Steve Jobs: “This doesn’t do that. I want you to make this, do that.” →

November 18, 2020 · 10:23

John Gruber, on Daring Fireball, has a fantastic story about Steve Jobs:

I’ve told this story on podcasts, but I’m not sure I’ve ever written it, and I think the time is right. Steve Jobs was on medical leave for the first half of 2009. When he returned in early summer, he devoted most of his attention and time to crafting and launching the original iPad, which was unveiled in April 2010. After that, he had meetings scheduled with teams throughout the company. One such meeting was about MacBooks. Big picture agenda. Where does Steve see the future of Mac portables? That sort of thing. My source for the story was someone on that team, in that meeting. The team prepared a veritable binder full of ideas large and small. They were ready to impress. Jobs comes in carrying a then-brand-new iPad and sets it down next to a MacBook the team had ready for demos. “Look at this.” He presses the home button on the iPad: it instantly wakes up. He does it again. The iPad instantly wakes up. Jobs points to the MacBook, “This doesn’t do that. I want you to make this” — he points to the MacBook — “do that” — he points to the iPad. Then he picks up the iPad and walks out of the meeting.

Steve Jobs would have fucking loved these M1 Macs.

Five People Hacked Apple for 3 Months and Here’s What They Found →

October 9, 2020 · 09:43

Sam Curry:

Between the period of July 6th to October 6th myself, Brett Buerhaus, Ben Sadeghipour, Samuel Erb, and Tanner Barnes worked together and hacked on the Apple bug bounty program.

There were a total of 55 vulnerabilities discovered with 11 critical severity, 29 high severity, 13 medium severity, and 2 low severity reports. These severities were assessed by us for summarization purposes and are dependent on a mix of CVSS and our understanding of the business related impact. As of October 6th, 2020, the vast majority of these findings have been fixed and credited. They were typically remediated within 1-2 business days (with some being fixed in as little as 4-6 hours).

I was genuinely surprised Apple reacted so fast. The whole thing is well worth a read.

Dream Fulfilled

July 31, 2020 · 09:17

I fulfilled another one of my decade long dreams today. It was extremely emotional, but since this was a material dream, it was nowhere close to what I felt at my wedding. I am writing these words three days later and I still can’t believe it finally came to fruition. Iwona already pinched me — didn’t help.

My Photography (99) — Meerkat Squirrel, Warsaw, Poland, 2007

July 29, 2020 · 12:18

This shot is not only has terrible composition, but it’s also very soft and underexposed (thank you RAW!), however this squirrel is much too adorable to not post it. I did have only a second or so to take the photo, so there’s that, but I have to admit, the quality difference in DSLR sensors has come a long way in recent years.

Shot with Canon 10D + EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L IS: 185mm, f/2.8, 1/250s, ISO 400.

My Photography (98) — Missed Focus, Warsaw, Poland, 2007

July 28, 2020 · 09:14

The shot above (as well as the one below) were both shot on the same day as “Looking On” from yesterday, but these are an example of two failures on my part. The squirrels in Warsaw’s Royal Łazienki Park often take on the funniest of poses, but they only hold them for a second or less. This means that there’s barely any time to focus, let alone manually correct. I managed to take these two shots and they were separated by only 0.04 seconds (not a typo; 4 hundredths of a second; the shot above was taken at 14:03:44 and the one below at 14:03:48, which you can check in the EXIF). This is a prime example of why the Canon 10D never cut it for fast-paced shots — it’s AF just couldn’t keep up, back-focusing on the first shot and front-focusing on the second.

Shot with Canon 10D + EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L IS: 200mm, f/2.8, 1/320s, ISO 400.

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My Photography (96) — Barcelona, Spain, 2007

July 23, 2020 · 09:04

I have been to Barcelona a few times but have yet to understand why so many people love this city. Sure, there are some pretty amazing things to see, but as a whole, it has nothing that attracts my interest, which is strange, since I usually find something to love about a place. And yes, this includes the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, from which I took this photo.

Shot with Canon 10D + EF 24-70 mm f/2.8L: 30mm, f/8, 1/400s, ISO 100.