A friend recently asked me to recommend an article for app management. “There’s so many apps on my iPhone!” he said. Well since I didn’t find one, I thought I’d make one myself!

My friend has four home screens filled with apps. This is not something out of the ordinary, as most App Store addicts have no less than 5 home screens on their iPhones. A few even find the 9 screens to be restrictive. With over 10,000 apps in the App Store, it’s not hard to find yourself looking at such a large number of apps on your iPhone. Having all these apps not only makes your phone slow, it also makes it difficult to locate that any particular app.

Doing what I do, I install end up with a whole lot of apps on my iPhone, and the important thing I’ve realized is to have a plan. Without a plan, your iPhone experience will become very hectic.

My first bit of advice is to arrange your most used apps on your first screen. While most people will prefer to leave Apple’s default apps on the first screen, I say move them out. Apps like weather and Stocks make little sense in my world, so I move them away from the first screen. Instead I keep my twitter client Tweetie ($2.99), NetNewsWire, Airsharing ($6.99) among others, as the screenshot to the right explains.

Remember, the bottom four are also movable. And they are the four apps that stay the same across all the home screens. And since I hardly ever need to access all of my phone contacts, I’ve tucked in my speed dialing app Favorites ($1.99). If you have more than 9 contacts that you frequently dial, I’d suggest you try out Smart Dial ($0.99), recommended by our very own Aayush.

Another tip I’d like to mention is never to fill up your home screens. Always leave at least one empty space or better still two. This will make sure that your apps never change their place when you want install new apps or move them between home screens. I for one get lost when any app moves even a single block on any of my home screens.

I have three key home screens. The first one is the one for those that I need at an instant. The second screen is for those apps that I need every so often, but not necessarily at the touch. The App Store, Maps, Facebook, and Record feature on this screen. I try to keep my third screen for games. And the fourth one is for those that I cannot delete – why do we have that useless Contacts app? – and for those that I’m not sure about. If I don’t access them often enough, off they go!

That’s it for my iPhone app management techniques, and I hope at least some of it makes sense. That said, I’d really like to know what methods you guys use to manage the 100s of apps that we come across.

I love receiving email. I created my first email account on Rediffmail about eight years ago. For about five years after that, email remained a novelty for me. I made ridiculous accounts with childish IDs and changed them as frequently as I did clothes. Instant messaging was the big deal at that time and, since I had been a student of an all boys schools all my life, getting to waste half an hour with a girl on IM used to be the high point of my day (yeah, lame, I know). Right from that time, all those years ago, I’ve had a deep seated love for those notifications that I had received a new email message.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that when I first read Joe Kissell’s suggestion over at Macworld that you should “empty your inbox”, I wasn’t exactly enthused by the idea of reading the entire article, which itself would only be the first one in a multi-part series. Despite my preconceived misgivings, however, I ploughed on and read the first article, and then the next one, and eventually the entire series. At the end of the day, Mr. Kissell had me convinced. Continue Reading »

Mac users swear by iTunes. While Windows users swear at it.

When the Windows version of iTunes was introduced back in 2003, Steve said, ‘iTunes for Windows is probably the best Windows app ever written”. I respectfully disagree.

iTunes on Windows is something that I dread using. Considering iPod users are forced to use iTunes, it makes me wonder how the iPod became the most popular music player in the world. Similarly, mention Quicktime to any Windows user and prepare to be amused with the amount of hate this little application has. Just to be clear, on the Mac one cannot live without Quicktime. 

If you take a good look at both the applications, you will notice that both are very similar to their Mac counterparts. What makes them suck so much on Windows and work so amazingly on the Mac? And more importantly, what opinion does this leave Windows users of Apple’s applications?

No matter how much Steve Jobs complains about how difficult the Windows coding environment, the end user finds a buggy, slow application which doesn’t work half as good as the other offerings on Windows. Quicktime is only installed as a necessary evil for when the average user wants to pay a quicktime trailer. iTunes on the other hand gets installed because of its iPod fame. But even a Core 2 Duo cannot render the Cover flow interface of iTunes like a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 does.

Quicktime on Windows of course is nearly non functional. First of all are the ‘Buy Me!’ nags that show on launch (which Mac users never see). Second, hardly any formats work in Quicktime! On the Mac we have Perian and a bunch of other codecs that make playing video very easy. On Windows Quicktime cannot be customised beyond its preferences.

