Pages & Numbers

With some much software being subscription based I have to take the opportunity to praise Apple’s Pages and Numbers applications which are available for free. I use both apps for running my business, from sending out invoices to making budgetary or booking spreadsheets. They are invaluable to me running a small business and they are completely free, here’s hoping it stays like that.

Photoshop & Photo Mechanic

Time marches on but certain things don’t change. My two primary work applications remain Photoshop and Photo Mechanic. Photo Mechanic recently moved to being a subscription based app and that really sucks because it’s hard to see where that money is going. The UI is so out of date and so out of place on a Mac. I also for the first time had a lot of problems with Photo Mechanic last year. I hd a period where it was crashing regularly. So much so that I had to reach out to them and see if they could help. Luckily an update to the app brought back stability.

As for Photoshop, I think it remains an application I have a love hate relationship with. Over the Christmas break I was using some of the AI features and I got hit with a popup telling me I needed to purchase credits to continue using the feature. So I pay a yearly subscription to use Photoshop and now they are building in features which require you to purchase additional “credits” to use them.

So foul … lets just leave it at that so I don’t have to type ant swear words.

There is a lot of talk about “vibe coding” these days and it sure feels like there is an opportunity for someone to vibe code an app that combines Photo Mechanic and Camera RAW.

DaVinci Resolve

I found myself having to make some videos again, the first time in a real long time and I turned to DaVinci Resolve. I had wanted to get Final Cut Pro, as I learned it pretty well back when I was studying, but I did not want to pay nearly 4000 :- for it not knowing if I would use it beyond the few videos I needed to make. DaVinci Resolve came to the rescue, it’s completely free and a really robust video editor.

Visual Studio Code

For coding I finally moved away from BBEdit. Now BBEdit has been reduced to being a plain text editor, used for making code replacement files. I can’t say I love Visual Studio Code, but it is free and it gets the job done. At some point I really need to sit down with some tutorials because it seems like it can be customized in a million different ways. So I am sure I can probably fix some of my gripes with it.

Chat GPT

I have to mention GPT. I use Chat GPT all the time, I pay for the pro version and it is absolutely invaluable to me. From having it write stuff, to translating, or helping with coding problems. Simply put it is a technology that is nothing short of revolutionary.

Backblaze

Not really an application I use, but a service that runs in the background. Backblaze will back-up your computer and any attached external hard drives to the cloud. It costs just 9 dollars a month. At that price it’s an absolute steal. I have lost track of how many times Backblaze has saved my butt and helped me restore files I accidentally removed.

As for the books I read I began the year finishing off the last book in the Slow Horses series and having to wait all year for the next one (Clown Town) to be released. I then suffered through A City on Mars, a book on which I found the writing to be so pretentious that I could barely get through it.

I finally tackled the Lord of Rings trilogy. I was always afraid that it would be way to verbose, like Game of Thrones at it’s most verbose multiplied by 20x. Surprisingly aside from maybe the first 100 pages of the Fellowship of the Ring it wasn’t that bad. Have to also say it was pretty surprising with some of the differences from the films.

Night of the Grizzlies was a great read, it’s another book from Ryan Holiday’s reading recommendation email newsletter, Ryan has a pretty good track record in recommending books I have enjoyed.

Chip War was an interesting read about the coming showdown between the United States and China over control of micro processors. Perhaps at times a bit too much American propaganda, China bad / America good. The book opens with the threat of China invading Taiwan, interestingly enough as I type this the United States has just overthrown another country.

No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker was a good read, and the Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch was also a pretty interesting read.

Lastly I closed out the year with a bit of Arthur C. Clarke and read both Rendezvous with Rama and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both of which I enjoyed.

