Is Apple’s new iPhone 6S a success? Let me explain.

Apple this September unveiled the all new iPhone 6S and 6s Plus. Every other year Apple is historically devoted in refining it previous year’s model. Not matter how much you hate the previous model and even if you have extensive research on why the previous iteration was bad, Apple doesn’t care and only will build on what it has previously build. This is so unlike what Samsung, LG or HTC would do. Competitors are so obsessed in winning over the market share that they do whatever the consumer tells them to do.

Apple sticking to their guns have huge benefits;

• Design cost stays low
• Manufacturing cost stays low
• Material cost stays low as most the orders are done in bulk.
• Huge profit margins

The innovation that Apple brings to the table are all under the hood and more pronounced at the software layer. As an early adopter, I recontacted my line to the iPhone 6S 128GB Space Grey.

Initial Impressions

The all new iPhone is exactly the same at first glance and its a tad heavier when you hold which add a certain “premium-ness” to the phone. It feels solid and well built all together. Unlike the competition, there are no gaps, no seam line or spacing at joints which helps feel as one single unit and not parts stitched together. Build quality is where Apple always has excelled in.

When you start using the phone, you don’t feel a speed bump as the new iPhone 6S comes with a new processor, ram and even a souped up graphics chip set. It was smooth and buttery throughout. It is in fact better that the previous iPhone 6 on iOS 9 because after the software upgrade I did notice lags and stuttering which is probably Apple’s subtle way of pushing you to upgrade. No matter how they tell you iOS 9 is lightweight and you can upgrade older iPhones is all marketing “bull”.

The new iOS 9 comes with a slew of iPhone 6S specific features and one of them is the all new re-branded “3D Touch”. Its definitely a whole new way of interacting with your phone. One of the aspects of that almost felt like a “right-click” alternative for iOS. There’s definitely a learning curve and using it helps you get to the point you wish to go without an extra interaction. The other aspect is using the keyboard like a track pad which I found was extremely useful. But to be honest, from a development standpoint, you can do all this at the software level than build a hardware specifically to capture this. You will definitely see how Android OEM’s are doing to respond in the coming months. So,is 3D Touch Useful? only time will tell. I definitely feel there is a lot more to 3D Touch that what they showcased.

The other upgrades were faster TouchID sensor, 12mp camera with Live Photos,
Gripes, Peek/Pop via 3D Touch, “back” button for multitasking and so on which all are a welcome addition.

Gripes

• Using the Home button to wake up phone becomes problematic with the new faster TouchID as you wont even get enough time to read your notifications.
• Camera Live Photos captures 1.5 second video after the shot which is predominantly a clip of you putting your phone down.
• Because of 3D Touch now getting to uninstall or move your apps are difficult as it registers as a hard press instead of long press.
• Security for peeking websites using 3D Touch safe?, I really doubt it.
• If you can peek and pop might as well tap and read websites or links. Why the extra step now.
• Battery life remains the same which is less stellar especially for the iPhone 6S. Thankfully the new #BatterGate or #ProcessorGate didn’t mess with my unit. (Explained below)

Conclusion

Overall, iPhone 6S is a great phone and Apple still maintains the crown with easy to use OS, superior App Store and great experience. No body noticed that i had the latest and greatest unless you highlight the “S” stamp on the back or carried a Rose Gold edition of the iPhone. After the first few weeks, the new phone experience weans off and its back to normal business again. I did get a few questions on how the phone was and I explained to them what’s new but you may find yourself sounding silly when you try explaining it.

Recently, Gizmodo was all over Apple on iPhone 6S’s battery life as who made the processor will determine the battery life for your iPhone. It was either made by Samsung processor or TSMC. TSMC showed better and longer battery life according to show test results. (Thankfully I have the TSMC version). But Apple responded saying knew about this and has fine tuned the software in such a manner that it would give consistent performance regardless of who made them and Apple also explained why these “tests” did not reflect real-life usage and they were right as BGR has pointed out.

Has Apple ever admitted to doing any wrong, never. So I am not too concerned as Gizmodo has a history with Apple and they will do everything to beat their drums harder.

So is the new features all gimmick or is Steve’s reality-distortion still at work, I really don’t know. But I know this, if you are the patient kind long-suffering kind, hold out on this one and wait for iPhone 7.

In defense of Evernote, the last great Unicorn

I have been an using Evernote for the longest time. It has not only helped me digitize and archive my life, it has also helped me simplify many of things which would’ve ended up on a napkin years ago. It helped me revisit ideas and materials years later and helped me rethink of better solutions that I can bring about today.

