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As always attending a Microsoft technology conference (TechEd India 2012) was fun & educative. You can catch the clips here and other information from here, so I will keep this post to few sessions I managed to attend.
The 3 day conference happened at Hotel Lalit Ashok, a fine hotel but as a conference venue I try to like it but I can’t. The map they give while registering keeps getting less comprehensible year after year, I was pretty sure if I run in circles I could have found the rooms faster than the map or ask the event folks. And this happens even though I am supposed to be familiar with the topography & room names as I have been here for many years now, either as a speaker or as an attendee.
In Windows 8, apart from Metro UI & WinRT there has been incremental improvements to Windows 7 in terms of Boot time, Tast Manager, Explorer file copy & so on. But I learn that there are significant improvements to Windows Server "8" from Windows Server 2008 R2. I attended the Windows Server "8" modern workstyle enabled by Pracheta Budhwar & Windows Server "8" The power of many Servers, the simplicity of one by Kamal Jain. Both were introduction sessions to new features in Windows Server "8", lot of improvements have been made relevant for all use cases, from Single Server to Clusters. DHCP Resiliency, SAN storage copy offloading, unified server manager, Hyper-V dynamic movement of running VMs & many more.
Demo Extravaganza by Harish Vaidyanathan & Nahas Mohammed was fun & entertaining. They showed lot of cool stuffs around Windows 8 Keyboard shortcuts, roaming profile and so on. When they were distributing "goodies" like Nokia Lumia 800 or T-Shirts, the stampede like scene near the front rows were scary.
Vinod Kumar demos in Demo Extravaganza on tips for Office 2010 were interesting, I knew the Access email data collection tip but the PowerPoint Photo Editing feature (Remove Background in Format Ribbon) was new to me.
Day 2 the first session I went was BigData & Elastic Cloud by Ramkumar Kothandaraman. He rocked with his practical insights & applications in real life for BigData (How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did, U.K. Man deported from LA for joke tweet about Destroying America). His example for explaining MapReduce was awesome – making juice by first cutting fruits, then grouping them by fruit-family (Apples, Oranges) and then putting them through a blender.
One of the biggest challenges of using BigData is the setup & configuration of something like Hadoop & its relatives (Pig, Mahout, Hive, Hbase, HDFS, Zoo Keeper). Ramkumar demo’ed the upcoming cloud offering from Microsoft Hadoop on Azure (currently in invite only beta), this was exciting to me as it makes Hadoop approachable to every developer out there. You can program MapReduce functions with Java or JavaScript, it is likely Microsoft will add support for .NET Languages in upcoming languages. Out of box you get cool Graphing features to visualize data easily
The next talk I went was a session by MTC (Microsoft Technology Center) team – Vinod Kumar, Govind Kanshi & Anirudda Deswandikar. MTC team rocks with their frank,practical advice on when to use & when not to use hyped technologies like ORM, Cloud, XML & Virtual Machine Platforms (Java, .NET). With all the marketing hype surrounding REST & Cloud, this talk was a bit of fresh air.
In the evening the last session I went to was by my fellow Microsoft Regional Director (RD) Stephen Forte (CSO, Telerik) on Agile Estimation. He was hilarious, putting serious data on why software estimate is always wrong at beginning. You can only improve estimate on iterations after each iteration, it is important you have many smaller iterations and there by improve your estimate. He talked about using "User Stories" & Tracking Backlogs as techniques to capture user requirements & maintain sanity in the project process. You need to insists on having one user story at least for each page if the project is a website, a single line like "Replica of Amazon.com" is not acceptable. Stephen demoed on how you can use PlanningPoker.com for improving Estimations. His same talk made in the TechEd USA is available here, don’t miss to watch it.
He gave following books for further read:
(Disclaimer: Microsoft India had given me a free pass to attend TechEd India as I am one of the Microsoft Regional Directors, a honorary title & partner program)
This is the follow-up to my earlier post “My new iMac”.
Printer
I have a 3+ years old HP Photosmart C7288 All in One Printer/Scanner. Its a nice versatile machine, double side printing, the inkjet cartridges on an average lasts about 12-15 months for ordinary household usage. I was not sure whether HP will have driver software for such an old printer for Mac OS X Platform, but surprisingly I found there is native out of box support in Mac OS X Lion for Printing & even scanning. HP also has provided with latest full-featured driver software and it works great.
