After spending nearly three hours in the car getting to the Apple store yesterday, I had to leave my computer with them. I don't get it back until Thursday. So I'm doing what I can on my upstairs computer (the one I bought in 2018 to use to write books—alas, my steely determination to write a book in 2018 was a failure). There's nothing on this computer, and I mean nothing. No passwords, no links, no bookmarks, no mail archive, and so on.
The lure of new cameras
While at the Apple Store I played with an iPhone 12. I actually wrote to Apple's PR department when the iPhone 12 came out asking for a phone to review, but my request was either lost or ignored. So yesterday I took some sample pictures with the iPhone 12 Pro Max (Max Pro?) and emailed the pictures to myself. On arriving home, there was nuthin'. Shoulda figured they'd have some sort of filter in place to prevent people like me from sending content from store demo units to the outside world.
Sigh.
The part of the exercise that amused me? The two pictures I took were of Chris, the Genius (that's not sarcasm, it's what Apple calls its in-store technical advisors) at the widest and narrowest of the three focal lengths. The reason it made me chuckle is because this is just the latest in a very long line of a generic type of shot I've been taking all my life: the Camera Store Counter Person Portrait. I go to a store, diddle around with a new camera I can't afford, and snap a few test pictures around the store, usually including one or two of the salesperson who's helping me. I've probably taken fifty such pictures over my lifetime and it could be twice that many.
I don't have some I'd really want, though. One would be old Mr. Baker of Baker's Camera on Tenley Hill in D.C. way back in the early '80s. That was a wonderful place—an old-style hole-in-the-wall photo store crammed with gear and materiel of every description, presided over by an ancient wizened gnome and his friendly wife who seemed to be taking care of him more than she was taking care of the customers. He had stuff for sale that he wouldn't actually sell! He liked his stuff. He was a swell guy, of a type that I always enjoyed. I wish I had pictures of some of the guys at Penn Camera in downtown D.C. too. I should have documented my life better!
It's similar to that other venerable genre, the Photo-Friend-Across-the-Lunch-Table shot. I have many of those slumbering in remote corners of the archives as well.
"Camera store countermen" would have made a nice idea for a project, actually. Of course I never would have thought of such a thing.
Anyway, sorry I can't show you the pictures. But the portrait of the Genius taken with the latest smartphone camera in the store just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Mike
UPDATE: The Apple Store just called to say the "logic board" of my computer is fried and needs to be replaced, and they don't have the part. There will be an unspecified wait. In the meantime, I've retrieved from my hazy memory the fact that this indeed happened once before...with my beloved Powerbook 160. It needed a new "motherboard." (Same thing?) On the good side, it was put completely right and lived a long life thereafter.
In fact I think I still have it somewhere–I kept it because Phil Davis's Plotter/Matcher program would run on it and wouldn't run on newer OS's. That was one heck of an interesting program, but it never got the attention it deserved, and now even fewer people care about matching film+developer and paper characteristic curves the quick and easy way.
Gear o' The Week:
I'm going to get a review unit of the Fuji GFX 50R as soon as the weather gets nice. Believe it or not what really appeals to me about it are the simplified controls. It has all the features I like and not many I don't like.
The above link is a portal to take you from TOP to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Here's a handy portal to B&H Photo, which also sells the GFX 50R:
Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Moose: "The only mother board failure I've experienced had wonderfully propitious timing. I had built up a new desktop machine, installed the OS and was migrating various 'stuff' across, when the old one just stopped working. It was soon obvious that the MB was not working. I didn't try to determine how/why. I just thanked my lucky stars, installed the old boot drive as a data drive on the new machine temporarily, until I had transferred everything. Luck was a lady.... Report from the other side of the Divide."
Olybacker: "I wish I had taken shots of all the photo store fronts in London (UK) during the 1970s and 1980s as well as the people serving inside. They have mostly all gone now."
Donald Zochert: "Not having your computer for a while may be an opportunity."