Evernote which started off as a note taking desktop application moved into the mobile app business. With there huge success they started rolling out many other applications and services that centered around archiving basically anything digital that you come across. They once used to have a plethora of products that used their massive archiving backend but now they streamlined it to FIVE main products;

• Skitch, which helped you to annotate images
• Web Clipper, it brought in Pocket like web archiving functionality.
• Scannable, you could virtually scan any document it would capture your document and archive it with no manual cropping needed.
• Penultimate was an acquisition that led to archiving hand drawn or written notes into Evernote. These are just to name a few. They have gone through multiple iterations to nail the right user interface and boy! they have the best app designs in the market today.

They have also partnered with multiple hardware vendors like Adonit, Moleskin & ScanSnap and worked on building hardware solutions that enable us to incorporate Evernote into our lives in a seamless way. 

So the $1 billion question is;

Is note taking dead? The answer is No.

Is Evernote the current King of the hill, Yes

Can it remain to be the King of the hill? No

Will there be a new king, No

Here’s why…

With the success of Evernote, every tech giant and start-up wants a piece of the pie. Google started building Keep, Microsoft started building OneNote, Pocket focused on archiving and many many more. Some of the aspects Evernote pioneered while some Evernote played catchup like the latest feature to date, WorkChat. This feature was introduced after the huge success of Slack, Whatapp and Facebook Messenger. Even I tried to take a crack at it with Sermonotes.

What I am saying is, there won’t be just one King instead there will be many Kings.

Why am I writing this?

This article is in response to an article i came across in the Business Insider called “Evernote, the first dead unicorn” written by Josh Dickson. In that article he discusses about how unicorn startups are no longer rare and are bound to be doomed, on how Phil Libin, Founder of Evernote is no longer passionate about leading the business and how Evernote tried everything and became the King of none.

I read the article and saw how one dimensional his take was. He was hell bent on focusing on only one thing and that was Evernote was doomed and he would go to length to arrange half information to point in that direction. Here are a few such except was;

Evernote knows it. Late last year, the company attempted to roll out a messaging product, Work Chat. I reached out to a number of friends to ask if they had heard about it or used it at their company, with the answer being a resounding, “No and why is Evernote making a chat application?”

 

The product certainly seems to be a flop in the market. Many Evernote users want to remove it entirely from their note-taking software.

Me: OneNote has gone below the 100 mark multiple times while evernotes rankings looks like blips.

Looking at the Y-axis you can see its like comparing apple to watermelons

Showing reviews of evernpte versus snapchat…way to go!, basically reaffirming my watermelon statement above.

Is it really wrong to enter a new product late? Facebook entered the Messenger late, Google entered the note taking game late and Apple entered the TV console game late. How does one entering a new line of business amount to bad business? If I am using the logic of why enter the messenger business, then Apple wouldn’t have moved to the mobile computing business either.

He continues;

Evernote is in the midst of a sizable, prolonged decline in relevance in numerous areas.

On the product side, customers are slowly  beginning not to care about the product, while downloads slip and competitors offer better products, many of them, like OneNote, free.

Me: Classic example of a generalised blanket statement. I do not know where is it stated that customers began to ignore the product.

He goes on;

Glassdoors reviews of Evernote paint a picture of a company suffering internally from the things customers are seeing externally.

 

Me: What! Since Josh went to great length to look at Glassdoor he should might as well start looking at OneNote creators Microsoft’s ratings.

Josh decides to give advice

The lesson for management teams at other unicorns is clear from Evernote: Forget worrying about whether you’re going to be around in 100 years, and refocus on making products that people want that will make money.

Me: Yep! using that advise and hoping no one would innovate Microsoft and Blackberry still would be been a dominant force in mobile computing today. Its all about catching up and staying ahead of the game.

Conclusion

Phil Libin lost his passion and many founders do but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of something. Evernote build great products and is always first to show their presence, like how they were the first to launch their app for Apple Watch. That’s how cutting they are.

To me the whole article by Josh Dickson was very distasteful and felt as though he was with paid to write against Evernote or he wanted to use his write as content marketing for Syrah. I truly hope he he stops connecting the dots with a line while in fact it’s been a part of the curve all along. He needs to see the light very soon because he did try to milk the web stat cow with a Part 2 which no sign of repentence.

