WWDC 2014 – iOS 8, OS X 10.10 – Apple opens up iOS a bit more!

Well…Not a very exciting event from Apple, but, there are some points that could stretch Apple’s lead in the mobile and desktop market to some extent.

1. Apple has opened out more APIs on the iOS side allowing app functionality, officially, that was previously available only on jailbroken devices. Given the wide developer base, we could see some exciting apps coming up in the near future. iOS 8 Enterprise features have also been enhanced and could spur wider enterprise adoption.
2. The introduction of a new programming language, Swift, which could accelerate the development on iOS and OS X platforms far more than ever before.
3. The integration and extension of the functionality of the 10+ year old Nokia PC Suite into Yosemite is a welcome addition. Most people using iOS devices would probably understand that this could be quite useful on occasion. This page has details.

A word of caution for early adopters. Do not attempt to try iOS 8 just as yet on your primary phone. Most of the current applications will not work as expected and a vast majority would simply crash, including the stock apps. Yosemite, although usable, is quite laggy and slow, which is to be expected from a developer preview. The same applies to Xcode 6 beta.

Setting up a new iPhone/iPad? A brief How-To…

Back in 2010, I had listed out some of the apps I was using and recommended the same. A lot has evolved since. It’s not just the apps, its also the devices that have changed giving rise to better and more powerful apps. I will try to cover the basic setup options for a new iDevice running iOS 7. iOS is currently at version 7.1.1 and, ideally, one should upgrade to this version, if not already on it.

I will focus on the iPhone here since that is the most commonly used iDevice. Most of the following also applies to the iPad. You can find tutorials for the iDevices on Apple’s site as well as YouTube, if needed.

Happy New Year 2014!

Wishing You All Very Happy New Year 2014.

As our learning through the years continues, here are some apps that iOS users can check out. Some of these are also available on the Android platform.

Udemy offers quite a few courses on a variety of subjects for free. These apps also allow you download the content for offline viewing later.

CodeCademy is great for learning to code.

Coursera is a massive collection of open online courses (MOOCs).

The MIT OCW is yet another great resource.

Khan Academy needs no introduction. In case you want some of these for offline viewing, check out the Khan Archiver app. For selected courses from Khan Academy, check out the this link.

Happy Learning!

PasswordBox is free for a limited time!

PasswordBox is free for Christmas. People who missed out earlier can get it from their Blog link. PasswordBox is a password manager that works across browsers and mobiles. The customer support is also great!

At 0 cost, this would be rated as a must have!

Merry Christmas!

TataSky – Everywhere TV? Not Really!

After having tried the TataSky “Everywhere TV” for almost two months, I would like to share my experience so far. I will be giving it up for the following reasons.

1. The quality and usability
2. The broadcast is crippled, not all programmes are available even on channels that are listed in “Everywhere TV”
3. Does not work all the time. At times the video feed just does not come through at all
4. The last, but not the least, is the customer support for this service. I have had TataSky since it came on the scene and have been quite satisfied with the customer support for DTH, but, not for the “Everywhere TV”

So, here goes the story of my experience…

BBM for iOS and Android…Bypass the Queue!

Despite the scaling issues BBM has, it also has one open loophole to bypass the queue system. This is very similar to PasswordBox earlier.

The only pre-requisite is that you have an active BBM account, just like with PasswordBox earlier. You enter the email ID for your active BBM ID and then you get the option to create a new BBM ID. Thats it!

Really, it is that simple, provided you have at least one active BBM ID on iOS/Android.

Another Nothing Event from Apple in October 2013!

Excepting for the MacPro, which has been in the works for quite some time, this was yet another “nothing” event from Apple.

Seems that all the presenters were in a hurry to get home. There was no interest and nothing captivating about the presentations. Apple has not only forgotten all about innovation and design, they also seemed to have forgotten all about captivating presentations and pride in their products. It was mechanical words all over again.

To be fair, can one actually blame just the presentations? In reality, there was nothing to present excepting “customers wanted this and we did that (since we could not think of anything more or better)”.

