iPhone 16 Pro Photography and Photographic Styles demo.
I’m always grateful that Apple releases new iPhones in September. It comes during the period when supermarkets are stocking up on pumpkins, gourds and other Cucurbits. Obviously one of the first things you check out on a new iPhone is whatever changes and improvements Apple makes to the cameras, and these colorful counters are a great location to do so.
Here’s a few shots taken during a supermarket tour playing around with different camera settings and what Apple now calls Photographic Styles. First up is just a series of photos in a gallery all using the Standard setting.
Following the Continue Reading break below are two videos showing off the differences in Photographic Styles Apple offers and more photos.
Nothing lasts forever and all good things come to an end. Along with everything else that includes tech blogs. Yesterday, Gerald Lynch and the iMore staff announced they are turning out the lights on what was once a revered and go to website when it came to everything Apple.
Here’s a quote from the farewell post:
I would like to take this moment to thank everyone from the iMore community, past and present, for their support and passion for what we’ve created over the years. A massive thanks goes to iMore’s previous leaders, Lory Gil, Serenity Caldwell, and Joe Keller, and of course, the inimitable Rene Ritchie who kickstarted this wonder all those years back. I hope we’ve done you all proud.
There have been some good writers through the years at iMore but two names stand out in that quote: Rene Ritchie and Serenity Caldwell. Calling it like I see it, Rene made iMore what it was and for a time was the pulse that beat in the Apple community. When he added Serenity to the mix it became the place to go for Apple News delivered with heart and intelligence, nothing artificial about it.
Nothing against any of the folks who kept the engines running once Rene and Serenity moved on to greener pastures (with Google and Apple respectively), it proves that talent will always win and exceptionally good talent will always win more.
I’m glad to see the site will be kept up as an archive. All the same, farewell to a great website that set a lot of standards and good luck to all of those moving on.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Fall is creeping in and things are creeping me out.
The world continues its whirl, the vultures continue circling, and down here on the ground we keep working hard to turn the tide on the ignorant before it’s too late. Still, it’s time to sit down, breathe and enjoy if you can some Sunday Morning Reading.
Perhaps you aren’t aware of the Second Circuit of Appeals decision rejecting the Internet Archive’s fair use defense. You can check out info on the decision here. Reading beyond that check out Matthew Ingram’s post The Second Circuit’s Decision in the Internet Archive Case is Bad. It is bad news for all of us. As a side note, Matthew has recently struck out on his own and you might want to check out his writing on The Torment Nexus. It promises to be a great place to read about issues in the intersection of technology, media, and, well…life.
Politics, or what passes for it these days, continues to dominate much of our attention even as it gets darker and more stupid with each passing day. Springfield, Ohio found itself the unwelcome center of the political world with all of the talk about eating pets and immigration. Isabel Fattal has a very good piece in The Atlantic titled The Springfield Effect. FWIW I don’t think Springfield is going to catch a break anytime soon, but then neither are the rest of us.
Sanewashing is just a new name in a long line of new names for ignoring the crazy, idiotic, and dangerous ways of the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist and his followers. Parker Malloy tells us Why The Atlantic’s Critique of Sanewashing Doesn’t Hold Up. There’s a link to the Atlantic piece in Malloy’s article. When a thing becomes a thing to criticize it becomes just another excuse for ignoring the truth.
There’s sadly a chance of some sort of carnage, physical or psychic, post-election. Certainly there will be political casualties. Perhaps that’s why we should read Ian Rose’s piece The Hidden Value of Vultures. Let’s hope the vultures doing the cleanup are only feasting on those who caused the mess.
Karen Hao takes a look at Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI when it comes to Microsoft working with fossil-fuel companies while purporting to fight climate change.
Before you clear your palette and move on to whatever you move on to, take a brief trip along with NatashaMH to Bangkok City in When The World’s Your Oyster.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
Artificial Intelligence in some form or the other continues to dominate tech and the markets around it, though there are some clouds on the horizon. Even the gold rush seems to show signs of slowing with the realization that AI might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s still exciting technology and there will certainly be some aspects that stick and enhance the way we do things. There will also be quite a bit that doesn’t, even more that’s controversial, and all causing trouble for that which does stick, and generally mucking everything up.
If you’ve paid attention to the comments and reviews during this recent Apple beta season and Google’s latest releases, it’s pretty easy to discern that the general temperature of the responses is lukewarm at best.
Advocates say it’s still early in the game.. That’s true. It’s also true that that putting bets down on an NFL team based on what seems like a good draft and undefeated pre-season is, well, more than a bit premature. (*Cough* *Chicago Bears* *Cough*)
Take the 5G rollout. Though the technologies aren’t comparable, the hype certainly is. 5G got its beginnings before 2020, but that was the year of the big push, arguably led by Apple. I’ve done a lot of driving over quite a few major highways large and small this summer and I’m still amazed at how little 5G coverage (and often LTE coverage) there is along these well traveled arteries between large population centers in the South, Midwest and on the East Coast.
