tell you.
Earlier this week I posted about Jeremy Brett being my favorite Sherlock Holmes. I received a lot of great feedback from that, so I thought I’d tell you my other favorite fictional detective, Poirot.
David Suchet is absolutely spectacular in his depiction of Agatha Christie’s famous detective. I have watched these shows over and over again, enjoying them each time.
If you are into the idea of buying a Nintendo Switch, you’ll want to watch this video, if only to get a sense of the different core accessories that you’ll want to consider, which will add to the $300 price tag.
Brianna Olivas says her rose gold iPhone 7 Plus exploded and began smoking Wednesday morning when her boyfriend grabbed his phone and began recording. The video, which Olivas shared on Twitter later that day, shows smoke pouring out of one side of the phone and the iPhone’s case melting away.
Here’s the tweet, embedded video:
So my IPhone 7 plus blew up this morning ? was not even using it, literally no explanation for this pic.twitter.com/sQ8CJt4Y69
While the dramatic video may bring to mind the now infamous Samsung Galaxy Note7, which was recalled after handsets began bursting into flames, there is no evidence what Olivas experienced is tied to a wider problem.
And:
Olivas says she has since turned the phone over to Apple. Reps have told her they are conducting tests and expect to know more within a week. For its part, an Apple spokesperson says the company is aware of the video. “We are in touch with the customer and looking into it.”
We need safer battery tech. Lots of smart minds are working full-time on this problem.
Last night, developer Victoria Fierce had some harsh words for Vice President Mike Pence. Incensed over the Trump administration’s recent rollback of transgender protections, Fierce let loose on Pence. “Fuck you,” she tweeted. “I gotta piss, and you’re putting me — an American — in danger of assault by your white supremacist brothers.”
Almost immediately, she got the notification. Twitter had detected “potentially abusive activity” on her account, and put her in temporary timeout as a result. For the next 12 hours, only followers could see her tweets — which meant she wouldn’t be able to lobby the Vice President.
Still chewing on the implications here. Victoria’s account was temporarily firewalled (the range of her tweets was limited), not suspended. Not sure I would use the word locked, as The Verge did in their headline. But that nit aside, this is part of Twitter’s new anti-abuse campaign that started rolling out last week.
For the average recipient of abuse, that’s good news: when a troll quote-tweets you with an insult, you simply won’t see it. But the limits are raising new questions in light of the political speech that is often hosted on Twitter. The average person has an expectation that their account will not receive insulting tweets on a regular basis. But what about, say, the president of the United States?
iCloud, however, much like real clouds, is notoriously opaque. It’s hard to see just what you have stored in it. Nonetheless, Apple has made it easy, at least, to fix some truth-related issues in iCloud, and you can do it with a readily accessible tool: a Web browser on any Mac or PC. With it, you can revert to backups of your contacts, calendars, reminders, and shared bookmarks, and even restore files deleted from your iCloud Drive.
If you have an iCloud account, this is worth a walk through, just to get a sense of the available options.
J. D. Biersdorfer, New York Times, points out a variety of ways to do dictation on your iPhone:
Hold down the iPhone’s Home button (or say “Hey Siri” to wake up the software), say “Make a new note,” and then speak your thoughts — reciting the punctuation like “period” or “comma” aloud. The resulting note can be emailed, copied, pasted or shared with a compatible text app.
And:
In Settings, go to General and then to keyboard to find the Dictation option buried at the bottom of the screen. When the setting is enabled, a small microphone appears on the keyboard of text-entering apps like Notes, Google Docs, Microsoft Word for iOS, or Apple’s own Pages word processor.
That setting is off by default. Check it. Good to know where this is.
Of course, you can also use a variety of apps to do dictation. J. D. highlights a few. Good stuff.
I was at the Seattle Goodwill outlet recently and noticed the Apple logo on letterhead sticking out from a bin of books, so I started digging. What I found were the 1979-1980 files of Jack MacDonald, manager of system software for the Apple II and /// at the time.
They tell the story of project “SSAFE” or “Software Security from Apples Friends and Enemies.” This was a proposal to bring disk copy protection in-house to sell as a service to outside developers. Inter-office memos, meeting notes and progress reports all give a good idea of what a project life cycle looked like. Different schemes and levels of protection are considered, as well as implementation primarily on the Apple II+ and the upcoming SARA (The Apple ///) and Lisa computers. Randy Wigginton is featured prominently throughout, along with mentions of Woz, distribution lists including “S.Jobs” and many other familiar names.
The documents were all a jumble so I’ve put them in chronological order and scanned the collection.
Pretty interesting collection of documents. Here’s a link to the PDF if you want to browse. You’ll definitely see some famous Apple names in there.
For a while now there have been reports of some older iPhone models, namely iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s, shutting down unexpectedly. Apple introduced some diagnostics into iOS 10.2 back in December to try and determine what was happening and, with iOS 10.2.1, they’ve rolled out a fix.
In the busy week in the run up to the awards, the director of Timecode, Juanjo Giménez, very kindly answered our questions about the post production process.
What’s amazing to me is that this was his first project using Final Cut Pro.
Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving car unit sued Uber Technologies and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto in federal court on Thursday over allegations of theft of its confidential sensor technology.
