Gray Smoke

A couple of weeks back, I was talking to my cousin who is a doctor in US who happily declared that she had finally bought a iPhone. My cousin is very intelligent and a great doctor but she is not one who can be called tech savy and would be a perfect example of a late adapter. She was very happpy about the ease of use of the iPhone and wished it had USER MANUAL. The first thing that astounded me, was the discovery that there were people who actually read a manual :-) Most of my device user manuals are stored in unopened packets for a couple of years till my wife throws it out. The second thing that came to my mind was the manuals are needed for products which are extremely complicated to use (like the VCR or the universal remote control). My design philosophy has been that if you need to develop a manual, you have not designed it right. A good product is one in which the configuration is simple and well laid out. I have always found it maddening when the configuraion is not in pl...

It was pretty clear to anyone who follows technology that the next battle will be in the mobile computing space. Microsoft, Nokia's Symbian and even Linux had been in this space for some time but Apple with its visionary finger base touch pad really revolutionized this market space. iPhone was so popular that though it started as a consumer device it soon took a huge market from blackberry's business class users. However this was not sufficient for Apple and they came out with the iPad. Though it did not seem revolutionary at the launch, the fact that 3.5 Million in 6 months speaks for the success of the device. If u travel any flight today, you will find as many users of iPad as u will of laptops. I do not have data but I am sure the iPad has eaten away a significant share of the Net-book market. This does not mean that competition has been sitting idle. Almost all major manufactures came out with finger-touch phones but none has been successful and iPhone is still the gol...

I have been a very happy user of iPhone since 2007. I had bought a locked iPhone 2G for $400 from US in 2007 and hacked it so I could use it in India. I am so used to the phone now, that when I use any other phone, I find myself clumsy pawing it trying to figure what to do. I have never been a extravagant spender on a cell phone and the iPhone was my first major investment on a cell phone. So the question is, will I buy a new iPhone if I loose or break my present iPhone. After much contemplating, I would now without hesitation say YES. Even though it costs $34K in India ($750) Why ? Because iPhone is so much more than a simple Phone. Yes, it also has the integrated phone functionality but I use it very extensively for so many other things. I mail, I facebook, I Kindle, I expense, I Skype, I blog, I Map, I listen to ITuneU. From my 3 year old son, he plays games, he learns phonetics, he has his flash cards, he solves puzzles, he sketches, he even is learning to take photos. For folks wh...