Tim Cook and his first 5 Years at Apple!

Tim Cook today completes 5 years of his tenure as the CEO of the most valuable company in the world. When he was handed over the post of the CEO by the board on suggestion of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook believed that Steve Jobs would remain as a chairman of Apple for a long time with Tim Cook being the CEO as Steve Jobs several times bounced back from ill health in the past after a medical leave. But Steve passed away on 5th October less than 2 months after he resigned as the CEO.

According to Tim Cook here are two of various important advices he received from Steve Jobs:

1)”Never enter into product areas where Apple is not the creator of core technology.” If we think of Apple and it’s products, most of the time they are not the ones that come first but they make the best with integration of hardware, software and services. To do this they need to be in the centre of the product and control the primary technology. Music players existed before iPod and phones existed before iPhone but once Apple entered, they were able to change the Music and Phone businesses completely.

2)”Never ask yourself - ‘What Steve would have done.’ Just do what’s right.” There was a reason why Steve said this to Tim. When Steve was the board member at Disney, after the death of Walt Disney, the execs would always discuss – “What Disney would have done?” and this question always used to fill void in the room and the thinking that went into making decisions once this question was asked became cluttered and unauthentic. According to Tim Cook, this one single advice cleared a huge weight off his chest and helped him think better.

Tim Cook is criticised several times for not being able to make Apple enter into new product areas. This statement is invalid because innovations happen when the technology is ready and the consumers have a problem that this technology could answer. Even when Steve Jobs was at helm it took 6 years to launch iPhone after the iPod was launched. 

While Apple’s incremental gadgets are doing quite well – iPhones, iPads and Macbooks – Apple watch, only new category of device that was launched under Tim’s leadership is yet to prove its potential as a device consumers can’t live without. 

All the technology perspectives aside, Tim Cook brought some elements into Apple that his  charismatic predecessor couldn’t (or didn't care). One of them is transparency and being more open towards critical issues. When the factories at China are facing a problem with lot of workers committing suicides, Tim visited China and made sure that there are some changes in the process that made the workplace more comfortable and less punishing. And the efforts of Apple on environment are legendary! Apple by 2017 will run on 100% renewable energy and its efforts on recycling are setting benchmarks in the industry! And Tim Cook even presented himself in front of the attorney on Tax evasion claims and debated passionately on the need for changes in taxation policies. 

Tim is a very private person, yet he openly declared himself as gay, and the reason that he stated was – “If foregoing my privacy in this one issue can help people come out of the depression, make them think that being gay is not wrong and make them believe that they too can achieve great heights, I’d happily help!” This statement sums up what he is and what he stands for.

Everything didn't go his way though. There were some instances when he was under immense pressure. There was Apple Maps issue where it was very un-Apple to introduce a product before it was ready and Tim Cook candidly admitted the failure. The biggest crisis he faced (if we could point out at one) is when FBI asked Apple to unlock iPhone of a terrorist. (San Bernardino incident) The way Apple reacted to this got lot of admiration from the industry and triggered a debate on an important topic – Privacy and Security. Wozniak (Co-founder of Apple) said "I very much admire Tim Cook for standing up for the privacy of individuals because my whole life, Apple has meant to me a question of who is more important, the human or the technology." Who is more important human or the technology?

With iPhone growth slowing down and critics’ rant at Apple for not being able to come up with a disruptive innovation, I would say, Tim Cook shouldn’t be judged on his last 5 years but on his next 5 years because innovation takes time to produce and his hints at Apple Car and VR look exciting!

Yahoo, Google and the Industry.

To include Yahoo and Google under one bracket is one risky title to start with considering Verizon’s recent buyout of Yahoo and Google’s passes at Apple to be the most valuable company. There’s a reason to it. Read on to find out why!

“Yahoo won the search engine wars and was poised for greater things,” said a Fortune article in 2000. Yahoo was valued $2.8 billion then and when Microsoft tried to acquire it in 2008, they allegedly offered $50 billion. Fast forward to 2016, Verizon buys yahoo for $4.8 billion. So what has changed in between? Press is full of various theories and takeaways many of which focused on Yahoo’s failure to buy Facebook and Google, or sell to Microsoft. But if I can think of one thing to attribute for Yahoo’s failure it is being on wrong side of major trends. 

If people remember, Yahoo was one of the untouchable companies in 90s and it was the leader till mid 2000s to the point that Yahoo’s CEO got a 10 minute stage time for the historic iPhone launch in 2007 and Steve Jobs projected Yahoo as a force to reckon with. And then 10 years later, Marissa Mayer who was poised to be the only saving grace and had the potential to turnaround the falling corporation failed to revive and finally sold it to Verizon. 

Now let’s look at Google. As of now, Google’s numbers look great! It is beating expectations quarter by quarter and Industry observers are walking away impressed after every earnings call. Google banked on digital advertising big time and are doing great! Google’s brainchild PPC (pay per click) – where advertisers are charged when advertising works – has become industry standards of how people look at the success of an ad. Even revenue streams of various companies are designed around PPC. 

