The $1000 iPhone

After much fanfare, and internet leaked secrecy, the iPhone's India launch is scheduled. The 22nd August schedule was pretty clear - that word had to come from Apple; but the tight lipped secrecy that shrouded the price was indeed the royal piss-off.

After all the ado - here we have it - INR 31,000 for the 8GB iPhone and 37,000 for the 16GB variant. Yes, that is almost $800 and $950 respectively, which jauntily brings us to the topic of this post - the $1000 iPhone !

Lets just look at this for a moment - the product in hand.
IPhone 3G, the second generation iPhone from Apple thats touted to run on the much faster 3G network. " Twice the Speed and half the Price" - that was the USP that Apple ( and AT&T) used for the iPhone. Fast Forward to India-> The iPhone 3G is pretty much as good as the iPhone 2G because the 3G network is prety much non-existant in India. we are still debating on HOW to sell the spectrum, let alone actually sell it. These operators who do not have ANY 3G spectrum are selling a premium 3G phone to potential buyers dangling the 3G carrot ( which even they do not have). Am not so much suggesting that they are trying to sell a service that they do not have, but yeah... that close enough. To add insult to injury, this prohibitive price is for a phone that is carrier locked with a contract.
AT&T sells the iPhone for $200 to select customers and $500 to some others. Now this is a CONTRACT locked phone - you subscribe to a $30 voice plan with a $40 DataPlan - so you spend $70 on your subscription. What you get in return is unlimited Data transfer ( at 3G speeds) and access to all AT&T WiFi hotspots, excluding some free minutes or talktime and some various text messages etc. So, for a cheap iPhone, you get tied to a decent plan, which lets you use the phone reasonably. O2 (UK) also has pretty similar plans, some cheaper.
What do we get here in India ? The Service providers decide to mark up their price to $800 ( 4 TIMES ) and sell it. What about a plan? Since they cannot provide any 3G, what plan? What Data? the EDGE network, where available is horrendous , simply cannot do justice to any portable internet browsing device. But still, our operators decide to lock to phone to themselves, and to force a contract to poor customer ( who is never of any concern) to choose any of the available 2G plans to suffer with. Never mind that the customer( read LOSER) decides to pay close to $1000 for a phone (whose NON contract version is pegged at $600 by AT&T), he still has to shell out a few hundred rupees more to google, and some more few hundred if he intends to use half the features on the phone because half of them dont have an unlimited data plan !

Where does that leave us - the HTC Dream ( based on google's amazing Anderoid) or the Nokia N96 ( exhorbitantly priced but justified - a 5mp cam, stereo bluetooth etc etc) ? Or to get the very same iphone from my distant cousin in the US who'd gladly get me one and have it unloacked and jailbroken? There are options.

I, for one, was a self confessed Apple Fan boy who had refused to buy the phone because i wanted to buy it legally, with the waruntee etc. But if they ( Apple, Airtel and Vodaphone) do not want me to buy it from them, i am not left with much of a choice.

cyberWars, economic wars, shooting wars

Russia attacked Georgia.

Though it did not exactly make the same kind of startling headlines material as the Coalition Forces in Iraq ( read: American invasion of Eye-rak ), it was indeed surprising. Anyway, my primary point of interest is not the war itself ( not much of a war, i must add) but the modus operandi.

According to one NYT Article ( link i am unable to find), the Georgia was under a cyber attack - an allout cyber attack against a nation. This is the first time that a war has been raged simultaneously - in both virtual and real worlds. Internet sources claim that the attacks on Georgia's internet infrastructure was staged and planned - starting as early as july 20th. Targets included government sites ( like President Mikheil Saakashvili's website, which was hacked and pictures comparing him to Hitler posted) which became victims to the now popular DOS and DDOS ( Denial of Service & Distributed Denial of Service): where the servers are bombared with millions of useless data and overloaded to shutdown.

Although the Russian Government claim that they have nothing to do with this - rumors generally point fingers to the RBN - the Russian Business Network, a St.Petersberg based gang known for such activites.

