Edwin Land was one of the most visionary, brilliant, and influential figures of the twentieth century. His company, Polaroid, was a direct extension of his insatiable curiosity and drive. In this video, I unpack the history of Polaroid, Edwin Land’s genius, and the rise and fall of instant photography.
Polaroid used to be the epitome of consumer photography. The SX-70 was the first camera I remember using as a kid and it was magical.
Hutchins was coming off of an epic, exhausting week at Defcon, one of the world’s largest hacker conferences, where he had been celebrated as a hero. Less than three months earlier, Hutchins had saved the internet from what was, at the time, the worst cyberattack in history: a piece of malware called WannaCry. Just as that self-propagating software had begun exploding across the planet, destroying data on hundreds of thousands of computers, it was Hutchins who had found and triggered the secret kill switch contained in its code, neutering WannaCry’s global threat immediately.
Hutchins was the shy geek who had single-handedly slain a monster threatening the entire digital world, all while sitting in front of a keyboard in a bedroom in his parents’ house in remote western England.
Hutchins was composing another tweet when he noticed that three men had walked up to him, a burly redhead with a goatee flanked by two others in Customs and Border Protection uniforms. “Are you Marcus Hutchins?” asked the red-haired man. When Hutchins confirmed that he was, the man asked in a neutral tone for Hutchins to come with them, and led him through a door into a private stairwell.
Then they put him in handcuffs.
Settle in. This is going to be a bumpy ride of a story.
Believe it or not, there are still people that like to print out their photos and create photo books to send gifts to family members. There seem to be more options than ever when it comes to online printing services, which makes choosing one a bit overwhelming.
We tested out five popular online printing companies and assessed them based on their ease of service, price, turnaround time and most importantly, print consistency/paper quality.
We placed an order for three 8×10 and three 4×6 prints on the same day from Snapfish, Amazon Photos, Shutterfly, MPix, and Printique (formerly known as AdoramaPix). We used the automatic ‘smart crop’ feature on each website when preparing the prints and, when it was possible, requested that the image be printed on Lustre paper. All prints were shipped with the economy shipping option.
Not every photo you have needs to be printed but there is something to be said for printing off your best shots. There’s something about the tangible nature of a printed photo or a shot you took hanging on your wall that showing it via a phone or computer screen just can’t recreate.
iFixit updated their iPad Pro Magic Keyboard teardown with a look underneath the trackpad.
Take a minute, follow the headline link, scroll about halfway down the page to that GIF showing the innards of the trackpad, with a finger pressing the switch to show how it works.
What looks like multiple buttons in the X-ray is actually just one button and a simple, elegant lever system. The single button is at the center of the trackpad, where the mechanism is rigid. When you apply pressure near the center, whether top, middle, or bottom-center, you are directly pressing the button. Press near the top, bottom, or one of the corners, however, and the lever system comes into play, forcing the contact plate in the center upward to make a click happen.
This article popped up on Hacker News this morning, though it is dated December 20th. Glad it did. Fascinating read, with lots of photos of the various gear used to create Street View models.
I’d love a similar detailed look at Apple’s mapping gear.
The Rijksmuseum’s imaging team led by datascientist Robert Erdmann made this photograph of The Night Watch from a total of 528 exposures. The 24 rows of 22 pictures were stitched together digitally with the aid of neural networks. The final image is made up of 44.8 gigapixels (44,804,687,500 pixels), and the distance between each pixel is 20 micrometres (0.02 mm). This enables the scientists to study the painting in detail remotely. The image will also be used to accurately track any future ageing processes taking place in the painting.
Not quite as well known as the Mona Lisa, The Night Watch is still one of the great master paintings. Like the Mona Lisa, if you do get to see the painting in person, you are kept at enough of a distance away that it is impossible to truly see any of the detail.
With this hyper-resolution release, you now have the chance to see this painting up close. The detail is amazing. Check out the lace collar (the brightest center of the image), zoom in to first see the lace, then a bit more to appreciate the brush strokes that create the illusion of lace.
Amazing also is the smoothness of the interface. Scrolling is effortless, with no lag. Brilliant work.
