Meta thoughts

The world's most beautiful equation is the Euler's identity.

You can ponder over the beauty of this equation while includes Pi, Euler's number, one and zero. Most people find it equally mysterious too, in terms of what it does. Here is found a simple 1st grade definition for the equation.

"As you walk clockwise around a circle, facing the direction you're moving, the center is directly to your right".

- Euler's identity in simple English

I literally want to own every new piece of technology, be it gadget, a service, or app. Being in India, this has not been always possible. When the first nexus device was introduced, or when spotify was launched, or even when Google introduced Paid applications, none of which was available for a Indian technology enthusiast living in India.

Being in Valley.

When I was in the valley for a couple of weeks, the most exciting thing to do for me was to grab all the geo specific goodies as long as I can have it. First I went on a bought a Nexus 4, Surface Pro and some other gadgets. It was easier with these physical gadgets as I could carry them with me, wherever I go ( even when I travel back to India). But it was not the same story with software subscriptions and services.

Content fears borders.

Google Play

Since it understood that my IP is within US borders, it showed me all the cool stuff, like Music, Movies, TV shows, apps like Spotify, Groupon etc, on the play store (which I couldn't even view when in India), but it wouldn't let me install (or buy) them. Everything worked seamless with my Indian Credit Card.

Fix: Went to the Google Account Settings and changed my Country to US and bazinga! it opened up access to everything at Google Play. 

Back in India: When I came back to India, my account was still working. I even tried buying some music and TV shows from India.

Amazon Kindle

The next one in my wishlist. But it was much more crazy.  I tried changing my country settings, but it wouldn't still let me download even the free apps, as it kept throwing country setting errors. After so much toiling I had to create a new US Amazon account with US bank credentials and stuff. 

Back in India: So far everything works fine even when I am not accessing the store from US. I didn't try music, movies etc.

Spotify

After using the free trial for a couple of days, I couldn't resist going premium (world plan). It works seamlessly across the globe, it was even mentioned in the documentation clearly. Only catch, I have to use a US card for the subscription, it wouldn't accept an overseas card.

Rdio

Once I tried Spotify and read I explored other streaming services and stumbled upon Rdio, I just tried the trial. But it was a very annoying experience, as they kept sending me daily emails to switch. Once back in India, as I was still getting these emails, I thought I have had enough, so I clicked unsubscribe. To my amazement, I was shown a landing page, "This service is not supported in your region", I cannot even unsubscribe to their useless newsletter unless I fly back to US. Worst of all!

Netflix

Netflix was the most fun thing I used when in the States, loved their ubiquity across devices, and simplicity of interface, but the moment I leave the US border, I lose all the awesomeness. No more netflix.

iOS App Store

I had my iDevices linked to my Indian Apple ID, so when I went to US it would still show me US only apps, but I cannot purchase them unless I get a new Apple ID (I didn't try changing my country settings, so don't know if that was a fix). 

Flipkart

I am a big fan of Flipkart and their Music Store (Flyte) from where I could purchase songs at prices like 10 cents (5 Indian Rupees). I also keep a lot of prepaid credit in the flyte store so that I can just download my favorite albums when I need. But it wouldn't work once I access it from US.

In closing

I have always said that, Android has a lot of learning curve compared to Windows Phone or iOS. And I had this conversation in twitter, where someone asked me, "Slide to unlock is same in all platforms". That is the typical analytical developer take on a UX feature.

I would buy my mom a windows phone or an iPhone. But never an android phone. That's the failure of its UX.

— Narayan Babu (@nyn) February 10, 2013

I use Android day in and day out, my startup strives in the Android ecosystem, but still I will not hide the fact that the Android UX is very confusing. It is super effective for people who are ready to spend time and learn, but there is a lot of learning.

Since the first iPhone we have seen hundreds of slide to unlock implementations, a dozen or so just in Android. But anything that slides and unlocks just doesn't make the cut. 

Look at iOS

If you look at the iOS lock screen, there is a tight one dimensional groove with a glossy shine that marquees towards the right, and we subconsciously know we have to slide it. It urges you to! I have seen first time kindergardeners, grandmas getting it. They just slide it when they see that.  I have really spent hours thinking how they brought that kind of simplicity to the design. Extremely amazing!

The Windows Phone slider.

I have felt the Windows Phone slider is equally intuitive. The moment something touches the screen, the vivid wallpaper just bounces a bit, revealing the home screen underneath. It literally teases your curiosity and makes you swipe the screen up, so that you can see what is behind. I have seen a lot of first time touch phone users effortlessly navigating to the homescreen, unlocking the phone!

