I took up a course on linked in Learning on microservices and have put up the learning summary here in this blog post.
If you like this content, you can check out my other learning summaries on this blog.
I took up a course on linked in Learning on microservices and have put up the learning summary here in this blog post.
If you like this content, you can check out my other learning summaries on this blog.
Its been nearly more than two years since my last post. A pandemic in between, situations in the family, movement of content from blogs to vlogs, family and other priorities needing more time, some hobbies along the way where I got serious, and office consuming most of my time – you get the idea.
I am still not dead. Very much alive and kicking, still investing into gadgets, food, cars and bikes. I am at point in time where I do everything I want to because YOLO!
further I am in zen mode mostly. No liabilities with banks, and generally eased out living except for the focus on work. And when else to work the most if not now during what’s potentially the last decade of my career? 🙂
I am here to write more and I will continue to when I get time. I hope you would continue to support me by reading along as I bring to you interesting facets as I pass through life. In the age of instagram, twitter, shorts – I still feel there’s an avenue to write and one to read whats written pretty much like the hard bound books we still read even in the age of kindle.
As 2021 came to a close, I realised that it was a full year from my last blog post on the bangalore blog. This meant a lot of things in between that took away my time. I got into two hobbies – biking and singing.
Since that last post, I have now managed to put up 10000km on my BMW which is the single best thing I have done in my life.
The other aspect of course is singing – I got into Smule App being a shy guy. I wanted to learn the nuances of singing correctly without the stage fear. A somewhat botched attempt to sing at my cousin’s wedding wanted me to aspire for much better stuff. With about 500 contributions so far on Smule, I now have come to a much better understanding of how to sing well and am much more confident to go on stage again. And it is pretty much time for another cousin to get married.
I have so many in my own generation who are not married yet so that would mean good food and great times for these weddings yet to come.
As I navigated the entire 2021 first trying to get vaccinated, then trying to be as safe as I could be with my family, we managed not to get into this Virus effect until now. Just when I thought I would start blogging again, Omicron hit us and the entire family is now recovering. Whether to feel bad that the virus hit us, or to feel good Delta did not hit us last year when we were not vaccinated, your guess is as good as mine on what I must be thinking.
I spend the entire covid reign time in finalizing a house for myself which I am happy about so as to look out for a change in the near future. It is not going to be easy to handle this, but what is life without excitement!
I sold my SUV/MUV since I rationalized with myself that I am biking more than driving and I least bit have any regrets on what I did. It is liberating without a car occupying a driveway and not being driven anywhere versus to find a BMW bike which I can actually ride always and loads of space in the same driveway at home.
I still have a small car which too I do not drive much. So I think it is the end of cars for us as such.
I changed my job too into something much more involving, but the timings and the load worked on my mental health a bit and biking and singing balanced it out when it got a bit too much. I have now learnt what I need on a job that I take up and one of the options is to also retire if there is an opportunity.
I also did not renew my blog on time and since the domain expired, I did it a bit late but also thought this is a good opportunity to move back to wordpress, a platform that I loved a lot for its ease of writing blog posts. And here I am doing precisely that with my new version of the bangalore blog.
As usual I will continue to bring you interesting info surrounding my life and my favourite city Bengaluru as time goes by, and wish you visit my blog often to share my happiness.
So here is to the new version of the wordpress hosted Bangalore Blog.
As you would all know I booked a BMW 310GS bike the experience of which I had detailed here.
At the time of writing that article, way back in mid November, I did not have the bike registered to my name. From there on a series of wrong steps happened and screwed my happiness for nearly four months, leaving me running from pillar to post. I am detailing a few of the things I would want every buyer to understand while buying the bike.
Understanding how things are done helps you in going about logically and completing an incomplete and frustration-raising job.
Usually the dealer has the authority to grant under “his” showroom quota, a temporary registration with a leeway of 1 or 2 days usage of the bike while in the meanwhile he will put the case forward for the permanent registration number to be allotted. And that step was done for me.
