When cellular service providers subsidize the cost of a phone, they know they will earn that money elsewhere. For this, they hook you onto a contract for an extended period of time. They generally tend to make a lot more than what they’re losing in the subsidy.

This cannot happen in India. Service providers don’t charge for receiving calls. They don’t charge us for receiving text messages. I talk a lot on the phone because I dislike Facebook. I pay about Rs.4992 a year and every month I get 1000 minutes of talk time within my home cellular network, 200 minutes to call outside the home network and 340 text messages. That is the amount the owner of an AT&T subsidized iPhone-owner pays every month. They charge this much for cellular service with internet access even for non-iPhone devices. And they charge you whenever you receive texts or calls. They make enough money to cover up the subsidy costs along with the usual hefty profits. In India it’s a game of numbers. They’re interested in getting into more hands, faster. Profits on each subscription can never be close to being as high.

The media gets the India iPhone launch wrong every time. They ask Apple the wrong questions. Instead of asking them why iPhones aren’t unlocked, they ask them why it doesn’t cost $200. When they charge the consumer the actual price of the phone, the consumer shouldn’t be tied to one carrier for two years.

Interestingly though, Motorola and HTC never seem to get any bad press about the lack of carrier subsidies on phones they sell. And no, it’s not because they’re unlocked. That has never been a first question in their minds. No matter how much better an iPhone is in terms of overall experience, it should cost the consumer no more than the equivalent of $200 across the globe. It’s good that the media didn’t see carriers in other countries (like England) offering the iPhone for free on contract. If that had happened, there’d be a bunch of people running around burning posters of Steve Jobs for not distributing free iPhones.

Apple doesn’t care about any country’s per capita income when it prices its products. It doesn’t dive into countries to create country-specific products. They take into account the duties and other taxes that need to be paid to price their products accordingly. So you’re never going to be promised an iPhone for what you have in your wallet. Unless it’s $649 + taxes. But what you might get instead is an unlocked phone. If you press them hard enough.

Quit Facebook Day clearly wasn’t a success. I dislike a lot about Facebook but deactivating my account is too drastic an action and I still don’t feel compelled to do it. I still like to use it as a directory of phone numbers sometimes. I’ve also managed to use it to find a couple of my relatives’ really good friends. So Facebook does have its plus points, but they tend to overshadow deficiencies that deserve an equal amount of attention. Why do people not understand a simple and sensitive subject like their own privacy? I’d actually like us to be more sensitive about other things too, but I’ll give each of those things separate mentions later. For the time being, I’ll limit the discussion to talk only about our privacy, which in the long run unfortunately, isn’t going to win any battle. Our problem is that human tendency guides us to prefer not to weigh the value of what we’re losing; we only see what we are gaining. Boosting our egos and emotional satisfaction by creating this pseudo-friendly bubble interacting with other people online, we’re ready to use any medium.

Free services like Facebook cannot survive just by having users sign in and sign out. They serve ads to users; this generates their money. To serve users ads that they might click, services and advertisers need to know what users want to see. Usually advertisers have limited access in the form of website analytics, they don’t see individual stats. But Facebook isn’t your usual browser bookmark. They send off all our data like gifts to advertisers. How they make us give them permission to do this is what is interesting. They make a change in their privacy policy, we roar and they tone down the language a little to keep us satisfied. This keeps happening and eventually the services get all the data they want from us, because by making those changes slowly their privacy policy reads exactly what they want it to read. We are horrified if a change is sudden, but not if it is gradual. 

Those of you smart people who initially tried to resist joining Facebook are probably already aware that your data is being sifted through right this very moment so that advertisers can find out the different patterns and relationships it has with data others have posted online to generate a set of very personal advertisements. Facebook records everything we do logged in. Facebook shares the information it records with advertisers. Even before we can delete the content we wish we hadn’t posted, it has gone into the hands of the wrong people. They use this data to generate ads when our friends(and those two hundred others who aren’t really friends) login. It is a whole new level of personal. It’s funny because they do ask us to confirm that a person is our friend, but they never indicate a single instance of advertisers using our data as if they were our friends.

People don’t realize that the data they put up online represents a large part of them - a part of them that they don’t make so public in the real world. It is data that has somehow seeped out of the comfort zone that they haven’t been able to define as easily online. There’s no end to reiterating all that’s been mentioned here already. And to be clear, I do not want you to quit using the service. My only request is for you to be a little careful with how you treat your own data in web forms and dialog boxes while using services online. Facebook isn’t going to solve its issues overnight, despite all the hopes you may have. It’s easy for them to say sorry when the damage is done. Tomorrow.