Android?

In Cupcake there was no touch unlocker, you had to hold a button to unlock the screen. From there they tried different variants, tried to do too many things (unlock/mute/camera). But never once they could convey the primary premise which was to reach the home screen. I have seen people struggling to unlock even the Jelly Bean of the newer Jelly Bean phones, primarily because the premise is very abstract, it is not clear how far to which direction should you slide to reach the goal, and for that matter, what is the goal you're trying to achieve.

Hope Matias fixes it soon.

I had done a small social experiment on the usability of smartphones (for first timers). Read about it here.

I really don't endorse the concept of 'being a fan'. But some things go beyond our control. Some people just own you with their mere poise and humility of character. Sachin is one of them. Like a billion (or more) other people who grew up watching him play and grow and become this unstoppable Hulk of cricket, I too caught up the habit. More so, because I loved the game, not just Indian cricket. I have admired the shuffled pull that Lara used to play, or the near perpendicular turn that Shane Warne delivered occasionally. 

But this habit went beyond all that, like every other habit, this one made me crave for more. I got frustrated when I didn't see him bat every week, even more when the Indian team was batting and only he was missing. I got irritated when he's not middling the ball, or when he defended tentatively, without moving forward or backward. You have watched him so much that you start hallucinating on what he is thinking on the field. When he looks grim faced, when he looks jovial, when he is laughing hysterically. 

But I think Sachin himself knew about the drug he had become to the crowd, and hence slowly brought down the dosage. After the world cup, he become sporadic when it came to his ODI appearances, even when it were twenty20s on IPL, he took his breaks. Trying to bring people back to their sanity. And of course, the rest of the team did their part too by trying to put up the worst possible show at every tournament. 

And now, when I was already starting to get shivers before the Pakistan series, Sachin just pulled the plug. He is not playing anymore, we are not going to get even the vaccine level dosages of Sachin. What a shocker! For a guy like me who haven't yet built an alternate habit like smoking or drinking, it was a real hard week to while away. I didn't know how to vent out my frustration. The only solace was reading all those sugar coated pro-Sachin farewell posts on the internet, or the vintage clips on youtube.

Today Indian Government hanged a dreaded terrorist named Kasab Ajmal, after close to 4 years trial. He was the part of the 9 member team which ransacked Mumbai and killed 100s of innocent people. And this has initiated an online debate on whether Capital punishment should be exercised at all.

If you look at it logically in a larger point of view, the society has to protect itself. At a cost effective manner too. Assume, hypothetically an individual is a threat to the society. There are two solutions to it.

- Either create a system where this individual will be permanently trapped and he won't be able endanger the crowd (prison). 

- Eliminate him

The choice between these two rests on

- the degree of threat this person poses

- against, the reliability of the prison system, and its ability to shield him away from the society in a cost effective manner.

In Kasab's case obviously it would have been a very risky proportion to just keep him in the jail, (risk escapes, extortion requests etc). So hanging was the practical solution. 

For ideology sake we can say, he should have given life imprisonment, but again you are keeping a risk open. And a major one in this case. As he has already killed a lot of people. So this is more of a preventive measure to ensure safety of a larger crowd.

Still it can debated that we don't have the right to take life of another person, so on and so forth. If you see, society is completely built on compromises. It is designed to cater to the average (to below average) individual, more so in a democracy. Reservations, tax slabs, social restrictions and rules on marriage, are all examples of compromises. Individually these may not be advantageous to each person, but collectively, the society might benefit from this.

Generalizing further, the arguments where you say,

doing X is not ideologically right. But I don't know what is the alternate solution (there are no alternate solutions).

does not have any value, in my opinion. You are not giving any (better) choices. I am not saying we should start hanging every other criminal. If you see in the last few decades on 3 people (including Kasab) have ever been executed by India. I am only saying we should use the above metric and weight what is the best option. For the society.

~~~***Before iPad Mini***~~~

Me: "I can't really find a difference between a retina and a non-retina display. I mean, in real life!".

APE: "Fuck you! Retina and non-retina are incomparable. I can't even imagine using a device that has a non-retina device, since I started using retina devices!"

~~~***After iPad Mini***~~~

Me:"iPad Mini? What about the non-retina display?"

APE: "Fuck you! It hardly makes a difference. You should see how vibrant the screen looks! And you know it's very light and handy and blah blah (features unrelated to display)"

A couple of weeks back Google cancelled its yearly pre-holiday event, where it generally showcases its new Nexus devices and new version of Android. And all were anticipating the launch of "Key Lime Pie" (yeah, weirdest of all names) and a bunch of Nexus devices. But to surprise all of us, they cancelled the event owing to Sandy. Yeah, they didn't 'postpone' it, but cancelled it.