UPS
I have an APC Back-UPS RS 1000 for power backup, it is important this works fine as nowadays in Chennai everyday we have scheduled power shutdown for 2 hours and many unscheduled power outages. After some web search I found Mac OS X Lion out of box support for many UPS brands especially APC. After switching ON, I just inserted the Data cable from UPS to iMac and it detected and enabled the UPS feature automatically in Energy Saver applet in System Preferences . It even shows a Battery meter in the menu bar that can show either the percentage of power left or the time left.
Configuration
There is not much that you needed to do in Mac OS, other than enabling “Firewall” in Security & Privacy Applet in Systems Preferences, which you can do after you have installed all your applications & devices. The Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic mouse that came with iMac worked just out of the box, you just need to pop some batteries into them and switch ON.
Parallels – Running Windows 7 in iMac
All said I love “Windows” especially its versatility and there are some apps in Windows that I definitely need in my Home PC. I truly wish Microsoft makes hardware as well as they do Windows software, XBOX & Microsoft Mouse are proof on what they can do when they put their mind to it.
The first piece of software that I absolutely need is KeePass. This is a password management software that’s written in .NET and works great on Windows. There is an iOS version called KyPass that I have been using on my iPhone and iPad for years now and it has full compatibility with the v2.0 database (KDBX) that’s created by the Windows .NET client. There is even a Mac OS X Port called KeePassX but unfortunately that supports v1.0 (KDB) database, so its a pain to export/import between Windows/iOS & Mac OS.
The next software I need is Internet Explorer, as few of the banking sites I have to use are available only with IE. One of the Indian Public sector bank I use has a security software that’s required to login that works only in Windows. There is no technology reason why they can’t provide a Mac OS or iOS or HTML5 versions, but the ground reality is that there isn’t one and I can’t do much about it. I have taken loan from the bank, so its not easy for me to switch bank just for lack of software support.
The third in my list (my important software list is actually longer but many of them have Mac OS equivalent as explained in next section “Apps”) is “Windows Live Writer” that I am using to write this post, as the name suggest this software is only available for Windows, this is the best blogging client software that’s out there including apps on iOS. It is surprising that WordPress and many other popular Blogging Software out there have no native client for Windows or Mac OS.
Lastly from time to time I need to use Windows for various tasks, so it is extremely important that I am able to run Windows in my iMac. I didn’t want to go the multi-boot option with BootCamp as its not practical to keep rebooting for every little thing and I then need to maintain two different OS in my Home PC. I explored the landscape and narrowed the choice to Parallel’s Virtualization client for Mac OS X. I downloaded the trial, impressed with the experience purchased the full version for $59 (they sent me a discount of $20 after trial download). I have used other deep integration Virtualization software like “Windows XP Mode” using Virtual PC software from Microsoft for running WinXP under Windows 7, but Parallels goes beyond this. It gives you an App integration option that makes every Windows App like MS Paint or Solitaire appear just like a native Mac OS, this includes Docking, Menu Bar integration and even sharing the same folders (Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, Downloads) which means no copying files between the two OS.
Parallel’s even shows you Windows Start menu from Mac OS Menu bar, Windows Task Bar items in Mac OS Menu bar and more.
One thing about Parallel’s is that it took quite some time to figure out how to activate the software when its in the App integration mode. The link for activation from the “Request support” in Menu bar doesn’t work, the email with key doesn’t say where you need to go to activate. It turns out you need to have the Guest OS shutdown and reach to Parallel’s main settings window to activate.
Apps
Below is a list of Apps that I have managed to discover so far and using in Mac OS X Lion.
