Padi padi, iPad!

I've been pottering about with the iPad for a smidge more than 4 months now, after the missus very kindly gifted me one for my birthday. I'm not going to say anything other reviewers who have been smitten with the thing have not said. I am going gush about its virtues and how 'cool' it is. Never before in the history of mankind has a single company generated so much interest among layman. No, scratch that. I'm sure folks behind the invention of fire, the tyre and sliced bread generated an equally high level of interest.

Every since I laid my hands on a device at an Apple store, I've wanted it. Sure it's only a bigger version of the iPhone, without the phone. That is the point, see, it's a bigger version of the iPhone.

Everything is simple and everything just works. Sure, there are the odd bugs that bug me, but nothing that would cause me to lose interest.

It's convenient and handy. Can be taken everywhere and I do take it everywhere I go. Here's a short list of the places I've used the device:

• On the sofa,
• In the garden
• in the train
• In a car
• In a flight
• On the john
• On the bed
• In the bath (note: take extra care not to drop it into the water)
• I'm sure you're seeing a pattern here...

I take the thing everywhere I go. In fact even when I sleep, it's always near my pillow. Before I'm dismissed as a weird person, a conclusion that, no doubt, several of you will hasten to do, I only take it everywhere because it's not out of place in any of the places I've taken it so far!

So what is it that's had me go ga-ga?

• the screen, the deliciously crisp screen. It's perfect for emails, browsing the net, watching movies and playing games. Everything is so clear and visible. Although it is little more than a slab of glass and plate at the back, it feels sturdy and incredibly well put together. There are no moving parts, which means panel gaps and rough edges are something the device has not heard of.

• iPad apps. As a policy, on my iPhone, I do not buy applications. Apps just shouldn't be bought. If app X costs £4.99 and can do 'n' number of things, I am quite happy to download 'n' free apps that in total perform 'n-1' functions. Until the iPad came along. I'm now happy to pay for apps that just look so awesome! In fact, I have a subscription to the Economist that I was all set to cancel. The reason for wanting to cancel the subscription was quite simple. It's a weekly magazine and I've had the subscription for approximately 8 months. There are roughly 32 unopened issues lying in wait for my father to come and read. You do the math. Just as I was about to hit the cancel subscription button on the website, along came the Economist iPad app and an announcement that subscribers to the tree killing edition get all areas access to the app included. I thought I'll give it a whirl and boy! I've read every issue that's come out since the app was launched! The paper one still comes in each week, but now I put it away unopened without even a pang of guilt!

When something looks as good as it does on the iPad, I ALMOST don't mind paying to get it!

• email. I don't need to say anymore, but neither computer based email clients, online email or mobile email can come anywhere near the email experience on the iPad.

• games. Specially driving games. These are supremely awesome to play and just so engaging!

• eBook reader. The Kindle can do one thing, which it does brilliantly. The iPad does several things brilliantly and this is one of them. Not only do you get a choice of e-readers to select from (iBooks, Kindle among others), you also get an amazing screen to read on! I don't even want to say anything about the blog reading experience on it. Suffice to say I wouldn't read blogs on any other device if I could avoid it. (not elaborating just saved readers around 15 minutes of time!)

• battery life. It just goes on and on! Even with my obsessive use, it goes roughly 2-3 weeks between charges. The one time I tried my darned best to make it run of out juice in one sitting, I ran out of juice before it did!

• engaging. On a recent trip to the US, I (of course!) took it with me and what a boon it was! We went on this road trip from San Francisco to San Diego with my sister's family. The niece is an active bubbly little bee and during the whole 10 hour drive, all she needed was a couple of hours to nap and unrestricted use of the iPad. She drew, drew some more, played scrabble, angry birds, cross-n-knots and what not! We didn't hear a peep from her the whole drive. 

I don't blame anyone for thinking, based on that I've said above, that I'm incapable of finding fault with the device. I can and I have. Big ones.

• eBook reader. It's a lousy eBook reader. Aha! I know your eyes just shot up a couple of centimetres on the screen to see the exact opposite of this sentence written on things I like. That's right, the very same advantage I found is my biggest disadvantage. The Kindle can do one thing and it does so brilliantly, the iPad, on the other hand is a master of all trades. It can do several things in a way most ordinary computers would struggle to do. When iOS 4 was released, it unleashed the beast within with multi-tasking. Now it is impossible to read a book on the iPad. Before one page is done with, one feels like playing a game, checking facebook, checking emails, reading blogs, random news items and the like. There's too much packed into this. I just cannot focus. On a Kindle or other dedicated reader, a book is all you can read and that's what one ends up reading. 

• Then there is the screen. Brilliant and amazing as it is, it just cannot hold water against the e-ink display of dedicated readers. As amazing as it is, it is just not easy on the eye. Much as I would love (and still do), I just cannot see myself curling up with the iPad and blasting my way through a book the way a paperback would do. The 'ol eyes would simply put their feet up and announce an early retirement. In a dark room, even the lowest power setting is too bright. 

