Year: 2014

Let me start off by saying how glad I am that I don’t use Media Temple anymore.

I recently had a client who is a real dickhead owe me a bunch of money, as part of the dispute he had the reasonable request that I transfer ownership of the Media Temple hosting to him.

No problem, 7 weeks later Media Temple finally did that transfer (and gave me no notice that it had been transferred). None of that really mattered to me, until I saw that Media Temple went ahead and allowed my client to charge my credit card for hosting fees.

What? Yep, once the account was transferred my client was allowed to charge my card.

So just FYI, when you transfer account owners, Media Temple will leave your credit card information in place. Isn’t that swell?

So what’s going on here?

Well Media Temple told me that they leave the card in place in the event that it was an employee who left the company, that way a smooth transfer can take place. Ah, perfectly reasonable if you ask me, except that I specifically told them that was not the case when I filled out the transfer form.

Here’s the relevant part of the account transfer form:

Three options, the first is the scenario in which Media Temple says they deem keeping the billing info — which is logical. Except I chose option number two, which clearly indicates that their scenario isn’t in play anymore. No where I can find does Media Temple warn you they keep the billing info — but maybe I have missed it — it does seem like you should be given that option on this form, or it should be stripped by default (the better move).

This is where my complaint lies. Media Temple knew this wasn’t an employee leaving situation, but still kept the billing info and allowed someone else to make unauthorized charges on my card.

Come on, that’s not ok.

That needs to be changed.

If you want a credit card removed you have to fill out this form. And maybe they will get back to you in one week, I am told. It’s better just to close the account and get a better host if you ask me.

Oh and don’t bother calling support, they just blame you for not filling out the credit card removal form — because really you should have known. ((Thanks for that Alberto, although you were very calm which impressed me.))

I just posted about how Lightroom doesn’t do the Fujifilm X-Trans sensors justice, and in the past I have linked to examples of this, but why not just show it to you here?

I picked a very uninspiring shot with a ton of foliage in it. The shot itself was taken with the Fujifilm X-E2 at f/1.4 with a 1/110 second shutter sped at ISO 400. I used the Fujifilm 23mm f/1.4 R lens for this shot. To my memory I think I wanted to play with the winding path, but the shallow depth of field which threw the tree out of focus messed that all up. In other words this is a throw away shot, but one that has a lot of fine detail in it.

Here’s the RAW file for the shot if you want to see the test for yourself.

Here’s the shot as I would have processed it in Lightroom to get it sharp and the color where I want it:

Here’s the same shot processed to my eye how I liked it in Iridient Developer:

Here’s the shot processed in the Camera with the Velvia film setting:

Right away the color shift is terribly obvious, but so is the detail of the Iridient shot. I like editing in Lightroom a lot better, but that detail is shitty compared to Iridient.

For better comparison, here is a crop that readily shows the difference. Again, Lightroom:

And Iridient:

And out of the camera:

There’s a huge difference and Iridient seems to do the best job by a large margin. So do keep in mind it’s not just the lens and camera, it’s also the software that makes the shot.

Most of you reading this will notice that I have been posting quite a bit about photography, and specifically Fujifilm, as of late on this blog. I’ve always tried to post only things that are interesting to me on the site, because I really don’t want to fake my commentary in order to seem “up to date” in the tech/Apple blogging world.

So I’ve been posting a lot about Fujifilm and photography in general, because both have really been on my mind.

More than anything else I have really started diving into Fujifilm since getting the X-E2. I’ve spent sometime thinking about why this is, why I am so drawn to the brand, and the best I can figure is that the reason is similar to why there are so many Apple bloggers out there.

I tried, bought, and own a thing that has connected with me in such a way that I want to share, and be shared with, stories of that connection. Maybe in an attempt to convince others, or largely in an selfish attempt to find more products which react with me in this way, but I feel like this connection is worth diving into. Worth exploring.

The first day I used my first Mac, a 2004-ish 12″ Powerbook G4, I had to setup up my printer on it. This was back in the days of “you dare not plug in your printer until you have installed at least the first 6 CDs of drivers” on Windows. But all I did with my Mac was plug in the printer, and it was ready to go, working perfectly.

It just worked — like so many people that I thought were brainwashed Apple users had been telling me it would — my did it just work. It was astonishing, and from that moment forward the technology was no longer a tool I fought with, but something I trusted — it became a part of my philosophy for working with technology.

Things should just work.

I always loved computers before I switched to Macs, but now I had found a reason to be passionate about computers. This distinction between loving something and being passionate is much larger than people often credit and speaks mountains to why there are so many people wanting to write about it. ((That and the foolish notion you can easily make money doing it.))

