My policy on interviews/comments about Apple and Steve

It looks like everyone has decided to write books about Apple and/or Steve Jobs, and I seem to be getting about one request a month to be interviewed by someone or other (or just “talk to”) about Apple or Steve or both. The rate of these requests seems to be accelerating, so in the name of saving me the hassle of answering this question repeatedly, here’s my policy on being intereviewed about Apple and Steve.

Short answer: thank you, but no.

Not quite so short answer: I’m honored. I’m amazed anyone actually CARES what I think. I really am. Heck, I’m actually amazed anyone remembers I used to work for the big fruit company.

However, today I work for a direct competitor, and I plan on working there for a while, because I’m having fun and surrounded by lots of fun and interesting people. I feel it’s inappropriate for me to make comments about or do analysis of a company my employer is competing with — ethics are a bitch some day, but I sleep well at night — and therefore, when I took my current position, I decided to keep my big mouth shut for the duration. I do not regret that. The potential issues of a conflict of interest (real or perceived) just make this kind of discussion difficult at best and an absolute disaster a real possibility, and I just don’t feel comfortable risking that, so I choose not to.

Believe it or not, my not talking about Apple has not caused the sun to go nova, has not solved the middle east crisis, nobody has grown a third eye and to the best of my knowledge, it had no bearing on BP’s decision to poke a hole in the earth and attempt to let it bleed to death (we need a bigger band-aid here!). So I don’t feel like the universe is missing much here. The sun still comes up in the east every morning somehow.

This policy will stay in place until I stop working for a competitor of Apple, or until nobody gives a damn any more what I think, or until I change my mind and decide to write my own book about Apple, or until the sun does in fact go nova. In case of the latter, I’ll be available for interviews somewhere in the third circle.

I appreciate your understanding in my wish to actually not talk about something. I realize it’s a rare thing for me… But we all need to sacrifice for the greater good.

Thanks,

Chuq

p.s. This is not my employer’s policy, this is mine. It will not change July 1 when my employer magically changes, because they didn’t set it. (in reality, my policy is more restrictive than theirs, since they wanted me to clear requests through them. They were, though, happy to hear I’d chosen to turn them all down for the duration).

p.p.s. Yes, I did just slyly admit that I am in fact staying with Palm after the merger with HP. I have the paperwork and anything, and to be honest, I’m looking forward to it.

p.p.p.s. Shh. Don’t tell anyone I told you that, okay?

p.p.p.p.s. Since about half the time the next question is “will you talk off the record?” let me answer that, too. No, I don’t talk off the record, either. I am not a fan of anonymous sources because they lead to stupid and lazy journalism, so I won’t be one.

p.p.p.p.p.s You’re welcome, Steve. I’ll buy the coffees next time.

p.p.p.p.p.p.s You’re still reading? Slow news day, isn’t it… Go outside and play already…

 

What You Don’t Know About Creative Commons Could Kill You

Having just come out strongly in favor of using Creative Commons (in my case, strategically and on flickr, not as a universal license or panacea), I thought I’d point you to Scott Bourne who does a good job of explaining some of the challenges you should understand before adopting it. In my case, I’m comfortable with my decision because all of those issues were ones I considered before I made my choice — but the exclusivity issue is one I need to monitor, but my plan was never to share images I was going to try to license exclusively in the first place.

He does, I think, reinforce one thing I tried to push: helping teach people about your licensing (whatever choices you make) is crucial to get away from the “if I can copy it, it’s okay” mentality, and to me, that acknowledges my view that you can’t just stuff licensing info into EXIF and expect it to work in the real world. You need to make sure people know your material is licensed, even if you make that licensing free, and you need to support that license with documentation on what it is and what it means…

What You Don’t Know About Creative Commons Could Kill You- Going Pro 2010:

The Internet is home to both amazingly valuable information and the world’s largest collection of bull crap the world has ever known. When it comes to Creative Commons licenses for photographers, it’s the bull crap contingent that wins out most of the time.

 

I am shocked by how very little photographers understand about Copyright issues. I’m even more shocked at the mis-information, dis-information, fact-less assertions and downright deliberately misleading data provided to and by photographers when it comes to Creative Commons licenses.

Based on e-mail, Twitter comments, Facebook comments and Flickr comments, I think I am very safe in saying that most photographers, if not the vast majority of them, have no real clue what Creative Commons is all about. They THINK they know something about it – but usually, all they really know is that all the cool kids are doing it so they should too.

Here are some things you may not know about CC but should.

