Episode 374: Moon Camera on Earth, Photographer Dies in Skydive & More

Show Transcript

Greetings, you’re listening to the Liam Photography Podcast, I’m your host Liam Douglas and this is Episode 374 for Thursday October 26, 2023. In today’s episode some exciting news stories from our friends at PetaPixel but first I wanted to share an interesting story about some recent issues I’ve been having with my M1 Mac mini.

So I bought the original M1s back in 2021 for both myself and Tina as our new personal desktop computers and we have absolutely loved them! The Apple Silicone processors are so powerful they run circles around anything put out by Intel or AMD and even the base models with 8GB of RAM are powerful. Over the last 6 months or so I have been having off and on issues with my iMessages randomly signing me out on the Mac even though I’d still be signed into iCloud and my unlock with Apple Watch would randomly turn off as well and when I’d try to turn it back on it would say my watch was signed out of iCloud when it wasn’t.

The only way to fix these issues and it was always only on a temporary basis was to sign out of iCloud on my Mac, reboot and then sign back in and it would all work again for 3-4 days before failing again. I thought for the longest time I had something software related corrupted in my personal profile but it takes a long time to reset all my software and personal settings, etc in my Mac clean and not from Time Machine that I kept putting off doing anything about it.

Once it got to the point where it was annoying enough, I did the wipe the system and set it back up clean and the issue persisted so I finally opened a ticket with Apple thinking maybe something was corrupted in my iCloud profile causing the issue. I started working with an Apple Senior Advisor and install a profile to do Data Captures to send to Apple when the issue occurred and sent those off to their Engineering team.

During all of this I also started noticing that my Bluetooth AirPods Max headset would lose connectivity with my Mac when only walking about 6-10 feet away from it and it never did that before. Bluetooth, without any radio interference should work for upwards of 100ft, so this was turning into a bit of a head scratcher as some of my symptoms seemed to be hardware related and others seemed to be software related but it was difficult to get a firm lock on which it was. Well, last week I decided to buy a new M2Pro Mac Mini as my new main computer as I wanted something even more powerful for editing my Youtube videos and podcasts and such so I ordered one from the apple.com online store and it arrived last week. I bought this one with not only the M2Pro processor but double the RAM for good measure as well and I also decided to set it up clean and not use any Time Machine backups in case that was still an underlying issue.

Happily, I must say that after nine days of running the new Mac I have had no issues so far with my iMessages or Apple Watch issues and another thing I discovered is after I moved the old Mac to my Podcasting desk in the same room as my work desk and hooked it up to that monitor it started having display issues where the video cuts out randomly. Now this same 1 year old Samsung 28” 4K monitor was being used before with my 13” M1 MacBook Pro as my Podcasting computer with no issues and while I was setting up my M2Pro Mac it was hooked to that same monitor with no issues so I am fairly confident it’s not the monitor or the HDMI cable.

I shot an email off to my Apple advisor letting him know that I believe I have narrowed down the issue on the M1 Mac to it being bad hardware this whole time as it has now developed video issues out of the blue and also that my new M2Pro Mac sits in the same spot as my old one did on my main desk and with my AirPods Max tied to it for a call, I can safely walk all around my house without the Bluetooth dropping and even go outside and walk 3/4 of the way down my driveway before it drops.

So, in conclusion for this part of today’s episode, yes, even those of us that work in IT for a living can run into weird IT issues on our own gear, that’s just the nature of the beast so to speak. When my Apple Advisor calls me tonight we can run the hardware diagnostics and hopefully get my M1 repaired or replaced while it still have around 5 months left on my Apple Care+. Ok, so now let’s look at these news stories for today.

https://petapixel.com/2023/10/25/prototype-camera-designed-for-the-moon-tested-on-earth/

https://petapixel.com/2023/10/25/photographer-employed-by-skydiving-company-dies-on-routine-jump/

https://petapixel.com/2023/10/25/time-selects-canon-and-sony-cameras-as-best-inventions-of-2023/

https://petapixel.com/2023/10/25/giggster-has-acquired-photo-website-ephotozine/

Remember I now have my own discount code for all Platypod branded products at http://www.platypod.com using my code LD20 you can save 20% off on ALL individual Platypod branded products EXCLUDING Bundles, which are already discounted and Square Jellyfish or Lume Cube branded items.

I also now have my own affiliate link for Think Tank Photo, use the link to guy any of their gear, get a free gift and free shipping!!!

https://www.thinktankphoto.com/?rfsn=7232819.5f5392&utm_source=refersion&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=7232819.5f5392

Also be sure to join the Liam Photography Podcast Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/liamphotographypodcast/ You can reach the show by call or text @ 470-294-8191 to leave a comment or request a topic or guest for the show. Additionally you can email the show @ liam@liamphotographypodcast.com and find the show notes at http://www.liamphotographypodcast.com.

You can find my work @ https://www.liamphotography.net and follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @liamphotoatl. If you like abandoned buildings and history, you can find my project @ http://www.forgottenpiecesofgeorgia.com. and http://www.forgottenpiecesofpennsylvania.com.

Please also stop by my Youtube channels Liam Photography

Forgotten Pieces of Georgia Project

Forgotten Pieces of Pennsylvania Project