What’s intriguing about that is that while there is a push by Apple and Google to have large chunks of AI operation happen locally on device, there will still be quite a few of those operations that will need higher bandwidth when they do need to call home to the mother ship for a response.
If we fast forward a decade or so and put a query into some LLM to summarize the rise of Artificial Intelligence, I’m betting it will spit out something along the lines of “yet another new promising technology, launched as a product before it was really ready, and spoiled by the hype.”
The book that will eventually be stolen by scraping Internet posts like this one is still to be written, but in these early chapters it is feeling more and more like the bubble might have currently reached it’s outer limits of expansion. There’s pushback on a number of fronts and quite a few enthusiasts always easily seduced by the thrill of a new technology seem to be chilling, if not chafing a bit.
Is there gloom and doom on the horizon? No, just storms and cloudy skies. I don’t think the AI bubble will ever burst, but I do think it will flatten into a puddle with not enough rising tides to lift all boats.
We’ve seen this story before. We’ll see it again. Only this time around the summaries will all sound more and more alike.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Summer begins to fade into fall with this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.
It’s Labor Day weekend here in the states, which means a three-day weekend, yielding more than a little extra time for some Sunday Morning Reading during the last lake visit of the season. Kick back and enjoy.
I’m a Shakespeare geek so my senses perked up when one of my favorite writers, Natasha MH. revealed her reasons for not appreciating the bard in Much Ado About Nothing, Something, and Everything. Excellent read and I know she’s not alone. But then lots of folks are wrong about lots of things.
Jeff Jarvis tells us How Murdoch Makes a Meme (and how the rest of the media helps it spread). No real secrets here. Jarvis is correct about Rupert Murdoch’s malign influence. The single most destructive human on the planet during his lifetime of muckracking.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
Fiction, fears, dreams, and Chicago Corruption dot this Sunday Morning’s reading.
Good Sunday morning. I’m in Memphis for a few days to participate and celebrate in The Ostrander Awards in which my recent production of The Lehman Trilogy was nominated for seven awards, so this will be an abbreviated version of Sunday Morning Reading.
There was lots of joy at the Democratic Conventon in Chicago nominating Kamala Harris as candidate for the presidency. There was also lots of joy (and some disappointment from the media) that this year’s convention didn’t turn into 1968 all over again. Nevertheless, Chicago is still Chicago. Rick Kogan gives us a terrific look at some of Chicago’s colorful and sordid history of corruption in Boodlers, Bandits, and Notorious Politicians. Fun read.
No One’s Ready For This by Sarah Jeong takes a look at the question we’re all going to be asking more frequently in the age of AI: “What the hell is a photo these days anyway? That question has been around for awhile, but in the wake of Google’s release of its Reimagine Tool for the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor, that question might be asked with a bit more urgency in the near future. Or not.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
From James Joyce to finger painting, some Apple spoiling, some Peter Falk, some politics and what will the LLMs spit out next?
“Every life is many days, day after day.” But Sundays are for reading. Here’s a mix of politics, tech, and culture into what I hope is a tasty smorgasbord of good writing and good reading. Also some good fun. Enjoy this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.
There aren’t many areas of interest I follow that don’t seem to be fraught with tension and turmoil these days. Apple, its technology and business practices, is certainly one of those. One of the best recent pieces I’ve read on how the tides of popular and populist opinion may be shifting against the folks in Cupertino is one written by Matt Birchler. Check out Is This The Slow Decline of Apple’s “Cult”?
This is a terrific read and a terrific piece of theatre and entertainment history. Wayne Lawson’s When Peter Falk Was My Roommate, and Theater Ruled NYC is a trip down a memory lane most of us probably never were aware of.
David Todd McCarty thinks we should rekindle some of what we lost as we pass through the years and recommends borrowing a four-year-old to help us see the world through their eyes in Finger Painting Through Life.
On the politics front, Marc Elias is doing the work for us all in his legal efforts to secure voting rights and the all important counting and certifying of the vote. Best piece of political news I’ve heard this week is that Elias has joined the Harris campaign’s legal team. Check out The Fight To Certify Elections Has Already Begun. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.
It’s easy to think this tempest of a political moment we’re in is something that’s suddenly sprung upon us. Aaron Timms reminds us that it’s been brewing for awhile in The Decade That Mangled The American Right.
Artificial Intelligence may be losing some of its luster as its purveyors continue to lust after our data. For those who enjoy seeing this play out, Aaron Drapkin gives us AI Gone Wrong: A List of AI Errors, Mistakes and Failures. I wonder how the LLMs will incorporate Drapkin’s work and spit it back out.