Whats interesting here is lets look at it from a different perspective. Lets say another country, a tech saavy nation, like Israel, India or Japan, was attacked by say the United States or the UK. The war would naturally take a two pronged approach - economic sanctions coupled with carpet bombs. thats the standard routine in modern warfare. But if the reverse were to happen? if Israel, india or japan wanted to wage a war against the USA or the UK, economic sanctions would be meaningless unless these countries provided something vital ( like back gold). An ideal approach would be to hack into their networks ( like the hollywood coined "Firesail" for Die Hard 4). with the internet not working, and the rest of the networks open to an attack - nations like UK, USA would cripple. utilities like power, banking, communications are inseparable coupled to the internet. The second wave of actual warefare can follow this.

Is this what Georgia was supposed to be? to see the impact of crippling a nation's internet services? for georgia, it did not amount to much, except for some lack of access to some government sites (Georgia ranks 74th out of 234 nations in terms of Internet addresses) . But for a nation more dependant on the Internet, it would indeed be a crippling blow.

A simple cost effective solution to wreck havoc.

Your thoughts?

India's First Olympic Gold since 1980

i was born in 1984.
http://en.beijing2008.cn/news/sports/headlines/shooting/n214528114.shtml
This marks India's first Olympic Gold in 28 years. Thanks to Abhinav Bindra. For a nation of over ONE BILLION people, we have churned out far less olympians than a country with a fraction of our "resources", like say Australia. But like Chetan Bagat had spoken of the "Bradbury Principle" ( Bindra's gold was not like this though ); we need a wake up call to bring something like sports to national attention, we need to understand that sports means more than just Cricket. its more than just Hockey too.

but more on that later... @ work now.
PS : see the video on YouTube

Even if God can, will God Want to?

L & G,
I came across two news articles that made me smile - not because its funny, but its sense of irony did amuse me. Even god cannot save this country: SC and SC directs flak at errant cops, babus both appeared on the same day on MSN. Independence day is around the corner and spirits of Nationalism ( with a Capital N) and PATRIOTISM ( all CAPS) is pretty high and doing the rounds on email, straw flags will soon be around too.

now, the first article - Even god cannot save this country: SC really did crack me up. let me quote -

"You complain about judicial activism when you are in power. When you are not in power you come to us for remedy," the bench remarked.

now, what do you say when a nation comes down to this plight ? with the apex court fuming that even god cannot save this country, i think it has come to the point where we have to enforce a severe law that prevents people with any criminial record, ANY, from holding any position in the government. Now, this would have been a difficult proposition in the early years of post independence, considering that most of our freedom fighters spent a major chunk of their time in prison. Today, most of our politicians NEED to spend a considerable amount of their remaining wretched lifes in prison ! Like someone had said, there is a dearth for good Statemen in India; all we have are politicians. Dont take this personally, am not very politically inclined ( just Nationally) but its about time the Judicial powers were truely isolated from the legislative and not just in theory.

The second article is something that i can relate to - and almost every other denizen can. The sheer feeling of the fact that there is no one to help you when you are in trouble; in the world's largest democracy, the very government you elected is not there to stand by you; the system that you are presented with is so convoluted that fixing it would mean getting rid of it.
Right from a simple stolen cell Phone to some gang rape, the Indian Policeman has an image - of harrassing the people.
Am not gonna vent on corruption and its tentacles, but thats another story.

iPhone 3G for the Second Time !

The second Generation iPhone, incidentally named - iPhone 3G ( for 3rd Generation services) sold over million phones in three days. wow, that was something.
Now for the Second wave - Singtel will launch the iPhone3G on 9th Aug in Singapore and Airtel confirmed that at the "stroke of midnight on 21st Aug" Airtel would be launching the same in India. Now that means a staggered approach - now very similar to the worldwide launch that they had on 11th July that chocked the apple servers globally.

Another intestering note on the same - where did the million iPhones go ?
From Dev's post - 600,000 in the United States. followed by 70,000 in Japan. Now, Japan is a country where people are used to having phones that are far more advanced than the iPhone, they use their phones on a regular basis to watch live TV, pay for various shopping bills and the likes - and there was much apprehension on how the iPhone would be selling into a market like that?

PS: Did you notice that the largest market bought 8 times more phones than the second largerst - that is over a 100,000 more than all the other countries put together!

PSS : The Second wave is on 22nd August GLOBALLY. Correcting my previous statement, this would mean another clog at Apple Servers, unless they have geared up themselves since July 13th !