I was told I could take the bike home since I had paid for it. So I got it home. This is mistake #1
Never take the bike out of the showroom even if you have paid for it and it is not registered fully yet.
Since the registration for the bike did not happen even after a week, dealer decided to issue me a separate temporary registration number against just my name after paying a fee and a fine that I noticed (perhaps for not having registered the bike) which I could use for a month from that date.
This was mistake #2, which was a consequence of mistake #1. I started using the temporary registration number.
Since now the bike was with me but was not registered and it was beyond couple of weeks, the RTO had a condition that I had to personally take the bike there to prove that I was indeed the owner. So I went to Jayanagar RTO and waited half a day for just the inspector to come over and see my bike. This whole thing was done because the online registration of the new vehicle did not go through properly.
The reason was that the dealer got a payment error on the gateway while paying my tax amount. This further introduced a delay of one week while the dealer waited for the money to come back into the account from which he paid failing which he would not pay again. To avoid this occurrence again I was told to do this manually and hence had to visit the RTO.
Post the visit, I was told the registration was done. But I never got my registration number even after a week. This was unfortunate part #3
After putting much pressure my number was allotted and I asked the dealer for the number plate since the number was allotted. Here is where things went terribly wrong. The online data fed into the system by the dealer ended up with the chassis number reflecting properly but engine number showed “0”.
Since the HSRP number plate procedure involves having both engine number and chassis number to be entered properly for the request to go through – now the dealer was stuck with this procedure. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. Dealer initiated a correction request for my record online along with 8-10 other owners who had other errors with the RTO software. This was screw up #4
After much hassle and seeing nothing happening even after three months, I spoke with the dealer and with BMW and also visited the RTO to ascertain what was the issue. Dealer said RTO goofed up the engine number entry, RTO said they can never do any editing and its entered wrongly by the dealer. So I had to go back to the dealer and challenge them that they had entered something wrong and faulted my record. They denied it.
The reason for me to believe they could have gone wrong is due to the fact that my insurance for my bike was goofed up with the wrong bike model number leading to a cancellation and reissuance of insurance on day of delivery which itself was an unpleasant experience.
In the meanwhile I applied for DL renewal for a relative of mine and when sourcing the records from the system it showed him as a female – which was a basic mistake. It is only then I understood from the agents and friends that the RTO software is all botched up and was taken to production because of time pressures from the higher ups without validating it properly. It makes me think even the vendor is questionable in the quality aspects.
This is what made me strongly believe that the software and its mapping for entered fields to actual tables in the database was going wrong for many people and I was not the only one. This I realised is the next major shit #5
So the dealer started seriously following up on the letter issued to RTO for correction in their software after four months – yes four frickinn months – of me waiting. They probably had the company talk to the RTO, and dealer spoke to RTO agents mutliple times and after some strong escalation the RTO finally fixed the issue of the proper engine number being entered.
In this time, I had gone to nearly eight different rides, and covered 4000 kilometers on the bike, the bike underwent first service for 1000km without even having proper registration or RC card. . As though to add insult to injury my bike battery died within 1500km and from what I understand they have replaced it with an exide battery as it works equivalent to the BMW battery. I had to tow the bike to the showroom at my own cost since it would not start no matter what paying towing charges from my own pocket since I had no RSA which would otherwise cost me 10000 bucks as high costs – the perks of owning a BMW I assume.
Finally after hundreds of phone calls, tens of visits to the RTO, hundreds of whatsapp messages and even the cops catching me for fining me for various reasons post COVID – this whole purchase has left a bitter taste in my mouth.
After four months of buying the bike – one fine day I got a call that the corrections have been done and number plate has been requested and after a couple of days I finally got them installed on the bike. At the time of writing my digital RC still shows engine number as zero and I do not have my physical RC card. I am not even sure of how long that is going to take now and what all errors it would have.