A new book from BuzzFeed News’ Alex Kantrowitz reported that Apple’s internal engineering teams operate “in a state of tumult,” staffed by contractors from different firms that find themselves in constant conflict over resources and priorities. “Until Apple gives the division a hard look, its employees will be stuck spending their time reworking broken internal software, and wishing they were inventing instead,” he wrote.
The book in question is Always Day One, released April 7th.
In late 2018, Apple announced plans to invest $10 billion in data center construction over the next five years, adding capacity in Iowa alongside five existing data centers.
I’ve always wondered when Apple would follow their “own the entire stack” approach (that has seen them use their chip-design prowess to create and extend their hardware lead in the phone space) to wean themselves from dependence on Amazon’s cloud expertise as “one of AWS’ biggest customers”.
Apple today unveiled a major update to Logic Pro X with a professional version of Live Loops, a completely redesigned sampling workflow, and new beat-making tools.
Just one example of the new tools Logic rolled out:
With Live Loops on the Mac, Logic users can now create music in new freeform and nonlinear ways. Loops, samples, and recordings can be organized into a new musical grid, where musicians can spontaneously perform and capture different arrangement ideas into the timeline.
And:
Logic Pro X has been optimized to take advantage of the latest Mac hardware and the power of macOS, delivering incredible performance when working with the most demanding projects with thousands of tracks and hundreds of real-time plug-ins.
If you use Logic Pro X, spend a few minutes reading Apple’s press release. There’s a lot of new stuff to play with. Better yet, jump to Apple’s Logic Pro page. There’s a ton to absorb.
Props to Apple for keeping this a free upgrade.
Side note: I wonder what is meant by “latest Mac hardware”? Does this include the new 13″ MacBook Pro? The picture in the release shows the Mac Pro, released last December. Hoping the optimizations apply to the later laptops too.
Early Monday morning, Jerry Stiller died of natural causes at the age of 92. The father of Ben Stiller, Jerry had a long, generations-spanning career—from variety show fame with his wife, Anne Meara, to Hollywood to the small screen. But among all of that, he’ll forever be known as Frank Costanza, the loud, hilariously embittered father of George on Seinfeld. In his memory, the Ringer staff remembers Stiller’s greatest moments as Frank.
I was never a huge Seinfeld fan but Frank Costanza was my favourite character. R.I.P. Mr Stiller.
An exercise in light painting and parallax displacement to create the illusion of 3D (or 2.5D) and motion in a series of still photographs captured after nightfall.
This film is comprised entirely of still images. All motion achieved in post production. The only time lapse shots are the star trails. All other shots are typically comprised of between 3 and 5 exposures of the same subject, but with different lighting in each, then blended together or transitioned between to give the effect of seamless motion.
The COVID19 pandemic forced me to put a number of projects on hold. Being unable to shoot anything new I took the opportunity to look back through my astrophotography and nightscape work from the past couple of years. I put this film together as a reminder of what exists outside my four walls and so others can enjoy the wonders of the night sky from their solitary confines.
I can’t even imagine the time and skill it took to put together and create something this beautiful.
Of all the industries devastated by the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown—restaurants and bars, hotels and convention centers, movie theaters and shopping malls—the airlines’ situation is in a sense the worst. Most of the other businesses are suffering because they have been told to close. The airlines are suffering in part because they have been told to stay open. As a condition of the recent bailout packages, and in order to retain long-term rights to their routes, airlines need to keep flying ghost routes: planes with almost no passengers but a full flight crew and cabin staff.
When will the airlines return to “normal” as we knew it a few months ago? That was the question I asked everyone I spoke with. “Maybe five years,” one person said. “I think four years,” said an optimist. Another person guessed seven. “I think never,” said an airline pilot, now on indefinite furlough.
I don’t think it will take that long. I think as soon as airlines are given the all-clear, they will drastically lower fares and people will start flying again.
Follow the link above and uncheck the Temporarily Closed checkbox to see US Apple Stores reopening this week.
I asked, Michael said he’d keep updating the map over time, so bookmark the link if you’re interested. Anyone know of such a map for the rest of the world’s Apple Stores?