 

 

 

 

How Not to Fix Soccer

Best explanation I’ve seen on why soccer is soccer and why Americans should stop trying to fix it (e.g. make it more american). Soccer is about playing, not watching. America is about watching, which is something I think we as a society should fix, actually. I’m not a huge soccer fan, but I’ve been watching the World Cup, and I think the biggest “flaw” about soccer for most americans is that to enjoy it, you have to actually pay atttention to it. You can’t, as we are wont to do, make it background noise and turn to look at the game when the announcer indicates something interesting is going on… Fortunately, the rest of the world is really unlikely to listen to us as we make suggestions about how to fix their sport…

How Not to Fix Soccer | Freedom to Tinker:

ith the World Cup comes the quadrennial ritual in which Americans try to redesign and improve the rules of soccer. As usual, it’s a bad idea to redesign something you don’t understand—and indeed, most of the proposed changes would be harmful. What has surprised me, though, is how rarely anyone explains the rationale behind soccer’s rules. Once you understand the rationale, the rules will make a lot more sense.

 

So here’s the logic underlying soccer’s rules

 

 

 

“We would like to thank Nabby for the time he has spent in San Jose. Nabby has been a big part of…

“We would like to thank Nabby for the time he has spent in San Jose. Nabby has been a big part of… – From The Rink:

 

“We would like to thank Nabby for the time he has spent in San Jose. Nabby has been a big part of this team for the past 10 seasons and played an important role is our successes. This decision boils down to a dedication of dollars in a salary cap system and under this system, teams can’t keep everyone.”

 

 

Agreed completely. I was  bit surprised that they let Nabby go, because I don’t see that improving goaltending is going to be easy here. But clearly Wilson has a plan, and to be honest, as big a supporter as I’ve been of Nabokov, he’s getting on in years, and he perhaps someone like Leighton could be successful in this system at a cheaper pricetag. If you think of cap limits being the reason and if you could only keep Marleau or Nabokov but not both — then Wilson made the right decision.

I’m not, however, comfortable going into next season with Greiss as starter. I can’t see Wilson is, either, so I’ll be curious what his plan is to fill the void.

 

Two Roads, Two Art Forms…?

OP – The Blog» Blog Archive » Two Roads, Two Art Forms…?:


A few years ago, while thumbing through a major calendar, I saw a remarkable photo taken at Artists’ Palette in Death Valley.  I was astonished by the vividness of colors, an intensity that did not match my memory of the place.  I was so curious, in fact, that the next time I was in the valley, I tried to reproduce the picture myself, if only to understand how it was done.  I went at sunset, used a polarizer to cut reflected light and bracketed widely to get just the right exposure. In other words, I did everything I could within the conventional arsenal to capture the colors in that picture. Nothing worked : my colors were hopelessly drab by comparison. Later, however, I simply opened the best image in Photoshop – and cranked up the saturation about 40 points.  Bingo.  The result precisely matched the shot I had seen in the calendar.

My question is this: is this still photography?

My opinion: yes, in the same way realism, dadaism, cubism and impressionism are all forms of painting.

But Kevin Schafer raises some interesting thinking points here, whcih I recommend you go and read. And consider how they interact with your photography and vision. there really is no right answer here, but understanding your views on the question will help you understand your own work better.

Complete Workflow, Storage & BackUp for Photography + Video | Chase Jarvis Blog

I’ve written about backups before from the view of the small/home photographer. Now take a look at how a pro does it. their design is rock solid and scalable, and there are ideas here anyone can adopt. The main one, of course, is multiple copies, multiple places, and do it first and do it always.

Very impressive setup he has…

Complete Workflow, Storage & BackUp for Photography + Video | Chase Jarvis Blog:

 

This may well be the most important behind-the-scenes video we’ve made to date. Not because it’s fancy or sexy, but because it covers arguably the most essential information on a set of topics that every photo and video person should understand: workflow, storage and backup of your precious images. This video covers all the ins and outs, the theory and the details of our complete photo and video workflow from capture to archive and everything in between. So whether you’re a seasoned pro, an aspiring amateur, or just starting out in photography or video we’ve worked hard to make this worth your time.

 

 

 

two years ago

It was two years ago tonight that we held Dad’s wake. It also would have been his birthday, so we had a birthday cake, and it featured a pretty damn good mariachi band. I find I’m still figuring out what his loss means to me; I had no time to grieve at the time, so I seem to be doing it a bit at a time, over time, at moments where his presence in my life was important to me like his birthday and father’s day and christmas. And that makes me introspective, so I hope you’ll be patient with my relative lack of scintillating commentary and verbal amuse bouche that I try to serve up here.

My view on life has changed fairly radically in the last couple of years. I’m in that time where I’m losing people, friends and family and others I know — my dad to heart disease, another to breast cancer, a third to bone cancer, another to liver cancer, while others have either fought and won or fight today, including one more close fried who fought breast cancer and won, and two others dealing with different cancers right now.

I’m finding that I’m a much different person than I was a few years ago. I’m still figuring out who that person is, but I find I really like this new person, much more than the old one. I’m finding that plans I made and things I started in motion are starting to come to fruition — and that I’m now not so sure they’re the plans I want to be the priority in my life today.