But the trend is changing faster than expected. Google’s focus is still on browsers, website and search which interrupt the user’s attention. These are now being replaced by advertising designed to engage them. Facebook, is on the right side of all these trends. As a result of Google’s focus on serving ads by interrupting user experience has impacted the rise in ad blockers. About 41% of internet users use an ad blocker according to a survey. As a result publishers are against these low-performing ads that clog the pages with takeovers, wrappers and pop-ups that weigh on load times and ruin the user experience. 

Smart publishers have realised that instead of putting user experience at risk, a better way to serve ads is to engage them with sponsored content. The success of sponsored content depends on publishers delivering value and relevance to the readers. Publishers have realised that sponsored content is more effective vehicle for driving deep engagement and influence!

Facebook is built exactly for this. From pages to sponsored posts, Facebook has concentrated its monetization strategy on feed based units than interruptive ads and is more poised than Google for success on this road. Google’s answer for this has been AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) which again are search based rather than discovery. 

Conclusion

In Conclusion, unlike Yahoo, Google has been good at identifying trends and getting ahead of the competition. Their brilliant leadership made some strategic decisions to acquire products like Android, Google, AdMob, etc to stay ahead of the competition and it is fair to say that this expertise is bought than being home-grown. 

But the business of digital content is more of curated than computerised. Google doesn’t have this culture in both structure and technology that is poised to take over this trend of curation because Google is always about left-brain comfort zone and computerising the activities than human curation. What Google needs now is a less Google-y approach to problem solving!

Differential Privacy - What the heck is it?

Artificial Intelligence has developed leaps and bounds in recent years. Automation has taken over the world and is doing many things unimagined 10 years ago. Creating auto calendar events, showing your parking location, tracking your packages are just the beginnings of what AI can do.

Tesla when unveiling Model S, introduced a feature where the car on having access to the owner’s calendar, can come out of the garage, switch on the air conditioning and send you a notification that its time to start based on the traffic conditions to the destination. AI is touching everyone’s lives. But at what cost is the question everybody have to ask.

For any artificial intelligence system to get better 2 things are of prime importance. One is having gobs of data and the other is access to high processing power. Cloud takes care of the latter but what about the data? One way or the other, companies should access users’ data to better the AI system on a constant basis. For AI to perform reliably, knowing users’ habits is of utmost importance.

Now comes the different approaches various companies have towards AI. Google, facebook, Amazon and Microsoft openly collect lots of user data for betterment of their AI systems - Google Now, Echo, Cortana, etc.. Apple has a different approach when it comes to collection of users’ data. They are very vocal about protecting users’ privacy. Apple doesn’t collect data as much as its competitors does and for that reason they are atleast 2 steps behind of what competition does. 

Google debuted auto calendar event creation feature by reading your mails 2 years ago. Apple introduced it last year and they have found an approach where the event creation happens locally on the phone unlike Google’s approach where this happens in the cloud. Google photos have great features such as scene recognition, face detection, etc and as expected Apple is late to the game and they have this feature available only now because they are trying to do that locally on the phone. 

This approach by Apple to do everything on the phone has some limitations. Phones do not have as much processing power as the cloud has and the apps might function slow and sluggish as a result of it. The other limitation is that as all the algorithms that detect scene and faces in a photo should reside locally on the device unlike Google’s approach wherein they reside on the cloud, the size of the app in iOS would be significantly higher than that of Android’s.

Apple might do that anyway on the phone now but when it comes to predictions and slang words rise, they have to collect data from the users. The answer for this question is “Differential Privacy” as unveiled by apple at WWDC this year. The tech­nol­ogy works by adding in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion to the data Apple col­lects. This is done in such a way that Apple’s al­go­rithms can ex­tract use­ful in­sights while mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for any­one to link ac­cu­rate data back to an in­di­vid­ual user.

Apple’s short-term am­bi­tions for the tech­nol­ogy are lim­ited. The com­pany will use it to keep user data anonymous while an­a­lys­ing how cus­tomers are us­ing emo­jis or new slang ex­pres­sions on the phone, or which search queries should pop up “deep links” to apps rather than web­pages. In the long term, however, differential privacy could help Apple keep up with competitors such as Google that collect user data more aggressively and use it to improve offers such as image and voice recognition programs. 

Its privacy stance that left Apple in something of a bind. The company promises not to touch its user’s data and criticises other tech companies for collecting personal information that is used to target advertising. But that policy has hindered Apple’s ability to develop and improve services for users. In essence, differential privacy is an effort to tap insights about what a group of users is doing without examining any individuals. 

In a race to Artificial intelligence and a moral obligation to protect users’ privacy, the concept of “Differential Privacy” is going to play a key role for Apple.

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!"