Thoughts about the iPad mini for Photographers →

Jeff Carlson's Thoughts about the iPad mini for Photographers points out some great points about how the iPad mini is an excellent tool for photographers just as the iPad with Retina Display is. The lack of a Retina Display is helped by the smaller physical pixels in the iPad mini's 1024x768 resolution display as opposed to the iPad 2 with its larger 1024x768 resolution display.

Which to buy? It's a hard choice. In every way but the display, I would prefer the iPad mini. I expect that in the next revision or two, the iPad mini will also get a Retina Display. Once that happens it will be no contest and I would definitely recommend the iPad mini for nearly all scenarios. For my uses, the iPad mini will be my choice. I am currently using a 3rd generation 32GB iPad with Verizon 4G LTE. This will shortly be replaced by a 64GB iPad mini with Verizon LTE.

Merry Christmas and Exciting New Plans

Today marks the first Christmas for our fourth and youngest child. I remember each Christmas since my wife and I were married a few days short of five years ago. I'm in a different place in my life as I appreciate the quiet time with our kids more than I have in the past. Each year is precious. They grow up so quickly.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I hope that all of you have been able to focus on family, friends, and God, the source of all our blessings. In the next few days as 2012 winds to a close, remember the things that have been most important to you over this year and each year before it. Cherish the most important things in life.

We have some amazing new plans for 2013 that we will reveal as the time gets closer. Look for updates over the next three months as everything falls into place. I will continue writing more articles as well. Some personal events in the last few months have kept me from writing very often but that will be changing as we go into 2013.

Build and Analyze Podcast Ended →

Altough this is old news now, Build and Analyze, the excellent iOS and mobile development podcast with Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, ended on December 17. I'm disappointed it ended for several reasons but especially because the podcast gave some insight into iOS development from a successful developer's perspective. Marco's Instapaper app and service has been a favorite of mine for several years now. I use it daily to save articles and information to read later.

I'm happy that Marco is still planning to be involved in podcasting as he stated in his November 18th post:

After Build and Analyze ends, I’d like to take a few weeks off for the holidays, be a guest on other shows, and then experiment with new shows, topics, and formats to try to figure out what I want to do next in the world of podcasting.

I'm looking forward to what's next in the new year.

The Trouble with USB 3.0 →

An OpenBSD developer by the name of Ted Unangst recently wrote a post entitled USB 3 back compat in which he refers to how it is difficult or impossible to use USB 3.0 ports if the operating system does not yet have an XHCI driver. (OpenBSD lacks an XHCI driver at this time.)

The confusion partially stems from there being multiple different XHCI host controllers. The ones by ASMedia and other third parties do not function at all without an XHCI driver. The new Ivy Bridge chipset native Intel USB 3.0 controller is a different story.

On my Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Mini-ITX board there is a BIOS option to set the Intel USB 3.0 XHCI controller to several different modes. As long as legacy USB is still enabled those ports usually function just fine as USB 2.0 ports. Although this varies from operating system to operating system, the default setting of Smart Auto may work just fine for USB 2.0 only operation if there is no XHCI driver taking control of the USB 3.0 ports. If Smart Auto doesn't work, try the other three XHCI settings and see if one works for you.

Watch out for the Sandy Bridge motherboards with USB 3.0 ports because they are always a third party controller that does not operate as USB 2.0.

Observations on Errors, Corrections, & Trust of Dependent Systems →

This is a very good article that covers some of the significant advantages of ECC memory and the perils of running critical systems without it. This article was written by James Hamilton, one of the Vice Presidents of Amazon Web Services. Thanks to @maximdim for originally sharing this article with me many months back. Based on this and other data, I would tend to run anything that's really important with ECC memory. I only wish laptops had ECC options available.

Anyone Know the Difference Between the S1200KP and S1200KPR?

I've written quite a bit about the Intel S1200KP motherboard and I've been pretty happy with it overall. The original board I tested actually failed on me but I might have been at fault. I'm planning to replace it now and I noticed that Intel has released the new S1200KPR but I have been unable to find out how it is different from the original S1200KP. Does anyone have that information?

Update: Thanks to the comment to this post, which references this Intel Communities thread, we now know that the purpose of the S1200KPR is to support Ivy Bridge processors. Apparently there are two additional resistors on the S1200KPR that are not on the S1200KP. Although users are still using Ivy Bridge processors with the S1200KP, it is not recommended or supported.