I believe that my philosophical approach to technology personally makes me a terrible candidate to even post this. Maybe I’m the crazy one here. Maybe I hold myself to higher standards than the rest of early adopters. The truth is, my level of early adoption goes as far as securing “adamjackson” as my username and them coming back to the service if I feel it’s worth using and gets the financial and user base backing so that I can use the product with confidence that it will be around for a while. If I had gone “all in” on Friendfeed, I’d feel pretty bad right now about spending so much time on a site that’s basically a graveyard.
I use technology for a few reasons. I’d like to share those reasons here in bullet form (cause it’s so darn fun):
- To entertain myself and pass the time (Web television, Gaming, Cute cat photos, Lulz)
- To be informed, follow news, learn new things and research
- To communicate, share, interact, build relationships and network
- To archive, store, cultivate and manage memories for later retrieval
Let’s focus on the last point. A vast majority of the things I do online are for this reason. It’s no secret or I haven’t hidden the fact that my memory has been failing me lately. I’m not sure why but I have terrible long term memory. Before each blog post about the past, I spend hours browsing tweets, Flickr uploads and blog posts that are 10 years old to piece together the story because, frankly, I don’t remember. I still have to look at a picture of my first girlfriend to remember what she looks like despite being with her for 3 years. No clue why this is happening and it’s why I try my best to archive my life.
I don’t need 3 copies of my 25K+ iTunes music library. I don’t need daily backups of every email, flickr upload or tweet sent to Backupify. I don’t need versioning on every file saved to my computer but I do it. I don’t use a service unless I have some availability of data portability (true portability not half ass) because, if I’m going to take some time and take a photo, edit it, geo-tag, file, tag and upload then tweet, I need to know that photo will be available for at least 10 years.
“10 years? Adam you’re crazy!”
If I told you to retrieve a photo taken of you 10 years ago that was uploaded to GeoCities or Tripod or AngelFire, you wouldn’t be able to. I would. I have my first blog saved as a zip file that’s raw HTML with a bit of MySQL 2.0 database files. I have it. So what? I have every single paper I wrote for school from 2001-2004. Heck, I even have this photo (wow).
This is why the influx of photo sharing services are mostly pissing me off. The focus on NOW in social media doesn’t appeal to me AT ALL. If I share my opinions on an Apple product 2 days later, so what? I had more time to weigh in on the announcement. I’m not huge on breaking news and I’m not huge on sharing a shitty photo of my dinner over a well produced photo that’s edited and uploaded later. It’s all in our approach I guess.
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Now, the Hipstamatic, Instagram, Path and Camera+ apps are doing more to destroy photography than they are to help it but that doesn’t really matter too much. The argument to applications like Instagram isn’t the filters. As MG Siegler points out in his latest post, “In The Era Of The Connected Camera, The Point & Shoot Commits Seppuku“. The thing is, the stats he shows off completely go against my thoughts and this is why I started with the preface that I’m the minority here.
Here are two photos. The top, taken with my Canon S95 on auto with zero filters or editing applied. The bottom was taken with my iPhone 4.
Now, if I use CameraBag (that simulates some of the features of Hipstamatic / CameraBag, here’s what I get with that photo taken with the iPhone 4 (which, in my opinion looks like crap compared to the micro-S95)
The filter known as “instant” mutes out most of the colors but boosts most of the shadows and low light issues that arise from a super tiny sensor such as the one in most camera phones. I’d vote that the iPhone has the best looking photos from Apple software tweaks more than just better hardware but I’d say it’s a combination of both.
The reason for charts like this one and this one are perfectly laid out by MG:
Smartphones are always connected. Point & shoots never are. When I take a cool picture, I often want to share it right away. With my smartphone, it takes 20 seconds. With my point & shoot, it’s impossible. I have to wait until I get home, upload it to my computer, then upload it to the web.
Yeah, I get that. I really understand that instant sharing of a moment is winning over photo quality but why?
