Internet is a great Equaliser — Cloud as a sidekick

“Google search works same whether you are a professor at Harvard or a kid in a rural India.” This is what Sundar Pichai said after he took over Google as a CEO. Nobody summed up what internet is all about better than this. Internet is a great equaliser!

Fire and wheel are said to be the biggest revolutions of mankind. For me Internet falls on the same league. Internet in one way is really transforming the way we communicate. Cards are not being sent anymore. We are in the world of emoticons and Stickers. While it revolutionised how we communicate, it on the way revolutionised and provided a way on how hardware should look like.

Machines are getting tinier and sleeker day by day. Moore’s law and incremental technology are helping designers achieve such awesome designs but it is internet that has transformed and informed the design process. On one hand, while internet is making everyone equal, in its quest internet is making all devices equal.

I’m saying this because there is a point where nobody brought Mac for the fact that there is no application market present for it. All the apps are designed for Windows and are supposed to be run on Windows. For Obvious reasons, Windows enjoyed network effects and a virtuous cycle - More users brought windows, so more developers built more apps for windows, so more users brought windows. Repeat. So many still are buying windows. If Mac was able to comeback and play a catch up it was only because of internet. 

Now most apps are moved to the cloud. Everything is done on web. Therefore it has become evident that it is not the company that builds better operating system that wins. But it is a company that builds better web browser that wins. Its not the company that builds better hardware that wins. It is the company with better networking that wins. Development of Webkit, design choices and obviously agile movement in figuring out where the next bet should be brought Apple back. Incidentally they are the first major company to implement wireless networking in a Notebook. Had the internet not been come in to existence, Mac would have run out of business.

Business creates Technology and scales it. In this case internet has created many businesses. If we can think of great internet successes like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb or any company that has got online presence for that matter is built on a strong foundation called internet. Internet is changing the rules of marketing. It used to be TV and print. Now its all about internet and tapping that user that sees your ad. 

There used to be a time where you have to possess a specific device to run specific program. When whole process is moved to the cloud, you just have a interface front end where you give commands to make things work. We are speaking of big apps being developed in iPads and iPhones. Microsoft recently said most part of the Windows 10 development was done on surface. That’s the world we are in! You previously have to possess a Macbook to develop apps for iPhone and iPad. Now that the programming language on which apps are made — Swift — is made open source, IBM put it in the cloud and all you have to do is open a browser, type in an URL and start developing great apps. You don’t have the headache of configuring the system and configuring the emulators. All you need to concentrate on is what you are good at — developing and coding!

There are three kinds of apps - Completely local, Completely web and hybrid. Apps which are standalone which mostly are games and other reference apps like dictionary are local apps that do not need internet to work. And then there are web apps which are completely web based and run on the browser. The problem with making the app completely web based is that there is a tradeoff with interaction and responsiveness. If the whole app is on the web, it obviously runs slow. Web apps, due to the speed of communications are not responsive as apps that are present in local storage. Today is the world of Hybrid apps where the most UI elements and the presentation patterns are local but the content comes from internet through APIs.

There might come a time where communications speed go to an extent where the apps on the web would be more responsive and provides a leverage to the developer that he need not concentrate on various intricacies involved in each individual Operating Systems. He can write one single program that works across all the devices and all we might need is a browser and various bookmarks. 

Social Networks and the Echo Chamber

Social Networking which never existed 10 years ago has seen the penetration faster than any other service in the world. While there are many advantages to it, let's for a minute be cynical and look at what it does to our cognitive thinking.

It is human tendency to seek out information that validates our view. So we actively look for people whose views match ours. We Selectively read online columns or newspaper articles that appeal to our thinking. We watch youtube videos or television channels that agree with our views. We read opinion pieces and editorials in newspapers and magazines that coincide with our view. This puts us into an “echo chamber” where similar views are repeated and reinforced. The contrary views are brushed aside as frivolous or biased. 

While this might sound bad enough, modern-day social media algorithms has made it worse. All the algorithms facebook or any social network for that matter suggest the pages and ads that we might want to see or might want to like or might want to open. Nobody shows us the reality! Our Facebook feed is filtered based on previous likes. Flipkart suggests items on our pattern of previous purchases. Twitter suggests whose tweets we should follow bases on those we are already following. Social Networks are ensuring that we are fed with more of the same to the point where our brains start confusing opinions for facts. 

There is a debate whether this urge for constant reinforcement makes us more intolerant as a society. That’s a question best left for sociologists and psychologists to answer but this Echo chamber is catastrophic for a business world moving forward.

