I’ve decided to travel to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and see if the Biden administration’s Secret Service is making efforts to protect Donald Trump from local armed teenagers. To avoid crowds, though, I will arrive on Friday, July 19 and my inspection will last through the morning of Sunday, July 21. If anyone wants to get together for coffee in Milwaukee, or between July 21 and July 27 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (EAA AirVenture!), please email philg@mit.edu. Thanks in advance!
Here’s a 2002 digital SLR photo from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Calatrava-designed wing that I took. I’m 99% sure that a smartphone today provides higher image quality:
Well, maybe not my iPhone 14, which I had hoped would last at least through the glorious release of the iPhone 16. Here’s what it is doing as of today:
The phone wasn’t dropped or, as far as I know, recently updated. It’s running iOS 17.5.1, which I think is a month old. The camera actually seems to work reasonably well. What seems to have gone wrong is Apple’s system for monopolizing parts and service. The phone isn’t recognized as “genuine” and that triggers a limit on what the software will do with it. I called Apple Support and was connected to a woman with a heavy Indian accent. She asked where I’d bought the phone and I responded “Verizon”. She had never heard of Verizon so she came up with a theory for how the fly-by-night vendor might have installed a third-party camera into the phone 1.5 years ago (this treacherous act not having been discovered by iOS until today).
[Update: Despite being kind of an Apple hater, I must admit that the repair was convenient. 12-minute drive, meet the genius at 6:50 pm, leave phone at 7:00 pm with a diagnosis of “needs new camera module”, hit Shake Shack in the mall food court, return just before 8:00 pm, receive phone and pay $219 (to the virtuous rainbow flag-waving (except in Muslim countries) Apple) plus tax (to the hated dictator Ron DeSantis) at 8:15 pm. How does it work when a Samsung or Google Pixel phone needs service?]
A 2019 picture taken from the EAA Bell 47 helicopter ride:
Just do not get yourself killed is some mass bombing or similar, if Secret Service fails again.
Happy to see a DeHavilland Mosquito! But I would not be so happy to go flying in it without reassurance that the glue holding it together and the timber that is glued are in good-enough condition. Have major parts been replaced since it was built? When was that? In the nineteen forties or, at latest, fifties?
Surprised their war on independent repair shops is pervasive enough to make it to the Greenspun blog. They were losing enough money to independent repair shops & the DIY movement to invest insane amounts of money in hardware DRM. Lions avoid all updates because they’re nothing more than forced obsolescence programs nowadays. You upgraded yourself into requiring a new phone.
> How does it work when a Samsung or Google Pixel phone needs service?
If you bought a Fairphone, via reshipper if necessary, you pull out some tools, debug and fixit yourself. Remember that cancelled google modular phone project Ara? If you bought something else, but highly rated on ifixit, you may do the same, with more difficulty and lower success rate. There are repair places too, but ordering new online may be the best option, depending on your value calculation.
> cameras
How much difference do they make now, when viewed on ~6″x3″ screens? Nevertheless, a pro photographer told me Sony sensors and raw image storage is the way…More storage – another reason for new phone…