Battery life is going to be affected by multitasking on the iPhone. But not as much as you would expect. The reason is going to gather a lot of criticism because people will begin to realize what the apps can’t do. It isn’t multitasking as one would see it on a Mac or PC. Instead of minimizing the app and having it update a frame buffer the approach is to have only the required background services running. This obviously has limits.

Also, this implementation of multitasking is going to have a bad effect on the perception of the platform’s ease of use as people use it. Apple’s going to be facing the task of making it easier for users to understand the effect of the double home-button tap. Apple’s internal implementation maybe good but how they have painted the interface on the exterior is confusing. What looks like a task manager really isn’t one. It doesn’t just show apps that are running, it also displays the apps that you used recently.

Maybe Apple shouldn’t call it multitasking. The reason they have done so is clear. To make the ranting stop. But you know how these haters roll. They’re smart people. They will find new things to complain about. They always have a some stuff to throw out in the air. Thankfully, as always, they wont have any effect on the platform’s sustenance or proliferation.

iPad. It’s futuristic. It’s simple. It has no better alternatives. It isn’t wrong to call it a computer. But is it good enough to replace all the weight that you carry around everywhere? It certainly is. But you need to treat it differently. Because it isn’t a laptop replacement; and it certainly isn’t the netbook replacement people were expecting Apple to produce.

Apple has always been against the idea of a computer sharing the size, specs and behavior of netbooks because it has higher expectations from the perspective of usability. It isn’t clear how these devices will progress to become development tools. Clearly, the iPad doesn’t lack the capabilities to render animation, process raw data or compile programs and develop websites. Apple is playing the role of a consumer electronics company by selling a device focussed primary at users who will use it to consume content.

Here are some thoughts about the iPad after a month of use:

No multitasking is no deal breaker
How does Apple make the experience of using the iPad better than the experience of using netbooks? 

The iPad, unlike a netbook, won’t allow users to make it do more than it can handle. I don’t know whether iPhone OS 4.1 and multitasking will change that. But I can tell you why early adopters are so happy with their iPads right now. You can work with iPad in two steps:

1. Open the application you want to use, get your work done, close the app.
2. Loop back to step 1. Simple, no?

As there is no Alt/Cmd + Tab interface to switch between applications immediately, the applications working in the background don’t require constant redrawing like on a desktop operating system. The constant redrawing isn’t necessary because it isn’t expected to come on screen instantly. If you want to open another application, you need to hit the home button first; only then can you launch the app.

On a netbook things work a lot differently. Since you can start multiple apps together, you actually do start them together. Open a web browser, it works fine. Open a mail application, it still works fine. But if you try resizing photos while you have the other applications open, you’ll start taxing the processor and you’ll be able to notice the performance dip. 

Just because iPad doesn’t do so many things at the same time doesn’t mean it is in any way inferior. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Because there’s only one application in the foreground, the application gets full attention. You tend to forget the hardware the moment you delve into the task that the application is going to help you with. Each icon leads the user to a new experience - an experience that can last for moments, a couple of days or even the iPad’s lifetime. Developers already have 2 million iPads out there that they can create applications for; the applications get to use the bulk of the display without being disturbed(if you keep notifications on, you choose to be disturbed) by processes continuing in the background.

State persistence instead of multitasking
Persistence of the application state is a feature that users have been asking developers to implement in their apps right from the beginning. It has made its way into a lot of apps recently. What it basically means is that when you start an app, it restores the state you last left it in. Other than for work that doesn’t require much human input and can be handed over to the CPU, you’re experience of multitasking on a regular computer essentially involves switching to apps and seeing them right where you left them. Multitasking may be very useful in a few cases, but the more you think about it affecting your battery life, the more you start to feel that you may be better off without it. Push notifications already make it easy to continue chats that you haven’t left. So there isn’t much that I am missing. The one thing I do see myself using as a background app though is Skype.

App Pricing and Quality
I find that the most popular apps on the store are rarely the apps that stick around. The reason those apps do well are because of their low prices or because of the eye-catching but unnecessary bells and whistles advertised as features, but the real apps - the ones that help you get work done - cost significantly more. That isn’t bad, because those don’t have the horrific embellishments that tend to distract you. They’re way more functional because they have fewer but more refined features. An example is Things for iPad. It is so good at putting your tasks in the right place with just the right mix of navigation controls in front view.