I’m realizing I started on a journey back in 2003, and while I didn’t realize it at the time, it’s transformed me. That transformation seems to be rounding into its final form now. That journey wasn’t always a lot of fun; no, honestly, it was definitely never any fun. But now that I’m here, I’m glad I made it (as if I had any choice in the matter).

So if you’re here for pretty pictures of birds or wry discussions of the challenges of the left wing lock — you’ll probably still get some of that. In fact, you’ll likely see a lot more, given part of my relative quiet has been because I’ve been introspectively trying to understand what I was becoming. But I think it’s finally time, and I’m finally ready, to write the final pages on this chapter of life, and start mapping out the plot for the next one. “and they live happily ever after” is still not a given, but whatever’s next, right now I’m looking forward to finding out what it is.

 

Let’s re-imagine Hypercard

I’m going off on a tangent here from an interesting piece by Kevin Marks:

While talking about Flash on the iPad, Jobs said:

A more popular developer environment was HyperCard, we were OK to axe that[...] Hypercard was huge in it’s day because it was accessible to anybodyIndeed it was – many people miss it; Dale Dougherty says he wants a HyperCard for the iPad. I don’t think he does.

As Jobs himself says, we have a platform to build on for the future – it is HTML5. It’s an emerging standard that is not under the control of any one company, but is built on the Web as agreement. And even Steve Jobs can’t stop it.

Count me in as someone who still misses Hypercard, or at least what Hypercard represented. And as I’m reading Kevin’s piece, it suddenly struck me that perhaps it’s time to take a look at creating something like Hypercard again. Not Hypercard, but what it represented. What is that?

  • A simple, accessible enviroment for quick hacks, simple projects and exploration.
  • A place for proto-hackers and potential geeks to get started. In my day, it was Apple II’s basic. Later it way Hypercard. Today, where are the potential explorers getting their feet wet?

Today, if I need to do a quick geek, I tend to intall MAMP and haul out MysQL and PHP, or bring up terminal and write a quick perl script. I’ve been digging more into the HTML5/CSS/javascript world for some upcoming projects, though, and see a lot of potential as a geekable environment.

So what would it take to create an environment that would do these things and give people access to modern technologies? It seems like this is VERY possible. It could run cross platform, cross browser and no server needed. Take HTML, CSS, Javascript, wrap in some kind of editing/IDE/CLI environment, wrap in some libraries or a way to install libraries for things like graphics and displays… it almost feels like 90% of this project would be packaging and integration and documentation rather than coding, and most of the pieces are there.

Anyone interested in belling this cat?

Of 3G iPads and MiFis

Of 3G iPads and MiFis | Chuqui 3.0:

My first hope is tethering will come to AT&T; WWDC is coming, iPhone 4.0 is coming, the tethering rumors have swirled again, and we’ll have to see.

Well, that didn’t take long. AT&T was nice enough to announce this before WWDC. Lots of commentary on it, my basic cut is that I don’t have a problem with tiered  or usage-based pricing as long as the tiering is reasonable, and for the most part, the new AT&T plan is. What the new plan means is that relatively light data users (like me) are no longer subsidizing the folks who are shoving gigabytes through their phones every month. My bill will go down.

I don’t even mind the extra fee for tethering (much); I simply see that as a way for AT&T to (more or less) add a set of tiers; people doing tethering are likely more heavy data users than non-tether users, I just can’t get up a lot of angst that the heavier usage folks have to pay something extra — you’re funnelling multiple devices through the connection instead of one, so, well, shrug.

but then it comes out that the one thing you can’t to is tether an iPad to an iPhone.

Apple won’t support iPhone to iPad tethering:

If you thought that when iPhone OS 4.0 gets released and you can buy the 2GB “Datapro” plan for $25, along with an additional $20 per month to tether your iPhone’s WiFi connection to your iPad, think again. It’s just not going to happen. This is consistent with Steve Jobs’ answer to an email asking him about this possibility. His response was a terse “no.”

 

Um, what? The only reason I can figure out for this is, well, to force people to pay for 3G on the iPad — require another monthly contract.

That annoys me. Fortunately for me, my most common use case here would still allow me to tether a laptop to the phone, and have the laptop create a wifi connection for the iPad; since I won’t be travelling w/o the laptop because of my photography, this doesn’t screw me over, but I’m still annoyed. But if there was ever any question on wifi or 3G for my iPad, it’s now answered: wifi. and if there’s a question of whether I’ll be enabling tethering on my AT&T contract, the answer is — not unless I absolutely know I’m going to need it, no sense throwing any dollars at this unless absolutely necessary. So I won’t. and you all probably shouldn’t , either.

I also think this pricing won’t last. But for now, that’s how they’re going to structure it.  Oh well. And here I was ready to back AT&T against the “I want it all and I want it all free” tribe that complains any time they’re asked to actually pay their fair share, and here AT&T went and messed it up by throwing some arbitrary pricing greed of their own into it.

Oh well, back to the sideline for a while. Fortunately, I can be patient before committing in to most of this…