A week earlier I got Jelly Bean 4.2 (Google made it clear 4.2 would be still called Jelly Bean) on my Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus. And I found out immediately why it is still Jelly Bean. There were hardly anything new in it. A new Keyboard, lock screen, a notifications menu. That's it. This was not necessarily an OS update. They had earlier updated Google Now app (via Google Play). They could have done the same for these too. And as I used the updated phone, I realised all the new features were of vanity value. The lock screen was irritating at the best, I use SwiftKey so the new keyboard went unnoticed, so on.

I could find striking similarities with recent Apple OS updates and this Jelly Bean update. Since iOS 4, I have hardly found the OS updates making any core difference to the experience, while every Android update has been close to 'revolutionary'. Compare 2.3 (Gingerbread) to 3 (Honeycomb). Or honeycomb to Jellybean. It's been very distinctive.

Has Google too hit a road block when it comes to innovating on the core experience? Apple did a couple a years back. Or we can say that the 'platform has matured'. Whichever way, looks like going forward Google is going to try to preserve the User Experience and just add incremental updates in the coming versions, just like Apple. 

When one of my colleagues got his iPhone 5 on the same day Nexus 4 sold out within an hour in 3 countries, I thought I should at least a take a look at it. Knowing that I would obviously pull his leg when I find about the purchase, he didn't actually shout around showing his new phone. So when the news got to me, I asked for the phone and took a look at it. I was actually a bit surprised that he didn't flaunt the new phone and tell me why it 'is damn good'.

The build.

The very first impression as I held the phone in my hands, it felt pretty bad. It had a very strange form factor, like some sort of a racket for a weird ball game. The texture of the surface and the weight made it feel like some kinda plastic toy phone. The worst part was whenever I would keep it on the table, I would  struggle to lift it. I have to either slide it to the edge of the table, or lift it carefully since there is a high chance I could drop it. The edge is unergonomially thin and slippery. I could already see a lot of scratch on the rear side because of the sliding I guess. 

I could not get the idea behind the shape though. They say it is easy for your thumb to reach edge to edge (horizontally), as they haven't increased the width. Then what about the height? The screen size is specified by the diagonal length, so when the phone is 4" long with same width, the height has to shoot up considerably. It is too long, if I can't get to the notification centre with one hand, what's the bloody point? I think notification bar is more important, what if I get a notification while I am driving, cooking, or pooping? I have to use 1 hand!!

The 5th row

My Nexus has 4.65" display, but still I can reach every corner of the screen with one hand, and more importantly the build makes sure the phone doesn't just slip through your hands, the iPhone has a very slippery and "grip-less" shape that it tried to slip through many times. 

I tried the camera, and sound. Didn't see anything exceptional. (Nothing good/bad), the Nexus/Lumia800 was very much similar. So I went to try out iOS 6, nothing great there either. There were around 4-5 rows of apps, but something was wrong. The 5th row was empty in every screen. So, the much hyped super smooth back up and transfer wizard forgot the fact that the new phone had one extra row and they could actually fill it?

I tried some popular apps like Flipboard, Path etc, I didn't get the feeling of "extra space" in one single app I used. Rather I felt pixels have been shaved off the sides. Because all these apps had the more width and height (compared to my Nexus). So the '5th row' perk sounds ridiculous to me. 

I felt so disgusted and disappointed with the phone that I didn't even go further. Like opening Maps, Siri, browser etc. As I placed the phone on the table, I saw the iPhone 4S. After using iPhone 5, 4S looks a lot better. Looks decent, feels decent. And when I opened my Phone (Nexus), I felt like a king :) 

The most horrible part.

I came to know the phone cost close to $1000 (32GB). That made the phone look even more horrible. For the price I could buy a Nexus 4 ($349) + Surface ($499) and still gift my friend a Lumia 920($99). I will still be left with money to take a round trip to my home town. Or, I could buy an iPhone 4S($800) and half a dozen  lightning to 30-pin adapters, which I won't.

As anybody else, I hate being labelled an addict, I have been a teetotaller all my life, and can't stand a puff of fag. I do drink a lot of coffee, but I don't consider that an addiction (which itself maybe debatable). But for me the definition of addiction is something that drives me to do things which otherwise I would not have done consciously. I generally feel good that I am in control of my thoughts and activities, until...

I realized I have serious addiction. This may sound a bit of a cliché, but my close friends know that it is not, I am actually addicted to electronic gadgets. And it became obvious this week as it is getting me anxiety and stress. I thought I got over it when even resisted my urge to get a Nexus 7 tablet, despite it getting very good reviews.