1. Bad Actors – Mick Herron
2. A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? – Kelly Weinersmith
3. The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
4. Dream Story – Arthur Schitzler
5. The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien
6. The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien
7. The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality – Michael Talbot
8. Night of the Grizzlies – Jack Olsen
9. Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Crucial Technology – Chris Miller
10. Guerrilla Warfare – Ernesto Che Guevara
11. Spring Snow – Yukio Mishima
12. The Old man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
13. No Beast So Firece – Edward Bunker
14. War is a Racket – Smedley D. Butler
15. Pines – Blake Crouch
16. Wayward Pines – Blake Crouch
17. The Last Town – Blake Crouch
18. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
19. Why Socialism? – Albert Einstein
20. Nausea – Ed Kurtz
21. Contact – Carl Sagan
22. Clown Town – Mick Herron
23. Penso quindi gioco – Andrea Pirlo
24. Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
25. Who Owns the Future – Jaron Lanier
26. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke

In terms of when I read, I discovered that there is a genre of non-fiction history that reads like page turner paperbacks, and I really like it. Books like The Art Thief, Tunnel 29, and Red Notice were among my favorites. If the author is good then can even pull it off with a subject you already know about. Walter Lord’s A Night To Remember being a good example.

On the subject of history King Leopold’s Ghost, about the atrocities committed by the king of Belgium in the African Congo will give you a slice of the history they don’t teach you in school.

As for fiction I read in 2024 … I think this year the clear winner is Mick Herron’s Slough House series. I have gone through at a relentless pace this fall reading 7 out of 8 books and three novellas that tie into the central story. I started the series because I enjoyed the TV adaption Slow Horses but I quickly discovered (as is often the case) that the books were much much better. Great humor and satire while managing to echo British politics and current affairs.

Bellow is the full list, books in bold are my favorites from last year:

1. The River of Doubt – Candice Millard
2. The Narrative Life of Fredrick Douglass – Fredrick Douglass
3. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival – John Valliant
4. A Night To Remember – Walter Lord
5. Children of Memory – Adrian Tchaikovsky
6. Profiles in Courage – John F. Kennedy
7. All Systems Red – Martha Wells
8. Artificial Condition – Martha Wells
9. A History Of God – Karen Armstrong
10. Compulsory – Martha Wells
11. Rogue Protocol – Martha Wells
12. Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory – Martha Wells
13. Exit Strategy – Martha Wells
14. The Johnstown Flood – David McCullough
15. Network Effect – Martha Wells
16. Fugitive Telemetry – Martha Wells
17. System Collapse – Martha Wells
18. King Leopold’s Ghost – Adam Hochschild
19. Photographing Men: Posing, Lighting, and Shooting Techniques for Portrait and Fashion Photography – Jeff Rojas
20. Titanium Noir – Nick Harkaway
21. Papillon – Henri Charrière
22. Slash – Slash
23. Photographing Women: Posing, Lighting, and Shooting Techniques for Portrait and Fashion Photography – Jeff Rojas
24. Day Of Infamy – Walter Lord
25. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
26. Dan Brown – The Lost Symbol
27. Dark Matter – Blake Crouch
28. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Jack Weatherford
29. Recursion – Blake Crouch
30. Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
31. Upgrade – Blake Crouch
32. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America – Erik Larson
33. The Mercy of Gods – James S.A. Corey
34. Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies – Brian Coleman
35. The 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene
36. The Book Of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi
37. Dead Silence – S.A. Barnes
38. The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession – Michel Finkel
39. Hard Rain Falling – Don Carpenter
40. Slow Horses – Mick Heron
41. Dead Lions – Mick Heron
42. The List – Mick Heron
43. Real Tigers – Mick Heron
44. Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall – Helena Merriman
45. Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road
46. Spook Street – Mick Herron
47. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice – Bill Browder
48. Livesuit – James S.A. Corey
49. London Rules – Mich Herron
50. The Drop – Mick Herron
51. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Expéry
52. Joe Country – Mick Herron
53. The Catch – Mick Herron
54. The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
55. Slough House – Mick Herron

If anyone out there knows where I can find a version that is a PDF please let me know.

My R3 got itself a big brother this week as my Canon EOS R1 turned up. I was told be Canon that I would be getting it sometime in November and with just 3 days to go it finally arrived. As I write this I have gone through the camera, changed settings, starting to get it setup. However I haven’t used it on a job yet. So this really is a bare bones, initial observations, for anyone that might be interested.

The camera feels bit more akin to the 1D X than the R3. It’s a little taller and beefier than the R3, when you hold it in your hand it has a little weight to it and that reminds of my 1D X days. The R3 by comparison always felt almost impossibly light.