Before discovery of Australia people were convinced that all Swans are white. It is because they didn’t find a single swan which is black. This is a view based on empirical evidence. But immediately after they found a contrary view that black Swans do exist, they changed a view. But unfortunately we are doing quite the opposite. We first form a view and then look for evidence that endorses our view. That’s the reason we should have a clear line of difference between opinions and facts.

Even in organisations, it often happens that managers prefer views of “yes men.” This is called confirmation bias. Many leaders seek out and take opinions of people who say what the Manager wants to listen but not what is right. They might sometimes be right but when something goes wrong, they will not be able to recognise what went wrong. They don't realise that the data that is sought is completely biased. Research essentially decreases uncertainty in the decisions that a Manager has to take but the person that takes that decision should be unbiased in collecting the data instead of being caught up in an “Echo Chamber.”

A philosopher named Karl Popper famously said “The only way of testing a hypothesis is to form a view and to spend the rest of the day looking for evidence that proves you are wrong, a process known as falsification. Good decision-makers should consciously seek out diverse views that challenge their existing opinions.” This sums up what decision making is all about.

Li-Fi - The next Big thing to look for?

Li-fi (Light Fidelity) is being seen as the next paradigm shift in the field of wireless networks. While there are many upsides of replacing Wi-fi with Li-fi, our technology is not ripe yet. In this blog post we look at what Li-fi is, its upsides and downsides.

What’s Li-fi?

We love internet and the way we access internet these days is Wi-fi. (Wireless Fidelity) Wi-fi uses radio waves which has a smaller spectrum compared to Light or Visible spectrum. Without going into technicalities, I would try to explain what spectrum is and what advantage we get using a larger spectrum which is light spectrum.

Before that let’s first see how Wireless networks work. All the data is digital and is in the form of 1s and 0s. Now let’s take a crude example. Let’s say that if the frequency is low, it is represented as 0 and if frequency is high, it is represented as 1. So, using two levels of frequency, we can send one bit at a time. Now let’s say, we can communicate 4 different  levels of frequencies. Let’s name them low, medium, high and very high. Now these 4 levels of frequencies can represent 00,01,10 and 11 bits. On the whole, you now are able to send 2 bits at a time. Now lets say, you are able to send 8 levels of frequencies. So, you can send three bits at a time. (000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111) So speed of the network depends on how many levels of frequencies you can communicate at a time. 

No of bits you can send at a time=  log2 (No of levels of frequencies you can send)

${\log }_a\mathrm{<br>}$

Though theoretically, you can communicate unlimited levels of frequency at a time but for the receiver to be able to discern between several frequency levels after the addition of noise, you can only communicate limited levels of frequencies. (ie., you can send 2.3 Mhz signal, 2.31 Mhz, 2.311 Mhz, 2.3111 Mhz, etc.. but for receiver to discern these frequencies you cannot just send whichever level you want.)

Here comes the difference between Wi-fi and Li-fi. Wi-fi is based on radio waves and the bandwidth (Roughly speaking, bandwidth is the difference between highest and lowest level of frequencies) of radio waves is much lower than visible light on which Li-fi is based on. So higher the bandwidth, high are the no of frequency levels you can transmit. So high are the no of frequency levels, high are the no of bits you can send at a time. Therefore, high are the no of bits you can send at a time, faster is the network. So, achieving 1Gbps has been an easy task for Li-fi.

How does the Li-fi Work?

We have modems in our home which transmit wi-fi signals for use. In Li-fi, we use the lights to transmit Li-fi signals. So as explained above in a crude way, if light is on it is 1 and if light is off it is 0. So if light is able to glow in different brightness levels, we can send many bits at a time. Normal lights will not be able to do it. So we use LEDs in place of normal incandescent lights for two advantages: 

1) LEDs can glow in different brightness levels.

2) They can switch to these different levels very fast.

All our mobiles have an ambient light sensor on top of the screen, generally near the ear speaker to detect the ambient light conditions and change the brightness of the screen accordingly. A similar sensor but a much more sensitive one will be placed in the receivers to receive this Li-fi signals. This is how Li-fi works

Now many people are jumping on it as the next paradigm shift in internet communications but it should be taken with a pinch of salt. Here are some reasons why we are many years away from seeing Li-fi replacing Wi-fi.

1) It is true that Li-fi gives you 1Gbps of speed, but is there a optical fibre network (which is an input to Li-fi modem which is LED light) that provides you 1Gbps of speed? Our current modems, based on technology they are operating on can give upto 400-700 Mbps but current optical fiber links are unable to catch up with even that speed. So what's the need to jump to even more powerful modems? Its like having a larger tap connected to a narrow pipe.

"Its like having a larger tap connected to a narrow pipe."

2) Downlink is okay but to transmit data from your device to the router, you still need to use Wi-fi or infrared unless you install an LED on your mobile or laptop to transmit data in the same way as Li-fi does.