Take the MacBooks for instance. Intel has a better processor, nVidia has better graphics, etc etc. All these innovative companies made progress and Apple put these together in the same old box. That’s innovation for Apple!

Mavericks will be a free upgrade because it’s the worst OS X upgrade ever made. But, to make it look better, a nothing demo of Safari and iBooks was on. Oh, BTW, let no one find out the next great feature for the next OS X release…cut-n-paste. It’s a top secret and Apple has been working on it for years to make the technology available “for it’s customers”. In a few years from now, OS XX will have a brand new feature which will allow you to cut-n-paste files right from the finder…another few years later, that would be expanded to the ability to cut-n-paste directories, full of files, at one go!!!

Personally, I doubt if people at Apple actually use their own products anymore. If that was not the case, how come they never ran into all the issues that my colleagues and I ran into with Mavericks? Perhaps this article is true.

Now that Mavericks is on the AppStore, there is an interesting line on it…the iCloud keychain requires iOS 7.0.3, which is also just released. I guess no one at Apple realised that this feature needed a future version os iOS 7 at the earlier presentation of iOS 7 and Mavericks! The only logical reason for Mavericks to be a free upgrade would be to get the majority of OS X users onto a current version, which would make the overall ecosystem even more powerful. I doubt if the current release of Mavericks is going to cut it.

Also, more more stuff will roll out for free, since Apple already has more money than it can actually spend. Hold on…Apple can always offset the free stuff by making more “official” accessories in “gorgeous” colours and can start charging the original .mac and .me paying users. Yep, sounds like an excellent strategy since Apple cannot do more than to create “innovative” accessories anymore!

Interestingly, this is the first instance where Apple will be cannibalising the sales of the iPad Air with the iPad Mini since they have the same specifications (supposedly). I think they would have crippled the Mini in some way that we will find out about once people get their hand on both.

Once again, unless there are more updates/changes to the formal Maverick release, than the current GM, it would not be an advisable upgrade for any normal user. Even the techies would have issues with figuring out work-arounds. So, unless you have a default OS X installation with a single partition and do not have multiple user accounts, do not have a time capsule and do not use multiple networks, stay off Maverick till Apple fixes the critical issues. Also, for good measure, you local HDD access will also be a nightmare using Finder. The command line in Terminal will come to your rescue most of the time. Of course, the overall UI/UX remains the same from the good old *nix and Solaris days…nothing changes there!

More on the official Mavericks once I download and check it out…although, I have very little hope of any improvement in this “free” upgrade.

BBM available for iOS and Android…Again!

Well…once again, Blackberry has made the BBM available for iOS and Android. The interesting fact of this rollout is that Blackberry has a queue system like MailBox and PasswordBox for iOS earlier. It would seem that a company that catered to millions of users should have been able to deal with the traffic caused by the new BBM users, but, like many startups, it chose to go the queue way.

Unlike the other startups that queued up users and scaled slowly to provide a better end user experience, Blackberry has major issues even with existing users like my account. It keeps telling me that I am in queue on my Android device. So much for end user experience.

Blackberry, like most others, seems to have missed the point of releasing BBM for iOS and Android. They have completely ignored the tablet segment. While this might seem okay for the Android part, ignoring the iPad is not a very wise idea.

Let’s see how the multi-platform BBM shapes up. For now, it does not look very encouraging.

Apple iOS 7, iTunes, iPhone 5x and OS X

As already mentioned in an earlier post, I believe that Apple has lost it. The design, the innovation, the ease of use, the relatively stable software…it’s all been thrown out of the door. Jobs put Apple light years ahead of the competition with the iPod and then the iPhone. Apple continues to make money because of this legacy, despite the current state of affairs.

Let’s take iOS 7 to begin with. The radical re-design is more like a kiddy project with garish colours and the overall UI being harsh and the UX almost completely destroyed. The maps disaster remains intact, the UI/UX almost completely destroyed, the ease of use and the visual clues gone. The release contains security bugs as before. The interesting part about the “maps” is that Apple continues to use Google Maps on the web site for “Find my iPhone” rather than it’s own, so called, non-existent, Apple maps. This, itself, shows the complete disconnect in Apple today.

