[Comments have been added.]
Roald Dahl earned half a billion dollars in 2021,
despite being fairly severely incapacitated (he's deceased).
You've probably heard by now that Elon Musk has taken the title of richest rich guy, showing up those washed-up poor-ass no-money-having former holders of the championship belt such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. Losers!
Ahem. Excuse me. Mustn't get carried away. I don't really have an opinion on Elon Musk. I'm not really entirely sure who he is. Something about space?
More recent news is that Apple, the little startup founded in a garage (or a basement, I'm not really up on the origin story), recently poked its nose past the landmark of three trillion dollars in market capitalization. Market cap, as you might know, means the dollar value of all of its shares. It's not a made-up number, but it's sort of a theoretical one. Nobody actually has the three trillion dollars. Anyway, it's doing well.
Meanwhile, back down here in the land of guys who never balanced their checkbooks, it seems to me that what I'm hearing and reading is that the Apple M1 iMacs work nicely for photography.
On the button
For photographers, it makes little actual sense to pursue ultimates and extremes. With enough money it's possible to buy the best, of course, but even if you do, "the best" is a very time-bound concept; soon enough it will be yesterday's news. Bragging rights have an expiration date. Does anyone really care, now, if you're using a computer that was the best money could buy in 2016, 2010, or 2004?
So it might be optimal (I almost slipped and wrote best) to use stuff that's merely very good but still practical. Sort of the upper-middle-tier class of product. The M1 iMacs seem to hit that goal on the button. We photographers don't really need cutting-edge capabilities in our computers, but it's nice not to have to sit around and wait for processor-intensive tasks to run.
As for the screen size—currently there are only 24-inch M1 iMacs—I have both a 27-inch monitor and a 24-inch one. I like to believe that I could be happy with just a 24-inch screen, but I also admit that it would probably feel like a step back to give up the larger one. You'll have to decide for yourself on that question. It's why I switched to a Mac Mini and an NEC monitor a while back...the idea is to keep the monitor through several lifecycles of computer. (The kind of plan I usually don't have the discipline to carry out.)
All things considered, though, the M1 iMac feels like it might be the ideal middle-of-the-pack sensible solution for Apple-using photographers, a fully matured embodiment of the graphics workstation. At least for people who are happy with compact APS-C or Micro 4/3 cameras, which are positioned similarly in the great scheme of things—"very good but still practical."
Doing well but not here
And by the way, one other thing Apple's three trillion market cap means is that actually, Steve Jobs is the world's richest person. Well, except for two inconvenient little details. First, he sold all his Apple stock (except for one share, which allowed him to access Apple investor reports) in 1985 when he got ousted as head honcho. And, he passed away. So he's no longer, you know, a flesh-and-blood person. Details, details.
It has hardly impacted his success or fame; Bing Crosby, Arnold Palmer, and Elvis Presley go on racking up profits and adding to their wealth year after year, and they are also—there's no polite way to put it—dead. Roald Dahl (Roald Dahl?!), the author of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, whose stock seems to keep rising and rising in the world, earned $510 million in 2021 (Netflix splurged on the rights to all his work). Michael Jackson had the best earnings year of any celebrity in all of history in 2016, which was fantastic for him except that...oh yeah, right. He was pushing daisies, then and still. Bereft of life. Bought the farm. Bucket kicked. My point is that in a world where dead people go right on making money and being admired for it, it seems a smaller leap to pretend that Steve had kept his Apple stock and to admire him for how rich he would have been if he had.
He managed to get by anyway—I'm not saying he wasn't rich. Did you know Forbes publishes an annual list of the most successful dead people? Bizarre but true. I can't quite wrap my head around the concept. But then, I don't understand Bitcoin either.
So how does Mr. Jobs feel about all his recent theoretical success? The amazing on-paper value of all the shares he wouldn't own any more if he wasn't dead? I for one would love to know. However, he can't be reached for comment.
Mike
Book o' the Week
American Geography by Matt Black, a great name for a photographer but a terrible internet name, impossible to search. Stan Banos calls American Geography a "handsome, well thought out and put together book." Matt's work is outstanding.
The link is a portal to Amazon. Thank you kindly for helping support The Online Photographer!
The following logo is also a link if you click on it:
Original contents copyright 2020 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
hugh crawford: "Well, compare to Ronald Wayne who sold his 10% of Apple for $2,300. If that wasn’t enough, to quote Wikipedia, 'In the early 1990s, Wayne sold the original Apple partnership contract paper, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak, and himself, for US$500. In 2011, the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million. Wayne has stated that he regrets that sale. Wayne retired to a mobile home park in Pahrump, Nevada, where he sells stamps and rare coins, and plays penny slots at a casino. Wayne never owned an Apple product until 2011, when he was given an iPad 2 at the Update Conference in Brighton, England. He holds a dozen patents.' Also, Jobs’ real fortune was from being the largest shareholder of Disney stock which he got for Pixar. He sold all but one share of Apple when he got fired and never again had that big a stake in the company."
