Eknath Kadam > Geek’s World

Writing after a long time. Have a good reason, too. I got my first green gadget, yes an electric bike. 100% electric. 0% emission. Ultra silent. Lightweight. And it feels cool.

The model looks like somewhere between bicycle and a scooter. Not as powerful as motorbikes but great for city roads where you can’t drive with higher speeds anyway. Its so silent that its sometimes risky. It requires no maintenance at all. Just charge the battery when required. It has also got room for an extra battery for backup. The ride is also smooth and not jerky like petrol bikes. Surprisingly, it has remote control lock and alarm system.

It has taken quite a long time for efficient and powerful batteries to come to market. Partly because of the vested interests of oil companies, governments and some other evil elements. But finally, the time has come where all vehicles will run on electricity.

I am watching this space closely as I also plan to buy my first electric car. It will be at least 2012 when affordable and powerful electric cars will come to market.

Tesla is coming big way in USA, Reva is to bring new models. Nissan’s Leaf will be fantastic. Its going to be crazy.

Its funny that I was never interested in cars or motorbikes. But the technological developments in this domain make me interested to watch how this space is going to evolve. Just like last 3-4 years were highly exciting in Mobile space, the next exciting space is going to be electric vehicles. There is gonna be a lot of food for my geek mind.

Now that Nexus one will be available on all 4 major US carriers. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon. Its scary for Apple and iPhone. Its been almost 3 years and iPhone is still stuck with AT&T while its hardly 3 months and Nexus One will be available on all 4 carriers. Android is spreading like wild-fire. It will be no longer from now when we can see what happened to Mac in 80s may happen to iPhone again.

Apple’s got a lot of philosophical problems. You will never-ever see a keyboard on iPhone. iPhone OS will never be licensed to third party handset manufacturers. Carrier exclusivity still continues throughout the world. India and China has proven it long ago what can happen to mobile industry if handsets are not locked to a carrier. Watch out for the speed Nexus One can move now.

If Apple is to follow their regular  schedule, we can expect iPhone 4.0 in June/July timeframe. Unless 4.0 has some amazing new features, both in terms of software and hardware, it will be really hard for iPhone to compete with Android phones in general.

While Apple is smart enough to see whats happening in industry and for sure they have some secret plans to destroy the competition. Here are my two cents what Apple can do to destroy the competition completely.

1. Make iPhone available on all 4 carriers in US. (This is so obvious!)

2. Alternatively, sell the GSM version unlocked thru out the world. (Like Nokia does and now Google is doing.)

3. Exceed all the basic hardware specs and stay ahead of competition by at least an year. It may mean bigger screen with higher resolution, a front facing camera, faster processor, more memory, longer battery life.

4. Reduce the revision cycle for the hardware from 12 months to at least 9 months. Rest of the industry is moving very fast since they only concentrate on hardware part. Google takes care of the OS. Apple is making the whole banana themselves.

5. Allow multi-tasking for 3rd party apps. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but its something people are asking all the time and competitors are advertising against.

6. Lower the price. Its a hard pill to swallow for Apple as they like to enjoy the premium status. While this strategy is working for Macs, it will be difficult going forward to work for iPhone too.

Update 1: March 23rd 10. HTC introduces HTC EVO 4G. The best hardware specs on the market. iPhone 4G now have great competition. Apple faithfuls will wait and watch until iPhone 4G is introduced. If the 4G iPhone H/W & S/W specs are disappointing  a lot people will leave the iPhone.

Update 2: iPhone 4 has been launched and its hardware specs are super exciting. Retina display is just beautiful. Front facing camera with Facetime gonna rule. Apple’s A4 chip is fast enough to beat the competition. Multitasking is in, new hardware form factor is in. iPhone 4 will continue to rule another year.