3) Li-fi cannot work in bright sunlight for the fact that sunlight dominates any LED light.

4) Li-fi cannot be used in different rooms across a home because light cannot traverse through the walls which is essential for Li-fi to work.

5)Light should be on all the times. Though the scientist behind Li-fi, Mr. Harald Haas explained that light's brightness can be brought down so much that a naked eye can't determine whether the light is on or off and can still send the data, it has to be proven yet.

So before you jump into Li-fi bandwagon, remember that there are still some limitations left unanswered!

If you don't understand Tradeoffs, You can't understand Apple!

Its about deciding between having higher mega pixel lens with a smaller pixel size or a lower mega pixel with a larger pixel size that lets more light inside giving you better low light performance.

Its about deciding between having many cores with meagre performance or having lesser cores with greater single core performance. (Though you have 8 cores, if there is a process with only 2 threads, other 6 cores are useless!)

Its about deciding between having an L3 cache or sacrificing it for higher performance bandwidth.

Its about deciding between screen having more pixels per inch or having just enough number of pixels with true colour representation and wider viewing angles.

Its about deciding between having an open source operating system and dealing with all sorts of viruses and inconsistencies or to go with a curated appstore approach.

Its about deciding to have a higher processor clock speed or a lower clock speed with optimised performance and sustained throughput. (Phones with higher clock speeds slows down once the phone gets heated to compensate the temperature)

Its about deciding between going with a bigger storage options of conventional hard drive or to go with costlier flash storage that has a greater overall performance.

Its about deciding between having a more powerful RAM or to have just enough RAM and optimising the performance conserving the battery life.

There are mobile cameras that give you better low light performance than iPhone, better quality in sunlight than iPhone and better color representation than iPhone but there is not a single mobile camera that beats iPhone in overall performance.

There are mobiles with better screens than iPhone, better viewing angles than iPhone, better saturation than iPhone. But there is not a single mobile screen that is better than iPhone’s mobile screen in overall quality.

There are mobiles having processors with higher clock speeds, higher no of cores and higher bytes of RAM but there is no single phone that is better than iPhone in real world performance.

While many companies are “Why not?” companies, Apple is the ultimate “Why?” company. Every new feature faces a harsh spotlight of inquiry. No feature in iPhone is done because it can be done. It is done because it really adds up to what iPhone is. That’s the reason, “New is easy, right is hard!”

The only thing Apple hates to make trade off with is Cost and that’s the only reason you have to pay a higher price for an Apple’s product!

Down below is a great video that explains what Apple is all about.

There are thousand "No"s to a single "YES!"

Happy birthday Windows!

Last Friday marks 30 years of existence for Microsoft Windows. Microsoft is the first software company. Bill Gates envisioned long ago how a software company should be like before anyone knew what software actually is. Microsoft has been the face of computing for many long years and it still is in a very tangible way. There are many ups and downs for a huge company as Microsoft where the former clearly dominated the latter, it wasn’t always a cakewalk for Microsoft to protect its identity. Software is funny. You clearly dominate the industry, become myopic and then you are irrelevant. We have seen recently this week on how Rdio filed for bankruptcy after being a super hit just 4 years ago. Similarly we have seen many instances in the past where companies faltered not knowing where their next bet should be and going bankrupt.

This was Microsoft's first logo

Microsoft was started in 1974 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. When Paul saw the future in Altair 8800 (A Micro processor) he persuaded Bill Gates that the time was ripe and they have to jump into the world of programming. Then Bill Gates and Paul Allen somehow convinced Altair manufacturers and started to write programming immediately. After spending many sleepless nights, they finally were succeeded in delivering the program. 

1980s

These were the days of IBM Personal computers which took public by storm. Microsoft wrote the program of MS DOS for IBM. The biggest mistake IBM did was allowing Microsoft retain the licensing rights on MS DOS. When Bill Gates and his team at Microsoft were developing MS DOS for IBM, they were not at all confident of getting the licensing rights as IBM being market leader was ruthless. But the management of IBM thought that nobody in the industry could replicate their success in hardware manufacturing and thought that they will remain market leaders in the foreseeable future. Bill Gates from the inception is a software guy. He when came to know that the management of IBM is not at all interested in retaining the licensing of MS DOS, he was shocked and said to his close friends how big this mistake is and also added that IBM is going to repent on this Historical mistake. He was right. Many manufacturers came around figuring how to do hardware and started to approach Microsoft for the software. Microsoft suddenly replaced IBM as face of computing.