On the body some of the buttons are different compared to the R3 and it has some new buttons that the R3 doesn’t have but it is very similar in look and feel. The EVF (electronic viewfinder) is really nice. It’s huge and when you look through it feels like you are looking out a window. The design of the eye-cup on the EVF is also different and it seems like it is harder for it to get loose and fall off. That would be nice because I lost the eye-cup to my R3 when riding on a motorcycle photographing Ironman this past summer.

Speaking of losing things the Hot Shoe cover has also been redesigned and now locks on. I lost the hot shoe cover on my R3 within two weeks of having the camera, so this is a welcome improvement. Testing the hot shoe cover it seems to sit really tight, to the point where it was hard to get it off the first couple of times. The Hot Shoe cover also works on the R3, so if you lose yours and have to buy a new one definitely get the version that comes with R1.

On the camera body there are a few other notable changes. It has a full size HDMI port, where the R3 used Micro-HDMI. The door where you insert your memory cards, now dual CF Express, has also be redesigned.

The menu system is very similar to what they had on the R3 but there are some significant changes. On the R3 and going back to the 1D X the options to customize buttons were spread out across multiple menu pages. For example changing button behavior for image playback was done on the blue Play menu. While changing buttons for general camera operation was done on the orange camera menu. Canon has now grouped all these settings and created a new green menu section with a round icon which I assume is meant to represent a button.

Another notable change in the camera compared to the R3 is the addition of four new AF modes, as seen in the above screenshot from the Limit AF Areas settings in the magenta AF menu. You can see the bottom row has new variations of Spot AF, 1-point AF, Expand AF Area, and Expand AF Area: Around where there is a lock next to the icon. These are the same as their normal versions except the tracking is disabled and focus is taken strictly from your focus point.

Definitely a welcome change as you can now toggle tracking on and off from the AF point selection button. On my R3 I decided I did not want the tracking on by default and configured it so that a number of buttons would activate the various tracking options: Subject Tracking, Eye Detection AF, and Eye-Control. Being able to toggle tracking on and off from the AF point selection button means I can likely reconsider at least some of my button customization choices on the R1.

The AF-On button which a lot of people use for their back button focus has also been updated. It’s now a two step button where you can do a half press and full press. By default it is configured to start metering and autofocus and it can be customized but Canon made some really weird decisions as seen in the graphic bellow:

So you have seven different options to can select from on the AF-On button, but on all the options there is one of button states (either the half press or full press) that is locked and can not be changed. A bit baffling as to what Canon was thinking when they set this up. The options on the button are:

1. Metering and AF Start (Half Press) / No Function (Full Press – LOCKED)
2. No function (Half Press – LOCKED) / Metering and AF Start (Full Press)
3. Metering and AF Start (Half Press – LOCKED) / Switch ES cont. shooting modes (Full Press)
4. Metering and AF Start (Half Press – LOCKED) / Eye Detection AF (Full Press)
5. Metering and AF Start (Half Press – LOCKED) / Start Stop Whole Area AF Tracking (Full Press)
6. Metering and AF Start (Half Press – LOCKED) / No Function (Full Press)
7. Metering and AF Start (Half Press – LOCKED) / No Function (Full Press)

Why not just let users set the state for both the half press and full press? What is even the point in having 7 different options to choose from when option 6 and 7 are the same thing? Really strange, I would not be surprised if this gets revised in a coming firmware.

Another thing I noticed on my initial setup is that if you activate the setting for blackout free EVF you can not change your shutter type away from Electronic until you go and turn off the option for blackout free EVF.

Not really a fan of when Canon sets up these limitations.

Most of the time I will use this camera shooting sports with the electronic shutter where I want to make use of the ability to have a blackout free EVF. However in the scenario where I toss on a Speedlite and need to switch over to the mechanical shutter or first curtain electronic shutter, in that scenario I want to do so as fast as possible without having to go and hunt down other settings that I need to disable.

A better user experience would be that switching away from the electronic shutter also turns off the setting for blackout free EVF. Although I’m not so sure that this will be addressed in a firmware update, think we will just learn to live with it.

The only other thing of note is that for some unexplainable reason the R1 does not see or want to connect to the wifi network from my mobile router. No amount of refreshing makes the camera seen the network and trying to enter it in manually also does not seem to work. The camera had no problem seeing and connecting to my home network, it also had no problem connecting to the network generated by my iPhone’s personal hotspot. So I don’t believe there is anything wrong with the camera, just possibly a bug in the firmware. I have seen at least one other R1 user with the same exact problem. I even saw an R5 Mark II user with the same issue. I figure the R5 Mark II might have a very similar firmware to the R1.

