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By most accounts a book written by Yukari Iwatani Kane about Apple is more of a hatchet job worthy of Dan Lyons drivel, than of a book presenting a compelling argument — but I haven’t and won’t read it so I reserve further judgment.

The idea does beg an interesting question, which many critics have sidestepped in reporting on the book: what’s the most immediate loss felt by Apple in the post-Jobs era?

You can make the rather foolish argument that there is no change, but I think that’s easily disproven. Of course there is change, the CEO changed, but that doesn’t mean that this change is a positive or negative for the company.

The answer to what immediate loss Apple suffered seems pretty obvious to me: the reality distortion field is gone.

It’s not just gone, it’s been obliterated.

The way the news reports on Apple, and its products, is notably worse after Jobs, and I attribute this to the loss of Jobs himself — more so the idea of Jobs than the man himself. The belief was always that it was only the mind of Jobs that could make the ordinary into the extraordinary and with Jobs gone, people are questioning everything instead of blindly believing.

The followers of the Apple ‘cult’ lost the leader they once followed, and now are skeptical of the new leader(s) — can those people make the amazing things Jobs made? Forget the same people are roughly still in charge as they were when Jobs was around, and forget that Jobs didn’t do everything — people like to believe it was all Jobs. And at the end of the day it is that belief that matters here. People are skeptical because the “new” leaders don’t have the track record and aura that Jobs possessed.

From the loss of Jobs forward any product Apple makes must be better on day one than the product they would have made with Jobs at the helm — if that product is to survive the press onslaught. It was easy to stand by a product in the past when Jobs held it in his hand, but when someone that is only known for his hair ((Sorry Craig.)) holds it in his hand — well that’s a touch less comforting.

Think about that for a moment.

That’s huge.

Apple has to be better than they would have been with Jobs in order to escape the fact that they no longer have the infamous “reality distortion field”. Put another way: Apple could not get away with introducing a smart phone with no copy and paste in this post-Jobs era.

Can they overcome this handicap?

That’s subjective, but to my eye they already are. The new Mac Pro is a huge shift in thinking for that level of computer, and yet I haven’t heard a chorus of pro users damning the machine — most seem to love it. The iPad Air is phenomenal and I have yet to experience a single issue with it. ((But that’s just one data point, so it’s irrelevant.))

The next iPhone will be the most telling though as we would expect a new design.

The big question for me is: can Apple, post-Jobs, convince people they need and want Apple in a new product category?

By that I mean: I can’t imagine how poorly received the Apple TV would be received if it had been launched without Jobs, as it seems like it would be a product ripe for mocking. This is the “Google” problem, they release tons of half-baked products and no one full buys in at first because they are half-baked. Apple has always been fully-baked, but without Jobs people will be skeptical of whether that is true or not.

Once again, Apple now has the unenviable task of having to be even better than it has been in the past if they want to find success with new products. That’s the real effect of losing Steve Jobs. ((Notwithstanding the intangible value of having someone, by all accounts, that great as your company leader.))

This post on the BitTorrent blog about how someone is syncing their 1Password file with BTSync sent me down a rabbit hole of creating a similar solution. I had been using Dropbox, then iCloud, then Dropbox. I was a confused man.

But I have serious privacy concerns with Dropbox, and I wanted the hell out of there. Also, iCloud seems like a good option as I trust Apple a bit (and the 1P file is encrypted), but at the end of the day I wanted something more reliable.

So I chose BitTorrent Sync. It’s stable, decentralized, and very private. That means, though, that my iOS devices cannot automatically sync and that’s a bit annoying.

Here’s my workflow:

• MacBook Pro: I have the 1Password file in a special folder, and syncing via BitTorrent Sync (my SSD on the computer is encrypted, so that’s all I need). All straight forward.
• iOS: I sync using the WiFi sync option. Amazingly this is far less annoying than I thought it might be. It’s also pretty fast. I only ever update it if I know a password I use a lot has changed. Otherwise things just tend to work.
• Mac mini @ macminicolot.net: Since this is not in my possession, and acting as a central server, I take a bit more care. I don’t use FileVault on the Mini to reduce potential problems with server operations, instead I keep the 1Password file inside a TrueCrypt vault on the mini. BTSync syncs the file within that volume. If I restart the mini I have to mount that volume again, but otherwise the sync happens perfectly. It’s not fool proof, but I feel pretty good about it.

That’s my setup, probably not something I would recommend for you.

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.