A reader recently emailed me to ask how to mirror an Apple TV on a Mac. There are two main reasons you might want to do this: to capture screenshots or video for documentation, or so you can give a remote presentation that involves the Apple TV.
Interesting that the only requirement with the current model is that both your Apple TV and your Mac be on the same WiFi network.
Not sure there are a lot of secrets revealed here, but this is an interesting read.
A few callouts:
“It was almost like wildfire how quickly it spread,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of product marketing, says. “It’s done even better than we could ever imagine.”
And:
Compared with, say, the Apple Watch, which took years to gain momentum, AirPods are a much easier, and cheaper, product to market. “Everyone’s using a smartphone, and so therefore headphones,” says Neil Cybart, founder of Apple analyst firm Above Avalon, “whereas the younger demographic is moving away from wristwatches.”
And:
According to Joswiak, Apple “had a vision for our wireless future for many years” before the first AirPods were unveiled. “We had this incredible wireless product, the iPhone,” he says. “And yet, what began to feel odd is when you saw somebody using wired headphones. Right then you thought, why would you attach the wire?”
When was the last time you saw someone wearing old-school wired Apple EarPods? Apple got rid of the floppy/CD drives when they were still widely used. Same with the headphone jack. Looking back, the “courage” decision has turned into an unquestioned success for Apple.
Apple recently updated the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the $1,299 base model remains a popular alternative to the $999 MacBook Air. To help with your buying decision, read our comparison of the notebooks below.
This comes up a lot. Is it worth the extra $300 for the 13-inch MacBook Pro? Where’s the value?
If you are considering this question, dig in. Obviously, the choice depends on what you’ll be doing, and how much you care about the display, speakers, Touch Bar, speakers, processing speed. The article lays out the specifics.
The linked Thunderbolt security report details 7 specific vulnerability scenarios. I can only imagine that Apple is long aware of these and will address them.
One in particular I found interesting is the weakness on Macs that run Boot Camp:
Apple supports running Windows on Mac systems using the Boot Camp utility. Aside from Windows, this utility may also be used to install Linux. When running either operating system, Mac UEFI disables all Thunderbolt security by employing the Security Level “None” (SL0). As such, this vulnerability subjects the Mac system to trivial Thunderbolt-based DMA attacks.
The way I read it, the vulnerabilities occur when a device is allowed to update its firmware. A Mac running Boot Camp disables Thunderbolt security and opens the door for attack. Here’s detail on the DMA attack.
Who else would you turn to for a review of the 2020 iPhone SE than the person who has not bought a new phone for four years?
What do you mean “Literally everyone else.”?
Rude.
I’m going to let you in on the dirty secret of the iPhone SE reviews you might have read on those other sites. All those people — your Grubers, your Sterns, your Panzarinos, your Bohns, your Brownlees — have all used other phones between the previous iPhone SE and this iPhone SE.
They didn’t love the original iPhone SE like I loved the original iPhone SE.
Let’s be clear right off the bat: the 2020 iPhone SE is not a real iPhone SE. And rather than keep referring to it as the iPhone SE Second Generation throughout this review, I’m going to just call it what it is: the iPhone 9. In fact, that’s what I’ve named mine.
I’ve always been a big fan of Moltz’s particular brand of silliness.
When this video first popped up on Twitter, many of us, myself included, were livid at the seeming tone-deafness and condescension of it.
But even on first viewing, something was off about it. It was edited too quickly at the end. Sure enough, it was because someone decided to try and make the video look much worse than it really was. As it turns out, the full video is wonderful and a great move by the company. I apologize unreservedly for my part in making the “fake” video seen.
And to the person who posted the original piece, shame on you. We already have far too many divisions in our society for you to make this worse. At least Hasbro is trying to make things better. Your attempts at tearing them down for no good reason are offensive and you should be ashamed at your part in it, as I am for posting the original.
Apple will reopen some stores in the United States next week, with temperature checks and a limited number of customers in the location at one time, the company confirmed to CNBC.
“We’re excited to begin reopening stores in the US next week, starting with some stores in Idaho, South Carolina, Alabama and Alaska,” an Apple representative said in a statement. “Our team is constantly monitoring local heath data and government guidance, and as soon as we can safely open our stores, we will.”