- MS Office 2011 for Mac OS X (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) is not a problem there are versions from Microsoft for Mac OS for years. For most part they work just like the Windows counterparts that I am familiar, with Ribbon introduction in MS Office 2011 for Mac the familiarity makes it very easy
- Microsoft Lync, we use this for our corporate IM and there is a native client for Mac OS
- Microsoft Messenger, the familiar Windows Live Messenger is called by this name in Mac OS
- Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, Adobe normally ships with every copy of Windows version of their software, a Mac OS version. Few years back I bought Adobe PhotoShop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9, the DVD had Mac OS version, so I installed them and they worked just like in Windows
- Google Chrome, there is a native version available for Mac OS
- VLC Player, this is one of the must piece of software especially since I will be using iMac as a Digital Hub. Fortunately there is a native Mac OS X version of VLC Player, thank the good souls who make this available
- Twitter, the official client from Twitter, Inc. is available in Mac OS X App Store here. Considering that FaceBook official App for Smartphone and Tablets is a HTML5 App, its surprising they don’t ship for Mac OS an App
- Skype, there is a native version available for Mac OS
- Handbrake, this is a must app if you are using iTunes and watch video in any digital devices. This open source Video Encoding software is the best out there, its free and a native version is available for Mac OS
- NHM Writer, I use this to type my mother tongue (Tamil) in Windows. But there is something better in Mac OS X, that too out of box. It is Murasu Anjal, the pioneer for last 3 decades in this
- ImgBurn: This is a fine (free) software for taking an exact image of a DVD/CD and then burning them. It also helps in skipping/fixing slightly damaged discs. I couldn’t find a port of this to Mac OS, but found something similar (but not as complete as ImgBurn) that’s called “Burn”
- Paint.NET, this is a fast, simple yet powerful Image editing software that is free and works fast. Unfortunately there is no port of it for Mac OS, surprisingly there is no basic Paint software (like MS Paint) that ships with Mac OS. Wikipedia says there used to be MacPaint but that doesn’t ship anymore. I found a software called “Paintbrush” that’s okay but is very basic
- Solitaire, just like Paint, I couldn’t find any games shipping with Mac OS X. Not even Solitaire!
- Nero, this is one of the best Disc Authoring Software. There is no port of this for Mac OS. There seems to be equivalent software from another company called “Roxio”, since I have got iMovie (out of box in OS X Lion) and Adobe Premiere Elements, for now I think I will not need Roxio and to spend a $50 on buying this
- Windows Live Mesh, there is a fine piece of software that I have been using for years now and there exists a port from Microsoft for Mac OS X. Unfortunately when I tried it now in iMac, it didn’t sync. So I looked around and found SugarSync (I have used Dropbox before but was not impressed with it). I installed it in Windows7 WorkPC, iPhone, iPad, iMac & MacBookAir. After installing SugarSync, I enabled OS X Firewall so I had to manually enable connections to “Sugarsync Manager” in firewall applet.
- Other than this in the last two weeks it seems to be working fine, it is syncing the files to cloud and to every other device pretty well. It is a paid service for storage beyond 5GB, for the 60GB version I am using it charges $9.99 per month which I think is worth every penny considering you have an automatic cloud backup with version control
- Antivirus: At the moment I am not running any Antivirus in OS X, I may change it if I feel a need to. I don’t expect to download from untrusted sources or expose this machine so I guess I should be fine. All my documents and pictures are in Sync folders and I have Norton 360 in my Office PC which scans all these files. For all other downloads from 3rd party sites I plan to do them only from the Windows guest OS inside Parallels and to protect that I have installed K7 Antivirus inside the Guest OS. Not the most safe setup, but should be fine for a Digital media hub PC.
With Windows 8 in the horizon why did I buy a new iMac?. It boiled down to few practical issues.
My Digital Media Hub which was a Windows 7 PC gave up its last breath after nearly 5 years, when I looked around for a good branded PC from Dell or HP with lots of RAM and storage (1 TB HDD, Quad Core, 8GB RAM, Powerful graphics) it came to nearly Rs.75K-80K like the Inspiron model below.
First, I realized any Windows 7 PC I buy today will not have great touch capabilities and it will be better to buy a new Windows 8 PC when it ships, but that’s going to be a wait of another 6-9 months. My son who has not been able to see his favourite TV shows in my Apple TV or in my iPad will not be happy with this wait. Over the years I have learnt that is wiser to go for a device/gadget that solves the problems that I have today, rather than wait for a new device. You can never beat the new technology wave.
