hey all. as it turns out, i had to return the e-620 because i didn’t read closely enough. basically, i was certain that (because the registry distance was smaller than that of canon’s FD mount, i would be able to find an adapter for FD to four thirds. while i was able to find an adapter, it wasn’t one that allowed me to focus on infinity. but in case you’re curious or thinking about buying one (and the E-620 is an excellent camera!) here are some sample images (click to go to the full-size image…and though it may seem kinda large on the screen, it’s only 25% of the original size. eek!)
use arrow keys to cycle between images and ESC key to get out if yer trapped in an image!
dear steve jobs:
you make truly beautiful and often innovative objects, but reasonable users have some complaints.
- don’t release products until they’re ready and then pretend the problems with them don’t exist / aren’t your fault / etc.
for example: the “you’re holding it wrong” comment in response to the fact that iphone 4 will drop calls when the phone is held in a certain way (or variants thereof such as the “our algorithm for displaying service bars is inaccurate”). also, what about the fact that the update to ios4 has (appropriately enough) quartered the battery life of my ipod touch? also, every app on the device runs about twice as slowly. wow.
- don’t engage in personal vendettas (however well- or ill-founded) against other members of the tech (or literary, or … whatever) community.
points which spring to mind are your senseless war against flash predicated on some late-coming updates for mac systems back in the 90s. it’s especially distasteful to me that you defend this one based on the rationale that flash is not an “open standard”. apple, once the icon of open systems and user customization, has become a giant, greedy, information-aggregating machine that doesn’t allow users (or even coders and app-designers) to perform the most basic acts of personalization. your clunky OS and buggy mobile devices need help sometimes. why insist on ridiculing users instead of including them in your efforts to improve on good products? or, you know, bad ones. let’s also not forget the time you banned james joyce from the app store because it was “pornographic” and the embargo against wiley based on your personal pride (see iCon). or your little spat with michael dell that drove you to release petty little emails to all your employees.
- don’t make crappy mistakes in your “pretty” OS/hardware that a first grade could tell you to avoid.
let’s simplify: it should be one keystroke to rename a file or folder–not a maze of menus. mice should have at least two keys. holding delete should delete things quickly. ctrl+left arrow should jump you back a word. shift should be a drag select and ctrl should be a point select, rather than having just one way to multiple-select that’s (let’s be honest) kinda broken. when i have a word selected, clicking on it again should put my cursor inside that word (so i can delete a letter from the middle) rather than … doing nothing! the “delete” key should … uh … delete things. i should not have to right-click and “move to trash”. i could go on, but you get the idea.
- itunes genius is spyware, plain and simple. while you’re at it, take a look at foobar to see how a media platform can perform better than itunes at about a quarter of the memory usage. oh, and it’s totally customizable too.
that’s all i can think of off the top of my head. i feel much better. i don’t think very much of you, mr. jobs / applecorp.
as you can see, i’m currently working on the site. various ugly things will be happening for awhile, but i promise it’ll all be better and more efficient (!) in the end. till then, look at the interesting happenings in the world and/or pretty pictures.
below are a few things i wish someone had told me about my ipod touch. i mean, like, you know, if apple had condescended to make something so distinctly unattractive as a manual with actual information in it. but that is not designy. so here i bring you my hard-earned knowledges!
- scrub rate control: extremely handy. if you’re trying to jump around in a song by scrubbing the bar that indicates where you are in the song but are frustrated by how jumpy the controls are, worry no more! by pressing and holding on the bar (until the ‘scrub ball’ appears) then sliding your finger down on the screen–don’t let go!–and then across, you can control the rate of the scrub. in the middle of the screen, you will scrub slower than if you are directly over the scrub bar.
- scroll to top: tap the status bar (with the battery life and time) in order to scroll to the top of a long page in safari or a very wordy note. no more minutes of dragging your fingers across the screen!
- double tap for caps lock: double-tapping the “shift” (up arrow) key on the keyboard will give you a capslock!
- magic ellipsis: press and hold “.” on the keyboard and … voila! you get a “…”
- double-tap home: this can do a variety of things depending on how you configure it. most importantly, however, it allows you to go instantly to music controls (even if your ipod is asleep!) no more laboriously locking and unlocking your ipod!
- drag shift for uppercase: if you press the “shift” (up arrow) but don’t let go (instead dragging until you are over the letter you want to capitalize and then releasing), you get capitals in … a little less effort!
- press and hold for alternate characters: just like it says. you need an umlaut? press and hold on your “u”! also works for punctuation (< > ! = etc)
- screenshot: press “sleep” and “home” buttons together to take a screenshot!
- pinch to zoom: and … whatever the opposite of “pinching motion” is in order to zoom out. spreading? i don’t know. try it out.
- double tap screen to zoom to fit: yup. works for, say, a column of text.
- add words to dictionary: google any given word (in safari’s google search bar) and it will be entered into your dictionary. (i haven’t actually tried this one out, so let me know if it doesn’t work…)
- actually shut down: if you just press the “sleep” button … your ipod sleeps. if you press and hold, it gives you the option to shut down. neat! saves batteries, i guess.
- force quit: finally. you can force quit an app by pressing and holding the “home” button for 6+ seconds.
- move apps around: press and hold (then drag) apps around on the home screen to rearrange the furniture.
neato! aren’t these things helpful? it would have been great if … ahem … apple had made them clear. neener neener.