One thing Apple is doing right, is Safari. The browser has proven to be quite a competitor on Windows. Although it lacks support from third party plugin makers, it still is very speedy and feature rich to compete with the rest of the browsers. Most of the non-geeks I have recommended Safari to have spoken only good words for this browser. I was hoping that iTunes 8 would tell a similar tale, but alas, it just gets slower.

However, there’s still hope. Apple is putting Leopard on a diet, and will soon release Snow Leopard (that’s not how it works in nature though). With Snow Leopard, Apple is removing all the junk code, and putting in some new technologies, and rewriting some of the existing code of applications. Basically making it built for speed and the future.

I do hope that in this grand scheme of things, Apple cleans out the code of Quicktime and iTunes on Windows so that Windows users realise what they are missing (and make it more bearable when we are forced to use a PC). Make them feel like the only two Windows applications that are worth looking at, are made by Apple. Make them want to use Quicktime and iTunes, by choice, not by force. Make them want to switch to a Mac and be done with all that mess.

Over at livemint.com, Priyanka Mehra and Shauvik Ghosh have a story on how and why the iPhone failed to take off in India, and boy, a truer article I’ve never read! Apple either doesn’t understand the Indian market at all or just doesn’t care about it. They’ve never really paid any attention to their flailing Mac business out here or tried to make the iPod as much of a household name as it is in the USA. Now that it’s a mobile phone we’re talking about, they’re finding it difficult to gain a foothold in the country with the fastest growing cellphone industry in the world. And it serves them right.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Apple’s products—everything from the hardware design to the tiniest level of software minutia to the integration between their various products is incredibly well thought out and implemented. However, when it comes to aggressively pricing and marketing their products, the only country they seem to give a damn about is the United States.

How else can one explain the lack of the Apple Online Store, the iTunes Store (one that actually sells music and movies like it’s supposed to), or even a single Apple Retail Store? How can one explain the huge disparity in the prices of all Apple products out here when compared to their USA counterparts? How can one explain the complete lack of any advertisement directly from Apple in any form in the second most populous country in the world?

Apple doesn’t care about the Indian market and it has now come to bite them in the, er, posterior end. At least this one time, I’m glad to see Apple not being a success and people not taking a liking to an Apple product. And the fact that it makes my iPhone unique is only a small part of that. What makes me glad, primarily, is the hope that they will perhaps start taking India a little more seriously now.

What Apple needs to do now is get off the proverbial high horse and face the music. They need to realise that when their CEO climbs up onstage at one of the most high profile technology events of the year and declares that the iPhone will be priced at $199 or less all over the world, their world map had better include India as well.

Furthermore, it’s high time Apple came to terms with the fact that you aren’t really in the cellphone business until you’ve managed to infiltrate the school and college campuses of India. And for that to happen, they need to add the capability to forward text messages pronto. We also need video recording, Bluetooth (that actually works), and copy-paste, but these can be dealt with later. But if you want your product to be in the hands of the millions of teenage prepaid SIM card users out here, it better be able to pass on that not-quite-so-funny joke they just received to everyone on their contact list.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Apple still plans to keep things the way they are currently and is happy with their slice of the Indian market pie, no matter how small it may be. If that is the case, well, it’s just more bad news for us Indians. But something tells me that’s not the case anymore. I do not think that a man like Steve Jobs and a company like Apple would be foolish enough to willingly allow Nokia easy access to the pockets of the millions of smartphone users out here. Sooner or later, Apple will get serious about India. It’s just a matter of time.

Watch this space for updates.

When Apple announced that the new MacBook will not have firewire, the entire mac community was enraged! How is it possible that Apple is ditching the better, faster and more powerful technology over something as windowsy as USB2.0? We macboys have always talked highly of firewire and its benefits, and to find Apple has suddenly gone pro-USB has left a lot of us confused. 

Now, if we look back on the series of events, it is obvious that Firewire was on its way out, at least on a consumer product. The iPods ditched Firewire way back in 2003 and have since been USB-only. The MacBook Air was the first Mac out of Apple since FireWire was introduced, to be USB only. The MacBook was definitely next in line for going USB-only. It is only possible that the Mac Mini will follow suit (if it ever is upgraded).
Continue Reading »

Someone over at Techradar has posted a piece [link] on how iTunes has become a bloated piece of crap, and offered beautiful suggestions on how Apple could change iTunes. From what it looks like however, the author is either a Windows user or has just switched over. Let’s go over the points he makes. 