If you have an R1 and have this problem I’d love to hear from you. That’s it for now.

Last week Canon announced the Canon EOS R1, which when released will be their flagship mirrorless camera. This means the camera will likely be in a hands of select lucky photographers at this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris and the UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany. Then hopefully the camera will be released in the fall or end of the year.

The announcement gave me an immediate case of gear acquisition syndrome, and I think I am more or less set on purchasing one when it’s released. I jumped on the mirrorless train early on opting to try and sell of my DSLRs and lenses while they still had a high resale value. Currently I’m shooting with one Canon EOS R3 and two Canon EOS R5. I turned over all my lenses and replaced them with RF lenses with the exception of my large tele (EF 200-400 with built in converter) where I am patiently waiting hoping for something interesting, like maybe Canon copies Nikon and does a 400mm f2.8 with built in converter.

My current kit serves me well under most working scenarios. There are occasions when I find myself shooting with the R3 and one of the R5s and it’s always annoying that the buttons don’t match. Other than that I think the only thing I can really complain about is the R5s don’t seem to be able to hold a connection to my mobil router. They just seems to always disconnect, regardless of the strength of the cell network. In the past two years I’m been doing more and more assignments where I need to transmit live and that is always a huge problem. I find the I have to place my mobile router right on the camera in order for it to maintain the connection. When shooting sports that is huge burden to be distracted from the game and messing with trying to place the router perfectly so it can send the files. The R3 on the other hand is a rock, just like my old 1D Xs. Once it’s connected it stays connected and I almost never have a problem transmitting from it. If nothing else I’m looking forward to the R1 just because it will give me two camera’s with reliable transmitting capabilities.

As for the specs of the camera, Canon did not release anything officially, but they did play up the camera’s auto focus abilities. Here’s a bit from their announcement:

By combining the new image processing system and deep learning technology to an advanced degree, Canon has achieved high-speed and high-accuracy subject recognition. For example, subject tracking accuracy has been improved so that in team sporting events where multiple subjects intersect, the target subject can continually be tracked even if another player passes directly in front of them. In addition, the AF “Action Priority” function recognizes subject movement by rapidly analyzing the subject’s status. In moments during a sports game when it is difficult to predict what will happen next, this function automatically determines the player performing a certain action, such as shooting a ball, as the main subject and instantly shifts the AF frame, thereby helping to capture decisive moments of gameplay.

So that sounds really great. Sony has been way ahead of them on this kind of stuff and it’s good to see Canon catching up. They made a huge step up in autofocus by transitioning to mirrorless. I find the autofocus on both the R3 and R5 to be pretty amazing. If the subject tracking improves as much as they are boasting then it seems like a really big step forward. Especially when covering sports where you get a lot of interfering objects crossing in front of your subject.

There were some leaked specs for the R1 that came from the Adorama website, it’s questionable as to how legit they are but I think they seem rather plausible. They claim the camera will have a 30 mega pixel sensor, which is higher than the R3 and lower than the R5. I think this seems very plausible. Honestly for sports and press work, the R5’s 45 mega pixel is more of a hinderance than a benefit. 30 mega pixels could be a sweat spot for them to one up the R3 and have a sensor that allows them to manage all the processing and maintain the speed they want. They claim the camera will only have an electronic shutter, just like the Nikon Z9. I’m not sure how I feel about this one. Too often with the mirrorless cameras I have found myself working under cheap LED lights that give a banding striped pattern on images. The easiest way to get rid of them is to switch the camera’s into mechanical shutter mode. The leaked specs also speak of increased dynamic range, which is always welcomed.

Looking forward to more info leaking out and hopefully an official announcement with specs from Canon. I would also love to test one out, if anyone at Canon Sweden is reading this.