Here’s a photo taken of Twin Peaks in SF from an iPhone:
And here’s one taken by me with a Nikon D80 in 2008 on auto with the kit lens with ZERO editing and not to mention, nearly zero skills as a photographer: (of course, I got better over time)
Which one do you prefer? In a small web format like this, they look comparable but click on each and go full(1 & 2) screen and you’ll see the intricate details that a small sensor in the iPhone can’t pick up. Sure, let’s say the first iPhone owner takes the snap, does 2 quick filters via iPhone apps and uploads it immediately to Flickr. That’s pretty cool that you see what he sees as it’s posted. I try to avoid doing this. I wrote this post in March after my spring break trip to Miami. I still think it’s worth a read and still very relevant.
iPhone photo sharing is focused on RIGHT NOW and, it’s odd that it’s winning over LATER. Now is cool. Instant gratification usually wins but it’s like fast food. That burger is available through the fast food line right now but you’ll pay for it later when you develop diabetes. The better option is buying fresh ground beef and making it at home.
I honestly don’t care about sharing RIGHT NOW with the wold but I do want to look back on a photo, tweet or blog post 5 years from now and have the best quality version of that memory. Is that wrong?
I’ve seen bloggers who are ultra talented like BT and Robert Scoble who, for the most part stopped blogging once they found Twitter. They found it’s effortless and easy to share things in 140 characters and hard to sit down, close TweetDeck, close Gmail and actually put out a blog like the one I’m writing. This kind of blog takes time and effort. I’ve been doing it for 10 years but it’s hard.
It’s probably hard or harder to grab my S95 instead of my iPhone but damn, the photos look so much more amazing. I also get a chance to truly curate and deliver an exceptional product like this photo blog post after my return from Amsterdam. People following me may get small snippets of low quality photos day after day for two weeks but instead, they got a beautifully edited and curated experience based on thousands of photos shot while I was there.
I’m the same way with Twitter. I delete my Twitter replies to others and often delete tweets an hour after I put them out. I’ll post a photo and after a few minutes, it’s deleted. It was too low quality and the “right now” people got to see it but the version I took with my Canon camera will be uploaded later and that one is much better. I look at my Flickr stream and Twitter stream as a story. I’m curating this story and delivering chapters of my life to anyone who wants to follow along. This is why quality over quantity is more important alongside the sometimes removal of tweets if they don’t benefit or add to my story.
Good enough doesn’t work for me.
I want to deliver and share the best of the best because the readers are worth it and I want the archive I come back to in the future to be perfect. Who wants foggy memories? Crystal clear is my objective.
…but it’s clear I’m the minority. I’m the crazy one. I’ll be disappointed if things continues the way they are. iOS is NOT a replacement to the Mac OS by a long shot. Typing and emailing on an iPad is the slowest and most painful process ever. Trying to share a photo in real time that’s low quality and crappy compared to my point and shoot is just worthless. Trying to buy music on an iPhone compared to iTunes on my Mac is worthless. Trying to communicate the intrinsic nature of my thoughts and ideas on Twitter is impossible. iMovie on Mac is better than iPhone for so many obvious reasons. People that argue against these facts are blind or just hopeful.
Long form, dedicated cameras, a keyboard and mouse and dare I say, physical buttons are still the clear winners over 140 characters, camera phones, multi-touch and iOS devices.
I dare anyone reading this to make the iPad and iPhone their sole devices and ditch their Macs & PCs and still pump out quality content. Your baby is taking his first steps. do you grab an iPhone or a high quality SLR? Your boss needs a presentation by 5. Do you open Keynote for iPad or use Powerpoint on your Mac?
I don’t get it but, for some reason, cutting edge in 2010 has been about NOW and not about QUALITY. Why, I don’t really know but it’s clear people aren’t fighting it. maybe it’s easier to output MORE mediocre than LESS quality. Whatever the reason, I won’t give in and will continue to create quality content using devices that people consider “old school” like a keyboard & mouse, external webcams, larger headphones and dedicated cameras. My memories will be crystal clear. Not “good enough” for right now.
UPDATE: And John Gruber adds FURTHER validation that I’m effing insane. What a sad day for technology progress. We’re giving up productivity and quality of INSTANT GRATIFICATION and this really makes me depressed.