Problems with Apple Beats Powerbeats3 Wireless Headphones, sending for service

I seem to be hard to be hard things, because they don’t last. I used to use Bose overear headphones for my dog walks every morning, but after a year or so they stopped working with a microphone even with a change of cable.

For Christmas last year I was given a pear of Apple Beats Powerbeats3 Wireless headphones. I didn’t want the Apple Airpods, because I don’t trust that they won’t individually fall our or I will immediately lose one. The Beats seem like a much better idea because of the cord in between them and that they wrap around your ears.

Overall I have been mostly happy with them. The battery life is very good, the sounds is good, and after trying out all the earpieces I found ones that mostly stay in my ears, though I am constantly pushing them on more.

For me the major problem is the connection to my iPhone 6. I take my dogs for walks every morning, Indiana Bones for 45 minutes and JK for 30 minutes. And even with my phone and headphones fully charged, and my phone in a case on my hip I lose connection constantly. Mostly it just stops playing, and I can use the inline remote to start playing again, but about once a day it completely disconnects and I either have to wait for it to reconnect or go into bluetooth and force a reconnect. As I said I can usually start again quickly, but not always and sometimes I have to pull my phone out to get them to play again. And this is a real pain when I am being pulled by Indy and especially when I am also carrying a full dog poop bag as well. I just want them to not stop! Not only that the problem has been getting much worse. At first it was happening maybe twice a walk, but now it can happen up to 10 times a walk!

Also the microphone does not seem great. Partially I think it is because it on the cord that wraps back around your neck, so it is behind your mouth so has to be powerful and so it picks up a huge amount of wind noise. My mom is constantly complaining about the sound quality.

The range in my house is pretty good, especially if I have my iPhone in the middle of the house, it reaches pretty far, but can’t make it outside, or through too many walls for sure.

I have tried resetting my PowerBeats3 and have restarted my phone, but the stopping persists, especially when I am out and walking (seems to work better in my house). I contacted support and they are sending me a case and will check them out, and if they find a problem they will send me a like new pair, and if they don’t they will charge me for the inspection, even though it is still on warranty.

And maybe the issue is my iPhone, but I will find out. Just can’t stand the constantly stopping.

I do love not having the cord to my phone, especially when walking the dogs, and I really like the wire behind my neck to keep them safer, though it could be a little longer in my opinion. They are great when they are working, but when stopping all the time they are frustrating.

I bet they work much better on an iPhone 7 with the custom bluetooth hardware. And maybe it is interference from also having an apple watch? I just don’t know!

I will update once I hear from apple.

Red Shark article on Mac Pro users wanting a simple powerful box

Red Shark has an article on Mac Pro users not caring about design, just wanting a powerful expandable box. I love the idea of a MacPro Classic with modern inards. Heck I would be OK with a PC box with Modern Mac innards, but the MacPro Classic is exactly what I want. Or honestly an even bigger box, with not only the 4 drive slots, but also a 4 drive raid with RAID hardware built in.

It isn’t going to happen though. Tim Cook does not get the Pro user or care about them at all. There hasn’t even been a speedramp on the Trashcan, and the video cards are old tech! Besides most pros want CUDA and NVIDIA.

Hell if Apple really cared enough they would let a 3rd party build a new MacPro. I want an Origin PC MacPro! And give me a choice of Xeon or i7 chips!

Once I can afford it my tower will become a PC, likely an Origin. I will likely keep my iPad and iPhone. They work great and do certain things better than my Surface 4 i5 can do.

DJI Osmo+ Test Footage at Stony Point, and Color Correction

This is some test footage with my DJI Osmo+ at Stony Point Park. It was shot with auto exposure as I have yet to get any ND filters to stop own the exposure. And the first shot was wrongly white balanced. It was shot with D-Log, Sharpness 0,  Saturation -2 and Contrast -2.

This is the color corrected shot.

This is a comparison as shot and color corrected.

Color Correction Test with DJI OSMO+, Canon 60D and iPhone 6S and Visual Effects of Gun Shots

I shot some test footage with 3 of my cameras, my DJI OSMO+ my Canon 60D and my iPhone 6S. I color corrected the footage using DaVinci Resolve 12.5 and did the Visual Effects in Adobe After Effects.

The visual effects include adding the gun shots, light flashes, and color correcting the orange tip of my gun so it is gray.

I was trying to show my ability to color match the footage from such different 3 cameras, as well as add the visual effects to make an interesting little sequence.

Let me know what you think!

More fun with iCloud Bookmark sync

So after giving up on LastPass because it is not e10 multiprocessor compatible, I have been trying to sync my bookmarks using Firefox Sync, Chrome Sync and iCloud Bookmark Sync for windows. Unfortunately iCloud bookmarks is garbage, because it has no simple way to either clear bookmarks, or force a sync from a single source, and unfortunately it often gets completely corrupted! To clear it you have to disable sync everywhere except your mac, and let it sit, then clear your bookmarks and either import or create a new clean set. Unforunately this process is very unstable. It requires much switching off sync and waiting, and hoping.

Keep your fingers crossed, as I am.

LastPass 4 does support e10s in Firefox, but no word on Xmarks

So I was let know that LastPass version 4 does in fact work with e10 multiprocessing in Firefox. The normal update does not work, so you need to install LastPass 4.0 from the web site.

There is no word on Xmarks though.

So I am now running the iCloud Bookmarks Plug In on my Surface Pro 4 to sync between Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. And using Firefox bookmark Sync to sync from my mac to my Surface Pro.

Looks like Xmarks and Lastpass will never support e10 Multiprocessor in Firefox

So it looks like neither Xmarks or Lastpass will ever support e10 Multiprocessing in Mozilla Firefox. For years Mozilla Firefox has been my browser of choice because of all of it’s extensions. There was a short period where I used Chrome, but it is not as customizable. Firefox though is changing and is becoming multiprocessor, and that requires re-writing plugins to work with e10, or they won’t work. Right no Firefox will still work without e-10, by keeping Firefox in the old mode without mulit-processor support.

I contacted Xmarks/Lastpass support to see about their e-10 support, and I got this response.

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to Xmarks Support.

Through testing that we were unable to install Xmarks in Electrolysis e10. At this time, we have no plans to launch Xmarks compatibility with e10. I will submit a formal feature request ticket advocating your desire if you’d like.

Thanks,
Jeremy

So basically a paid service will never update their software and will very shortly lose all support for Firefox my favorite browser! Time to kill my accounts for xmarks and lastpass!

Of course now the question is how to replace these essential programs. I am going to try out Firefox Browser sync, and iCloud sync. Unfortunately iCloud Browser sync only runs on windows, but I have my Surface Pro 4 running Windows 10, so I can try Safari Browser sync to sync between Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac. And it is e10 supported, so that might work. I will keep my backup in Firefox on my mac so I can keep replacing my good backups.

DJI Osmo+ Test Footage in the Los Angeles Rain Storm February 17th, 2017

Some more test footage with my DJI Osmo+ in the big rain storm in Los Angeles, on February 17th, 2017. Shot in D-Log with Sharpness of 0, Saturation of -2 and Contrast of -2. I did a simple color correct in Premiere Pro 2017 with Lumetri Color. Still not 100% happy, but I think it looks pretty good.

The footage is a bit shakier than I would like, but the wind was strong and it kept gusting and hitting me and the camera with water.