Kirk Tuck (Safety director for VSL): "Pen and Paper. I have a small notebook that was specially designed to be a password book. It's tabbed. It's small. It's available on Amazon for about nine bucks. I write my passwords in there. Then, when lightning and meteors and volcanos strike I can still log on with any device. Again, pen or pencil, paper. $9. Fault tolerant to the max. Will even survive an EMP attack by a hostile power. But then you might not have much left to log into....
"If you are ultra paranoid and live near a bank you could keep your book in a safe deposit box. If you aren't all of the above just stick it on a random bookshelf. Burglars rarely, if ever, steal books. Just sayin'."
Kenneth Wajda: "Here's a wonderful post by John Dersham with his photos of Camera Shops. And I recently started a Camera Shop hangout on FB."
Hey, Mike, when you get the computer back, think about using the iCloud storage thing for passwords, or get the Lastpass password manager. Then you'll be able to have all your passwords on any device. Just log into Lastpass with one password (your "last pass-word") and all of them are available.
Posted by: Ken Bennett | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 02:10 PM
If you have a UPS that the computers plug into, ignore this message. If you don't have a UPS you should have one, especially in a rural area. Make sure it's "online double conversion". It's not the backup power that's important, it's the cleaning and protection. (The backup power does give you some time to shut the system down properly if it looks like an outage is going to last.)
Posted by: Carson Harding | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 02:16 PM
With regard to my comment that the UPS should be "online double conversion", I hadn't looked at the price for small ones, and was just thinking about my requirements for office/work use. Line interactive may be ok and more reasonable.
Posted by: Carson Harding | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 02:24 PM
I remember Bakers, Penn Camera, Industrial Camera, Ritz, Eastern Camera, and a few others in the DC market. Sad that they're all gone.
Posted by: Howard | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 02:24 PM
I had to have a logic board replaced on a MacBook some years ago. I kind of knew it was coming because for some time I'd had to apply manual pressure to certain parts of the chassis to alleviate recurring display issues. But Apple wouldn't do it--it was out of warranty and they no longer stocked the part anyway.
Luckily, I lived in Philadelphia at the time, and quite a few electronics repair shops had sprung up around the city. I think the bulk of their business consisted of replacing cracked screens or worn out batteries in smartphones, and salvaging phones from dunkings, but most also worked on tablets and laptops (there simply isn't much difference these days).
The work cost a lot (for me) but it was still less than half what a generic replacement MacBook would have cost, and far less than a similarly equipped one, so I bit the bullet, and they did a fine job.
Posted by: robert e | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 03:04 PM
"Logic board" is indeed Apple's idiosyncratic term for motherboard. I'm sure there are historical reasons for that, but I don't know what they are.
Posted by: Ben Rosengart | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 03:21 PM
Too late for you to take advantage of it now, but others might like to know that Rossmann Group does Apple repairs, possibly more competently than whoever Apple sends their products to. They've got lots of Apple repair/rant videos on Youtube too, so you can judge the level of their expertise.
[Good to know, but they're in NYC, which is farther from me than NYC is from Boston. --Mike]
Posted by: Kent Wiley | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 03:35 PM
Mike,
As much as I love Apple computers, this happened to me with an old, white plastic laptop—-twice. Fortunately, it has not happened since, and that was years ago. But it can happen to anyone.
Everything you had on the computer that you have not backed up will be gone. It will be a clean machine, and you will need to reinstall software and files. I have been using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable backup of my current laptop. You might look into that or a similar product.
Posted by: Chip McDaniel | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 03:46 PM
My guess to the linguistic differences: Motherboard is a term dating to at least the beginnings of home computers (that's where my memory begins. It wouldn't surprise me that it dates to mainframe/mine era). It contained the processor and all other things attached to it via connectors (memory, hardware interfaces etc). Nowadays, everything is integrated into the one board, hence the neologism Logicboard. It contains everything, and newly attached items go through mechanical connections controlled by the logic board (USB, Thunderbolt etc).