1. Che: A Memoir – Fidel Castro
2. The Sins of Our Fathers – James S.A. Corey
3. Woken Furies – Richard K. Morgan
4. Artemis – Andy Weir
5. Chroma: A Photographer’s Guide To Lighting With Color – Nick Fancher
6. Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
7. The Running Man – Richard Bachman
8. Raw: My Journey Into The Wu-Tang – Lamont Hawkings
9. Neuromancer – William Gibson
10. The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu
11. Pimp: The Story of My Life – Iceberg Slim
12. The Dark Forest – Cixin Liu
13. Death’s End – Cixin Liu
14. The Book of Jose – Fat Joe
15. The 12th Planet – Zecharia Sitchin
16. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
17. Ripley Under Ground – Patricia Highsmith
18. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome – Mary Beard
19. Ripley’s Game – Patricia Highsmith
20. The Redemption of Time – Baoshu
21. Chokepoint Capitalism – Rebecca Giblin
22. The Boy Who Followed Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
23. Witness To Roswell – Thomas J. Carey
24. And Then There Was None – Agatha Christie
25. Ripley Under Water – Patricia Highsmith
26. Mao: The Unknown Story – Jung Chang
27. The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg
28. Tesla: Inventor of Modern – Richard Munson
29. The Mountain Into The Sea – Ray Nayler
30. Strangers On A Train – Patricia Highsmith
31. From Staircase to Stage: The Story of Raekwon and the Wu-Tang Clan – Raekwon
32. How To Talk To Anyone – Leil Lowndes
33. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
34. Communion: A True Story – Withley Striber
35. Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee – Shannon Lee
36. Killing Commendatore – Haruki Murakami
37. Ark – Veronica Roth
38. Summer Frost – Blake Crouch
39. Emergency Skin – N.K. Jesmin
40. You Have Arrived At Your Destination – Amor Towles
41. On Photography – Susan Sontag
42. How It Unfolds – James S.A. Corey
43. The Last Conversation – Paul Tremblay
44. Randomize – Andy Weir
45. Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky
46. The Long Game – Ann Leckie
47. Falling Bodies – Rebecca Roanhorse
48. Slow Time Between Stars – John Scalzi
49. Ways of Seeing – John Berger
50. Love & Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain – Max Wallace
51. The Demon-Haunted World – Carl Sagan
52. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography – Roland Barthes
53. Children of Ruin – Adrian Tchaikovsky
54. Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color, & Composition in Photography – Bryan Peterson
55. Def Jam Inc. – Stacy Geraseva
56. Chess Story – Stefan Zweig
57. The Sicilian – Mario Puzo
58. Void – Veronica Roth
59. Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach – Nnedi Okorafor
60. Heart Of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
61. The Most Dangerous Game – Richard Connell
62. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Irving Washington
63. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Mankind – Yuval Noah Harari

Tim Cook’s track record

All in all I think Tim Cook did okay as a successor to Steve Jobs. He lacks the product vision that Steve Jobs had, but it would have been impossible to find a successor that had all of qualities that Steve Jobs had. Tim however had a lot of other great characteristics that made him the right choice for that moment in time. He came from an operations background and was responsible for setting up Apple’s supply chain.

As the iPhone continued to grow he was able to maximize that moment and has probably squeezed out every possible dollar from the most popular consumer electronics product of all time. The iPhone is such a popular product that it is able to carry satellite products such as the Apple Watch and AirPods and they sell so well that if you split them into a separate company it would have a rather healthy business year over year. One can make the argument that Apple has an unfair advantage since they control the iPhone, but I think you should not overlook how hard it actually is. Other companies (Samsung & Google) have copied the model, but none have come close to moving the same amount units.

Tim Cook has also shown an ability to adapt and course correct. The Apple Watch initially launched aimed as a fashion product before transitioning completely into a fitness device. The MacBook Pro, the best laptop money can buy, nearly had its reputation destroyed when Apple removed most of the ports and replaced the keyboard with one that was prone to failure. But again Apple corrected, walked things back and today the Apple’s laptops are again sitting were they belong as the crown jewel of the computer industry.

An inability to read the room

Where Tim Cook has really failed is the moments when he has tried to lay out visions for the future in new or updated products. As already mentioned the initial launch of the Apple Watch was a mess. They could not decide what the product was meant to be and tried to do a multitude of things. The biggest head scratcher was that they somehow convinced themselves they should release the watch in special gold editions that cost $10,000 to $17,000 dollars. Talk about not reading the room, you are a consumer electronics company not Rolex. A watch that would be out of date in a year at that price. I will never understand how that was approved, but as mentioned Tim knows how to course correct and the iPhone is so strong that they were able to salvage the Apple Watch as a product.