Mike replies: Ronald Wayne, Pete Best, and the '62 Mets are among history's biggest losers. Fortunately the Cubs are finally off the list.
Ilkka replies: "If I buy shares at $10 a piece and sell them at $30, I made $20 per share. So I won (?). If that share price then goes on up to $200, what did I lose? I still made a $20 profit. How is that losing? If I take part in a marathon run and do not win, does it mean that I lost? I don’t think so. Football game and boxing match has two sides, one wins and the other one loses, unless it’s a draw. In most other things in life there are no losers even when you don’t 'win.'"
Mike replies: Ronald Wayne sold an asset for $2,300 that is now worth ~$300,000,000. And is living in a mobile home park in Parhump. How would you feel? I really doubt he looks back on that and thinks "no loss."
Ken Brayton replies: "An engineer I used to work with quit and got a job at a new startup. Not much of a pay raise, but very nice stock options. He loved flying planes, so when the company went public and he became quite rich he bought his own plane. Flew down to Vegas and ended up landing nose first into the desert. His startup was Apple. I would much rather he was retired in a mobile home in Parhump."
Paul White: The Jobs Trust controlled 38.5 million shares of Apple after his death. It also owns 12.5% of Disney. Jobs was granted shares after he came back to run Apple in 1997.
Mike replies: I haven't been able to determine what percentage of Apple those shares represented, but most sources seem to agree that it was nothing close to 11%, the stake Jobs sold off in 1985.
Phil Stiles: "The classic comment on Elvis' demise was that 'it was a good career move.'"
Mike replies: Yes, and although I appreciate it as a joke, I still kind of can't quite get my mind around the concept. It implies that the important thing about such celebrities is the enduring persona rather than the personhood of the actual person. It sounds like the basis of a Monty Python skit. And probably was. Didn't the family in The World According to Garp have a stuffed dog, Sorrow? And I recall that the original "Saturday Night Live," long ago, had a recurring joke on the "Weekend Update" fake news segment, repeatedly announcing that Generalissimo Francisco Franco was still dead.
Robert Pillow replies: "Sorrow was the family pet in The Hotel New Hampshire whose remains were stuffed following his euthanasia, which I believe was implemented because of his blindness and constant flatulence. Of course, it's been a while since I read the book."
Richard Tugwell: "I have an M1 Mini, which I use exclusively for photo processing, paired with a nice, mid-price monitor. Very, very pleased with performance. So I guess the M1 iMacs will be similarly suitable."
Mike replies: Finally, a comment about the M1 Macs! My purpose in this post was to elicit opinions about them, but apparently I so thoroughly buried the lede that that purpose was lost. Maybe I should try again....
Stephen Cowdery: "I got an M1 iMac as soon as it was released. It is wonderful, especially for image processing. Use your old monitor for displaying files and folders and the Photoshop windows."
Bill Tyler: "I'm reminded of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Hotblack Desiato, an incredibly rich musician, spent a year dead for tax purposes."
Phil Stiles: "A year ago, I upgraded my Mac Mini to an M1 model. The difference is profound, especially in how fast Photoshop and Lightroom load and perform. I use solid state drives for storage. My monitor is an aging 30" Cinema Display, but it still works for me. The Mini is the most cost effective way to upgrade. I also recommend an additional OWC Thunderbolt Dock for a plethora of ports."
Steve Rosenblum: "I sold my maxed-out Intel i7 Mac Mini and my 2018 Macbook Pro and bought an M1 Max Macbook Pro to use as my only computer. When photo editing I connect it to my existing NEC 27-inch MultiSync monitor. It's a major leap forward for photo editing compared to my previous computers which were pretty good."
Richard Tugwell: "I have an M1 Mac Mini, which I use exclusively for photo processing, paired with a nice, mid-price monitor. Very, very pleased with performance. So I guess the M1 iMacs will be similarly suitable."
Will: "For one, Roald Dahl’s children’s books are essential read-tos for a certain type of kid. My son was captivated by many of those books, and I expect my daughter to be as well.
"For two, your surprise at his work being well-regarded suggests you’re unfamiliar with his adult work. His short stories are brilliant. And if you’re familiar with any individual episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," it is extremely likely they were Dahl adaptations. Many rely on a sort of characteristic 'dark twist,' like the probably best-known 'A Lamb to the Slaughter,' which sees a housewife murder her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then serve the evidence to the investigating officers. Many follow this pattern, but the 'dark twist' in 'Genesis and Catastrophe' is more subversive.
"Regardless, it is worth grabbing a Roald Dahl adult short story collection. Loads of good stuff."
Mike asks: Like this one?
