Podcast Appearance: Orbital Podcast

Last week, I had the pleasure of making another appearance on Orbital — the Gadgets 360 podcast hosted by my friend Pranay Parab. Come hear us discuss Apple’s October 2020 event announcing the new iPhone 12 lineup and the HomePod mini, along with the preposterous pricing in India.

We recorded this while my both my primary and backup ISPs were down, and I literally had to go the extra mile to make sure the recording reaches him, so I’m glad it turned out this well.

October 19, 2020 ✚ Permalink

New iCloud Storage Pricing for India (Updated)

Update: 12th August, 2020 with new iCloud Storage Pricing for India in 2020.

At it’s annual September event, Apple announced updated pricing and revised tiers for storage on iCloud. Although the Free Tier remains at 5GB, the paid tiers have been revised from 20GB, 200GB, 500GB and 1TB to only three — 50GB, 200GB and 1TB, costing $0.99, $2.99 and $9.99 respectively.

This new pricing is now active and here’s the iCloud Storage pricing for India.

iCloud Storage Pricing for India in 2020
iCloud Storage Pricing for India in 2020

Due to the addition of 18% GST and fluctuations in the US dollar value, Apple has adjusted the pricing of iCloud Storage in India.

50GB of iCloud storage costs ₹75 per month in India, followed by 200GB at ₹219 per month. Apple has upgraded the 1TB storage tier to 2TB, which comes in at ₹749 per month. So for a small bump in the price, you get double the iCloud storage.

The old article from 2015 is below:

iCloud Storage Pricing for India

As you can see, the 20GB paid tier has been revised to 50GB now and the pricing has been updated to INR 65 for 5GB, INR 190 for 200GB and INR 650 for 1TB of storage.

August 12, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Graphing the Evolution of Smaller & Lighter Mac Laptops

Jason Snell, writing on the Six Colors blog:

The trend in laptop design, since the very beginning, has been toward lighter and thinner laptops. In 2001 Steve Jobs boasted about the mind-blowing one-inch thickness of the Titanium PowerBook G4; 19 years later the average Mac laptop is half that thickness.

But it’s one thing to know that laptops trend toward thinness and lightness. It’s another to see a chart that lets you visualize it. So I dug through the specs of past Mac systems at EveryMac.comand averaged the weight and thickness of the Mac laptop product line for every year since the first Mac laptop, the hilariously heavy Mac Portable, hit the scene.

Fascinating graphs. The dive in 2008 in both the graphs is my favorite.

May 30, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Apple Updates the 13-inch MacBook Pro, Kills the Butterfly Keyboard for Good

Apple today announced the release of an updated lineup of its 13-inch MacBook Pro that introduces the new Magic Keyboard, doubles the storage, and adds faster RAM and newer CPUs in the top-end models.

The biggest change, of course, is the replacement of the terrible Butterfly keyboard with the newer and better Magic Keyboard. The 13-inch MacBook Pro was the only notebook in Apple’s current lineup that featured the sucky keys, so good riddance.

The new lineup also offers Intel’s 10th-generation CPUs and 16GB of faster 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory, but only on the topend model that features the 2.0GHz Core i5 processor. While the lower model does get the option to upgrade to 16GB of RAM, you’re limited to the much slower 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM only.

Effectively, the base model of the “new” 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro that will go on sale in India late next month will come with:

  • Magic Keyboard
  • 1.4GHz quad‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5
  • 8GB of 2133MHz LPDDR3 RAM
  • 256GB SSD
  • Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645
  • Two Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) ports

and cost a whopping INR 1,22,900 or $1625.

If you have to actually take advantage of the newer processor & RAM, you have to get the topend model with:

  • 2.0GHz quad‑core 10th‑generation Intel Core i5
  • 16GB of 3733MHz LPDDR4X RAM
  • 512GB SSD
  • Intel Iris Plus Graphics
  • Four Thunderbolt 2 (USB-C) ports

and costs INR 1,74,900 or $2315.

If you need 1TB of SSD storage, i.e. +512GB in the above config, you have to shell out INR 20,000 extra, taking the total to INR 1,94,900.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at INR 1,99,900.

May 4, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Apple Readying ARM-based with 12 Cores Macs for 2021

Mark Gurman, Debby Wu, and Ian King writing for Bloomberg:

[Apple] is working on three of its own Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. The first of these will be much faster than the processors in the iPhone and iPad, the people said.

Apple is preparing to release at least one Mac with its own chip next year, according to the people.