“No point trying to convince people who are hellbent on being misunderstood” – Dr. A. R. Bernard

ThingThing iOS Keyboard App Review

A few weeks ago as I was doing my usual social media tour and I noticed a new company that started following my account @georgeiswrite.

It was a UK based company @Thingthingapp.

I was a bit curious as to how they were planning to do it. I worked on Sermonotes which had a similar concept but was build for the Christian population to have easy access to the Bible while taking sermon notes.

The concept of productivity on mobile devices has been around for quite some time. But ThingThing is focused on taking productivity through a new route and that is via your iOS keyboard. Apple started supporting third-party keyboard with iOS 8 and ThingThing saw this as an opportunity where no big keyboard makers like Swiftkey or Fleksy keyboard has gone. They basically became a link to the rest of the services we all frequently use on our device.

On-boarding

The on-boarding process was fairly simple and straight forward which was followed by a video on how to activate the keyboard. (Deep inside I wished it was a trailer for ThingThing instead). That showed they’ve gone lengths into ensuring the user gets to experience the app fully with no stones left unturned. Once activated, there was a handful services readily available. I was impressed by the ease of getting these services connected.

Using the app was a breeze and it doesn’t have a steep learning curve. The UI was smooth and responsive and didn’t crash on me like other apps have. They mean business.

There was only one let down

There was no keyboard.

Shocking but true. I reached out with the ThingThing team and they assured me that it was in the works but no timeline was given.

One thing that caught my eye was how they communicated their unique approach to work and life. They spoke about their principles behind why they do what they do and how they do it.

Respect.

The other portion was their stance on privacy and why you will never be a product and explained it further on their blog. Because its all about trust.

Conclusion

I love ThingThing and their passion in what they do as a company. Their product is polished but not complete but having said that, ThingThing app is definitely on standby mode and will go on Turbo mode when they release that keyboard.

I was not paid to write this…#justsaying

Did Apple deliver on September 9, 2015

Apple has finally set the rumor mill to rest.

There was so much speculation on the next iPhone that you could print all the blog posts and compile a thick book. But as the rumor for the next iphone was going on, slowly rumors about the next version of Apple TV started showing up. The writers wrote that Apple has a new streaming service lined up with some original content. It was soon followed by more speculations during the first week of September that the next iteration of iPad, the iPad Pro was going to be announced and that is the reason why the chose such a huge venue. Then came the leaked images of the Force Touch display, saying the device would be thicker than the previous version to accommodate this new tech.

Cult of Mac wanted to beat the crowd so they did on rumor on iPhone 7! Too soon?

You know what, now it’s all laid to rest. So this is what happened.

Did Timmy deliver?

The day came, saw and conquered every media outlet possible. Tim Cook was at his best. He was comfortable and knew where he was leading the crowd to. He took all the viewers through a great storyline and stitched it all up and ended the event with One republic singing “Counting Stars” which was a fitting end.

But let’s take a step back, let’s break it down and look at each product announcement objectively.

iPad Pro

Initial impression was it was a big iPad. But slowly it started to fade away when they showed the lengths at which Apple took to showcase iPad Pro beyond a consumption device to a creator device. Phil Schiller shared a lot of numbers and stats as to why this is a redefined desktop class device rather than your regular iPad. They showcased the ease of editing movies to music creation and even rendering on Autocad!

Man! I’e used Autocad when I was in school and even my PC couldn’t keep up with it.

So who was it made for?

I seriously am still confused on who is their target audience. Its a tablet and not a PC. Microsoft’s Surface has been there and done that. Only time will tell what is it finally going to be used for. So far, Apple has gained the support of IBM and Cisco as their Enterprise customers and that is a good thing.

With the iPad Pro, they introduced a sidekick called the Apple Pencil. I initially thought it was a joke and Phil kept his cool, then we knew it was real. Apple Pencil has a nice touch to the entire iPad Pro storyline.

I recently invested in a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 inch just to replaced by diary because I love to write. I love styluses because they take note taking to a whole new level.

Every tech blogger started reminding us on how Steve Jobs hated styluses at the iPhone launch. But when you look at the context, he was referring to using a stylus for all touchscreen input. This was so common back then with the Windows touchscreen phones.

I think Apple was wise in introducing a stylus but does it justify the price and how does it affects the future of Adonit, Paper and Evernote is yet to be seen.