Posted by: Patrick D Perez | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 04:22 PM
But surely all your bookmarks, reading lists etc are in Safari on the other computer and in your phone and iPad and there should be much else besides. Your password manager will be in all of them too won’t it?
If you use iCloud for some of your documents or your Desktop, they’ll be in all 3 other devices and so on. Mine are are. Always provide you’re logged in with the same Apple ID!
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 04:36 PM
Frank's Highland Park Camera, was a family run mail-order camera store in Los Angeles, California. They advertised in all the photo magazines.
They did monthly model shoots at an old movie ranch. They provided the models—model shoots were popular back-in-the-day.
I was living in the Pasadena area during the 1960s,70s and 80s. I bought a lot of film from Frank's before they closed.
ellenbloom.blogspot.comellenbloom.blogspot.com
Posted by: c.d.embrey | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 04:49 PM
Let's hope a replacement board can be located soon.
The iCloud syncing may be worth looking at for logins, passwords etc. I don't use Safari but I know Firefox can do this independently - once you create a FF profile your bookmarks, history etc can be replicated on each device when you log into that profile.
Having worked with an office of nearly 20 Mac machines (mostly Minis and Macbooks) used daily for 15 years I've found them to be far more reliable, stable and user-friendly than Windows devices. And you really don't want to know about the hassle created by Win10 auto-updates!
Posted by: Simon | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 05:25 PM
I well remember Penn's Camera and was sad when it closed. My clearest recollection of Penn's was looking in the outside display window one evening while another patron came up and started talking about how he used Selenium toner a great deal, even as he twitched uncontrollably (!).
It's ironic how so many major city stores have failed in the digital age while a medium city like Anchorage continues to have a great Mom and Pop photo store, Stewart's Photo, that started in pre-statehood days, survived the massive 9.2 1964 Anchorage earthquake when much of the surrounding ground and buildings collapsed, and has survived and evolved into the digital era as an authorized dealer for most major brands.
When Mr. and Mrs. Stewart were still alive, they were pillars of the community and ran a classic camera store, half of which was filled with rock polishing supplies, many kinds of semi-precious stones to polish, and large chunks of Alaska Jade mined in the Arctic. The Stewarts even had a succession of pet reindeer that paraded at many civic functions.
The modern Stewart's Camera store is still in the same location that survived the second largest earthquake ever recorded. Internally, it's much more modern and sleeker now in appearance, with a proper techno-digital-cool ambience. I'm glad that they've managed to survive and apparently thrive.
Posted by: Joseph Kashi | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 07:16 PM
So Mike... is your wounded computer still covered by Apple Care or are you paying for repairs? If it's coming out of your pocket, how close is the cost to that of a new computer?
Posted by: Steve Biro | Saturday, 06 March 2021 at 07:25 PM
1. Have you ups or power protector ...
2. I use LastPass .... so I have my passwords on all my devices.... after a while it becomes second nature to use....
3. Set up your browser so it synchs between all your devices ....
4. Keep your data on a network drive... then available for all devices (maybe have a different strategy for your photos.
1+2+3+4 gives your a lot of resilience and recovery options... (Backups... a different topic).
5. Remember you can have a Roon client on all your devices ... all the better if your music is on a network drive.
I lost a system disk once.... Every since my system disk gets backed up at 5 am every morning. Sunday is a full backup and Mon-Sat is incremental.
Posted by: Matt O'Brien | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 07:37 AM
Not sure how old it is, and while I know you aren’t wealthy, maybe a zero percent Apple Card and a new MB Air for $999 would be a much better move than paying to get the old one fixed. As for photos of old stores, I feel the same. I used to shop in B&Hs original store. Bought my Zeiss binocs, 10x40BGA (rubber armor coated) there in 1980. I was newly married. My wife (now of 40 years) asked me how much they were. When I told her $500, she said, “Whaaaaat?” You spent $500 on those? And I still have them. The store had a long single counter that you literally had to fight to get to the front of.
