Om Malik

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. Read More

Big Emps, Low Temps!

In 2021, I had a chance to visit the frozen continent of Antarctica. It was a chance to experience “totality,” a kind of solar eclipse where the Moon fully obscures the disk of the Sun. Originally the plan was to see this eclipse over a large Emperor Penguin colony, but the weather changed my plans. Instead, I experienced totality on the vast nothingness of the Union Glacier.

But before that, I got to spend a lot of time with the Emperor penguins and get up close and personal with these beautiful creatures. I captured some of these moments on my iPhone, which was my primary tool for making short videos on this trip, which took me to different locations in Antarctica. My videographer friend Felix helped cobble them together and created a short 2+ minute film for your enjoyment.

Let me know what you think!

January 31, 2023, San Francisco

On Photography
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WiFi is super fast on 2023 Macbook Pros

Apple recently released the 2023 MacBook Pros in 14 and 16-inch configurations. As expected, there have been many reviews about the new devices. They range from ho-hum to great reviews. As expected, most of these reviews and reviewers go over the specs. They talk about what’s new –more cores, more GPU power, and longer battery life. Bumps are great, but they aren’t bumper! And since this isn’t as big a bump as the e saw from Intel to M1 chips, no one is doing cartwheels about the new devices. 

I am one of those who doesn’t care about reviews that are pushed out after using the devices for a couple of days — it is true for the cameras, and it is true for the laptops. You could buy any Apple laptop as a general user, and you won’t be disappointed.  I recommend the new MacBook Air to friends and

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Technology
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Glacier’s Edge

When visiting Alaska back in 2018, I took a helicopter flight over a glacier. I took a lot of photographs from the air, but never really got around to editing them. I am usually plodding and lazy about editing my photos.

This past weekend, however, I got a burst of energy and inspiration, that allowed me to edit a few photos from that trip. I have a complete set of images and will share them for the rest of the week.

I have shared two photos: the first (above) is of a near-naked sand bar, and the other (below) is of land where time has allowed life to flourish. These are B&W photos, but they have a slight glacial blue tint to them — my homage to the mighty Knik Glacier, which like glaciers worldwide, is receding.

January 30, 2023. San Francisco

On Photography
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Scenes from Winter Wonderlands

It is not a secret — I am woefully addicted to snowscapes and winter wonderland photos. Give me snow, ice, fog, and gray skies, and I am happy as a clam. I can spend hours in freezing cold, or raging storms without as much as a peep of complaint. What I am terrible at — coming home and editing those photos.

Thankfully, I finally have a handful of presets that make it a breeze to edit and maintain a consistent look and feel in my images. I am going through my archives, finding ones I like, and editing them. Here is a set of four from 2018 and 2019 — the first two are from Wyoming, and the last two are from a visit to Utah just before the pandemic struck.

Photo # 1 (above): Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming: Wires, networks, snow, snowstorms. Some of my favorite things.

Photo

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On Photography
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Is “stream” as a design paradigm over?

person typing on laptop computer
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Earlier today, I read something that led to the question” do we even need to organize the blogs in the reverse chronological stream? Ben Werdmuller, frustrated by the design of his website’s homepage writes:

As of right now, the homepage is a mix of long-form posts, short thoughts, and links I consider interesting, presented as a stream. It’s a genuine representation of what I’m reading and thinking about, and each post’s permalink page looks fine to me, but it doesn’t quite hold together as a whole. If you look at my homepage with fresh eyes, my stream is a hodgepodge. There’s no through line.

Like Ben, I, too, feel the same way. What Ben is asking and I am echoing: are these end-days of using “stream” as a design and information organizing principle? It has been just over two decades that I have written “for” and

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Technology
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The Smartphone Megapixel Race!

Smartphone photography keeps marching on — and why not. After all, cameras, screens, and battery life are the key distinguishing features of most phones, especially in the Android ecosystem. And that is why we continue to see Android hardware makers — Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, and others try to one-up each other with camera technology and megapixels. 

Samsung will soon launch a new Galaxy (23) model featuring a new 200-megapixel camera sensor. The new sensor, the ISOCELL HP2, will pack 200 million 0.6-micrometer pixels in a 1/1.3″ optical format. This isn’t the first 200-megapixel sensor made by Samsung. The higher pixels allow for “pixel binning,” which allows the sensor to perform better. So, for instance, four pixels can be binned together to create 1.2μm size pixels to output 50-megapixel images. Bin 16, and you get to a 12.5-megapixel image, which can lead to a better quality of images. Apple’s iPhone also uses

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Technology
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Apple launches new (M2) chips

Apple is kicking off 2023 with a slew of new products — Mac Minis and MacBook Pros. Apple’s new devices are powered by two new chips, M2 Pro and M2 Max. These two chips are the next generation of Apple’s Silicon, and if the mini-keynote and the press release are any indications, they are a nice (if not a massive) step up above the M1 chips. Here are some of the highlights of these chips: 

  • M2 Pro has up to 12-core CPU and up to 19-core GPU, together with up to 32GB of fast unified memory. 
  • M2 Max has up to 38-core GPU, double the unified memory bandwidth, and up to 96GB of unified memory. It features 400GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, the same as the M1 Max. 

The big bumps for both the chips are in the graphics and neural engines. Both M2 and M2 Max have a 16-core

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Technology
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Trip down the memory lane

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another,” said William Gibson. I was reminded of these words when reading two long pieces about my friends Mathew Ingram and Wesley Verhoeve. 

Both stories (tangentially involved me,” and inadvertently took me down memory lane. Mathew wrote about the first Mesh conference, where he invited me as a keynote speaker. When I returned from the conference, I quit my day job at Business 2.0 and started working full-time on GigaOm. The year was 2006; since then, life has been a journey. Mathew later became a writer and confidante at GigaOm, and some of the folks I met at the conference have become lifelong friends. Like many events at that time, Mesh captured a vibe and a feeling of optimism about what was to come. Mathew’s piece reminded me of one truism: “life is a contact sport.” Going-out, mingling, and learning are how you grow. 

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Musings, My Reading Picks
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