It’s a similar feeling that I had with my X-E2 from Fujifilm. I’ve always loved photography and cameras, and I’ve had tons of them over the course of my life, but it wasn’t until that first hour of playing with the X-E2 that I felt that same thing. The camera became a part of my philosophy — and photography a passion.

I won’t say that Fujifilm is the “Apple” of cameras — that’s just not a comparison that I think any company can live up to. What I will say is that of the Fujifilm cameras I have spent time with, they have made me far more connected and apart of the photography than I have ever felt before.

Is that corny? You bet, but it is also the truth. It’s not easily verbalized or understood. Like telling people that Macs just work (or did), you have to experience it first hand.

With the X-E2 I can ignore the fact this is a digital image for the most part and capture imagery. I don’t have to worry about learning the tool because it just works. I’m not constantly in menus, or fiddling with software controls. I am shooting and trusting my tools.

Like Apple, though, Fujifilm is full of unexpected surprises. When Apple announces an impossibly good new OS, and then also tells you it is free, and works on devices they haven’t sold in a good long time, people’s loyalty is rewarded and you feel taken care of. Fujifilm updates the camera and lens firmware more than any other company I know of and they add features because they can add them, not withholding them to encourage you to buy new models of their cameras. They eschew profit hungry practices so that they can instead build loyalty and trust.

In that sense, the comparison of Fujifilm to Apple is apt — but I’d limit it just to that comparison.

So, in a nut shell, you can expect to see continued posts from me on this matter. I’ve found something that turns my love into a passion once again and I think that is something worth sharing.

When I read Gabe Weatherhead’s post about how iOS 7, and its crash prone nature, should have ruined Apple’s reputation I really wanted to take him to task over it. I agree that iOS 7 crashes, but I don’t think it crashes that much — but the problem is that his argument faced the same flaw as my rebuttal would have: anecdotal evidence only.

In other words I needed to poll people to see how bad we collectively thought the crashing was on iOS 7. I created a vague poll with six possible responses. The polling software showed those choices in random order and used cookies to keep people from double voting. ((Not fool proof, but good enough.))

This is the poll question and possible answers:

“How often did iOS 7 (pre-7.1) crash on you?”

1. Mulitple times per day
2. Daily
3. Only a few times
4. Barely
5. Never
6. Every time I used the device

Now, before we get into the results and analyzing them, we need to address fundamental flaws in this poll.

Flaws

• I did not specify what “crash” means. I left it open to interpretation. Some would damn the poll because of that, but in my opinion that is the most accurate way to conduct this research. A perceived crash in this case is no different than an actual crash. That is, a perceived crash will equally ‘ruin’ Apple’s reputation as a real crash would. You wouldn’t rebut an anger customer by telling them the device didn’t really crash.
• I did not specify devices, or limit devices. I only specified iOS 7.
• I used vague and slightly interpretive terms. I’ll address this more later, but it is of very little difference.
• I posted this on a tech blog, not say Facebook — so the respondents are naturally more likely to notice a crash.
• I didn’t ask for an opinion on if the crashes were better or worse than iOS 6. This is because human memory is shitty at recalling annoying things like this — either forgetting them completely or exaggerating them in hindsight.

Overall is the poll flawed? Hell yes. But so is every poll, but knowing these key flaws can better help us interpret the data.

The Results

Here are the raw results in bar chart form, the total number of respondents was 676.

I’ve now taken that same data set and consolidated the information into two categories, with “Barely, Never, Only a few times” being one category that I call “not too crashy”. The second category is “Every time I used the device, Multiple times per day, Daily”, which is called “too crashy”.

In other words I boiled the results down to a yes or no answer of: Did you iPhone crash too much?

The overwhelming answer is no, for most people their devices did not crash too much. But their devices did crash and one could make the unreasonable argument that even a single crash is too much.

While that is a nice goal, it is completely unrealistic for any operating system on this scale.

What this data doesn’t tell us, that would be most useful, is how these responses differ from iOS 6. Without that knowledge we cannot make a conclusion as to whether the software has become more crash prone or not. And it’s hard to judge the damage that iOS 7 did to Apple’s reputation.

All I can say right now is that 26.4% of respondents to my poll claim iOS 7 crashed far too often to be considered acceptable by any reasonable person. I have no way of knowing if that is worse or better than anything else. It is just a number by itself.

So the real question then: Did Apple damage its “just works” reputation with a 26% crash rate for users of iOS 7?

You be the judge — honestly it was a lower percentage than I thought it would be, but higher than I would want it to be.