Posted by: Mark | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 07:43 AM
I would have thought that the cost of a new logic board would be a significant part of the cost of a new M1 Mini, (or Air or Pro). I would have been inclined just to leave the store with a new machine. Especially given the time to get there and back.
Posted by: Peter Wright | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 09:21 AM
The counter at Central Camera in Chicago was always a hoot. Maybe by this summer it won't just be a folding table out front (photo by Evan Garcia of WTTW): https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/styles/full/public/article/image-non-gallery/CentralCamera_EvanGarcia.jpg
Posted by: MarkB | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 12:36 PM
Bravo! Phil Davis, BTZS, and the Plotter/Matcher software. I am using my solitude to trawl through the neg files and there is a clear distinction in how little tweaking is necessary once started producing work according to the Gospel of St. Phil.
Posted by: Walter Glover | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 01:03 PM
I agree that a password manager is a good thing but if you value privacy, Android Lastpass maybe not...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/25/lastpass_android_trackers_found/
It has the most separate trackers of any password manager checked by the described security researcher. "The software's maker says users can opt out if they want."
I am a retired doc, use 1 password and have no other connection to any type of manager.
Posted by: Nature Lover | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 01:05 PM
A couple of years after the turn of the century when still relatively new to San Francisco, I entered an Apple store to witness an incredible ritual... And after twelve years of Catholic school- I knew ritual.
Employees lined up on either side of the store as if on cue (ie- the waves parted) and down the aisle walks this honored figured half my age to extremely enthusiastic albeit seemingly controlled applause. Clearly, this young employee had done something of truly heroic proportion- scooped a young lass from a roaring, raging, out of control fire or cataract? Turning to the closest worker, I asked what had occurred to merit such grand adulation. "He's gone corporate," she murmured half smiling, eyes completely transfixed. Right... a cult!
Posted by: Stan B. | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 01:10 PM
Photos across the camera store counter are amusing. Here's an alternate angle to the standard picture of the salesperson: yours truly, snapped by a salesperson at Carsand Mosher (RIP) on Barrington Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Taken in 2009 with my trusty Nikon F100 on Fuji Superia 400. I don't remember what we were trying to accomplish or why he took the photo. Perhaps trying to get the speed light to fire?
Posted by: Andrew | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 01:44 PM
I asked around, and the best answer I found was that early Macs separated analog components onto an "analog board", with digital components on a "logic board". The analog board having gone the way of the CRT, "logic board" remains as a Mac-community shibboleth.
Posted by: Ben Rosengart | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 03:00 PM
Mainframes and even minicomputers tended to have a "backplane"; a connection infrastructure connecting all the boards. "The CPU" was not just one board, it was across many boards.
"Motherboard" is a later term from when computers were often on a single board. It has many of the functions of the backplane (interconnecting other things), but itself contains most of the computer.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 03:12 PM
What Kirk said (most amusingly). Keep a password book. Write them all out. Update the book when you update the passwords. I can’t tell you how clients’ bacon has been saved by that little book.
Dave
Posted by: Dave Fultz | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 04:00 PM
Whether your un-backed-up stuff is gone or not depends on whether storage for your machine is on a separate drive or in flash soldered to the logic board. You might get lucky if it’s not the very latest model. As to motherboard, in the old days, most stuff in a computer came on multiple cards that all slotted into connections on the motherboard. Nowadays, it’s all on the one board. This reduces cost, eliminates failures at connectors, and makes for a more compact package. It also means you replace the whole thing when it fails. The bit about connectors is significant. They are expensive components, prone to failure, and bulky. The fewer the better.
Posted by: Bill Tyler | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 07:15 PM
Key to getting in store iPhone photos is to airdrop them from the store phone to your phone.