Microsoft also licensed their ‘Basic’ programming for Macintosh and wrote office software for Mac. Bill Gates worked closely with Steve Jobs in creating Macintosh’s software. Bill Gates was a little apprehensive on Mac’s success as he thought the Macintosh that was launched in 1984 was way ahead of its times and may not succeed. Turns out, he was right and Macintosh’s failure lead Steve Jobs step out of the company. But people started to look at Macintosh’s GUI as a game changer. 

Then the whole industry started to believe that Graphical User Interface is the future of the computing and the huge debate of Text based interface vs Graphics based interface soon turned into a intuitive common sense. It is clear - GUI is the future.

1990s

Windows came up with Windows 95 and it was the first windows operating system that supported GUI and it became an instant hit. Apple immediately filed a lawsuit that Microsoft copied their Macintosh’s interface and the competition became intense. Microsoft finally relented and agreed to purchase $350 million worth Apple shares in ‘out of court’ settlement when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. While Apple pursued an integrated approach from the start where Hardware, Software and Services are provided by a single company, Bill Gates’ vision was different. He thought consumer should be given a choice of different hardware manufacturers and he pursued an open approach where different components are designed by different companies. In hindsight, we have to say that the industry immensely benefitted from Microsoft’s open systems approach. Competition intensified among the manufacturers which turned into a Zero sum game which triggered price wars. In the end, consumer benefitted. 

Microsofts push to Enterprise is also a commendable effort suited to its open approach. Microsoft allowed OS customisation and tweaking according to the needs of the enterprises and they came up with a server operating system that was and still is immensely popular. Even food chains like KFC use Microsoft’s enterprise Operating system. Here instead of whole Operating system a lite version of Windows is deployed on a low cost hardware that saved lot of costs and was easier to use. 

2000s

Many say that this decade is a ‘lost decade’ for Microsoft. Steve Ballmer when took over Microsoft, it is a giant. Microsoft lost focus and ventured into many irrelevant spaces in the fear of being Myopic. They ventured into robotics, phones without a vision and did many irrelevant innovations that didn’t help its desktop operating system in any sort. In 2004 they debuted a Windows based tablet which is a complete failure. Windows Vista’s failure didn’t help Microsoft. On the other hand Apple and Google are driving ahead leaving Microsoft behind. In a desperate attempt to attract attention, Microsoft even ventured in to search space through Bing. The abbreviation of Bing is ‘Bing is not Google.’ If you name your product after your competitor, it says how terrified and desperate you are. After losing ground to Apple and Google on mobile front and Amazon on server front, Microsoft really need a restructuring. 

Present

Steve Ballmer was sacked as CEO by the board and Satya Nadella who overlooked Enterprise Mobility division and cloud platform Azure was made the CEO. Satya Nadella when made the CEO stressed the importance of Mobile first approach and started conscious efforts to bring back Microsoft as an enterprise leader. 

Its too early to judge Satya Nadella as a CEO but innovations of Microsoft recently on Surface tablets, Surface books, Windows Mobile, Azure, Microsoft Band, Xbox, Holo lens, and Windows 10 looks promising. Satya has a clear head unlike the chaotic personality that represents Steve Ballmer. Below is a video explaining his vision for Microsoft after a recent product launch.

Microsoft indeed brought us a long way. Let’s hope Microsoft takes us to even more heights we could never have imagined. Happy 30th Anniversary Windows!

Google Services - A faustian Bargain?

Faust is the protagonist of classic German legend. He is a scholar who is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life. This leads him to make a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Now the reason I brought this up is that while all the Users are Faust s in their souls, the question that whether users are always in a bargain with Google always ponders me.

Google has always been the go to company for many services we use today. Some might be surprised on how much google knows about us. Google has got the upper hand over Apple in the services it is in because Google was able to read more of your data and provide you many contextual services. Google now, for example is a service which provides contextual cards. When there is a reservation made, be it flight, movie, or a bus, Google automatically reads your mail, looks for the details in the ticket and serves you the contextual cards telling you the time to start based on your current location and traffic conditions to your destination. Now for this to happen, Google has to read your mails, strip the vital information of your location, destination, time and date of the travel. Only then will it be able to serve the cards. For an user, it doesn’t matter what information Google is gathering as long as these services thrill you.

But the inevitable question that arises is what else Google is doing with this data. If you think that Google collects data just to provide contextual services, you are terribly wrong. After Google does this, it sells that data to advertisers. Advertisers in turn use this data to serve you contextual ads. Google is doing this through its service called adsense suite. Google assigns a random ID to all the data and uses that data to serve you contextual ads. While the identity of the person can’t be known, the service reading your mails and analysing your location data sounds a little creepy. Android users can open this link and can see their location history. Open this link and you can get all the searches you made at Google. Google not just tracks you, it even sells this data to companies. 