1. Clean up the interface
What’s wrong with the iTunes interface? The author clearly wants only the list view, and if that’s the case, use the list view! No one is forcing anyone to use the Grid view or Coverflow. Both may be gimicky, but they work just fine for the rest of us.

I will however say that the Grid view does bring an inconsistent UI into the application, which Apple seems to be just testing out. In the next version a cleanup of the grid view would be appreciated.

2. Bar the Genius
Okay hold of a minute. The main feature of genius is playlist generation, and one that works fine. The tracks that are recommended are not necessarily those available in the store as it uses user data to generate playlists. Apple is not making any money out of Genius playlist feature. The Genius feature is also a fantastic addition for the iPhone/iPod and is something I use on a daily basis.

The Genius Sidebar on the other hand is just the rebranded mini-store and can be left out of this discussion.

3. Better file handling
While we would all like to play our pirated content in iTunes, Apple is not going to let that happen because of the record deals. So hopes of iTunes being able to play x264 and all that jazz isn’t going to get them to allow that media. Deal with it.

The author then wants iTunes to seamlessly convert video files as and when needed while syncing an iPod or iPhone instead of you having to manually convert those files (resulting in two of the same on your hard drive). This is insane! A single 200MB video file takes 15 minutes to convert! Imagine the hue and cry that will follow when people find their iPhone takes six days to sync up!

For those confused, to convert a video file (say a HD quicktime video) to iPhone format, just right-click and select “Convert for iPhone”. This creates a new file in your library leaving the original one as it is. 

4. Better handling of Multiple libraries
This is absolutely rubbish. Most users are content with a single library. And for those who want a second one, hold down the option key at startup! How much simpler can it get? The author is also aware that there are plugins for this purpose at dough’s scripts. Since this is a more advanced feature, script hunting is fair game. 

5. Better file tracking
In all my years of using iTunes with the “manage my music folder” checked, I have never faced a problem of file tracking. This is only two Windows geeks who prefer to manage their music in custom folders and then end up crying about it on the web.

And, on the Mac there’s no such thing as losing a file. iTunes will keep a track of your file if you move it or even change its name. Unfortunately, Windows is a little backward in technology hence there is no way to do this. 

6. Better database handling
Why do we have to care? iTunes is always running on my Mac, and it hardly uses 200MB to do the same. Even the startup, with my 8000 song library is very fast. I wouldn’t care if iTunes used a MS Word document as a database.

7. Better codec support
The author suggests iTunes should support WMV. Nuff said.

8. Multi-room support
The Airport Express, AppleTV and iPhone are more than capable tools at extending your iTunes library outside of the computer den.  

9. Cheaper iTunes Store
How does this apply to iTunes? In any case, 256kbps tracks are more than enough for anyone who listens to music. Simply making uninterested users download heavy CD-quality tracks does not make good sense. And at $1 per song, Apple has proven that it is a very good business model. Case to point: 5 billion songs sold already.

10. iTunes Pro
This I will partially agree with. Just as iPhoto has Aperture, and iMovie has Final Cut, iTunes should have a pro version. Something that is totally detatched from the free version of iTunes (no ads for the pro version please!), that has a lot of powerful features and expandability for those who want a little more than the basic version. This will of course never happen as there is no way Steve Jobs will allow a pro version of iTunes to be released.  

So what does Apple need to change then?
For one, it needs to improve the code. Snow Leopard is going through the shredder, and so should iTunes. Especially the Windows version (have you used iTunes on Windows lately?). Making iTunes blazing fast, optimised from the ground up, will make this application the more preferred music player on Windows, as it is on the Mac. 

I’d also like to see some improvements in the interface of the iTunes store. Tabbed browsing would be nice, wish lists, and a more responsive search (Store > Search…) feature. 

Any gripes with iTunes? Share them in the comments.

Amidst the process of making their revolutionary open source phone OS, a direct competitor to the iPhone, Google has forgotten one important thing—the desktop part of it! 

Let’s back up to the iPhone and see what role iTunes plays in it. To put it in a single word, everything! First of all, it manages your music, movies, and TV shows and synchronises them with your iPhone in a manner unmatched by any other application from any other phone manufacturer. Secondly, it manages your applications, makes sure your contacts are sent to and fro, and manages the rest of your iPhone settings with the the trademark Apple touch firmly in place.

