Dear Soumyadip Choudhury, why do you hate Apple?

This is a very obvious response to this blog post from an avid admirer of Apple Inc. and its products. I personally have been very disgusted by this post and the hatred it has caused towards Apple Inc. over the internet. I am trying to be as polite as possible :) ( The smiley is intended to re-emphasize politeness)

Dear Soumyadip

I totally agree with your frustration over the delay of the launch of the latest Apple products in India. But this has very valid reasons. Firstly, India is not the only country in the list. Secondly, It is NOT UNETHICAL for a company to launch products in markets which have good selling potential. Just because Apple doesn't find India's market lucrative enough, it is not immoral on Apple's part and Apple or SJ are certainly not against India. Do you think a company like Apple would miss a market like India's if it thought it was profitable to launch products there? The reason you give for not owning even a single Apple product is respect? It is not true that Apple does not sell any of its latest products in India. Apple did partner with companies like HCL to sell iPods in India, which was not very successful, which is why it chose to delay the launch of certain products.

Coming to the prices of iPhone in India. Companies like Apple and many more sell mobile phones with the concept of 'subsidy'. A contract-free iPhone costs around $599, the reason it is being sold for $199 in the US is because it is subsidized by telecom operators like AT&T and Verizon. The same applies to the Indian market. The service providers ( Airtel and Vodafone ) have to be blamed for the sky-high, unaffordable prices.

Mac is a PC, true. But for a common man, PC is a device which runs Windows OS and that is the point and basis for the Mac VS PC commercials. PC is a generic word now, more generic to the Windows domain. Like how Googling is synonymous to searching on the internet, PC is to a windows machine.

No one can deny the fact that several devices have adapted the design and UI concepts from many Apple devices, be it tablets or mobile phones. Samsung did come up with its second iteration of the Galaxy Tab. But Why? Because it realized that 10.1 inches is a better form-factor than 7 inches and that is because of the tremendous success of the iPad. Just because Samsung launched its second tablet first does not make it a pioneer. Let's not forget, Apple started selling thousands of iPad 2s even before a single Galaxy Tab 10.1 was shipped.

The MacBook. Could there be a better design for a laptop? Hell no! There's nothing wrong with flaunting a device like that. I won't deny that it is not affordable to most people but is definitely worth every penny you  pay for it. When it comes to Macs, it is not the specs that matter. It is the hardware/software integration and overall experience that counts and no one does it better than Apple. 

Also, your blog post is not clear whether you are criticizing the tech by Apple ( by praising openness of Android and Linux ) or just have a problem with the delay of sale of awesome Apple products. No doubt about the success of Android. Remember, there are a ton of companies in the Open Handset Alliance and hence so many Android devices. Kudos to Apple as it competes with so many companies with just three devices, viz. iPhone, iPod, iPad.

Again, I share everybody's opinion over Apple not launching its products in India along with other major markets. Let's hope this changes soon.

Wishing SJ good health!

Kartheek Pathuri

(An ardent Apple fan)

Eye on Eye Fi !!

Well this is for all those shutterbugs who are in a relationship with their cameras and pictures and have experienced heart-break when they see the memory full sign at crucial times.

Eye-Fi memory cards. These simple SD memory cards which when pushed into an ordinary camera gives it the power of 'endless' memory. You read that right 'endless' memory as opposed to your slim SDHC cards! This is possible because of the fact that as soon as you click pictures, they are sent over the internet to be stored on your computer or photo sharing sites like picassa, flickr and even facebook! How does it do this? Simple, it has built-in Wi-Fi which uses your home (or any) Wi-Fi network and transfers the pictures and videos over to wherever you want you memories to be stored. There are 32 Wi-Fi networks that can be pre-configured into the card and it will make sure that whenever you enter one of these networks, the card will automatically make space for your new memories and clean the oldest and safely stored data, thereby providing a virtual endless memory.

What's more? It also automatically geo-tags your photos. This means when you see these pictures after a certain period you'll know exactly where they were taken. It uses Wi-Fi triangulation to achieve this. Wi-Fi-Triangulation is a technique that works by sniffing around for wireless networks in range, measuring their strength and comparing the results to a database. It does not connect or use these hotspots but merely sweeps for relevant data for comparision. The databases are maintained by a service provider (like Skyhook Wireless and Navizon) which periodically sweeps the area and catalogs new hotspots. This is a technology which is a competitor of the GPS (aweak one though) and is currently found in mobile devices like iPod Touch, iPhones and Windows Phones.

Surprisingly the price point of these cards is not too high. The price range starts from $49.99 for a 4 GB card and goes on till $149.99 for the 8 GB fully loaded pro version. The features vary over the four available variants and can be compared here.

Like almost all things, Internet is quite changing the face of photography too. A few years back, the camera companies dabbled with the idea of integrating networking in the point and shoots but the idea wasn’t accepted as expected. But Eye-Fi, a SD memory card with Wi-Fi, is coming close to achieving what the previous ideas couldn’t achieve. It’s one of the more innovative ways to make us store and share our memories and in the process bringing us closer and closer to The Net.