Prakash Advani's Blog

I have been quotes in this article.

Apple released a feature of its Mac OS named LaunchPad. LaunchPad is a development, bug tracking platform of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. Canonical doesn’t seem to have deep pockets to sue Apple over the usage of name LaunchPad. Canonical’s Prakash Advani told our editor that “We are glad Apple likes our brand name! The purpose of Canonical’s Launchpad.net and Apple’s Launch pad are different, hence non-competing.” No surprises two years from now Apple sues Canonical over LaunchPad.

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A while back, my friend Ramnath forwarded me this interesting flow chart, It holds true for iPad and may apply to many of our wants [not needs].

A few people who owned iPads, [althought many would not admit], were finding their iPad had diminishing marignal utility. After a few days of use, they were not find much utility for it.

Are tablets good computing devices or just for browsing and viewing? Are tablets going to replace the netbook? Well lets wait to have more tablet options based on Android platform. In fact Android team says Android is not designed for Tablets and Android 3.0 expected by end of the year, is expected is suppose to be tablet ready.

Android has overtaken Apple OS (iPhone,itouch,iPad) to be number 2. Blackberry RIM is still Number one,  however they are quickly loosing marketshare to Android.

• RIM’s BlackBerry OS at 36 percent;
• Android at 28 percent;
• Apple iPhone OS at 21 percent.

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To all the people rushing to buy an iPad, you should know that Apple makes as much as 52% profit margin on the iPad. The devil is in the details.

BOM (Bill of Material) for iPad.

16GB iPad with WiFI costs US$270 which retails for $499. The margins go up further if you add a 3G Module or high capacity.

Here is the link for a detailed breakup.

Expect other vendors to launch products to compete with iPad with more aggressive pricing.

Marvell has already announced a $99 tablet!

Apple just released the latest firmware 2.2. I have successfully upgraded my original iPhone to the new firmware. My iPhone came with firmware 1.1 and was updated to 1.1.4.

Standard disclaimer applies: If you end up with a fancy looking brick, don’t blame me. This is also known to work only on the older iPhone and not on the new generation iPhone 3G yet.

Here is what you need to do:

1. You need to update your iTunes to the latest version 8.0.2 (if not already), don’t update your iPhone firmware yet, just update iTunes and sync your data.

Syncing is an important step as when you update your firmware, all your data gets erased and then iTunes syncs it back.

2. Download these 4 files.

QuickPWN Windows Version OR Mac Version

Note: I have not tested this on Mac.

iPhone firmware 2.2

Bootloader version 4.6

Bootloader version 3.9

3. Update the iPhone to Firmware 2.2: Don’t do the automatic update, go to Advanced setting tab, hold the shift key and click on Update. This will give you an option to select the 2.2 firmware file that you downloaded in Step 2.

4. Optional: If you phone goes into recovery mode, like it did for me, Go to the Advance setting Tab again, hold the shift key and click on Restore. This will give you an option to select the 2.2 firmware file that you downloaded in Step 2.

5. After the update, your phone will get locked or will show emergency model. Keep it plugged in.

6. Start QuickPWN and select the firmware files and the boot loader files that you downloaded in Step 2. Follow the instructions, you will need to hold the home/power button in various combinations, QuickPWN will instruct you on that.
You will be given an option to install Cydia, Cydia is another installer and gives you more options to install 3rd party apps.

It also given you an option to replace the logo. If you select that option, your iPhone Apple boot logo will be replaced with a Pineapple

7. Once QuickPWN unlock your iPhone, check if you are able to make calls. If not, re-do step 6.

8 Once successful, go ahead and sync your iTunes to get your contacts. Also sync photos, music and video. I prefer to do each of them separately as its time consuming, so you can sync what’s necessary first.

9. Enjoy your iPhone 2.2 with all the new features.

For me it unlocked successfully, I am able to use EDGE, WiFi, etc. Don’t yet see all my favourite applications yet in the installer, perhaps they need to get tested on 2.2 before they show up.

Sources:

QuickPWN

Firmwares and Bootloader links

Mint has this nice article on how Apple got its India strategy wrong for the iPhone launch:

Lost Opportunity | How Apple got its strategy wrong

To add to this, Apple charges its customers in India full charges for the handset, which means no subsidisation from the service provide and yet the handset it locked to the service provider.

In US, handset is locked to AT&T but then subside the cost of the handset and charges only US$200. The rest they make up over the 2 year contract.

In India too, Apple should either sell the handsets unlocked at full price, or if the service provider wants to lock the handset, they should subsidise the cost.

Apple is about to release iPhone 2.2 firmware soon. The Beta is already out.

It has Google street view, and the most requested feature: turn off auto correct. Apart from several bug fixes.

Cut and Paste is noticeably absent, which was suppose to be added in this release.

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It apparently can be jailbroken, but wait till its finally release..