ARM-based Macs have been rumored for a long time, but Bloomberg’s team has some exciting news:

The first Mac processors will have eight high-performance cores, codenamed Firestorm, and at least four energy-efficient cores, known internally as Icestorm. Apple is exploring Mac processors with more than 12 cores for further in the future, the people said.

Imagine a world where running 12+ cores is common.

April 23, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Devanagari Numbers: How to Enable Hindi or Marathi Digits in the Watch Face on Apple Watch

Back in September, I wrote about my favorite watch face on the Apple Watch running watchOS 6 — the California Watchface with Devanagari (Marathi) numbers.

Devanagari Numbers on Apple Watch

The numerical text on the Apple Watch is being displayed as Devanagari text — Hindi or Marathi — with a simple analog watch face. Since then, I’ve received a bunch of emails asking how to enable the Devanagari numbers on Apple Watch. Here’s a small guide that explains how to display Apple Watch time with Marathi or Hindi numbers.

How to Enable Devanagari Numbers on Apple Watch

Apple Watch running Devanagari Numbers Watch Face
  1. First, ensure that you’re running watchOS 6 on your Apple Watch, as the California watch face isn’t available in previous versions.
  2. Now, tap and hold on your Apple Watch screen to enter the watch face editor mode.
  3. Swipe till the extreme right and tap on the ‘New‘ watch face button.
  4. Swipe up or rotate the crown till you see the ‘California‘ watch face, then tap on it to enable it.
  5. Once again, tap and hold on your Apple Watch screen to enter the watch face editor mode.
  6. Tap on the ‘Customize‘ button.
  7. Rotate the digital crown to cycle through California → Arabic → Arabic Indic → Devanagari numerals on the watch face.
  8. Swipe left to customize the appearance of the watch face, such as background color and shape.
  9. Press the digital crown when you’re done.

That’s it! You now have an Apple Watch with Hindi or Marathi numbers on the watch face.

You can add and customize any complications you want, depending on what shape you choose for the California watch face. If you choose the Full Screen watch face, then your options are limited. Choosing the round shape for the watch face lets you set much more complications, so you can go wild. I personally like to keep it simple, so the photo at the top are the Devanagari Digits I currently have on my Apple Watch.

Hit me up on Twitter: @preshit if you have any questions or feedback. And share your photos too, so

April 17, 2020 ✚ Permalink

Halide Team's In-Depth Look at iPad Pro LIDAR & Cameras

Sebastiaan de With & Ben Sandofsky, makers of the insanely good camera apps for iPhone — Halide & Spectre, have just published their deep-dive and Technical Readout of the LIDAR sensor and the read cameras on the new 2020 iPad Pros.

A fantastic look at the new LIDAR sensor, its capabilities, and (current) possibilities. I sure hope Apple has some big plans for it in the near future, and doesn’t just intend to use it for their AR push.

Don’t miss the QnA at the end.

April 17, 2020 ✚ Permalink

PDF Expert’s New Reading Mode Makes it Easier to Read PDFs on iPhone

We, at Readdle, have just shipped a massive update to PDF Expert for iOS that introduces Reading Mode — a feature that improves the experience of reading PDFs on iPhone. Reading Mode makes it easier to read the text from PDFs on the tiny iPhone screen. I’ve been playing around with this feature for a few weeks now as part of the marketing team, and have been terribly excited about its release. With Reading Mode, reading PDFs on iPhone is a delightful experience now.

Read PDFs on iPhone

PDFs are usually hard to read on the small screens of iPhones, especially the ones that are formatted in multiple columns. You have to constantly keep zooming in & out, panning in all four directions to make sense of the content. The Reading Mode reformats and adjusts the text and images in these PDF files and displays them on the screen in a single column, presented in a beautiful way. It’s like activating the Reader view in Safari or using Read Later apps like Pocket or Instapaper. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

You can change the theme from the default ‘Day‘ theme to ‘Sepia‘, ‘Night‘ or ‘Auto‘. You can also adjust the font-size and toggle the ‘Keep iPhone Awake‘ and ‘Crop Header and Footer‘ settings.

My dad loves to read, and spends several hours in the day reading e-papers, PDF books & magazines, blogs, etc. on his iPad. For many months now, he’s been asking me, complaining in fact, why he can’t enjoy reading PDFs on his Android phone. I think it’s time to switch him to an iPhone.

There are a lot more exciting features that we’re working on at Readdle, and I can’t wait to talk about our feature-packed upcoming releases. Stay tuned to our PDF Expert, Spark Email, and Readdle blogs in the coming weeks.

Now go grab the latest update of PDF Expert for iOS from the App Store to try out the Reading Mode on your iPhone. I’m happy to hear your feedback.

April 15, 2020 ✚ Permalink