Apart from two of its biggest advantages turning into its biggest disadvantages, I am smitten by this little stroke of genius and I know for sure that when Mr. S Jobs comes back and announces the iPad 2 and fixes the things he deliberately left out just to make sure iPad 2 can include them and be 'all new', I will miss the camera that would change the face of video chat.

Finally, I suppose huge thanks are due to the missus for uniting me with the pad... iPad :)

Imsai arasan 23am Pulikesi a.k.a Microsoft Windows 7

A person would have to be stone deaf AND blind as a bat in order to have missed the slew of advertisements Microsoft has been flooding the telly with over the past couple of months, with the launch of Windows 7. Even then, said person with said weaknesses would have had to be completely cut off from a TV/Radio/News paper to have missed these ads. In other words, the only person who could've missed these is a hermit doing some good old fashioned tapas in upper reaches of the Himalayas.

The flip side of this analogy is that the audience Microsoft's ads target, spans the spectrum of the human race and a few from the animal kingdom. With such a large target, boy, did Microsoft do a Pulikesi!

Most self respecting Tamilians would have seen Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi and would also recall the scene on the bear hunt. The emperor, deserted by his 'loyal' followers when a bear is spotted fires several arrows and misses at point blank range. The bear is insulted by the lack of skill of its foe and, instead of killing Pulikesi, simply spits on him and moves on. An insulted Pulikesi nurses his wounds by taking up shooting classes. A soldier is tasked with holding an apple over his head so the emperor can shoot it. As each soldier dies, the target grows and is eventually replaced by a huge pumpkin, which is also missed! I may have screwed up the narrative above and made it not funny, but this was a massive slap-stick hit and still has me in splits each time I see it. Each time I see it, I also think about how implausible the whole situation is. Until Microsoft proved me wrong.

You see, the target demographic for Microsoft is massive, to say the least. A catchy ad campaign would have to capture a 3 year old and a 75 year old and everyone in between. I'm sorry to say, in classic Pulikesi fashion, Microsoft's missed them all! I have multiple bones to pick with Microsoft:

• what do you mean you got suggestions from users on what they would ACTUALLY like to see in an OS and implemented them in Windows 7? Does that mean for 20 odd years you sat on your high horse and belted out sub-standard products that didn't care about what the user wanted to do? Even if you did, I think it's a pretty big boo-boo to be admitting this every 10 minutes on telly

• one of the key features being touted is that of faster wake-up. Hasn't Apple being doing this for eons now? I can't help but noticing that my 2 year old MacBook wakes up faster than the Toshiba being showcased in the ad for faster wake up!

• a couple of the adverts feature folks being flown all the way from the UK to Tokyo/Houston just to prove the new laptops are capable of 'waking-up faster' and they are better at gaming! Each of these adverts include a limo ride to the airport in the UK, a flight to Tokyo/Houston and a gas-guzzling 4x4 ferrying the passenger from the airport to Toshiba/Dell, as the case may be. Come on Microsoft, the whole world's in a recession, you have climate change and environment friendliness being bandied about more often than Kate Moss's drunken charades or Amy Winehouse's drug-fuelled antics and here you advertise that you proudly brought a person across the world just to open a freaking laptop? Know your audience Microsoft, is that so hard?

• scriptwriters for the adverts could do with being more creative. If you want to showcase people friendliness, focus on the larger issues and club the smaller ones into a single ad for heaven's sake! Why, oh why, would you want to waste 30 seconds of precious prime-time screen real estate by having one irritating advertisement that says your new OS can arrange windows or the task bar is simple to use (again, stuff that Macs have been doing since the dawn of time!)

It's not so much an argument about the superiority of Windows over Apple's Mac OS or vice-versa. Windows 7, by Microsoft's own admission, has just become more like a Mac to use. It's as simple as that. Some changes that ought to have been done years ago, are being done now and there is nothing wrong with that, better late than never and all that. Look at Mac adverts, they are clean, simple, devoid of loud music or ignorant users (who, by the way, feel proud that they suggested something the Mac has been doing all along!), straight to the point and focussed on the features. No wonder you have fewer adverts for the Mac than Windows and no wonder again that an upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard to Mac OS X Snow Leopard costs £30 compared to £120 for an upgrade from Vista/XP to 7 - Microsoft needs the cash to fund the ads!

The ads end with, "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea!". I guess PC here stands for Puli(c)kesi...

Racism on the internet

Ever wondered why many websites ask you enter random gibberish when you're trying to do something in a hurry? Blogspot itself is guilty of this. Want to read a post in a hurry and comment on it before the boss notices, sorry buddy; you've got to type "Ima-nid-iot" before your comment gets posted. Which in itself is forgivable since it protects the site from the scourge called spam. What makes it all the more difficult is the way the letters are scribbled and arrogantly lie sprawled across the screen at impossible angles. If your boss can't find out you're blogging from what's displayed on your screen, then the way you twist your face and hang upside down from the ceiling just to read the blasted code surely will give your game away.