I am now skeptical of anything to do with RTO itself. I had to tag BMW and the RTO multiple times on twitter for help to even get this far. In all of this the dealer did not even bother to refund me the “handling charges” – the scam going on everywhere in the city these days. If I had to take the bike for inspection myself, what handling did the dealer do? At best they have manhandled my case for four months. So what happens to the money I have paid the dealer for this? – Simple, no refunds.
In all of this mess, the bike has stood up to its quality and has performed well so long. If this means some consolation I will go with it.
It is not in my intention to throw my anger at anyone. But dealers need to treat customers better with respect to the communication of being honest about what they are trying to do. If situation goes out of hand they need to talk daily to assure customer that issues will be solved. Empty promises of “Sir this will get sorted in one week” when in reality it took four months is absolutely unnecessary and shows the maturity of dealers and their communication aspects. Brands need to reach out directly to customers if they have to sell more models next.
The brand connect with customers is a powerful aspect and people won’t take all this lying down if brands decide to ignore customers. Finally the government needs to take these shoddy software vendors to task for bringing them a bad name all over the place.
As for now, my amazing rides shall continue with a bit more peace of mind, that this issue is hopefully sorted and assuming my RC card shall arrive soon.
Written with StackEdit.
After 20 years of driving a car, I decided to get back to biking again. My criteria was clear, easy to sit, easy to use, good height for seating to reduce back pain and reasonable power and torque. I really wanted it to be as lightweight as possible. I am a bit leaner than most heavy weight people so wanted a bike I could push and shove if it came to that on the road.
Shortlist & showroom visit
A few bikes impressed me. Friend got a Harley and from a long time I was eyeing a Ninja as well. Couple of friends had RE Himalayan and Yamaha FZ so those were under purview as well. In addition BMW caught my fancy for its brand name, looks etc and also the fact it ticked few of the boxes that I had for myself. KTM was a contender too though I felt it was too sporty and too dangerous as it picks up speed way too fast.
I preferred the pedals being right below my leg rather than the fact I have to angle forward and keep my legs a bit backward (sporty seating stance). So bikes such as Avenger, or bikes such as Honda CBRs were out of scope because of their extreme cruising or extreme sporty stance. I wanted a relaxed seating and relaxed driving posture. KTM was out because of it being too aggressive for a started like me (although I may have wanted to consider the duke).. That left the RE, Yamaha, and BMW though for some reason I never decided to check out Honda.
At the time of making a decision, the Meteor was not out, so wasn’t the Highness. So it was probably an opportunity lost to test out both. When I visited the showroom in early October, there was no test ride as bike was not launched. So tentatively booked it with 20k bucks. Meanwhile a friend had a BS4 GS 310 and I managed to take a test ride and get convinced. The BS6 version then would be only better if not worse.
Booking experience and test ride at showroom
Towards the latter half of October, I got to test ride the motorbike and I felt it was a bit top heavy and bottom light. But all ergonomics were spot on and there was no issue anywhere as such. Post the already done booking I worked out some loan formalities for the bike and that process was rather smooth talking to the bankers and coordination with the showroom.
Delivery and first ride home
Day of delivery was just one month after prebooking but still one of the earliest bikes delivered in Rallye Kayene blue colour. It was a smooth take over of the bike with pending payments done and bank loans disbursed and there was not much fuss around the delivery itself.
However the staff did make some errors with insurance papers (wrong model specified) which led to cancellation of insurance and need to reinsure the vehicle. One another major issue was the registration not done due to RTO gateway payment error. I had to literally take home the bike on a temporary registration (belonging to showroom).
The ride itself was smooth though the bike is revving a bit at idle more than usual. The design caught a lot of eyeballs on the road, with people asking me how much it costed and what was the engine displacement, complimenting the colour, etc. I was pleasantly surprised at the build quality of this bike. I would have preferred a much better engine grunt, but this sounds a bit lame to my liking. Basically there is no announcement or arrival at signals or places where you get the vehicle to stop. So no notice until the big huge frame gives it away.
This bike sits tall. I mean really tall. Among a row of bikes, this bike is like easily visible no matter where this is. Filled some fuel on the way and managed to get it home. I literally had to renovate my gates to fit the bike in. This bike weighs close to 170+ kg and needs 3 feet of clear space to enter a ramp and exit.
