Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

Steve Jobs , Apple’s showman nonpareil, provided the first public glimpse of the iPhone last week, gorgeous, feature-laden and pricey. While following the mas ter magician’s gestures, it was easy to overlook a most disappointing aspect: like its slimmer iPod siblings, the iPhone’s musicplaying function will be limited by factoryinstalled “crippleware”. If “crippleware” seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard “FairPlay”, but fair it is not. The term “crippleware” comes from the plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit, Melanie Tucker Vs Apple Computer Inc., that is making its way through federal district court in Northern California. The suit contends that Apple unfairly restricts consumer choice because it does not load onto the iPod the software needed to play music that uses Microsoft’s copy-protection standard, in addition to Apple’s own. Tucker’s core argument is that the ab...

With characteristic showmanship, Steven P. Jobs introduced Apple’s long-awaited entry into the cellphone world on Tuesday, pronouncing it an achievement on a par with the Macintosh and the iPod. The creation, the iPhone, priced at $499 or $599 (approx Rs 22,000 or Rs 26,500), will not be for everyone. It will be available with a single carrier, Cingular Wireless, at midyear in the United States. Its essential functions — music player, camera, Internet browser and email tool as well as phone — have become commonplace in handheld devices. But it was the ability to fuse those elements with a raft of innovations and Apple’s distinctive design sense that had the crowd here buzzing. Apple’s goal, Mr Jobs said, was to translate the Macintosh computer’s ease of operation into the phone realm. “We want to make it so easy to use that everyone can use it,” he said. And he was clearly betting on translating Apple’s success with the iPod music player to a hot category of multifunction devices. Unde...