Apple iOS 7 – GM & iPhone 5C and 5S

Well…after trying to come to terms with the “nothing” Apple event of September 10th and a day with the GM of iOS7, I can probably echo the thoughts of many Apple device users and the stock market…Apple has lost it.

While most people would agree to the fact that Apple has some of the best talent in terms of developers and designers, they alone, cannot really do much. The current Apple “leadership” has to shoulder the responsibility for this.

They legacy that they (Apple) inherited is so strong that the momentum will continue to make money for some years to come. Given the fact that the other mobile OSes are not really anywhere close to the iDevice ecosystem, the current Apple “big guns” will continue to make money while the company faces a downtrend.

In an earlier post, I had mentioned the fact that if Apple brings out another cheap variation of the iPhone, then, we could be sure that the company had lost it.

When the rumours of the iPhone 5C (I still call it cheap, even though it’s not) surfaced, it was disturbing. Then, there was the thought that…why not? People who had not used an iPhone because of the price barrier, would probably go for it. The drawback might be that Apple might not be able to deal with the massive traffic caused by a cheaper iPhone variant.

Alas, that was not to be. The Apple “leadership” had other ideas. The iPhone 5C is not cheap by any standards. Then, one has to wonder as to why the 5C was even created…? Logically, it would seem that the 5C was created to make a lower end iPhone 5 so that the 5S would look like a premium option. If we compare the iPhone 5 and 5S, I have serious doubts that the majority would pay a premium for the 5S. To be honest, I would wonder why people would pay a premium for the 5S since the 4S would be free on contract. If all I wanted was a faster device to play games, I would not be purchasing a phone.

Again, I already mentioned in an earlier post that for the majority, a phone is a phone. People who go after the latest and greatest will pay for the 5S, but, people who use the iPhone as a “smartphone”, will probably skip it.

If we look at the track record of Apple since Jobs, it has gone just one way…down. The iOS 6 and the so called Apple “Maps” disaster continues even in iOS 7 GM. iOS 7 itself, was a disaster to begin with. Although somewhat toned down to be just about usable now. The UI might be acceptable just because it needed a change, the UX remains terrible. The built-in apps are completely inconsistent in terms of UI and UX. The calendar app remains unusable. The choice of colours is absolutely atrocious, specially in the case of calls.

While some people, myself included, would have accepted any incremental change in the UI simply because it was needed, the iOS 7 UI was not it. It lags iOS 6 in terms of usability and consistency.

While Apple claims to have added “n” number of “new” features, they forget to mention the fact that all of these “n” number of features existed in the 10+ year old Nokia phones. Of course, the usability of these “new” features is questionable. For example, none of the lists in iOS 7 GM are indexed even now. You can keep scrolling up and down even in the notifications under settings and spend a lifetime there. The block list is scattered across 3 different locations with no navigation/grouping or anything to make it usable…not even stats of blocks! Pathetic!

The entire history of Apple devices, since Jobs, reflects the same pattern. The same applies to the laptops and OS X. A company, once known for it’s attention to detail, design and innovation, seems to be going off on a tangent now.

For example, take iTunes. Even though the iOS 7 has reached GM, there is not even a beta that supports the folders in iOS 7. Never before, in the history of iOS or iDevices, has this happened.

To summarize, given the fragmentation of Android, the state of affairs of BlackBerry and the similar state of the Microsoft-Nokia combine, the iDevices and iOS, despite their faults, will continue to rule the premium segment for sometime to come. The only hope of something better, might come from Microsoft, if at all. Of course, there is a slim chance that it could come from a completely new source.

Lastly, like most iDevice users, I can only hope that there is some serious re-jig at Apple which would change it’s current direction and go back to being the company we all admired and invested in. Not a company that goes into selling leather jackets/covers and docks for devices just to try and make some more money…