I call it the monkey check, since you look like a monkey trying to read the code.

I only found out a few months ago that the monkey check was designed to deter spammers, until then I simply thought that was a cruel joke being played out on netizens by web designers. As spammers got more innovative, the text had to be more and more squiggly and unreadable. If a human struggles to read it, a computer sure as hell can't seemed to be the prevalent logic across board rooms the world over. I suppose the next step in anti-spam security would be to print out your comment, sign and date it, go to a designated building and hand it over to another human being who will scan the document and email it to another designated human being who would print the text out and get yet another human being to deliver it to the human being who posted the original blog on which the comment has been given. Wait a minute... isn't that called the postal system? The very system the internet is threatening to replace? I wonder if we are taking steps backwards here...

Without getting into the rather complex argument on backward steps, I should probably leave it to said occupants of board rooms to decide how to fight spam. The purpose of this post is different. It is to expose the true intent of this so called anti-spam check.

Like all other inconveniences, I often have a stiff upper lip when it comes to gripes and comply without complaining. I resigned to my fate and went about my fate squinting and groaning all the way. This morning, something pushed me realise the true intent of this check - racism. Allow me to explain.

I was, as usual, sneaking a peak at the good friend's rants on the Indian prison system and wanted to offer my 2 cents worth. I typed in a long winded comment and jubilantly hit publish, only to be confronted with this:

I thought, of course I'm a human you stupid computer, tell me which other animal can type so many words and click on publish and imagine what a coincidence it would be if the words mostly made sense! Never before have I actually been confronted with the truth on why the gibberish is to be entered, it took me completely off guard. And then the real truth stared me in the face - this check was born out of racist tendencies of humans. The designers of the internet wanted to future proof the internet so that only humans can comment on blogs and create email ids. Non-humans, i.e., animals and aliens, would not be allowed to benefit from the internet since this check is only for humans. I am ashamed and shocked! Innocent users, including myself, have unwittingly become accessories to this cruelty.

Having been scorned, I did what any human would do under the circumstances; I posted a blog about it and now more people can become monkeys to prove they are human!

P.S.: Should you want to post a comment, please enter the following text (and the text blogspot asks you enter):

Should I bring out the bubbly?

My name is Anand and I'm (supposed to be) a geek. And in Geekland, today I got the ultimate reward. I'll get to it in a bit. First, more on why I'm a geek.

Geek is a label that my sister lovingly stuck onto my forehead while I was with her in Dubai. I think that label is wrong more on account of her being 'um, lets say, "technologically challenged" rather than on my being any sort of technical gee-whiz with soda bottle glasses. You see, back then, when I was in Dubai, I was a man of simple means, living the bachelor life in a single room with no TV or girlfriends to keep me company. So it became that my means of entertainment centred around the Internet and appliances that make it possible to connect to the Internet - i.e., computers and related items.

I was quite content using my office laptop with a tethered connection for these pursuits until the suits in my office decided that using the office laptop for personal purposes was blasphemy and blocked all the fun software - messengers, video players and the like. For some sadistic reason, there were some software that were not blocked, but an email was circulated saying you may install these software, but if you get caught, somebody's gonna get hurt, we won't say who.

I needed a personal laptop now and not wanting to settle for anything else, it came in the form of a Mac. Soon I was blissfully spending nights watching movies online and even downloading some of them. Problem solved? No. My Mac has a 13" screen, so keeping it tethered meant the screen was faraway and audio sounded wonky. So I got a wireless router and sound blasters (again of the super fast and super fine quality varieties respectively). Problem number 3 was that I was running out disc space thanks to my fire-at-will downloading, so I needed more hard disk space and that came in the form of a 500GB WD MyBook (back then that was the most space available). The only drawback to the above was the minefield of wires that necessitated tip-toeing into my room to avoid an urgent meeting between face and floor. So that's about my computing pursuits.

Next on the list is my love of good mobile phones running Windows Mobile and lovely, fun filled hours spent customising them with custom ROMs that I tested for some 'fellow' geeks at an online forum. The result - three phones, with one almost always connected to my laptop. That's it.

When I started this blog, I also included a stat counter so I can see which countries people are visiting my page from and get some cheap kicks out of that. So in geek terms, I am really only a teenager who is experimenting and nowhere near the professional that I am portrayed to be. I can see true geeks nodding in agreement and I am thankful to them.


But please, pretty please, call me a geek! Why, because I got the reward mentioned above. With frowning eyebrows, I can see you asking me what that reward is. Here it is: my page is listed 6th out of 4.2 million web pages, I am on Google!












PS: I will not rest until I reach the number 1 spot. So, to answer my question, no I will not bring out the bubbly on this occasion, but yes, I might just treat myself to another custom ROM...