Post sales headaches
Post sales support has been a bit on the downside with the showroom. As of writing the article my bike is still not registered. It is 15 days now after taking delivery. Other than being apologetic nothing is being done to logically close the case. I am feeling that I will already reach the first service date of November end and still the vehicle won’t be registered.
Showroom argument is “we have created temp regn for you sir, so what is the issue”, my argument is “bike has been delivered, logically close the case”. I think they need some lessons on managing customer expectations, specially when someone is paying so much for a bike.
I will write about the driving experience in further threads, but for now I will leave you with one heck of a looker bike!
I was not looking what I was doing and plugged in my Alexa power supply into my wooden LED digital clock that I purchased from Singapore for above 50 SGD and the next thing I know is the clock was beeping with screwed up display.
I knew that was the end of it. So there began my search to replace that clock. I checked out many websites in India and came across that the same LED clock including shipping would cost me much more than 50SGD. It was not worth it and I was wondering what to do when I came across the Croma web site which was selling the Lenovo Smart clock at a deep discount of 3999/- down sharply from the MRP of 9999/-
At the time it was launched the thought of someone having to pay 10k for that clock astounded me. So I did not for it at that time. However at 3999/- it was a compelling buy.
I made a short video on unboxing this clock. It was a fairly simple unboxing and took very minimal time and less fussy as well. Take a look for yourself.
The following are worth mentioning about the gadget
CONS: There are really no points I can take to nitpick on this product. I really do not have much to say on the negatives of the product. In fact in my opinion there are really no negatives. Had it been sold for the original price of 10000 it would have been a huge negative, but that is also not the case now.
The Lenovo Smart Clock is a great buy at 3999/-, the hardware is slick and fuss free, the display is amazing and so is the sound. It does sound a bit tinny since it is not a bass machine like say the HomePod and rightly so. This is not a device built for music but still gives you listening pleasure if you wish to play music.
For what it has to offer, it is pretty accurate and integrates google tech very well inside what is a right dimension of hardware. The Lenovo Clock is a hardware that would get you to actually use it more than say a Google Home Device. Its understanding of Indian English accent is commendable as well considering how far Google has come with this.
So what are you waiting for, let me know in the comments below if you liked the review and if you are going to get yourself one of these.
Until my next post, Stay safe!
So finally I did it. The opportunity came across. COVID. I could not and did not want to go for a haircut to a salon outside due the risks. The only other option was me to have a haircut at home itself. And for my kids as well.
I had a Philips beard trimmer which was unsuitable to cut hair on the head. In fact it is even a wrong tool to use to do that. I had seen a lot of these hair trimmers in the salons that I was interested to see what they were using. And then it came through. I made an Amazon purchase for the WAHL corded clipper.
So was it a good purchase? Read on to find out as I will share interesting snippets about this product.
In short its a corded hair clipper. Period. But with a difference.
The clipper is heavy. If you do not hold it properly it can give you wrist pain. It is seriously heavy in a good way. It feels solid in the hand. The motor is powerful. Really powerful. You can feel it when you switch it on. Perfect build for the price.
The hair lengths attachments help you adjust how much of hair length you want to clip. It take a bit of getting used to.
Here is a video review of the product unboxing
This is the real thing about this product. Can you actually use it at home. I used it at home and this is what I found out, read on.
The product is solid for its price. It has none of the efficiency issues that we may have with cordless trimmers. It’s a simple product with not much tech complications, but still can get difficult to use as the process is more about skill than anything about the product usage itself.
The other things it will teach you are patience, care, being slow, and getting to know how difficult a barber’s job really is. This is why everyone cannot be a barber. This is not a lawnmower job, it is a hair trimming job. And if the end result is a disaster you not only lose that customer, you will lose other customers also by word of mouth.
With every lost customer, the skill is hard to master. If you liked this review, leave me your comments below!