Let’s draw a real world example here. I have a bunch of Podcasts set to automatically download new episodes when available. Whenever I dock my iPhone, it automatically syncs any unplayed episodes to my phone. If I watch/listen to the podcast on my desktop or my iPhone, the next time I dock my iPhone it will delete it and transfer a new one instead. If I watch it halfway on my iPhone, it will transfer that info on the next sync, and resume playback at the exact same position. This is just one example of the big role iTunes plays in the working of the iPhone. 

Truth be told, I was a bit skeptical about Google’s being able to pull this off in the first place. I expected something poor and shabby, with a shabby interface to begin with. Something even half as good as iTunes would have been sufficient to impress the likes of me. But Google had to prove me wrong. Instead of making a shabby application, they have totally done away with it. 

To sum up the the Android platform, what we have is the phone (HTC G1) and the Android OS, but no software to back it up. You have to manage your contacts and emails using a Google account (Tell me, have you checked the mess in your Google contacts recently?) It is inevitable that this will result in a multitude of vendor specific software, which will confuse the hell out of the end user. Think about it: you not only have to choose among a variety of different shapes, sizes, and features from the phone perspective, you also have to ensure that the software backing it all up is up to the mark (if at all there is any in the first place). This, of course, is just one of the gazillion problems I can think of with regard to this platform, but I will refrain from venting them all out in one article (be thankful, be very thankful).

The Android platform may be in its early stages right now (the phone isn’t even available for the general public) and Google may be planning on something for later, but if this is the way things are supposed to be, it will turn out to be just like Linux was to the desktop (very powerful software but one most people, the “average” folk, choose to stay away from). And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?

As amazing as the App Store is in most respects, there are certain things about it that are just plain annoying, either for developers or for users, and sometimes for both. One such thing used to be the provision for any iTunes member to be able to post a review for an application, regardless of whether they’d bought it or not.

Thanks to this feature, a lot of paid applications would end up with crappy ratings just because people thought that they were expensive. Visit any application priced about $5.99 and you’re likely to see several colourful reviews claiming that it’s far too expensive.

To put an end to this practice, Apple now expressly enforces that you must buy an application to earn the right of being able to review it. This is, of course, great for the application developers because this eliminates the possibility of their painstakingly developed application being relegated to the category of third grade products just because a bunch of kids decided to give it poor ratings due to it being out of their budget.

However, I think Apple’s solution is a little too simplistic and, like a few other aspects of the App Store, not fully thought through. Sure, this rule will stop the junk reviews from entering the store but, just like an overprotective spam filter, it will also keep out a lot of great reviews. That’s the reason why almost all online stores, including all the other areas of the iTunes Store, do allow people to comment on products without their having bought them (although there is a valid argument that none of them are exclusive vendors for that category of products).

There are many reasons why someone might have a valuable opinion about an application without ever having used it. I, for one, am quite grateful when I see reviews for applications that tell me that some other application is better than this one, which gives me the opportunity to compare the two and decide for myself. Similarly, it’s helpful to know that the company or developer behind the application I’m about to purchase has a poor track record, which may prevent me from spending my money on a product that has little prospect of ever being updated again.

A better idea, in my opinion, would be to only give credibility to reviews that are lengthier than a certain predetermined number of words (which would ensure that the “omg! $9.99!!! r u insane!!” reviews do not hold any weight) and/or have been marked by a lot of people as helpful.

Or, I don’t know, something else that works better. I’m just not sure that a blanket rejection of all non-customer reviews is such a great idea. However small it may be though, it’s definitely a step in the right direction and is, I hope, indicative of a greater, more subtle detail—maybe Apple is listening to us after all.

[Via TUAW]

First, it was NetShare, and then it was Podcaster. Now it’s MailWrangler by Angelo DiNardi (via Daring Fireball). The application, like MailPlane for Mac OS X, allows you to log into several Gmail accounts simultaneously and use Google’s iPhone optimised web interface to browse through your email. It’s basically a version of MobileSafari that can only open Gmail accounts. And, clearly, it’s of great use to anyone who has several Gmail accounts and needs the starring and conversation features of the web version. Furthermore, it sounds like the best way to let someone else check their Gmail account on your iPhone without messing with any of your own settings.

Angelo submitted his application for App Store approval, only to be met with a rude rejection letter six months after the event:

Your application duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion.