If you don’t recognize the quote that begins this week’s Sunday Morning Reading, perhaps Natasha MH gives us a clue in her piece Reading James Joyce Ulysses Will Be Fun, They Said. Tackling Joyce may or may not be worse than a trip to the dentist, but you can risk being “embalmed in spice of words.”
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
The phone companies are missing a cash grab that’s right under their noses.
Here’s an idea for a new way for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to make some quick cash. We all know you profit by selling banks of phone numbers to spammers. Fine. It sucks that you know who you’re selling to and want to visit this on your customers.
We remember when you tried to charge us for blocking those spam calls and selling us services to weed them out. That didn’t work out so well.
So, if you’re going to continue to sell banks of phone numbers to miscreants and criminals here’s an idea. Every time one of your users blocks a spam number, charge the owner of that number a fee. You already know who purchased the phone number, so it would be easy to discern who the assholes are and just how ripe they are for the plucking.
I’m actually surprised AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile haven’t thought of this sort of double dipping.
You’ve already turned blocking spammers into a never-ending video game. You should at least profit off of it.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
High stakes gambling going on. But there’s a hedge.
The tech bros are going all in, pushing all of their chips onto the table in favor of convicted felon, child rapist, and national security threat, Donald Trump. Well, not really. They’ve got a hedge.
The cynic in me (it’s a very large cynic that overwhelms sometimes) thinks that the big tech bros donating to Trump are gambling that he gets elected, expires or is removed from office somehow, making Trump’s new VP pick, J.D. Vance, their penny ante puppet. They’ve already paid plenty of pretty pennies to pull Vance’s strings.
The hedge is that even if Trump continues to hang in there he’ll create enough chaos to let them run rampant without any real adult (read government) supervision. It’s the same gamble Putin, Xi, other world leaders and CEOs are making.
Either way, they’re priming the pump gambling they won’t have to dump it.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Some Sunday Morning Reading and mourning insights to share.
Another sweltering summer Sunday morning so it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading with a host of topics mostly dealing with the myriad challenges ahead of us and mourning some that are behind us.
Natasha MH reminds that in the midst of tough times there are ways to conjure magic that’s actually within our power to control in When Space Meets Stoicism. A lovely piece that hits home. Good advice in these unsettling times. Or even settled ones.
Speaking of unsettling, Cody Delistraty takes a look at how we Americans do and don’t deal with grief in It’s Mourning in America.
Artificial Intelligence remains a hot topic this summer and will remain so for quite some time. There’s been some excellent points made on all sides of the issues involved and I can’t wait to be a few years down the road and see how that’s all rolled up and regurgitated by some generative AI engine that probably doesn’t exist today. In the meantime check out some interesting thinking on the matter from Wenzel in Apple Intelligence and the DMA, Dan Henke’s take in Beardy Guy Musings, and Tim Marchman and Dhruv Mehrotra’s chronicling of Wired’s adventures with Perplexity, Plagiarism and the Bullshit Machine here and here.
Most of the above centers on the issues surrounding AI and its potential for abuse of creators. Sadly, history proves the heat around that issue will eventually cool down. Perhaps we should examine the heat all of this “compute” needed to power this abuse takes on the planet. Check out Bloomberg’s AI’s Insatiable Need for Energy Is Straining Global Power Grids.
David Todd McCarty gives us an artist’s guide to learning how to listen in It’s Not All About You. It’s not just advice for artists.
As crazy as the political and tech worlds are these days, the entertainment world is just as nuts, especially when it comes to the covering of it. Winter of Content by Kevin Nguyen is a rich piece focusing on print media’s transition to the Internet from within the crazy explosion of coverage of Game of Thrones. Great read.
And speaking of entertainment coverage and mourning, it’s a fun game for this older guy to track the sad news surrounding an artist’s death. You can tell when a typically young writer knows very little about an artist’s body of work by the ludicrous title choices of that artist’s work they choose to run in the lede of the obituary. I doubt AI summaries of this will be any better than the quick scans of Wikipedia these interns obviously do now. With this week’s passing of Donald Sutherland it was particularly entertaining given the breadth and complexity of his career. However, there was one piece that grabbed my attention that bucked the trend. Amber Haley tells her remembrance of working with Donald Sutherland as a young set decorator proving that not only do small details matter, they tell the bigger story. Check out The Set Decorator and Donald Sutherland.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Here’s a few shots taken during a supermarket tour playing around with different camera settings and what Apple now calls Photographic Styles. First up is just a series of photos in a gallery all using the Standard setting. 
There was lots of joy at the Democratic Conventon in Chicago nominating Kamala Harris as candidate for the presidency. There was also lots of joy (and some disappointment from the media) that this year’s convention didn’t turn into 1968 all over again. Nevertheless, Chicago is still Chicago. Rick Kogan gives us a terrific look at some of Chicago’s colorful and sordid history of corruption in 
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 