Many Apple users face the heat from their friends who are Android users on how cool Google services are but they  never realise that Google steals gobs of data from them. Apple recently through its software update iOS 9 brought the capability of converting mails into calendar events. While Google fanboys proclaim the feature to be available for them for two years, the thing they never understand is that, while Google’s approach makes the server read your mail and create calendar event for you, Apple’s approach makes the iPhone do that for you without a byte of data moving out of your phone. A rational person would understand how different the two approaches are and why Apple takes so much time to bring out these features and execute them just right.

Down below is a screenshot of famous game 'subway surfers.' Now as you can see, it collects the information like, Device & app history (Allows the app to view one or more of: information about activity on the device, which apps are running, browsing history and bookmarks), Device ID and call information, etc.. Now here’s a trivial game that can read the apps that are present in your phone, apps which are running in the phone, browsing history on your phone and bookmarks present in your phone. Now what do you think the developer of the app does collecting the information? They sell it to third party, makes money and doesn’t care what the third party does making you vulnerable. 

Now, Apple never allows this to happen. That is the reason you find many apps in iPhone less functional than their Android counterparts for a simple reason that Apple never gives such sensitive information away. This is one of the two reasons why you find many Android apps being free while Apple charging premium for the fact that Android developers can collect your data, sell it and make revenues. The other reason being many pirated versions available and the ability to side load them in Android. But in Apple, you can download the apps only from the Appstore unless the device is jailbroken. 

For Apple, customer is the king while for Google, customer's data is the king. I know that this post started from being a critique of Google services has ended being a comparison between the approaches of Android and Apple, but the point I was trying to make is that choice is subjective. People who are very sensitive and critical about where their data is going might want to depend on Apple and people who don’t care where their data is ending up as far as they are enticed with the contextual services of Google might want to stay with Google. 

So while entering into Google services, beware that you are entering into a faustian bargain. Only time will tell whether Google is a devil or it isn’t!

Steve Jobs - Life Lessons

Steve Jobs as a person needs no introduction. People know him as the founder of Apple and as an amazing leader. But there are lot of intricacies involved in his personality worth knowing to truly understand why he got the success he got.

                               

Steve Jobs thorough his career had revolutionised many industries. He single-handedly transformed computer industry with Macintosh, Animation industry with Pixar, Music industry with iPod and iTunes, Mobile Phone industry with iPhone and Tablet industry with iPad. His genius lies not in the result but in the process and the way he did it. Everybody knows how and why he created these industries. But let us look at some situations where he exhibited a flash of brilliance that was needed for the day.

1. Fonts in Macintosh

Computers back in 1984 were majorly used in the field of research and publishing. When Steve and his team were brainstorming for the breakthrough features that needed to be put in Macintosh, Steve came up with this idea of having different typefaces (fonts) in word processing software. When they executed this idea and released the product, this feature became the talking point and a huge success as publishers instantly fell in love with the feature. Only later in 2004 when Steve gave his commencement address at Stanford, did he mention that the idea of different fonts came only because he had dropped out of his college and dropped in calligraphy classes. It is hard to believe but the truth is if Steve Jobs hadn’t taken calligraphy classes we wouldn’t have had this feature of fonts.

So he said to all the young graduates that attended the ceremony not to ask the question of why when you are learning. In his own words, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

2. iPod and the Aquarium

Steve Jobs was a micro manager and he used to handpick the design himself looking at the prototypes. When a designer showed him a prototype of an iPod, Steve was not satisfied with the size as it didn’t fulfill his his vision of “1000 songs in your pocket.” Steve asked the engineer to make it smaller for which he got a reply that minimizing it further is impossible. He stood up took that iPod and threw it in the aquarium in his office and showed him the water bubbles emerging from it. Then he said to the engineer with his ever passionate tone. “Tell that you can’t do it. Don’t call it impossible. Go back and rework.”

3. Being a Control Freak

Steve approved a Prototype of iPod and the manufacturing facility was about to start the trial production of iPod when Steve halted it saying the socket into which the headphones went was “defective.” Engineers were called to Steve Jobs’ office and Steve started to complain that the socket was not “clicky” enough. Engineers didn’t understand the problem and Steve started telling that click is the only feedback a user gets when he inserts the headphone into the socket. When he hears it, he feels content that he inserted it properly. So I want sockets to be reengineered. 

Here’s a CEO complaining about sound that came when you inserted your earphones into the socket.