Posted by: Scott Symes | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 10:04 PM
Hi Mike, this might be a few days late, but I second Ken Bennett's suggestion to use the iCloud Keychain.. This will work seamlessly across all your Apple devices.
If you need multi-OS capability, I think BitWarden works well.
Posted by: SaifulRizal Muhdramli | Sunday, 07 March 2021 at 11:17 PM
I have a spreadsheet file called frizdat and I enter my email passwords, corporate rewards passwords, subscription and restaurant and other codes. Every week or two I send a copy to a secret email account. As long as I can get to gmail I can get to the file and any computer can open the file. There's another called persdat that has names, street and email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, children's names and sometimes the reason they're on file. It's slow, it's clunky, it works.
Posted by: Zave Shapiro | Monday, 08 March 2021 at 06:03 AM
FWIW I have used 1Password to hold passwords for most of the last decade or more.
It shares the password database with multiple users and multiple devices per user. It's even reasonably cross platform although we are mostly Apple systems.
As the name suggests you pick one password that you have to remember to encrypt all the other passwords. Then you don't need to worry about making readable or memorable passwords at all, which is good because memorable passwords are easier to guess, generally.
The database is also stored locally on every device so you don't need Internet to find the passwords. Although if the Internet is down so is any site that you might be logging in to.
Posted by: psu | Monday, 08 March 2021 at 09:32 AM
The Herald Square area in midtown Manhattan used to be the hub for photo supply houses. Willoughby-Peerless, Camera Barn, Olden, Spiratone, Adorama. A bit further north was 47th Street Photo.
Adorama is still around in a new location on 18th Street. B&H has its superstore on West 34th Street. There are still a few smaller and more specialized shops around (a Leica emporium further downtown, one or two film-related shops in Brooklyn).
Posted by: Bruce Appelbaum | Monday, 08 March 2021 at 09:59 AM
Mike - given the issues you've had with interference messing with wireless devices and now a fried logic board, have you considered checking the wiring in your home? I know that the house was pretty much totally redone before you purchased it, but it might be worth checking out.
Posted by: Earl Dunbar | Monday, 08 March 2021 at 11:51 AM
Syncing computers. I have Apple MacBook Air, iPad, and Mac Mini. I use Google Chrome as my browser, it syncs on all devices. I pay $1.99 per month and sync my data on Google One (cloud storage). I'm syncing an encrypted volume on my Macs. I also use iCloud to sync my apple stuff like messages, photos, mail, etc.
I have electronic version of Kirk Tuck's analog password file. I use Google Apps, and have a password document (damn thing is like 7 pages) stored in my secured volume, but it is also synced in the Google cloud so i can get to it from any device, including my iPhone. I suppose I'm trusting the Google cloud to be secure.
All this unasked for advice.
Posted by: SteveW | Monday, 08 March 2021 at 01:19 PM
Mike,
About fifteen years ago, the only time that I've had any of my Macs go down, the problem turned out to be a fried motherboard. I had bought a refurb and it died on its second or third startup.
As with you, I lived a long way from the repair shop. We had a local place that could repair PC's, and would even build them to spec, but they didn't touch anything Mac. Had to to go to the city for that. 45 minutes to the ferry dock....1 hour wait for the boat....45 minutes for the crossing to Vancouver Island....and 45 minutes of highway into Victoria. Took a good while, but sure beat having to do it in one big highway burn.
At that time, in addition to the two camera stores the local pros frequented, there were two others that dealt almost entirely in used gear. One of the used shops was next to china-town, so even if I didn't score any treasures, a good lunch was always guaranteed. That's hog heaven to me.
The return trip was, of course, just as time-consuming as getting to the city had been, but, in addition, I would get nicked $35 to go home. And I was always glad to be home, enjoyed being in the boonies after nearly a decade of loft/studio living on noisy Hollywood Blvd.
Posted by: Jeff Markus | Monday, 08 March 2021 at 09:24 PM