War of Words

Last evening, i was having just that with a friend of mine, who had a comment on an old blog of mine (which i retired from service for more than obvious reasons). She found it rediculous. the bone of contention happened to be an extract from Michael Crichton's State of Fear. the whole excerpt is one of my favorite passages by one of my favorite writers. the whole argument began to get heated when it found it pointless for me to put someone else's work on my blog, though i had stated very clearly that the entire passage if From Crichton's work and all that jazz. She certainly thought it bordered on plagarism.
So we came to this fundemental question - what then is a blog? well, for me it certainly is not an anthology of all my literary accomplishments that it should state and contain only words that originated from my fingertips. I'd rather picture my blog as my scrap book - something where i can put what i feel, either write them or if i found them somewhere put it here, so somebody else can also have a look at it - comment on it, tell me what they feel about it. Well, as long as i dont put up Crichton's work on my blog and try to pass it off as mine, i thinkits alright.
Your comments?

Lessons learnt from the loo. LESSON 1

Lesson #1 : Never touch his iPhone !

John Doe walks into the loo, his swishy iPhone plastered to his ear, talkin his heart out. he swaggers down to the urinal, and pulls out his tool, wedging the phone between his ears and shoulders, head tilted at an acute( not a cute) 20 degrees. Now comes the best part, after he is done, he does the usual jiggle and wriggle before zipping up, and just as his phone is about to slip off, saves it by catching it and holding it firmly in his palms( with a sigh of relief ) - the very hands that he used for a very different purpose a few seconds back.
" Hang on a sec, i'l call u back", John Doe tucks his phone into the pocket and washes his hands religiouly, then dries it. careful not to dirty the phone, he wipes his hand before retiriving it from the pocket.
Now, tell me - how many of you have handled a nice fancy phone from your friend who uses his phone "way too frequently" ?

Apple and Steve Jobs. And some cancer.

Its more than just a well known fact that Steve Jobs IS Apple.right from when he and Woz founded Apple in their garage back in 1976, on April Fools day, Jobs has been the face of Apple.

When he was ousted 1985, the company started its nose-dive ( though the dive started much before he left ) and was on the verge of bankruptcy during the mid 90s. Apple picked up, once NeXt ( another Jobs venture) and brought back Jobs. After he took over as CEO, and with the launch of the iMacs, history assured a place for Apple.

Now, this is not meant as a history of Apple, or a dissertation on Steve Job's "Greatest Second Act in the history of business " - but at the striking pattern here. Is Apple Inc. tied to Steve Jobs? Will Jobs be able to distance himself from the company the way Bill Gates has done with Microsoft? Rumors of his cancer has surfaced and plagued Apple image, horrendously.

There are two questions that i want to ask here -

1)Why is Jobs the face of Apple?
For any company to grow up, you cannot just pin down success to any one reason, let alone a person! there are many complex factors and people. Why Steve Jobs? Why not Jonathan Ive? For all we know, he designed the iMac, the iPod and now the iPhone. So what is that drives Apple to fall back on Jobs? True he might just be the best salesman apple has or he might be the most important businessman of 2007 - but how can an entire $25 Billion work completely around one man?

Left, Dabaghian/Reuters; right, Avelar/Bloomberg New
2) Secondly and more importantly, Why on earth should he publish his medical reports? When Andy Grove was ill he informed the board at Intel, but not the investors ! he later published it in his, claiming that his illness in no way affected his running of the company . What indeed is a marvel is the fact that Wall Street is driven by the image of a once chubby Jobs looking lean and lanky.

I am for one who believes that my sperm count is my issue and not exactly international news. for the same reason, i am utterly speechless that Apple's stock seems to be proportional to Steve's "weight".

Increased Productivity

I remember reading somewhere that office productivity would increase by almost 70% if internet access is restricted at the workplace. Add to this another survey reports that 80% of the people actually use the Internet at work for personal use.

Humor me, I'm just playing the devil's advocate here.

Putting these two simple survey inferences together, the most common thought that would occur would be to look at restricted internet access locations - China. Internet access is highly restricted, apparently they are having some great productivity ! Its difficult to say what they are NOT manufacturing, from babies to cars !

i was wondering what would happen if they did that everywhere? Put an iPhone in my my hands, and I'd browse anywhere...
btw... that's 10 min of work productivity.

also, on the babies note - United States seems to be having a baby boom, if this report is to be believed. So now that bring us to the ol' question - Whats keeping Americans Happy ?