4. Stepping into the Shoes of a User

Steve being a CEO of Apple had used products of different competitors so that Apple as a company was never behind the competitors’ offerings. Whenever he opened any box of an electronic product, the user manual used to say “charge for 8-16 hours before switching it on.” Steve as a user was irritated on seeing this. Steve then called the lead of iPod project Tony Fadell and said to him “I don’t want to see this in my product. User should start using iPod from the instant he sees it.” Tony Fadell presented him the problems from manufacturing perspective on how difficult and lengthy manufacturing process will now become as they needed an extra hour to charge the batteries. Steve then asked the product’s hard disk to be tested for an extra hour versus 10 minutes they did till then so that the quality assurance is higher and batteries would charge.

From then, every electronic product started coming with at least 50% charge so that users need not wait impatiently for the product to charge.

5. AM/ PM in an iPod

Interface engineers in iPod's team were having a heated debate on which font to use for the new clock face they were designing. They tried different fonts but it was affecting the aesthetics of the clock design. When Steve Jobs walked in to the lab, engineers explained him the problem. Steve Jobs as usual within a second came up with an amazing as well as aesthetically pleasing solution - He said "Use a white face if it is day and use a black one if it is night." 

Now talk about spontaneity. Anyone?

6. Success through Cannibalization 

Sony had been the king of consumer electronics in the 20th Century. Experts believe that Sony had necessary technology to make iPod before Apple but they chose not to because they are worried if the sales of the CDs would drop as the consumption pattern changes. Nonetheless Apple did it and as a result Sony’s sales dropped. Steve learned this lesson fast. In 2005, when iPod has been the primary revenue generator for Apple, Steve Jobs asked his strategic team to name a product that can kill iPod. Everybody said mobile phone with music capabilities has the ability to kill an iPod. Steve said “Let’s do a phone.”

And the rest was history.

7. Attention to Detail

This is what Steve Jobs said to Vic Gundotra, a google executive on the phone on Sunday Morning. "So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve. "I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have a team member of mine fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?" 

But in the end, when we think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, just think about this call a top level executive of google received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson we all as future leaders should never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday. 

This is the reason why Steve Jobs was such a person whose personality is worth emulating, whose actions are worth imitating and whose words are worth inscribing. 

He is not a coder, he didn’t know how to program, he didn’t learn design academically. But this is how he described himself:

“Musicians play their instruments.

 I play the orchestra” 

Uber and Ola- The new revolutions in transport.

On a sunny (I'd rather say hot) Wednesday afternoon, I was waiting for a bus to get a ride to a friend’s place nearby. As always the frustration to wait for public transport, the convenience of having AC in a cab and laziness to walk last few metres after getting down a bus influenced me to open apps that are present under “travel” category in my phone. So I opened Uber. Requesting for a ride, the driver arriving there and me getting in to the car hardly took 5 minutes from the tap of a button. The conversation I had with the driver influenced me to write this column. 

After I got in, the first thing he did was to confirm my Identity and started to write my name in a book with the odometer reading beside it. I asked him the reason for doing it. He said in elegant English, “Sir, I have been getting wrong readings in Uber dashboard while I have been riding longer distances than what is being showed. So I wanted to confirm whether it is any technical error and wanted to report it.” I was offended when he said he found fault with technology. Geek in me came out brashly and explained him how navigation works and said that mighty Google powers Uber’s backend of navigation. He listened patiently and said to me, “Sir I have been getting cancelled rides and some non payment issues because of combination of wallet and cash. I just want to make sure that there is no foul play. Nothing against Google or Uber.” There’s a shiny Asus phone plugged and set in a stand on the car. I asked him whether he purchased it. He said that Uber gave it to him. “I was offered Samsung and Asus. I hate bloatware in Samsung and touchwiz is laggy. So, I have selected Asus.”

Then our conversation moved from technology to revenue models. I asked him, “How do you make profits from Uber? We pay a mere Rs. 7/Km and is it even viable for you?” He smiled and said, “Sir, apart from whatever you give us, we get an incentive of Rs. 100 or Rs. 125 based on the type of car whether it is a Sedan or a Hatchback. In addition to that for each hour we login, we get Rs. 200 irrespective of whether we get rides or not. I asked him whether those incentives remain forever. He said that starting from 1st Nov, prices of Uber are going to be increased with all the incentives for drivers cancelled and the new price is going to be Rs. 16/Km and are going to serve sub-urban as well. I was surprised and agitated at the same time and said, “How could they do that? Do they even realise that people are going to desert them if the prices hike outrageously high?” Then he said to me, “Sir, you can’t desert us. You know that, we know that, Uber knows that. Will you now after enjoying the private rides go back to footboard rides on a bus? Uber went as far as to rent Audi s and Benz s for Rs. 25000 a day from top celebrities only to attract people to Uber. They are even showing losses in the profitable counterparts only to provide free rides and promos and push this concept aggressively in India.* Bitter truths are hard to digest and I countered him to back his claim. He replied wryly, “Surge pricing. Surge pricing is a strategy to test your spending capabilities. There are 20 lakh cars in Hyderabad which are registered to Uber and let’s say, 25% of them are offline. There would still be 15 lakh cars on roads and rarely will there be a deficiency. Even at the time of surge where the prices would go 3 X or 3.5 X, people are not stopping. And recently when Uber started charging Rs. 18/Km after 16 Km, it didn’t deter people from taking a ride.” Now I didn’t have anything to speak. 