Huh? Really? The three applications (Mail, MailWrangler, and Safari) have three separate icons with three different names. Each application has a clearly different purpose—Mail is a POP3/IMAP client for accessing your email from any service provider, MailWrangler exists solely to open Gmail accounts, and Safari is an Internet browser that can be used to visit any website at all. And this is coming from the company that has sanctioned more than ten flashlight apps (iTunes link) and an innumerable quantity of to-do applications (iTunes link) for the iPhone.

It’s like saying that you cannot write a Baseball game for the device because an application already exists for tracking real world Baseball matches, and the coexistence of both on the same iPhone might confuse users. How stupid does Apple think its customers are anyway? I’m pretty sure that if someone is wise enough to be able to launch the App Store and download an application, they’re capable of processing the difference in functionalities of two applications. Read on for more… Continue Reading »

The current standing price for the iPhone in India is Rs. 31,000 and Rs. 36,100 respectively for the 8GB and 16GB models. This seems to have everyone in a tussle as to why a device that was touted to be “half the price” actually turned out to be three-to-four times more. I’m not in the least bit disappointed; it was more than expected. The answers lie in historical patterns as well as present marketing. Let’s start right from the beginning.

Apple has never seen India as a potential market for anything except the iPod—and that too five years after the first iPod debuted in the U.S.A.. It was around the middle of 2005 that iPods began to roll into the country and one would see them everywhere (a few departmental stores had them too). India has never been on Apple’s radar as a market for Macs, the iTunes Store, or the Apple TV. It would be a really far fetched bet to believe that their latest gadget would be any different. Heck, Apple itself is not selling it either. It is being brought in by the telecom giants Airtel and Vodafone. Apple resellers are taking pre-orders and have reportedly said that they’ll be selling the phones, but again, they’re being paid by either of the two telecom companies to do so, not by their parent company Apple.

The price tag of $199 is for locked phones and we know that AT&T is shelling out good money to subsidise the price and keep it that low. That means the price cut is at the provider’s loss, who plans to offset it by selling them in large quantities and levying outrageous charges on customers in the form of recurring rentals for the entire duration of their multi-year contract. That ploy might work in India too, but it would be a gamble because the majority (and I mean majority) of the country has never used a smartphone before. The ones who have, have been using Blackberrys and Nokias, two very reputed brands in the country. A lower price of around Rs. 25,000 might be good to sell it as a ‘smart phone for the masses’, but the masses in India:

• cannot afford a phone for Rs. 15,000 or more; and
• don’t particularly care for Apple as a phone company, especially one that wants you to spend about Rs. 20,000 on their phone.

In a market which has never associated Apple with anything except music players, bringing in a new device at their own loss is a risk companies are not going to take so early in the game. Maybe a few months down the line we can expect a price cut (like what the Motorola Razr saw), but the telcos will want to make the most of it while they can play off the hype that the international market has created in people’s minds. Remember, the mainstream crowd hasn’t heard most of the problems the iPhone 3G has been facing. It’s only us, who follow technology news like we do, who know what’s really happening.

Then there are those who are jacktastically converting the international prices of $599 and $699 for contract free iPhones to Indian National Rupee and saying that the price is still high. We can’t do much about that. For what it’s worth, I think the price tag of $599 or more for an iPhone 3G is very high in and of itself, but that’s the subject of another discussion.

The iPhone has been priced relative to other smart phones in the market and, comparatively, it holds up pretty well. The 8GB iPhone is almost in the same price bracket as the 8GB N95 and, similarly, the 16GB model has a price close to the N96’s (argument of features and usage plans aside). It is also priced near about the same as the most expensive Blackberry. Plus, you’re paying for the Apple brand, so if you like, you can accept that as a reason for any pricing offsets to the other phones in the same segment.

In any case, people will buy the iPhone in the coming month or two out of sheer hype and on the basis of whatever little promotion the providers can come up with. Price will not be a deterrent for those who can afford it. For those who can’t, well, I don’t think they were bothered in the first place. Hopes of a price slash are not very far fetched, seeing as how the first generation iPhone saw a slash merely months after it was launched. Plus, if iPhone sales don’t match up to the expectations of the telcos, the laws of economics will step in automatically.

[EDIT]: I got my price for the N95 a little wrong. Still, the N95 is much older than the iPhone 3G, so it is bound to be cheaper in a country like India where prices drop fast enough to baffle Newton’s laws. (Thanks to Krazzy for the price headsup)