I never liked the iPhone app half as much. While people always praised Things on the iPhone, I somehow never managed to get used to the app because I found it difficult to use on that small display. I don’t like to go back and forth menus or follow a multiple-step navigation on iPhone apps. It just didn’t work somehow.

What I have noticed is that you can implement your idea better when you get more space. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is true even if you think beyond iPads.

iPhone apps on iPad
In Apple’s TV spot, they mention that the iPad is a console for two hundred thousand apps. They make it sound like there’s an app for everything you can think of. It’s true, but slightly misleading because these apps they’re talking about are written for the iPhone OS. While this is a solution that could work for others, it certainly doesn’t work for me. The other day, I wished to upload some photos to Picasa Web Albums and I wasn’t able to find a single app in the iPad section of the App Store that would let me complete the task. iPicasso was the iPhone app that I had to make do with. iPhone apps occupy the same amount of space on the iPad as they do on the iPhone, unless you hit the button that reads ‘2x’ which will allow it to pixel-double. Not worth the effort.

Mobility
The iPad makes the iPhone and iPod touch look weak. Much of what it can do will never be possible on iPhone. The reason, once again: the enormous display. But looking at just the dimensions, you’ll never be able to use the iPad when you are mobile like you can use your phone. The thing needs you to be seated for you to be comfortable using it. It can’t be used everywhere and in any position. Is it going to find a permanent place in your travel bag? Depends on where you’re going and what you need to do. For me the answer is: not yet.

Internet Tethering
Steve Jobs says it isn’t possible. I say it is. You’re looking for an app called iBluever. Works beautifully with my reliable Bluetooth-DUN supporting Nokia. But you need to go through Cydia to download it. If you have a phone that lets you create Ad-hoc WiFi networks, that is the no-jailbreak-route one could take to tether the iPad to one’s phone.

Buy or Not?
The news is that Apple’s working on some really snazzy additions which will make their way to the iPad next year.  Apple doesn’t talk about unannounced products and you cannot trust those who speculate about new features. All you can do is wait for features that might not turn up.

I’m sure you’ve made up your mind already. What more can I add?

The MacBook Pro that I had with me for the last two and a half years is gone. There was just one part that kept failing on my MacBook Pro. Ironically, that part is the one Apple calls the Super Drive.

Anyone who has faced hardware issues probably knows when hardware starts exhibiting signs of death. With Apple’s amazing Super Drive, you realize that this doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen for the first drive, nor for the second one. It doesn’t die painfully over an extended period of time. It just dies when it feels like and it dies instantly.

Having done a lot of research on the web before going in for a replacement part, I noticed that the Super Drive failing was a very common problem.

Replacement Event 1 - June 2008
The first problem with my SuperDrive was that it wasn’t capable of writing to CDs. It would read CDs and DVDs just fine and it would event write to DVDs but when I tried to write to CDs, it was a totally different story. Any blank CD that I popped in would be popped back out within seconds. It seemed as though my drive didn’t think the CD that I wished to write to deserved admission into it. So after a couple of calls, I walked to my local AppleCare Service Provider and turned my unit in. They said the repair would take 3-7 days. I got a call the next day saying my unit was ready with a new Super Drive. When I went to collect my unit, I started it up to do a routine check anyone would do before signing on a sheet which stated that the service was satisfactory and the unit being returned was in full working order. On the Apple boot screen, I started seeing several greyish dead pixels on the boot up screen. They noticed it too and immediately offered to replace it, but I was clueless as to how and why this happened. It took another day, but I got my computer and it didn’t hit me that hard because I still got it well within the regular repair time frame.

Replacement Event 2 - September 2009
I went to have my drive checked the second time because now, it had stopped reading dual-layer DVDs such as the one I had Snow Leopard on. So, they apologized and since I was giving my unit to them on a Sunday it took them till Tuesday to acquire parts and replace the drive.