Guide to Unlock & Jailbreak iPhone 2G for firmware 2.1, This is already working on 2.2 beta, but may be blocked by Apple before the final release.

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When was the last time you dated a woman who was nice and sexy and at the same time intelligent too? Welcome to the iPhone. Steve Jobs magic is working.

The iPhone is not only a sexy phone but extremely intelligent. Once you use it, you would find other phones are so dumb!

I tried a Windows mobile phone. While talking it would blank out the screen. Which is a good way to save power but…. during a call if I had to wake up the screen, I had to tap the screen. While doing that, some other button would get accidently activated and the call would get disconnected or go on hold.

Similarly on many touch screen phones, you would find that while talking, when the ear touches the screen, it activates some button that you didn’t wanted it to.

How does iPhone manage this? It has a proximity sensor. The proximity sensor switches off the touch screen when you take the phone close to your ear, and turns it back on when you take it off. Simple technology but extremely practical.

The iPhone interface is also the best I have seen. Very easy to use and intuitive. It hides all the complexity that a normal user wouldn’t use.

What Apple is missing in the iPhone that they are not trying to make it a replacement for a computer. It still requires the computer and iTunes to sync music, pod casts, etc. You also can’t sync your address book with Yahoo or Gmail directly, this again requires iTunes.

What more I like about the iPhone:

• Good battery life, goes on for 2 days on moderate use.
• Good sound quality through speakers and the headphone. The sound volume is good for music. However the volume is low for the phone and the speaker phone even after when the volume is on full. Didn’t figure out that one!
• Excellent screen resolution and good video playback.
• Conferencing facility works well.
• Email works well, I tried IMAP and Gmail.
• EDGE works well and it switches to WiFi whenever available.
• No crash. It has never crashed on me. It does get slow at times, when you load up too many applications but never had a crash. This is amazing considering how many times a Windows Mobile phone crashes.
• Also the operating system response is fast.
• WiFi works well and the Safari browser works well.
• Very attractively prices at US$ 399 in US. Hope they can maintain the same price in the rest of the world.

Now what I don’t like about the phone:

• Very very proprietary. Everything is proprietary and it feels like your locked into Apple for life.
• You can’t use it to connect your computer to the internet using the iPhones EDGE/GPRS service. Apparently this is again locked by Apple. There are sites that explain you how to do that in a round about way. But that’s a little complex for an average Joe user.
• You can’t edit emails once they are in the outbox but not yet sent.
• No option to send electronic business cards like Palm, Nokia and other cellphones.
• Once you sync your music/video from one computer, you can’t sync with another computer. If you do that you will lose all your music and videos. This may have been done to prevent people from sharing music but its a big pain for the average use. I feel every more sorry for Windows uses, who need to re-format their computer every couple of months. They better have backups of their iTunes.
• The phone does get a bit hot when used. Its still doesn’t get as hot as a Nokia but still its irritating.
• No expandable memory, which means you cant add more memory. With 8GB and now 16GB phones, they may not be required by most uses, but why live with a limitation?
• Camera is good but only 2 megapixel. No flash or zoom or any other camera features such as scene modes.
• No camera in the front which is required for video conferencing.
• Regular head phones jack doesn’t work. You need only an iPhone jack. Proprietary!!!
• It has excellent maps but no GPS.
• If you face a problem with the battery, replacing battery is a rocket science! Its not as easy as the other phones where you can just change the battery.
• No video recording so you can’t make some fancy home videos
• No timer for Silent mode. I like this feature in my Nokia phone, when I go for a meeting for say 2 hours, I can put the silent profile which expires in 2 hours. So after 2 hours the phone switches off the silent profile. In iPhone, you will have to manually switch it back.
• Big problem with recognising Numbers. If I have a number saved as 55555 without the country code and the caller ID send the number with +15555 (country code), it won’t understand. Nokia does this very well and that’s a limitation of the iPhone.
• Couldn’t find a way to synchronise your calendar with any other web service. Would have liked if it could sync with Google Calendar.
• No PDF reader, Adobe Acrobat! Apparently Adobe asked $2 per device as license fees and Steve Jobs said FO! So we get F$%#.
• No TV out cable included. So if you want the watch the videos on TV you can’t right do it out of the box. You need to buy a cable from Apple which cost $49.

The iPhone’s SMS is very poor, perhaps because SMS is not big in the US but it surely is in India and other countries. Hope Apple fixes it before they want to sell it to Europe and Asia.

• No MMS.
• No SMS forwarding. Not a big deal, there are third party applications that allow you to do that but it would be nice if Apple included that by default.
• SMS with special characters. These are alerts are sent by Banks/Airlines. They show as garbled on the iPhone.
• No option for sending group SMS.

Conclusion:

For me the iPhone is the smartest device I have ever used. And if you don’t mind some of the limitations mentioned about, its definitely worthy the try.

PS: If Steve Jobs is reading this, good work! But keep it open

Read Earlier post:

Why wait to buy the iPhone