This inability to read the room however has repeated itself. When Apple launched a new version of the Apple TV, Tim Cook stood on stage and proclaimed the future of the TV was apps. Apps were not the future of TV, while Apple had hoped an App Store on the Apple TV would energize the product the way the App Store did for the iPhone that never happened. Today the App Store on the Apple TV is a dead marketplace where you only go when setting up the device to download the streaming services you are subscribed to. And as such the Apple TV is a stagnant product, updated sporadically, and with no real vision for where it wants to go.

And then you have the Vision Pro, released earlier this year in the United States. It’s the first new product category from Apple since the Apple Watch and in my opinion it was dead on arrival. Once again they failed to read the room and the resulting product is an absolute mess. It’s been reported that originally Apple wanted to make a pair of glasses that you would wear that would augment your vision. Unable to get there with the currently available technology they pivoted and made what is essentially a VR headset. The problem with VR headsets in my opinion is they just aren’t very compelling products. They make amazing demos, and it’s easy to get enticed and wowed when you first try it, but eventually the novelty wears off and you realize the things you can do with a computer screen strapped to your face you can already do, and do better, with the laptop or computer you already own. The only use case for VR headsets that seems to really stick is games, something which Apple has never really been strong in. The other big mistake with the Apple Vision Pro is that it is priced so far on the high end that it’s hard to envision a second generation coming down to a price where it might be able to actually take off and gain traction. The starting price of $3,500 is just crazy for something that does not really do anything that the tech products already in your life do and do well enough. To make matters worse the Vision Pro is not going to be able to lean on the iPhone as it tries to make a pivot in its second generation in an effort to catch on.

The Vision Pro was released on February 2nd and now as I write this at the end of March there is very little talk of it on the internet. Interest in it, seems to have collapsed in less than two months time. I really struggle to see what future the company can grind out for this product, especially considering how stretched out and how many different platforms they are managing and trying to bring forward.

The sharks start circling

All of this brings us to this moment, Apple’s shaky future as the regulation sharks from the European Union and now the Justice Department are circling around the company. This moment highlights Took Cook’s other great mistake. During a lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple documents became public that showed how leadership with in the company was split on how to manage the App Store as it grew in popularity and the revenue took off. Certain executives felt they should lower the split between Apple and developers at intervals as the store grew in popularity. Unfortunately money can blind you and the money certainly seems to have blinded Tim Cook. Tim Cook saw the revenue of the App Store as a way to continue growing Apple’s stock, using it to show growth in the company even as sales were peaking and slowing down across product categories. While great for the stock value this strategy has lead to relations with developers eroding over time. Here Tim Cook was not able to course correct. With hindsight you can easily say that Apple should have given a little.

They could have made exceptions for especially large developers, picking an arbitrary number of users that a developer needed to have that would enable them to receive exemptions from the certain App Store policies. I’m sure there is number fairly high that would have left things as they are for 90% of App Store developers and made concessions to the 10% who happen the ones doing all the governmental lobbying. Instead they held firm and went after every dollar they could get their hands on and now the sharks are circling.

In Europe the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is already upon us and it is forcing Apple to open up the iPhone to third party app stores. This has the potential to amount to nothing or be the beginning of something that ultimately ruins the iPhone experience. The reality is the average consumer loves the iPhone/App Store model. It’s why they buy the phone and none of them are sitting around asking for alternate App Stores. Apple is complying with the DMA and trying to do it in the least painful way possible. However it seems like the EU is going to keep pushing. Initially Apple was trying to place themselves in a position where they would notarize apps from third party stores, in the name of security and privacy. However it seems like the EU might prevent them from doing that, a scenario that is absolutely horrific. Here you could see a company like the Zuckerberg spying apparatus (known as Meta) move all their apps into their own App Store and no longer be bound by the privacy restrictions Apple puts into place. Free to use private APIs to spy on users completely and with impunity.

Plus now the Justice Department might be gearing up to do the follow the EU and do something similar in the United States. If Apple is forced to allow third party app stores in both the United States and the EU then it is even more likely that some of Apple’s competitors will make a push at creating a successful third party alternative. However it plays out one thing is certain it will not be the average consumer who wins.