Second, it is going to be in my Home. I can never imaging replacing my Windows 7 Workhorse in my office desk, what’s the point of losing 20 years of experience and productivity that comes with it and I have so many applications that works only in Windows. But the PC I was looking for now, is instead going to be used by my family for some regular browsing, Facebook, YouTube & some MS Office, all this iMac can handle comfortably just like a Windows 7 PC. Mainly it is going to be my Digital Media Hub, so it is going to be only iTunes based. I have already moved my Digital Library last year from Zune/XBOX to iTunes as my iOS devices in the house started proliferating at unstoppable pace. As it stands today Windows Phone 7.x does not support even display of Indic Languages (Tamil for me) so I don’t see myself moving from iPhone to WP7. So what can be a better PC than a iMac for iTunes workload?.
Third, I am not new to OS X as I have been using a MacBook Air for last 4 years as my travel laptop in dual boot with Windows Vista/7. But frankly I always ended up using more Windows due to familiarity.
And lastly my wife ordered that if she allows me to write this big cheque then whatever I bring home has to look good in “her” Den along with our Bookshelf & TV and I have to use it for next 3 years at the minimum.
Having narrowed down I checked out for an iMac and got the below quote. It was a bit expensive than PC choices but not my long, so I went ahead with it. I convinced our regular vendor to rush me delivery in few days against 2 weeks for this 1TB SKU.
When the iMac arrived in the carton box it was a treat to open just like opening the box of iPad or iPhone4. The box came with just the Monitor (with the machine in it), just one cable (power cable) and a small wireless keyboard and mouse. Setting it up was a breeze. I will post my experience of configuring it for my taste, my apps and my accessories in next post.
I am not in Barcelona today, I wish I was there for the Consumer Preview launch of long awaited Windows 8 from Microsoft. I am super excited, the last I felt so was when I was waiting to get my hands on Windows 95 & then for Windows XP.
Microsoft decided not to do a live webcast, not sure whether the recordings will be made available later. I am writing this blog post by following the proceedings from the superb live coverage by The Verge. With in few months of their launch, The Verge has become my technical news site of choice, I seem to be visiting it few times every day.
(Couldn’t help to notice the sofa used for sitting and demo’ing the Windows 8, the idea and the design of the sofa is strikingly similar to the one used by Steve Jobs in the original iPad launch. I see nothing wrong in getting inspired on good ideas, especially this one that is communicating the relaxed use-case for a Windows 8 device)
Microsoft talked in detail on their no compromise with Windows 8 – you don’t need to choose between Keyboard and Mouse or Touch, it can be both. PCs & Windows always have been about choice. I liked their USPs which show how Windows 8 is different from say iPad – features like side by side apps, sharing of information with Charms & Search within apps. I think these are certainly big limitations of iOS today and so pluses for Windows 8. Microsoft highlighted their point that “When you use one app, all the other apps get better”
In the Windows Store all apps will be free during Consumer Preview, so immediately install Windows 8 and rush to Windows store for downloading.
I like the new devices they showcased today, especially the new lighter and thinner machine. They even showed a machine with a port that is motorized and comes out, cool isn’t it. In the picture below of a Ultrabook look at the display (top) it is so thin, I can hardly find it in the picture.
Look at this giant screen below which was flipped from being Vertical to being flat to the ground in seconds, kind of like surface, super cool.
I like the new Storage spaces feature, ability to keep adding new storage devices and all of them getting pooled into one giant storage with no need to backup, fit and restore. Microsoft has been trying to do something similar to this for ages with Windows and Windows Home Server, but never got it main stream. Over the years, my experience of using a Windows Software mirroring has been mixed. Windows To Go, the ability to run Windows from a USB stick is exciting & can turn out to be quite useful.
It was good to see availability of lots of Apps already, including Kindle (which they demoed) and Facebook & others (which only icons were seen).
You can download all the bits from the list below (Kudos to Microsoft Operations, all the downloads happened for me immediately & were fast, just few minutes of announcements, great work in scalability):
Finally, a full review of Windows 8 is here by The Verge & a Preview from Microsoft here.