Apple TV

Finally, after so many year Apple decides to take on TV again. It morphed itself from a setup box to a fatter set top box with Amazon Fire like features. It didn’t feel ground breaking at all. Apple basically borrowed ideas from everywhere and created a hybrid device with a refreshed interface. Nothing new here.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus

As usual they stuck to the iPhone routine. Every “S” model would follow the predecessor in terms of hardware design and then would upgrade everything internally. This time with the “6S” they improved the cameras, processor, display and so on. The biggest announcement was the introduced of “3DTouch” aka “ForceTouch”.

They showcased mobile screen interaction to a whole new level. By applying a little bit pressure you could have a sneak peek into what was underneath and press a tad harder it will launch you directly into what you were peeking at. It reminded me a lot of Samsung’s Air view feature which was deemed a gimmick.

I don’t know why whenever Apple does the same no one calls it a gimmick?

The question in every consumer head is, “Why should I buy this phone?”. Apart from 3D Touch, they have some neat features on the camera front. It was the 12 megapixel, 4K shooting, Live Photo holding phone was the one that made people go quite. It was beautiful.

There were surprises and it didn’t come form Apple.

Let’s just say Microsoft was invited. Apple has had a long standing love-hate relationship with Microsoft and this event seems to me that this was a sign that they have moved on and have buried the hatchet.

Even though Microsoft delivered a great product and a cringeworthy performance on stage, its good see them play nice.

Conclusion

Overall, it was a great warm fuzzy event but it lacked the “WOW” factor that I’ve experienced before. It was an update or “catch up” to times and didn’t feel revolutionary.

May be my expectations are high or may be Apple is saving it for something bigger for a better time.

The future of Apple lies in the watch

Apple has done extremely well over the past few years. Even after the passing of its visionary leader and brand icon Steve Jobs, Tim Cook has steered the ship to even greater unknown territories without flinching a bit.

The death of Apple was greatly exaggerated

There might be a couple of reasons why Apple remains successful;

1. Apple is following through the roadmap they have worked on with Jobs for the next 10 years. So nothing changes and company’s got Jobs blessings.
2. Jobs was just a father figure and it’s still business as usual after his passing.

The reason for this posting is nothing to do with Apple’s future as a business because we all know that they are gonna be fine. Even if Apple makes a terrible move, they can still ride the wave with the kind of cash reserves they have. My intent of this post is to serve as to where Apple is headed  as a consumer and how do I see it coming. Previously it was the iPhone that pointed to what we could expect for iPad, iPod and so on. But I feel iPhone is just going to follow something else, a new entrant.

A few days ago I purchased the Apple Watch Sport. I was a bit skeptical at first because I’ve read various reports about Apple Watch’s dwindling sales but then I thought you know what! Let’s do this!

My Take

The Apple Watch is weighty & porcelain piece of art. The software was a beast by itself. There is nothing familiar about the OS, it was something new. It was smooth, fluid and personal. It told me to stand up, told when my email came and even took my heart rate! I was not blown away instead I finally understood where Apple was heading.

I was watching the introduction of iOS 9 at WWDC 2015 and I finally saw how this is all gonna make sense for the experience that Apple is looking to bring to the masses. Previously, the iPhone always pointed what iPad would be receiving in future but now it’s the Watch that is going to show what the iPhone and the iPad is going to get.

Here are the features that we are going to see on the next iPhone & iPad;

1. Hey Siri voice activation
2. Circle UI App management
3. Force Touch for revealing additional features
4. Magnetic wireless power charger
5. Lift to activate phone from sleep
6. Proactive contextual alerts
7. Digital crown (I wish)

fin.

Why I switched to DuckDuckGo and ran back to Google crying

In the name of Proactivity

In this day and age of connected living, our lives have been radically changed for the better. But on the down side, our privacy took a beating. In the name of proactive services, tech giants like Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft started creating services to “enrich” our lives with services like Facebook Advertising, Google Now, Siri and Cortana. Your behaviour online is fodder for these tech companies to create services, analyse future trends and monetize their ads network.

The last of the tech giants, Microsoft has now baked their cloud services extensively in the latest Windows 10 by collecting anonymous user logs back to its servers. This has been extensively covered by The Verge, click here for more.

If you use them, you will know how amazing these services are. These services made me feel like Tony Stark with my handy wingman Jarvis. These experiences were not only cool and got creepy at times in a good way.