In the second of this three part series, I outlined the improvements to WatchOS, Privacy, Smart Home, and Apple TV coming up in iOS14. To conclude in this article we discuss the big daddy of all OSes, Mac OS.
This time the new operating system is going to be called Big Sur. The focus is on design and power of the OS. Some of the important introductions are as below
Big Sur claims that the Safari browser is now 50% faster than Chrome. And we all know that Chrome is going down the drain with its memory hogging functionality. This comes at a time when Microsoft Edge is blazing fast on all platforms. The real competition is now really between Safari and Edge rather than Safari and Chrome
Safari also has improvements to privacy and now will allow users to see how websites are tracking them, using privacy report button. Website passwords have stronger level of encryption within Safari in case of a data breach and Safari is now also allowing developers to port extensions to Safari easily.
The Mac app store will also feature a list of these extensions to find them easily. Being able to give extensions permissions just by the hour or day and giving them specific permissions for specific websites makes Safari very powerful. Safari also has a new look with custom backgrounds, and specific themes.
One of the issues we people have always had is to have multiple tabs open to the point that each tab shows only the icon. It would by then become hard to read and we would not understand which page is on which tab. For this the new browser comes with page preview just by pointing the button at that tab which in my opinion is a great move.
Another feature introduced by Safari also includes the fact that we can now close only tabs to the right or only taps to the left. Safari also comes now with built-in translation where we can translate an entire webpage in real-time contextually while being on the same page. This is especially great if you want to read content written in other languages, but shown in let’s say English.
Perhaps the biggest update in WWDC but still nothing visual is the decision from Apple to move from Intel to ARM. This is by far the most important decision that will let Apple bring about newer tech in near future of at least five years. Every new hardware released hereon will be having ARM chips and it is an exciting time for both Apple and ARM knowing the sophistication of ARMs IPs in terms of performance and the likes.
Some of the key points about the hardware evolution are as below
The developer betas are already available and the iOS 14 release would be officially available by Fall time (September in India). These OS updates are substantial in their own right and have finally caught up with what Android was offering all the while. But in a more sure footed manner.
It is an exciting time for buying Apple products especially with the very performant and less power hungry ARM cores and it is only anyones imagination how many avenues this will open for Apple in future. The only thing left to do is to wait to savour the new iOS14 for now and some great ARM based hardware in the years to come!
In my last post we discussed the impact of the new features being launched as part of iOS 14 release which is upcoming. Simultaneous improvements to WatchOS, iPAD OS, MacOS, and TVOS also mean all things get incrementally better than before.
In this second post, let us discuss the remaining things that made up the WWDC announcements.
So the Watch Os is undergoing some transformation as well. The things they have introduced are
Note: For India however the cycling data on watch is not going to be so very useful yet. The sleep monitoring assumes you have the watch on, and the phone near you which we Indians are not accustomed to.
Special feature – helping you with your hand washing during COVID times. Apple thought they could use their existing sensors to include this feature where the watch knows the time when you are washing your hand apparently and runs a 20 second timer to ensure you wash enough. During pandemic times such small but important features add to customer delight if not anything else. Again for India, one cannot be really sure how many of us will even be using these watches or wearing them all the time.
Apple is making many improvements to privacy of customer data. Customers can now choose what kind of data they want to send back to the servers. Some of the salient points on privacy are as below
For us Indians, this is a welcome move to protect privacy of phone users.
The home app is now going to have a uniform standard of being able to identify appliances within home since Apple is now collaborating with many companies to integrate their products into the OS.
Smart notifications like the one that comes up when AirPods are nearby and ready to pair for example will now be shown on iPhone with automatic intelligent automations being suggested by the phone for each device.
Special focus is on some things like
Apple TV gets slightly better with PIP support for handling workout activities while watching your favourite shows, multi user profiles with pausing games where the user left off the previous times, etc.
Apple TV+ also includes Foundation, a visualisation of Issac Asimov’s novels.
In the last part of this article series, let us see what is coming up as part of Mac OS Big Sur.