It is no news iPad has taken over the world by storm, with 55 Million units sold in just under 2 years this is phenomenal. For entertainment and consumption of content no other portable device has come closer to iPad. Microsoft & Bill Gates have pioneered and spent enormous resources on Windows Tablets for over a decade now, but they didn’t get one secret sauce right – the secret was ease of use and not power. I have a iPad2 and love the device for its simplicity & convenience. Apple got the formula right due to several reasons – correct timing, technology was available in 2010 to make it happen; iOS hides the technical complexity nicely, never showing or asking the user to make configurations or choices; the device is compact and the fact you can carry it effortlessly makes it approachable and friendly to non-techies. My mother who is in her 70s is averse to any technology more complex than a TV Remote (simpler one), over the years I have tried to make her use various devices so that she can consume her favourite Music, Movies & Family Photos. Whether it was XBOX with Windows Media Center or Netbooks or Google TV or even Apple TV she always felt a fear to spend more than few minutes to understand and try it. But with an iPad she took to it immediately, I think this was due to its use of natural gestures of using touch to control it. The same goes with Preschool kids, Doctors & Teachers.
Now its the turn of Enterprises to go with iPad. Over the last few months there are news of more Enterprises developing their internal & LOB Apps for iPad, 83% of businesses planning to deploy iPads. Apple shows many examples (pictures below) including GE deploying many of their enterprise apps for iPad, British Airways making an impact to passenger experience through use of iPad. All of these use cases are possible with other technologies (and Windows 8 has everything in theory to do these work loads better) but the fact is that iPad is doing it today & solving problems that no one saw before. Apple was initally slow but now is taking advantage of this momentum in enterprises, spicing up their business side with increasingly decent content on support & new resources.
And all this is not limited to Western world, I am hearing first hand from Indian Enterprises (Automobiles, Manufacturing & Media) whose IT departments are planning to replace Laptops given to their CXOs and A-Level Executives with iPad for ease of maintenance. I am not sure whether this can be extended beyond corner offices whose occupants have their Secretaries carry a laptop and do all the productivity work. Even if MS Office (as rumoured) comes to iPad or to Windows 8 on ARM (WOA), you can’t be productive in creating Documents or manipulating Spread sheets without a Keyboard & Mouse, instead of trying that clumsy combinations you are better off with a regular PC/Mac for these workloads. Of course majority of the workforce in Enterprises do this kind of work from 9 to 5.
Windows 8
Though many have criticised Apple for the walled garden approach of iTunes & App Store (I don’t like it at times like when it comes to Photos management), it is an important reason for the success of iPad. Microsoft in my opinion pioneered this integrated App Store model way back in 2002 with XBOX Live, but then over the decade they missed seeing the obvious and extending it to their PC, Phone & Enterprise software. Many in Media report this due to politics between divisions in a large company like Microsoft. I am happy that at least now in 2012 they are doing things right with Windows 8 & Windows Phone. Especially with WOA (Windows on ARM) and Windows Phone 8 Apollo (Rumoured) they seem to be not going for shortcuts but taking some big, audacious moves that I feel are right. We will have to wait and see how the market accepts them. I don’t see the race to be over yet in Tablets & PCs (may not be in Mobile where Android is leading in market share), Microsoft still has a good chance to play (and even lead this space) if they execute and deliver flawlessly. So far Windows 8 appears impressive but its not only the OS that is important, it is the entire ecosystem, especially their hardware partners to innovate and come with devices that people aspire for is key. In the Enterprise space with Windows 8 I feel Microsoft has an inherent advantage with their Windows Server, Active Directory, Exchange Server & other enterprise software all of which they can leverage in favour of their Tablets for Enterprises. But for consumers I am still clear on what’s going to be their compelling offering that will match & excel iTunes (Music, Movies and Apps), eagerly waiting for Feb 29th so that we may know more about this with the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Closing comments
All this battle between Apple, Microsoft & Google technology boundaries are being pushed at ever greater speeds and consumers are getting benefited enormously. And that’s for sure. Without competition any industry stagnates and it is more true for IT Industry. So let the guns roll, cannons be fired and the best minds win!
For few years now, Citibank India has a Virtual Keyboard for their online login. While this is a good scheme to prevent Keyboard hookers the UI could have been better. Security and Prevention of hacking is not an excuse for lack of design and intuitive user interface, unfortunately many think it is so.