Enter Super-Duck

Here comes DuckDuckGo, founded by Gabriel Weinberg, He decided to take real privacy to a whole new level. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that doesn’t collect any user data. Of course, they don’t need to collect anything as they don’t have any other services to offer other than give you relevant search data. Fast Company magazine wrote an amazing article titled “Inside DuckDuckGo, Inside Google’s tiniest fiercest competitor“, click here to read more.

I got even excited when Apple made DuckDuckGo as an option to use as your default search engine for iOS. Apple during their 2015 WWDC announced that are taking strides in ensuring they are not taking the Google route and that privacy is a real concern and a matter of importance for their consumers. Click here to read more on TechCrunch

Embracing a bold new philosophy

I bought into their philosophy and immediately started taking steps to ensure my data was iron clad. I changed my default search engine to DuckDuckGo, revised my privacy setting in Google and diversified my tech portfolio (yes, I started using Microsoft Services).

It was great at first, I searched on DuckDuckGo and I was pretty surprised with the quality of the search results it produced. The UI was familiar and navigating around the site wasn’t a chore. On the other hand, Google Services started acting out. To name a few, Google constantly reminded me on how great life would get if i enabled Google Now to how terrible it would be if I didn’t enable the search history on Google Maps. Facebook too kept on asking me to enable location, update my phone number, update about me and so on. The only winner in this period was Microsoft as I started using Outlook as my primary email driver.

The next phase of my life didn’t want change

Then I entered the next chapter of my life with the arrival of my baby girl. I share more about my experience on daddy hood on Daddylogs. I searched constantly on how to swaddled her, feed her and what each of her need meant. But frustration grew as the search results were not what I was looking for. I had to move around quite a bit and Google couldn’t deliver as I didn’t fully embrace their services. Thinking it was only a phase, I grew even more frustrated and I manually started typing google.com and started searching for results. Two weeks later, I threw in the towel and changed to Google and its services.

Conclusion

Google has immensely invested into refining its results and its technologies over the years. Even with the introduction of Alphabet, Google’s world class algorithm is still a force to be reckoned with. Changing a behaviour that has been engrained over the years is not easy and I didn’t want to reorganise my digital life just because of a new philosophy. Even though I do understand the gravity of privacy and the need to defend it, I am a firm believer that companies will eventually circumvent these issues and create new concerns.

Basically, its a never ending cycle of cat and mouse.

What Samsung really showed to the world on Unpacked 2015

Today Samsung introduced the 2015 edition of their next-gen in the Note series with the the introduction of Galaxy Note 5. They also surprised the crowd with the long rumoured Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ and followed by a sneak peak onto the upcoming Samsung Gear S2 watch.

Let’s break it down

Samsung Galaxy Note 5

The new Galaxy Note 5 is a beast in itself when looking at the specs. But the design reminded me so much of the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro with its inspired back. I didn’t feel there was any new as it was heavily S6 inspired. They did take fast charging to the next level with the Super fast wireless charging. While watching the presentation I assumed they would be using the reversible micro usb (found on Kickstarter) but it was not.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+

It’s basically a big Galaxy S6 Edge. That’s it. They may have been pushed to introduce that with the success of Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus. The specs may be all jacked up but I feel the experience remains the same with that of the Galaxy S6 Edge.

Keyboard Cover

The new Note 5 Keyboard Cover accessory was genius and could mimic what Typo aspired to do with the iPhone. I also foresee the keyboard cover being a serious contender for Blackberry and it’s future.

Samsung Pay

The Samsung Pay presentation was a reiteration of what they presented earlier at the launch of the Galaxy S6. It focused primarily on their roll out plans for world domination. What I liked about Samsung Pay was it was immediately usable and didn’t require fancy tech. Samsung has the bandwidth to taker over the rest of the world compared to Apple and it might success at this for once.

Samsung Gear S2

The next gen Gear was introduced via a trailer. It’s round, classy with a familiar design and horrible UI. My toes curled when I saw the interface for the Heart Rate monitor. It’s a not an Android Wear device and I see Tizen raising it ugly head again. More details to be seen on their upcoming presentation on September in Berlin.

Conclusion

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ looks unsurprising and very familiar, S6 familiar. Samsung is good in adding new technologies but shy of removing old tech, which Apple is good at. They kept touting about single hand usage but I’ll just keep it at that as its nothing to rave about and is purely a design choice. Samsung, I believe is looking to releasing big screened phones together for future releases. This is aligned much better with their manufacturing schedule. The surprising aspect in all this was the phones would be available on the 20th of August, just a week away.

Let me know your thoughts on Samsung’s Unpacked 2015 launch.