This will be a methodical reopening in a few stores. Fingers crossed this goes well and we can be done with this pandemic.
I did my homework this week and watched the Beastie Boys movie on Apple TV+. Dave and I talked about the film without giving away too much about it. We also talked WWDC and Apple’s announcement about the conference this week.
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I love Rogue Amoeba and have used their audio software for years on my Mac. Thank you for sponsoring The Loop this week. Their new app, SoundSource, gives you powerful control over all the audio on your Mac, right from your menu bar:
Per-Application Volume Control
Change the volume of any app relative to others, and play individual apps to different audio devices. Mute your browser, or send music to one set of speakers and everything else to another.
Improve Sound Quality
Use Magic Boost and Volume Overdrive to hear your audio even in loud environments. The built-in equalizer can sweeten the sound, and more advanced users will love the ability to apply Audio Units to any audio.
Fast Device Access
All the settings your Mac’s audio devices are just a click away. Adjust input and output levels, tweak the balance, and even switch sample rates, right from your menu bar.
One More Thing…
If you have a DisplayPort or HDMI device that fails to offer volume adjustment, SoundSource can help there too. It gives those devices a proper volume slider, and the Super Volume Keys feature makes your keyboard volume controls work as well. Neat!
Check out SoundSource today, with a free trial! Rogue Amoeba has extended their April sale – through May 15th, Loop readers can save 20% with coupon code LOOPSS.
Another in the series of music-by-year mashups from The Hood Internet. These started with 1979 and have, year-by-year, made their way to 1984. They are all fun to watch, especially if you have a sense of music in the ’80s.
But, in addition to the cool images, there’s insight into how the various mechanisms actually work, like the spring-loaded hinge and the more even clicking trackpad.
After the story of Amazon VP Tim Bray quitting in protest went viral, Tim posted this follow-up, mostly about the tidal wave of responses to his original, but worth reading.
Also worth reading, the like-minded posts linked in Tim’s piece.
Solid interview with Apple COO Jeff Williams. It’s an easy watch, about 3 minutes long, and packed with interesting comments about the supply chain, opening Apple Stores, and Apple’s response to leakers and bloggers.
When I want to shop Apple online, I tend to go to apple.com and pick a product category from the menu bar at the top of that main page.
If I want support for a product, or find info about Apple Store hours or Genius Bar appointments, all bets are off. More times than not, I end up doing a Google search to find the right link.
With Apple’s Apple Store Online hub, things like chatting with a specialist, getting help with trade-ins, financing, order tracking, and Genius Bar appointments just got a bit easier to find.
Here’s a link to the new hub. Worth taking a minute to swipe through it, just to get a sense of the options available. Don’t miss that “Find a store” link at the bottom.
According to sources, Defending Jacob ranks among the top three series premieres for Apple TV+, logging a big opening weekend with viewership continuing to build in Week 2 and the audience growing by five times in its first 10 days (April 24-May 3) to rank among the two fastest-growing series premieres for Apple TV+.
And:
Defending Jacob also is believed to be setting Apple TV+ records for viewer engagement. The vast majority of viewers who sampled the show during its premiere weekend watched all three available episodes, and nearly all who watched those also completed the fourth episode released May 1, I have learned.
Episode 5 of Defending Jacob is scheduled to drop today.
Three episodes per week, 15 minutes per episode. Not a minute less, not a minute more. New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I have a lot of respect for Ben and John, so this should be interesting. I just listened to the first episode and it was exactly how you think it would be. I enjoyed it!
Apple today announced it is awarding $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to COPAN Diagnostics, a market leader in sample collection kits that play a critical role in COVID-19 testing. This funding will allow COPAN Diagnostics to rapidly accelerate their supply of sample collection kits for hospitals across the United States, expanding production from several thousand today to more than one million kits per week by early July. As part of this effort, Apple will support COPAN Diagnostics’ expansion to a new, larger facility in Southern California, with advanced equipment that Apple is helping design. This expansion is expected to create more than 50 new jobs.
Apple continues to step up and do the right thing.