Notice the below screenshot. They say IPIN cannot contain special characters, can contain only Alphabets & Numbers. Then why did the Virtual Keyboard have special characters. Frequently I end up pressing special characters then get prompted I am wrong!
World over Microsoft conducts lots and lots of events every year. Their flagship events are two – Professional Developer Conference a.k.a. PDC (this is where they announce the next big thing like .NET, Windows 2000, Longhorn, Windows Azure and so on) and Tech Ed (this is more hands-on current technologies for IT Professionals with some Developer content) happening almost every year in USA and then replicated across the world. About five years back in 2006, they announced a new event by name “Mix” which for the first time tried to bring 3 stakeholders into one event – Business Managers, Designers & Developers. It was started to promote Web development and Microsoft’s new designer tools family Microsoft Expression. This was the first Microsoft event where you got to hear Microsoft’s competitors like Yahoo! & Amazon (Microsoft wasn’t in cloud yet in 2006), which I found to be quite useful to get a sense of where Web technologies are going in general. And the lunch-table discussions I had with such a variety of audience were very interesting.
 
As a Microsoft Regional Director from 1999 and as a Microsoft Partner for many years, these events have become annual fixtures in my calendar.With the new “Build” event that happened last year (instead of a PDC) where they announced Windows 8, it was clear the existing Microsoft events landscape was changing. And indeed it has changed. First casualty was PDC and today they officially acknowledged that there will be no Mix in 2012. Though I feel sad for an event that offered variety and fun, in the last few years unfortunately Mix was made into yet another Developer event by Microsoft. So it was time the event got killed and merged into a unified better event.
In this moment of our prayers for “Mix” and for its soul to R.I.P I I will like to look back at some of the moments I have experienced around this event.
Mix ‘06
Bill Gates announced and kicked off the very first Mix at the Venetian, Las Vegas. The big announcement was WPF/E (which became Silverlight later) and demonstration of it on a Nokia phone which never got released.
Mix06 was my second or third trip to Vegas so I didn’t understand well on how lodging in Vegas works. I ended up blowing money (literally) by booking a $400/Night (concessional rate for attendees!) room at the venue itself (Venetian).
Mix ‘07
This event was all about Silverlight!. I am sure most of us .NET enthusiasts remember the demo where Silverlight in a browser with C# code-behind winning over Java Script in a game of chess. Looking back (from a world of Node.JS & Chakra) I was not sure on what we were smoking back then in May 2007.
I found the BBC Radio 1 and Windows Live Messenger social co-browsing (called Messenger activity then) & sharing to be quite cool. Unfortunately it never got released outside UK (just like most of the good stuffs from BBC which are available only to UK Residents due to a antiquated theory of UK Tax payer funding).
What got me thinking was a quote made by “The Economist” Publisher Mr.Andrew Rashbass on a panel discussion (which alone was worth my travel to the US from India). The quote was on how Portable Reader devices replacing paper. Andrew said “it will not happen in short-term, not in mid-term and definitely not in long-term and that BillG can use one, but no one else will use it”
I think this year Microsoft started to highlight that Mix was a “72 Hour conversation”, a tag line I liked & which I consider to have captured the essence of what Mix ‘06 and Mix ‘07 were. The evening party on one of the days was fun and colourful.
After blowing my money staying in Venetian, I realized how lodging works in Vegas – you can get rooms from $40 to $1 Million per night, it all depends on what you are looking for. From this year, I was booking myself a room at $40 in the Stratosphere Hotel. Although it is on the other end of the Strip, it was a good 30 minutes walk in the evening after you finish your dinner near by to Venetian like in the Food court at The Capital Grille.
Mix ‘08
This year the keynote was by Ray Ozzie who outlined Microsoft’s investment in IE and Silverlight, Web Slices and more. Lots of demos this year.
Then it was Dean Hachamovitch talking about how great IE 8.0 was (do you remember this IE?)
Lot of coverage about live streaming capabilities of Silverlight during the then upcoming Beijing Olympics
My fellow RD Scott Stanfield’s company Vertigo demoing the “Hard Rock” app they have build using Silverlight and Deep-Zoom technology.
Coca-Cola sponsored UEFA Euro 2008 & Windows Live Messenger community (what was that I don’t remember other than the photograph below?)