My destination arrived and while he was pressing “End trip” on his console, I asked him, “How much do you make?” He replied “Rs. 65000 - 80000 a month.” As I readied myself to pick my bag I have promised it to be the last question and asked him “What is your qualification?” “M.Com.” Understanding the bafflement on my face, he continued speaking “I didn’t want to work under anyone. I love driving and wanted to be my own boss and thankfully technology is allowing me to do it.” 

If technology is allowing a man in his 30s to follow his passion, giving him financial freedom, and is encouraging public to lead a better way of life, I’ll indeed call it Revolutionary in bold and italics :)

*I was unable to confirm the claim.

Ad-Blockers and the Business Reality.

By now as I write this article, many publishers would have already started creating technologies that bypass adblockers for running their businesses. Recent move by Apple to move out of its values (or what they have spoken till now) to provide content blockers on its mobile browser is really catastrophic for the publishers. The move could take ad-blocking on the mobile web mainstream, with serious implications for any business with a stake in online ads. I liked adblockers. In fact, I absolutely loved them until I really thought of it deeply by putting myself in the shoes of publishers. The reason I used the word catastrophic is because it really is if Apple does that in such scale. It is estimated that 60% of web traffic today comes from Mobile devices out of which many (not majority) are iOS devices. Now that Apple is giving an option for its users to download adblockers and use them in Safari, Apple is not just killing Google and Facebook which primarily rely on Ad business, they are giving a death call to publishers.

Where did it all start?

Google is the first word that comes to anybody's mind if one thinks of the word free or ad. Google is not giving everything free for philanthropy. It is creating a business model around a service where the primary service is given free to the users (at least on disguise) but charges users in the form of their data. Tim Cook recently said, "if somebody are making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. As far as we, Apple are concerned, you are not our product." Apple tried and tried hard to convince people to move away from free services like Google to protect their privacy. But at the end, every user votes for themselves on the tradeoffs on whether or not he wants contextual services (Google Now) by sacrificing privacy, whether or not he is ready to trust all his personal collection of photos to one company for free (Google photos) or paying for it. It eventually boils down to the user on tradeoffs he's going to make. The problem now to Apple is that they are unable to turn enough of the users away from Google. 

We read many blogs online everyday. It is estimated that more than half of the publishers rely on Google's AdSense for the ads to be served. Whether they use Google's services or anybody else's, Apple allowing content blockers on their web browsers implies, revenues for many blogs is going to plummet. It has been just a day that iOS 9 is released which support adblockers and all the apps that are adblockers are already topping the charts on the App Store. Users are surely annoyed about the ads and my personal experience says that content blocking allows you to load your webpages as quick as twice as fast depending on the density of media these ads deploy but blocking them altogether is harsh. 

Apple may come out and say, we care about user experience more and all the other things less but on the way to their vision they have to look back and reflect upon casualties of their decisions because they are no more a startup. Their decisions do not create ripples. Their weight now disposes water from the ocean to the bank. Some even say that the debut of both Apple news app and content blockers is not a coincidence but a conspiracy. I'm not going that far to suggest the same but can say with some certainty that Apple is having a cruel laugh as they are now successfully blocking revenue sources of Google.

What should publishers do now?

Big companies that rely majorly on ad revenue like Google, Amazon, Facebook are purportedly paying millions of dollars to major adblocker players like ABP to whitelist their ads. Now that Apple is personally involved in this they seem to have upped the ante. It is rumoured that Adblocker plus creator is now working alongside Google to block the adblockers. (what an irony!) Google has already updated Youtube's code and is penalising users that use adblockers by forcing them to see the whole ad taking away the option to skip the ad. 

All these futile attempts aside, if we speak of current ads, they are cluttered, passé and an overhaul is long due. Now all the publishers should seriously consider revamping the ads and should think of  ways to deal with adblockers. One way is to politely ask users to switch off adblockers. (A publisher can know whether or not a user is using an adblocker by running a simple html script) Second way is to deceive adblockers by serving inline ads. Curated ads is another way to deal with the problem. Rather than serving up random ads that come directly out of Google's servers which are often deceptive, publishers can always serve users with better, contextually relevant ads which serves the purpose of one, better user experience and two, the probability for the ad to be clicked. 

