WD My Passport Wireless Pro Review

Over on SharpShutter.co, I posted my review of the WD My Passport Wireless Pro — a stellar portable storage device from Western Digital.

I’ll go ahead and say it. The WD My Passport Wireless Pro Hard Disk Drive is not just an essential tool to carry around for photographers and cinematographers, it is also one of the best backup and storage options out there to have in your toolkit today. WD has knocked it out of the park with this product and having spent about a month reviewing this product, I can confidently say this is by far my favorite WD product ever.

The WD My Passport Wireless Pro is priced as follows in India:

1TB model: Rs. 11,000
2TB model: Rs. 14,500
4TB model: Rs. 18,500

October 27, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Official India Pricing for iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, Apple TV 4K and Apple Watch Series 3

Apple today announced a new generation of iPhone models at its annual keynote event in Cupertino. This year, the company held its iPhone launch event at the newly constructed Steve Jobs Theater in its swanky new HQ — the Apple Park. From what I’ve seen in the photos and heard from friends who were lucky enough to attend the event, the Steve Jobs Theater looks every bit as stunning as you’d imagine.

Unlike the keynote event WWDC 2017 which was jam-packed, today’s keynote event felt purposefully natural and deliberate. Tim Cook and other Apple executives seemed in no hurry to finish a demo or move on to the next slide. It was also quite a bit weird to see them stutter when delivering the lines, which leads me to believe that the keynote either wasn’t rehearsed that well or they just didn’t find the time to.

Apple announced the following products today:

  • iPhone X
  • iPhone 8
  • iPhone 8 Plus
  • Apple TV 4K
  • Apple Watch Series 3

I’m still going through the material made available after today’s announcements and will be posting my thoughts, comments, and observations here very soon. In the mean time, here is the official pricing of all the products announced today.

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September 13, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Apple AirPods Review — Intelligent Wireless Earbuds

Apple AirPods Review in India

AirPods were introduced by Apple on September 7th, 2016 at an event that also gave us the iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch Series 2. Unlike these devices though, the AirPods didn’t actually go on sale immediately and instead, Apple did not start accepting orders until December that year. It has been quite difficult to get your hands on the AirPods, and the product is still seeing long shipping estimates, as late as six weeks at times.

I had made up my mind not to buy the AirPods. There was no way I could manage to somehow get my hands on one, and I had already spent ₹25,000 on the incredible Bose QC20i noise-cancelling earphones [Buy Now on Amazon or Flipkart]. There was no way I could afford them. But more importantly, I just didn’t feel the need to spend ₹15,400 on another pair of earphones, just to get rid of the wires.

Then, over the last six months of 2017, I witnessed several people that I follow on Twitter slowly end up buying AirPods for themselves and tweeting about their experiences using them. Every single person who bought these AirPods had high praises to sing for them. It was great to hear about the experience of owning the AirPods from people I know and look up to. Six months ago, I had made up my mind to not buy them, and by the start of June 2017, I was torn. I wasn’t immediately looking to buy them since they weren’t officially available in India anyway, but a big part of me really wanted them. Badly.

Apple wasn’t sending me a review unit, so in the end, I decided to dive in on my own and by June 13th, I was holding a pair of AirPods in my hand.

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July 30, 2017 ✚ Permalink

My Journey Towards My First iPhone

It was exactly 10 years ago today, on June 29th, 2007, that the original iPhone went on sale. Although it was first introduced and demoed on stage by Steve Jobs back in January 2009, it didn’t actually go on sale till June that year. Today, irrespective of which mobile platform you primarily use, there’s no denying that the iPhone has completely revolutionized the mobile phone industry.

On its 10th anniversary, I decided to take a look back at some of my original tweets about the iPhone from 2007-2008.

I joined Twitter on 15th August, 2007, a couple of months after the iPhone went on sale in the US. Back then, I had just purchased a new Mac — the old white Mac mini, and was getting used to the joy and delight of using Max OS X Tiger. Coming from Windows, this was a fascinating new world for me, and I was hooked.

On the other hand, the iPhone didn’t catch my attention till the end of 2007. Sure, I had read about its launch and its featured, but back then, India as a country was nowhere on Apple’s radar and there was no chance that Apple would start selling the iPhone here (They didn’t).

My first tweet about the iPhone was congratulating someone on her purchase of an iPhone:

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June 29, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Some Thoughts on Apple’s WWDC 2017 Announcements

Apple WWDC 2017

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 this week, Apple delivered a jam-packed keynote address on Monday. As has been tradition over the last few years, a bunch of us Apple enthusiasts gathered at the iXyr Media HQ to watch the keynote together. Unlike the last few keynotes, the WWDC 2017 keynote address lasted almost 2.5 hours, and the company had so much to talk about. They even completely skipped talking about their sales and growth, and their tvOS platform barely got 2 minutes on stage, only so that Tim Cook could mention that the Amazon Prime Video app is finally coming to Apple TV later this year.