How this eventually plays out will be what ultimately ends up defining Tim Cook’s legacy as CEO of Apple and unfortunately I believe there is a real possibility that his legacy will be ruined because he failed to get on top of the possibility of government regulation and just kept his foot on the pedal until it was too late.

Time will tell.

Then a few weeks back I logged into Google Analytics. I’m not crazy about Google Analytics, I look at it occasionally. Mostly in the periods where I am working on the site, which believe me are few and far between. Anyhow Google Analytics is now nagging that:

Set up your property to record consent from end users in the European Economic Area (EEA) to allow their personal data to be shared with Google for advertising purposes. To ensure there is no impact to your ads personalization and measurement, verify your consent settings for the Google tag and other data sources.

Google Analyitcs

I’m not expert in Googlese but it seems like they are going to force Analytics users to connect their Cookie/Consent bars to their Analytics accounts in an effort to make sure that they are legally covered from possible litigation from the EU.

So when I saw this I thought is this the end of my cookie banner free existence? But then I decided that it would not be. Rather than putting that stupid and intrusive Cookie & GDPR banner on my website I am just going to stop using Google Analytics.

As an alternative I found the WordPress friendly Independent Analytics which is self-hosted on your own website and completely GDPR compliant out of the box. So problem solved. With Google Analytics removed my website is both completely cookie free and GDPR compliant (since users can’t comment or login). I can keep it free off those horrible consent banners and not have to worry about ever having any trouble, enjoying the cookie banner free lifestyle.

Anyhow, that is beside the point. Today I have launched a new version of my website and finally said goodbye to PhotoShelter. I started using PhotoShelter to manage my portfolio way back in 2015 and over the years I became more and more disgruntled over the lack of updates to their platform.

Between 2015 and 2024 there was not a single update to their platform that provided new functionality or improved their templates and tools for building out your website. They made a lot of promises about re-focusing and building out their tools but in the end I got tired of waiting for them to deliver.

Back to our old friend WordPress

The old site was setup with PhotoShleter running the portfolio on the main domain and WordPress running the blog on a sub-domain (blog.campanella.se). Now with this new version of my website I have gone back to using WordPress for the entire site.

I’m very happy with my decision, WordPress is being rebuilt and modernize little by little and the team of volunteers who work on the WordPress project are doing an amazing job at something that is truly a monumental task. I believe WordPress runs on about 40% of the websites on the internet. Rebuilding and modernizing a piece of software that is that heavily used is no simple task.

I still have some fine tuning to do on the website, but I do think this represents the look and feel of the site going forward for the foreseeable future. Soon I will make a post talking a bit about the experience of rebuilding this site using a block theme and the new FSE (Full Site Editing) environment in WordPress.

Last week I had the great privilege of photographing Sweden’s national mens football team taking the official portraits for the UEFA Euro 2020 tournament. It’s very similar to the portraits I did of FC Rosengård for UEFA back in the spring, that job was a trial run for this one.

We did it at Friends Arena over two days as the team trained. The portraits were meant to be shot close up with a 24-70 lens but COVID restrictions made it so I could not be closer than 3 meters to the players, even though I took daily tests and wore a mask at all times. So all of these are shot on a 70-200 lens with the original lighting setup modified slightly to accommodate for it.

I think most people had their eyes on the Champions League final last night but there was also a friendly match between Sweden and Finnland at Friends Arena. It was one of two test games before Sweden departs to participate in the Euro, next Saturday they will face Armenia. The game was pretty standard they put in a stable performance and pulled out at 2-0 win.

Emil Forsberg remains Sweden’s key player, the engine behind most of the attacks. I had wanted to get a great panning shot of him running but it never really came together. I even made a meal of the first goal sequence as I was following Forsberg with a slow shutter (1/30th) and did not manage to switch back to a fast shutter until Quaison had already scored. Oh well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

I am disappointed that we again saw Marcus Berg starting the match. Nothing against him, but I am really ready to see Sweden starting match with a pairing of Alexander Isak and Robin Quaison. Maybe against Armenia??

This week I am shooting portraits of the Swedish men’s national team for UEFA. Not many people get an opportunity to do portraits of the team, so I am really excited to be doing this job. The pictures will be used by UEFA on match programs, the web, and social media during the Euros. Vey similar to the images I shot of FC Rosengård for UEFA earlier this year. So let’s hope Sweden has a strong showing so plenty of the images are used.