Its now on the publishers come up with a business model around the new developments of adblocking and strive to serve it's readers.

iPhone, iPad Pro and Apple TV - The Critique.

Tim Cook started the keynote by saying "We are really firing on all cylinders and we are about to make some monster announcements across several of our product lines." Boy they indeed delivered on what they have promised. Its been almost 4 years since Steve Jobs passed away and the flow of ideas is still consistent from Apple. Whether you like Apple or not, these keynotes are phenomena in themselves. Nobody seems able to replicate the scale and energy. Apple Keynotes are the least acknowledged among the best products of Steve Jobs! Now let's look at what's changed.

iPad Pro

This is BIG — both in size and scale! The new iPad Pro is a monster with 12.9" screen 78% larger than the standard 9.7" iPad. iPad has been a huge success initially but gradually the sales are slowing down - a concern for Apple. Nothing is really wrong in recent iterations but its just that people are upgrading their iPads less often. Apple is not shying away from doing whatever necessary to increase its sales. Deal with IBM to develop enterprise applications is an example on how far Apple is willing to go to revive the growth of iPad. Not stopping there, Apple even gave its keynote space to Microsoft to debut its Office suite on iPad. There was a stunned silence from the audience when Apple put Microsoft's name on the screen but thats the distance Apple is willing to go if they see an opportunity.

There is a lot of discussion on the internet that Apple is doing things Steve Jobs hated - the stylus. But the fact is when Steve said about stylus, he was referring to mediocre styluses on resistive touch screens. Not the kind of stylus Apple debuted through "Apple Pencil." If History was any evidence, Steve Jobs always did things he said he would not. He said iPod with video would fail and the next year, first iPod with video capabilities came out. He said he would never do a phone. iPhone was a history. Steve Jobs was an amazing in flipping and flipping is an art. Things do change and you have to change accordingly. Be rigid and you are preparing your route to oblivion. Moreover Steve Jobs' parting advice to Tim Cook is to "Do what's right. Never think what I would have done. Just do what's right."

iPad Pro could have many implications and many use cases that we never would have imagined. Through iPad Pro, Apple is clearly targeting photo-editing professionals and enterprise employees who run multiple apps side by side. New Photoshop app from Adobe and might of iPad to support multiple apps with 4 GB RAM is the evidence. This potentially could have a huge impact on the industry and its up to the developers now to decide on the places and use cases they take it to.

Apple TV

Apple has always been the company that started with a less - capable but user friendly operating system and add features to it over time based on the advancements of the hardware. They did the same with iPad where they took mobile operating system iOS to a bigger canvas when the competitors are trying to port stripped down versions of Windows on to the tablet hardware. There lies the brilliance of Apple. They are doing something similar with the Apple TV. While the competitors are out with game consoles that can do a bit of entertainment, Apple started with entertainment and overtime started giving gaming capabilities to this device. This is a completely different animal when compared to X box or PS both in price and positioning. Apple has a large advantage in the form of developers and the community is ripe with innovations. They are making unique value proposition with developers, thanks to Apple users who buy more when compared to the users of it's competitors. Siri integration into Apple TV is great and with the same pace we are nearing a day in the future where we would finally cut the cord!

iPhone 6s and 6s plus

Now we come to a product that is earning 56% of the total revenues for Apple. Whether Apple admits it or not, iPhone is the most important product for Apple. Smartphones are maturing and innovation in this sector is drying up. Making things work is where Apple really relies on.... Until now. With force touch, Apple is taking advantage of its unique strength - hardware-software integration. It might take some time for competitors to come up with similar UI as hardware and software manufacturers are different. While Apple's force touch user is neatly implemented, it takes time getting used to as there is some learning curve involved. In the end, this gesture adds another UI interaction and as Apple is opening up the API of force touch, its time for developers to start fiddling with it and come up with new features. The only downside of force touch is that Apple can not be free from fragmentation of Apps now . Now that the new iPhones require different apps written to make use of force touch, there would be some fragmentation involved.

The updated optics and the live photo feature are the other talking points of iPhone. The live photo feature might shake the industry and may give Apple a first mover advantage as facebook and instagram have already announced that they would start supporting this new format. Though similar feature already exists in some phones of htc, Apple nails in implementation yet again. Making use of screen as a flash for selfies is one another nice implementation. For this Apple included a chip in the iPhone that drives the brightness of the screen 3 times more to its normal brightness. This great additions make this iPhone a compelling purchase!

All said the iPhone is on route to reign the title of "best smartphone in the industry" yet again and Apple, as always is going to remain the market leader. 

Here's the full keynote.