Over the next 140 minutes or so, Tim Cook and other Apple executives took the audience through an incredible journey, in what is touted at one of the best Keynotes that Apple has ever delivered, largely for the sheet number of announcements that the company had to make.

Here is a list of everything major Apple announced at WWDC 2017 and some thoughts on the announcements:

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June 8, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Airtel Introduces ‘Internet TV’ — An Android Powered, 4K Ready Hybrid DTH Box for your TV

Airtel Internet TV

Bharti Airtel today introduced ‘Internet TV‘ — a hybrid DTH set-top box for TVs. Touted as “India’s first”, the Internet TV box is powered by Google’s Android TV and comes with a host of interesting features targeted towards avid viewers who stream a lot of online content.

Airtel’s Internet TV is a Hybrid STB, bringing you the best of both DTH and the Internet. It brings you 500+ SD & HD channels from Airtel’s digital TV service, as well as virtually any app downloadable from Google Play. You can download and install apps, games, including apps from online streaming services such as Netflix, Eros Now, HOOQ, etc. You also get access to Airtel’s own Wynk services.

Airtel Internet TV

The Internet TV hardware isn’t shy on specs or ports, featuring a 2GB RAM and 2GHz ARM processor, 8GB of internal memory (upgradeable to 128GB), 4K 60fps resolution, Dolby ATMOS, 10/100 ethernet port, built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and also comes with companion “gamepad” apps for iOS and Android.

Airtel is also offering a complimentary bonus to Airtel Broadband customers under its myHome offer. Depending on your plan, you either get 10GB or 25GB of free data every month.

A subscription to Internet TV is currently priced at ₹4999 for 3 months or ₹7999 for 12 months, the latter being a limited time offer. You can head to Amazon India to place your order.

Update May 1st, 2017: Airtel has now clarified that you do need an active DTH connection in order to continue using the non-DTH features of the device.

I was looking to order a couple of these boxes for my house to replace TataSky, but clearly that doesn’t seem like a good idea yet.

April 12, 2017 ✚ Permalink

On Vivek Wadhwa’s Factor Daily piece titled “Why Apple is destined to fail in India”

apple-vivek-wadhwa-factor-daily-piece-lol

Earlier today, Factor Daily published this piece titled ‘Why Apple is destined to fail in India‘ written by Vivek Wadhwa. A similarly-worded article from the author also appeared on The Washington Post and VentureBeat a day earlier. I subscribed to Factor Daily via RSS a while ago, primarily for the people behind the site who have delivered some great content in the past. I, however, was definitely not ready for this hilariously bullshit stream of content heading my way.

Now, usually when I come across a title as bold as this one about Apple, and they’re dime a dozen these days, I usually either skip it completely or read it and then skip reacting to it. But this piece by Vivek Wadhwa has such ingenious crap filled inside, I couldn’t help fire up Ulysses. Vivek’s piece essentially says that Apple is destined to fail in India because the company fails to understand the Indian market and that “it is repeating the mistakes it made in China”. However, a lot of points that Vivek raises are just not true, plain wrong, or simply laughable.

[With inputs and corrections from Rohan “RN” Naravane, who was just as baffled upon reading the piece.]

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March 17, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Tim Cook on India during Apple’s Q1 2017 Earnings Call

Apple had their quarterly earnings call yesterday where they announced record first quarter results. The company posted all-time record quarterly revenue of $78.4 billion (compared to $75.9 billion in Q1 2016) and all-time record quarterly earnings per diluted share of $3.36 (compared to $3.28 in Q1 2016).

iPhone and Mac sales and revenue are up, whereas iPad sales and revenue is down compared to the year-ago quarter. Revenue from Apple’s Services business and from Other Products (includes Apple Watch and Apple TV) are also up.

During the earnings call, Brian White from Drexel asked,

I didn’t hear much mentioned about India. How did India perform with the iPhone, and how should we think about it for 2017, especially with the 4G network going up?

Tim answered,

That’s a really good question. Despite the de-monetization move in India that created lots of economic pressure there last quarter, despite that, we had all-time record revenue results. And so we were very happy about that. The de-monetization impact has not worked its way through yet; it’s still definitely having some overhang, but I think in the longer term, it’s a great move. I feel really good about how we’re doing there. We are in discussions on a number of things, including retail stores and fully intend to invest significantly in the country and believe it’s a great place to be.

[Via iMore]

February 1, 2017 ✚ Permalink