At the WWDC Apple launched many improvements to many of their operating system versions and many new features as well which makes Apples operating system exciting to use. This article aims to dig deeper into how these features translate into productivity or usefulness for the Indians at large.
We will understand how these features are going to be to use in daily life for many people in the Indian subcontinent. So what are we waiting for? let’s just dig right in.
The app library is a welcome addition to what we already thought as a cumbersome operation of having to arrange apps the way we want. However I have a grouse about this, there are automatically arranged categories and sometimes that may not be what the user really expects.
My opinion is that the app library may probably have few useful blocks, but there could also be blocks that are not exactly those choices the user wanted.
In India we have different ways of organising apps. While some people have too many apps, and they have so many categories which themselves go into pages and pages, others just have hundreds of apps lying on different screens. All said and done no one goes beyond page 1 of the screens.
This was never properly implemented in iOS since a long time due to which Apple may have lost business by users on Android buying many phones which offered these since a long time. However that is about to change now with apple offering widgets on the latest iOS. These widgets are beautiful and knowing apple they come in different shapes and sizes with different amounts of info with the unique feature that upon moving the widgets around app icons, the icons arrange themselves without asking you to show how the widget fits on the screen. This is a welcome move and now iPhone users will finally feel on par and in some cases even better than android users.
Smart widget stacks automatically move depending on time of the day to show you what you want and you can see all different types of the same widgets even before placing them on the screen. This clearly shows that Apple has understood the pain points about these widgets on Android before launching them here and has fixed all those potential problems.
The picture in picture is another Android feature that was available on Samsung and other phones since a long while. So its the same thing here the only quirk being that if you minimize the video, audio still keeps playing. Other than that its pretty much normal fare and is coming to iPhone a few years late.
Siri has been redesigned in iOS 14 to be more smarter and answer more complex questions. Other than that the results of questions you pose Siri are shown as notifications overlaid on the current app you are using if the information suits such a panel (like for eg., weather) which means you are less likely to be visually disturbed.
Other than that Siri button is now much more minimal and shows up in a really small area of the screen unlike the wavy UI we have known Siri for.
Audio messages and dictation are more integrated with Siri now. Nothing that was not there before, but hopefully more accurate.
Siri would have been able to translate few sentences here and there anyways in due course, but what fun is it to just use it for that. What we would like to have is two panes with one showing the language I know, and the other showing the language I want to know, and both using audio inputs to help translate from one language to another side by side. So this is a good move to make it a separate app called Translate which would be very useful in due course.
Just that be aware for Indian languages the updates may take a year or year and half to be rolled out with mostly basic support for Hindi, and a few other languages. This is not easy so that is how it is going to be. There will be delays in rolling this out fully in all countries. With India the challenge is 26+ different languages and hence its also an opportunity for people to contribute to this app if need be. The specifics are yet to be rolled out in due course.
Only 11 languages are now supported and more are yet to come. This app works completely offline as well and securely so that your data is with you.
Landscape conversation mode is wow as usual !
In short, conversations are going to be supported now under messages. Also many more memojis as this seems to be gaining popularity. In line replies to messages were much needed and going by the demo it seems well implemented. The only thing you could do earlier was to show icons, but now real actual messages can be collapsed and expanded as replies to a message in the conversation.
Pinning conversations above, messages showing up on avatars and @ addressing someone so that you can subscribe to only those messages sent to you as notifications are some improvements to this feature. However this is where I have the biggest grouse with Apple yet in 2020. In India we know that 7/10 messages we get are spam. Mobile numbers are sold and within no time of acquiring a number you are beginning to get spammed already.
The junk section of the SMS messages was not implemented properly and it remains so in iOS 14. This is a big disappointment. With apps like true caller or advanced algorithmsappstools that could have helped to kill these promo messages by filtering has been given a miss (whether or not it is country specific). This could have been difficult to implement or too country specific – not sure – but its a disappointing miss nonetheless.
So dear fellow Indians, let us continue to not use SMS app on iOS. Bad. Or you can still look at that important salary credit information along with that SMS which provides you confidential massage or friendship services in utmost fairness in an area nearby where you live.