Replacement Event 3 - December 2009
I was a little upset, because I had already had a second replacement and this was the third optical drive that was failing. This time, not expecting anything out of it, I escalated my case to Customer Relations to express how unhappy I was with this issue. They heard me, didn’t say anything for some time. Then they said they needed time to investigate and analyze all the data they had about the repairs after which they would call me back to tell me what I should do. I got a call in 2 hours, from Ireland, from someone who handled cases such as mine. He did the usual bit of apologizing and went on to say that since my warranty would expire within the next six months, and this has been a recurring problem, Apple would replace my unit with the most current MacBook Pro. I asked them how they would handle the replacement, and they said Apple would collect it from my house, and have a replacement unit shipped from Singapore. I was warned that I might have to pay whatever customs duty that might be involved in these exchanges. With the government of India charging 33% of the cost as customs duty on imported electronics, I was in no state to accept their offer like this. So my case was then transferred to Apple Singapore, and I was assured that I wouldn’t have to pay anything: “Customs are usually charged in other countries but they’re only small amounts like a couple of dollars or so but since India has a different system we negotiate the exchange directly with the customs office in India. My colleague who spoke to you earlier doesn’t handle cases from India.”

So now that I could see the customs issue more clearly, I proceeded with the replacement in the first week of January. It took Apple a week to send me the new computer and subsequently process a prorated refund ending my AppleCare insurance contract with them. Since I got a discount on my AppleCare through the third party reseller I bought it from, the money I got back made it seem almost like a free warranty extension.

My final conversation with Apple about this case was just a short one in which they thanked me for sending them an email acknowledging the delivery of the unit they had shipped.

The new Mac
The only impressions I have about this unibody MacBook Pro is that it feels solid and has the best trackpad I’ve ever used. More impressions later or maybe never(just to be clear). Everything does work as it should, but what are the chances of my new computer failing in the first few months? I have had a couple of HPs fail and I know they were a big headache to handle. But I should curse myself for comparing my computer with ones made by HP since it doesn’t sell computers…but commodities.

AppleCare
The decision to extend my warranty insurance was not incorrect. If I hadn’t done that, the money I would have had to shell out to perform the repairs myself would have turned to be quite a big sum. Thanks to Prateek for convincing me to buy the protection plan.

I know I’ll extend the warranty of this machine too because I’m not going to change how I treat my computer nor am I going to stop expecting it to deliver. AppleCare is just the best peace of mind you can buy. If you look around, you get good deals too!

UPDATE:

Why does Apple replace defective units rather than let it go to the bin to make more money from the people throwing them away?
I could take the angle everybody takes and say it’s all about customer satisfaction. But that is no reasonable explanation. Of course, every consumer has rights but the warranty doesn’t explicitly mention that replacements will be served at all times. So my only intelligent guess would be that Apple, being a company which cares about product quality, cares to replace units after the defective unit is returned because it has ulterior motives. The ulterior(but not necessarily bad) motive here might be that they are able to identify the defect and the reason it was uncovered. Obviously a lot of the problems they hear about are new and must be rectified to at least improve future production. By taking possession of the defective unit, Apple has a lot to gain even by analyzing its state. With every new revision, they rectify some of the shortcomings of the machines that shipped in their previous generations. And what better way of identifying these problems than by locating the actual machines that have problems. These problems may be very important because they may be generic for the entire class of computers.

With other manufacturers, manufacturing is not so much a matter of design or development as it is a process for their survival. What they did in the past is gone and a fresh slate is what they use to make a new computer. Supporting old hardware is an expensive routine, and those who sell cheap computers find it easier just to skip the task completely. They do offer in-warranty support but making a product grow over a period of time is something their business doesn’t require or doesn’t seem to have required till now.

That still doesn’t make sense. Why should Apple care?
Apple is a company which does both the hardware and software. The integration is great but they have the additional work of handling every problem the user faces. Not like PC manufacturer and PC desktop OS maker that they start blaming each other stating some idiotic case of incompatibility. They shouldn’t be in the market if they didn’t work. Apple cannot survive if this happened. Every little nuance is as important for their software as it is for their hardware, the combination of which is Apple.

If you visit a page that is in any language other than what you have chosen(or set by default) in your language preferences, Google Chrome will offer to translate it for you. Though the continuity of text seems fragmented every now and then, it does work quite well.

You could find the CPUpalette app on earlier versions of OS X along with the CHUD Tools but this has now become Processor.prefpane that you can find by going to the following location on your hard disk:

You still need to install the developer tools though.

While finding text on a page, Chrome on Windows not only highlights the text, but also the positions of the text on the navigation bar with orange bands. What a neat idea that adds more value to the browser window without taking up any additional space.