But two days back Microsoft dropped the bomb. As they made the Surface tablets available for pre-order I started having the irresistible urge to get one of those. Even though it didn't even have Windows Pro., I just wanted to buy one of those! And it was keeping me awake all the nights. Now as Google is announcing its next Nexus phone and rumours doing rounds that there are going to be two Nexus phones announced, I am literally getting a panic attack. Obviously these things are going to cost a lot. And if Lumia920 also becomes available, I don't know what I am going to do.

Why is this addiction?

Just heard Mark Cuban saying "Don't follow your passion, Follow your effort", which was a very sensible thought. But that got me thinking, what should I be doing? Is that things that I'm good at (already) or things I love to do. 

Like they show in one of those Naukri ads, if AR Rahman loved cricket instead of Music, despite him being super good at music, would he have succeeded? I may love something a lot, but what if I am not built for that? What if Mozart was actually passionate about Oil Paintings? They all may have still succeeded, but may not possibly become exceptional in the field.

One may argue that, if we're so passionate about something, we could be good at it, but to what extent and in how much time? We may be born with certain skill set, like Usain Bolt who actually wanted to play cricket, but when his coach realized he's better suited for running, he quickly switched careers. Bolt would have still become a good cricketer if he had persisted, but would have never become a Sachin Tendulkar or Waseem Akram. But since he followed his skill set, he is now a superhuman. And do you think he is not passionate about running? 

So passions are not fused in our DNA, it can be built on the way, but skill sets may be part of our gene to an extent.

For the last two days, after the leaks, all of us knew Lumia is gonna be epic. With wireless charging and gorgeous colors, it was clear it is going to be futuristic. But after I saw the live webcast of the Lumia event, I realized it was not just epic, but historic. Probably Nokia today performed a historic gig, which might revive them once again. Just like what Apple did with their iMac in the beginning of this millenium. 

Lumia has just taken a giant leap across all the other smartphones in terms of useful and pragmatic innovation. Suddenly, it looks like Windows Phone 8 is just one of the features that these beautiful candybars carry. The top 3 highlights of the device are

As I was reading something online I stumbled upon MG Siegler’s blog, which I generally read once in a while (for a good sarcastic laugh, of course). But today when I checked it out, it looked totally different and way too awesome. It didn't even look like a tumblr blog, but a full blown website. So I shot a question on Quora to know how he made his tumblr this kickass. And within an hour I got the reply that tumblr has a plethora awesome themes which literally turns your blog into anything you want. From there I started digging themes starting with the one used by Siegler. At last I fixed upon mason, which I felt was simple yet fresh. (it cost me 20$). And it didn’t stop there. I went on to purchase the domain, nyn.me

I have been on Android for a couple of years now. Not because I 'love' Android, but since my work demands I carry an Android phone and demo people around me, the friday app. So I have not much options to change my primary device from Android.

iOS:Retina.

A couple of weeks back I got a iPod Touch with retina display. Even though I have used iPhone intermittently before, this was my first chance to play with a retina device. Since, it was WIFI only, I was skeptical. But still I kinda enjoyed carrying it around. 

I try to be as unbiased as possible when it comes to gadgets and tech love. But sometimes people feel I am a little pro-Microsoft, neutral-Google and anti-Apple, which I personally don't agree. I just don't like certain practices each of them follow and like certain others. Anyways, the thing I hate the most about Apple is its fanboys and their primary school logic. The way they argue when it comes to Apple products are almost always illogical and religious. Let me teach you how to argue like a fanboy.

An excerpt from Bill Gates' 1995 book Road Ahead.

What do you carry on your person now? Probably at least keys, identification, money, and a watch. And maybe credit cards, a checkbook, traveler’s checks, an address book, an appointment book, a notepad, something to read, a camera, a pocket tape recorder, a cellular phone, a pager, concert tickets, a map, a compass, a calculator, an electronic entry card, photographs, and maybe a loud whistle to call for help.

You’ll be able to keep equivalent necessities — and more — in an information appliance I call the wallet PC. It will be about the same size as a wallet, which means you’ll be able to carry it in your pocket or purse. It will display messages and schedules and let you read or send electronic mail and faxes, monitor weather and stock reports, and play both simple and sophisticated games. At a meeting, you might take notes, check your appointments, browse information if you’re bored, or choose from among thousands of easy-to-call-up photos of your kids.

So Microsoft comes up with a logo and everybody starts criticising it. Typical crowd response to anything Microsoft. 

My take on their logo.