Every WWDC there will always be a talk about maps being redesigned ground up. I am not sure why maps has to be redesigned ground up. For me ground up means throwing out the old code and restarting from scratch, so unless you are doing that Apple I think usage of word ground up is not so correct in my opinion.
That said, Google maps now shows you which lane you are on when you are going by a flyover, whether under or over it. A guy from fast company shares an opinion that apple maps is way better than rival google. Well please come to India and start using Apple maps and I will bet you that if you do not ditch apple maps in half an hour, I will be surprised.
Let me be a blunt here, finding great places is not what we do on everyday basis with maps. We use maps to get from point A to point B in India, in the least amount of time. All we want to know in Bangalore is whether we will spend 3 days at silk board, or 1 week before we get a move on. Having said this, all we wish to know is how long it will take to get from A to B. 70% of Indians dont use maps or have smartphones. 90% of the remaining 30% use maps for the reasons I stated and the remaining 10% of the 30% maybe using it to find “great places” using guides.
Now coming to some good things about maps, there are cycling routes introduced. But in India you cycle over the same flyover someone drives through. So big deal again! For us we have only one set of clogged roads whether you are on cycle or bus, or auto, or car, or a bullock cart. And for us if a cycle can go somewhere so can an auto or a two wheeler, we will somehow squeeze through. And we only lift our cycles while crossing the road or giving it to service.
As for EV routing, hopefully we would need that feature in 2030. As for notifying which areas are congestion zones don’t bother. Just show a huge big circle around Bangalore. That is all. The whole city is a congestion zone for us anyways.
Ok so you have great improvements on Car Play which includes – wait a minute – new wallpaper options? Really? Wow!
And you want to digitally open the car. That is great. So how do I use it? Wait what? I need to purchase the next year’s BMW for that feature? Hmmm …..
When launching features like this how about using SMS, bluetooth and some existing tech to make every car digitally lockable and unlockable? That would have been real innovation. Well I am hoping some accessory guy will come up with that shortly.
And sure yes you are making this tech available with iPhones and new cars only, but why not old cars? With a mod maybe?
App clips are small part of apps, and launches to just let you pay or do some important things only instead of needing full apps. That now is a good move apple.
So basically Apple have launched something called sidebar which in effect is windows explorer’s clone on ipad. Calls on iPAD now have compact notifications instead of full screen one, again something Android has finished eating for breakfast lunch and dinner long long back. What took you so long? And on top of that you say customers will love it? No doubt, they were already getting frustrated and were about to switch to Android for something as basic as this. Good for you, you held them back.
The universal search is a good addition and was always there on other devices such as TV from sometime. I am not sure such a thing is there for Android yet and so deeply integrated, so correct me if I am wrong there. Good for Apple with this feature.
Here is where Apple has innovated this year and it shows. Using Scribble feature you can directly enter a URL into a browser address bar for example. But for longer URLs that is going to be a pain. I do not see many people using pencil to do that. However it is about continuity where a person doing free form writing actually also can input text without putting the pencil down.
It is the intent Apple had that has to be lauded. Of course a larger scale reading written text and able to paste that as analysed text into some other context is where Apple seems to have beaten Samsung at least with this release of the operating system.
Using scribble on any text field is a welcome move. Pretty cool ! Allowing me to draw figures and making them accurate, interpreting phone numbers and directions from what I write are just the most natural way of seamlessly adding richness to content. I hope you have patented that Apple!
Airpods now switch to the nearest device you are using. Without asking you. That is pretty seamless and a much wanted feature. And this time around Apple has worked on the spatial audio algorithms to give you the best sound experience with Air Pods. Tracking your head as your head moves to alter the sound distribution is way too tech savvy for sure.
The only thing left for apple is to read your brain waves and interpret what you are thinking about that secret date you are planning for and sending reminders about it which others in your family can see 🙂
Read about the rest of the WWDC updates in the Part-2 of this article.