2009 was the year of new smart phones and thier app stores. As Steve Jobs created new industry everybody was trying to catch up. I was fortunate enough to try most of the new smart phones released this year. iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, HTC Dream, Motorola Cliq and Droid. One thing is sure, none has yet figured out how to make touch user interface as seamless as Apple does. That said, Android, Palm,RIM will take some more time until they are up to par with iPhone. By that time, Apple would be gone too far ahead with new tablet and a brand new industry that will be built around this tablet. And again, industry will start copying Apple and try to catch up and so on.

For Android is supported by Google and major handset manufacturers, 2010 will be a great year. I have already started seeing that effect for my app downloads in Android Market. Google’s push to sell handsets with new way is a welcome move. America needs that to carry mobile revolution forward. Being an Indian, the carrier lock-in model was quite annoying to me. It has its pros and cons. This model was hurting cell phone manufactures and consumers equally. Cell phone industry is so dynamic that every month we see exciting new devices coming to market and 2 year period was quite too long for consumers to wait to change their handsets.

Google’s AdMob acquisition and Apple’s Quattro Wireless acquisition is clear indicator that mobile is the next big thing in digital revolution. And all major players are damn serious about it. Google selling its own handset is a big thing in my opinion. It will be another big push for innovation. I also like what Palm is doing with WebOS. They stand out distinctively from the copy-cat crowd. Palm Pre will also be the first new smart phone to be available on all 3 major carriers in US. With their new PDK they have also proven that they are serious about gaming on their platform.

I was expecting this to happen. I was wondering why Google is not so aggressive when it comes to adsense on mobile. And at some time I thought they might be looking for acquisition  of an established mobile advertising company rather than investing their time and money into building there own mobile advertising platform. And finally it happened.

This means a lot to advertiser and publisher. Being an iPhone developer I will be watching this development closely.

Apple needs to be worried about this acquisition. Apple, so far has no data as far app usage on iPhone is concerned. Google will tremendously benefit from the stats they will gather and eventually use them to make strategic decisions about Android Platform. Since mobile is the future this acquisition makes Google a little more powerful.

Update: Its interesting news that Apple tried to buy AdMob. Of course they should have bought it, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to own AdMob. Nevertheless expect a new framework from Apple that will help developers to include ads in iPhone.

Windows is the Bug #1 in Ubuntu bug database. It might be same case in Apple bug database as well, but since its not public database we will never know it. After bashing windows for last 3 years, I seriously started to think if its a Bug or a Fix?

Windows 7 is officially out. I have been using its pre-release version for a quite a long time. Its better than Vista. But its still windows. After using Mac for last 3 years, every moment on windows PC is full of annoyance. But this post is not about telling how bad windows is, but about what this world would have been, if there was no windows. And how Windows-ecosytem is great in some ways.

Apple made the personal computing revolution with Apple II and then the Mac. Mac OS was always tied to its Apple hardware. It was for a good reason. Later when Steve Jobs left Apple, they seriously thought of licensing Mac OS to third party hardware manufacturers. But it never became a reality. Macs are great computers but they are too expensive. The cheapest Mac Mini is priced at $599. Add another $100 for a cheap monitor and $50 for Mouse and Keyboard. So the cheapest mac computer costs you $750. In same amount of money one can buy two Windows PCs.

Apple enjoys huge profit margins on its hardware where as PC manufacturers have tough times maintaining their profit margins because of the competition. The end result is that PCs see huge price decline every year. Apple faces no such competition, they maintain their monopolistic position in pricing their hardware.

So, If there was no Windows, I doubt if countries like India and China could have seen the same amount of computer literacy as they have it today. Its very easy to criticize the shortcomings of windows, but hard to appreciate what the Windows-ecosystem have made it possible for third world countries. Apple computers are way too expensive for these countries. Today, in India every middle class household has a PC or thinking of getting one. If there was no Windows, I doubt if India could have ever emerged as an IT-Superpower.

So far windows has worked a Fix. The world (90% it) runs on Windows. So its enough proof that windows works, and it works to fix a lot of world’s problems.