On the corridors of the show, I gave an audio interview to Scott Hanselman on Outsourcing (the hot topic then because of a Presidential Election year in USA).
Mix ‘09, 10, 11
Due to the onslaught of recession, travel budget constraints and thanks to great live streaming of the Keynotes by Microsoft, the next three years I decided to watch it from Home, only trouble being the need to have loads of coffee to keep me awake through the Night in India. I didn’t miss out the individual talks either – all the session videos were made available from Channel9 for download in few days of the event getting over.
After 25 hours of listening spread over last 30 days during my regular drives to work and Gym sessions I finished listening to the Audiobook of “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson. Few months back I had finished the book “The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation” by Jay Eliiots so I was familiar with the man & his life. A lot has been written about Mr.Jobs and about the book in the weeks following his sad demise in October, so I will write in next few paragraphs my impression about the book and what I feel after reading it.
First thing you notice is the size of the book which looks exhaustive, over 600 pages in the hardcover edition. A thorough work by the author “Walter Isaacson”, considering it should have been a monumental effort for Walter to make Jobs talk and then to verify/cross-verify facts as Steve Jobs (as you will learn in the book) is known to distort reality both wilfully and unawares.
In the recent years media has taken a liking to Apple because of Apple’s phenomenal success in Marketplace and its massive market capitalization. Millennials reading it are unaware of the two decades of struggle Jobs had to grow through to bring (personally mature and ripen with age) to that level, he had to suffer through being ousted from the company he founded & so on. Jobs’ early life was unlike any others, he had to deal with the fact of being adopted, had long stints with most things that are narcotics (ACIDs, LSDs), his year of free-roaming in India in Himalayan plains, his interest of Japanese Zen philosophy, yet his appreciation of Italian architecture and the list goes on. What strikes you is the realization that a man as creative as Jobs, with his Buddhist bend he can be a sensitive person, pick up easily vibes assessing people emotionally, yet can use those same skills to hurt the people who are around him at his will. It is well know that Jobs liked the quote “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” from the back cover of last issue of “Whole Earth” magazine in 1971. Jobs had a way of thinking/behaving like pirates during the original Mac development times in early 1980s. Jobs doing most of his important meetings and probably decisions too during his long walks with the concerned person – be it Sculley, Gates or Music label titans. Jobs had an enviable ability to laser-sharp focus on items he cared and completely ignore things he doesn’t care or don’t want to hear – this led him to create brilliant products of our age.
Readers will see the obvious differences between the two personalities who shaped the digital world in last 4 decades – Bill Gates & Steve Jobs, they are exactly of opposite poles. I enjoyed this quote from Bill Gates while countering Jobs claims that Microsoft stole for its Windows the GUI from Apple Mac OS – “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it”.
In the last chapters of the book you are left wondering what if this man could have lived for few more years, what more great products he could have given us and what about his young kids losing their father for ever. But then it suddenly hits you, that’s what life and nature is. All of us including Jobs get to stand on giants (and generations before us) shoulders and it is up to each one of us to make use of the vantage point & the time we have got there.
After listening to the Audiobook I bought the hardcover edition as well – as the book certainly needs a reserved place in my bookshelf and the hardcover has some of the rare photographs from his life journey.
For years whenever I wanted to do some screencasts or record what’s on the screen, I have been using Techsmith’s great Camtasia software or Windows Media Encoder. Today from a FaceBook wall post I learnt that the free & open source video player – VLC Media Player has this feature in every copy.
The steps to follow are just four, first is to select Convert/Save option from the Media Menu, then in the dialog box that appears select “Capture Device” tab, then select "Desktop” in the Capture Mode option, increase the frame rate (for smoother animation provided you have powerful graphic card) and then press “Convert/Save” button. That’s all.
After upgrading to iOS 5 in both my iPhone & iPad, one issue I have been struggling was with Photo Stream – the automatic sync service of photos across iOS devices & PC/Mac. The issue was how to get the sync done to Windows PC faster and how to delete photos in the stream. There is no feature available for editing or deleting the photos in the Photo stream. Then I saw this Apple support article that says how you can reset and get all the photos deleted in the stream.
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