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 ?