Saturday, December 31, 2011

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Just my interpretation from the book:

The book provides independent and neutral biography of a person who had arguably the most media attention and possibly one of the greatest visionaries in technical field.

The book is definitely motivational and has some shocking facts on how rude or ruthless the people at these higher management positions can be. The author had lot of discussions with Jobs and also many of the prominent people in his life. Though at times you feel the author might be biased towards Steve Jobs and praising him a lot, there are enough instances described in the book to provide a sort of neutral stance.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication"
A principle that Jobs strongly believed in and we see that in all the Apple products (I cant speak of Mac as I haven't used it yet). All other devices, iPod, iPhone and iPad are extremely user friendly and do not need any kind of user manual to use. This is a primary feature that still differentiates Apple with others products.

Another line I liked - "Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you"

Steve has acknowledged the role of others who have worked at Apple and who have contributed immensely to the building and/or rebuilding of the company. Almost all the people in Apple who were interviewed by author mention the reality distortion field around Steve. People go to Steve to convince him that a particular task is not possible the way he wants it done, but they would end up getting convinced and even doing the task the way they thought is impossible."You did the impossible, because you din't realize it was impossible" he says.

"Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?"
He believed that consumer does not know what they want. This worked magically for iPod, iPhone and now iPad. Though none of these were new inventions, they were merely well packaged, well designed and ease of use that went well with consumers.

Though Apple popularized GUI with Macintosh, it was not the inventor. This was originally done by XEROX who could not capitalize on it and Steve stole the idea and implemented in Mac.
He believed in "Good artists copy, great artists steal"
Much later when Microsoft released Windows, Jobs blasted them saying they copied Mac. This is contradictory.

Jobs had pursued John Sculley to be the CEO of Apple very diligently and apparently these words are the one that finally made Sculley accept Jobs' offer: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world"
Sculley was President at Pepsico when Jobs was trying to get him to be Apple CEO. It was Sculley along with other board members who fired Steve from Apple. Steve also did all possible things from his side to get himself fired. Board fired him unanimously.
He then went on to create Next and Pixar of which Pixar was a remarkable company having produced many of very good animation films.

Jobs has mentioned in the book that he wanted his children to know why he was not able to dedicate more time to them or wasn't a perfect father they would have wanted him to be. The book clearly outlines Jobs life in detail and also all the great products he brought out from Apple, Pixar and may be Next, the amount of work put in by Jobs but you do not see any justifiable reason for his ignorance towards family. He was never in control of family life the way he held Apple together. This can be inferred from the book that he realized this and wanted his kids to know and understand him.

Jobs maintained a very tight hold on the units in Apple and ensured they work together. He stressed on end to end control for any product; to have full control over both hardware and software and not to let user to meddle with the system by creating custom screws for the products. This created a closed Apple ecosystem the way it is today. An interesting review mentioned in the book on this model - "Why I won't buy an iPad?. There is a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. but there's also a palpable contempt for the owner. Buying a iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; its a way of telling your offspring that even changing batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals"

Jobs has made lot of other interesting statements in the book about companies like Google, Microsoft, etc. His interactions with Bill Gates and comparison provided of the two pioneers is particularly interesting. Google being and advocate of open systems, Microsoft not fully open but believing in keeping hardware and software independent and Apple believing in integrated system to have full control on hardware and software. Jobs also says - "I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they are the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company"
I find this very true and see a lot happening in technology service companies especially the larger ones - No points for guessing the names :)


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

View from apartment balcony

Some photos on a partly cloudy evening

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Inbox?

There is some guy by name Micheal Vincent who keeps finding me jobs in Richmond. Every other day, I get a mail on my yahoo with a subject "I found you a new job". Udayan Mukherjee gives a statement on CNBC that "2009 will be the Year of Sowing". Someone by name Babu G from jeevansathi.com sends a wish (Happy new year, happy mid year, mid month etc.) for every new day and asks me to respond to profiles on their website. A scrolling add by Naukri.com saying there are 2 lakh jobs available. And then the biggest news of the seasonn apart from slowdown "Satyam: A big Lie"


Definitely want to mention another very very big news "Pakistan's denial mode"!
This is not just overview of my Inbox, but pretty much the only things being reported everywhere. Any newspaper, new site will carry mostly news about Satyam, Pakistan, ads on marriage portals and job sites and news about slowdown.

While talking with some friends the other day, we were thinking that Infy hasn't started any layoffs where as all other firms are in news for layoffs/pink slips etc. We never have heard Infosys laying off people. Is it that all people are so good that they can't be laid off! (hard to digest) or is it that things happen without media publicity? Whatever the reason may be, the day Infy announces layoffs, it would not be recession but depression in economy.


Thats all the news for the moment...

Friday, October 17, 2008

Friday, March 28, 2008

Life-cycle overview

Life on weekdays can be broadly classified into 3 -
1. Personal life
2. Office life
3. Bus life

Sleep consumes about 8 hours of a day.
Personal life will be consistant and predictable with same people around - 3 hours; Office life with high work load also remains pretty much predictable as even here you are interacting mostly with same set of people - 10 hours (including all breaks).

The third one, bus life where I spend almost 3 hours a day is the one with new people and things happening. Every other person in the bus feels like a strange character and as days goes by it only becomes clear that my initial thinking of character is indeed correct! :)

There are one set of people in the bus who are constant; every morning I board the bus, I am assured that I see those people sitting in the same seat everyday. We usually have a unique name for each of these characters. Then there is another set who are coming in the bus only temporarily. This set keeps on changing with time; some change residence, some change work location, some leave company and thousands other reasons. This changing set happens to be the most interesting pieces of the lot. The third set of course are random people who board different bus everyday, so there is nothing much to write about this set.

As I was talking, the second set - this is where I have seen lot of stranger(st) characters. By virtue of their characteristics, of course they get unique names (bean-1, tikla-1 etc.), but its amazing to see that these people live up to their names as long as they are coming in the bus. There are times when some people just want to come and sit next to me even though the whole of bus is empty, people just put all their weight on you and sleep with heavy snores (it was a tiring day in office after all).

And then there are some people in bus (esp. females) who I am terribly scared because of the angry looks they have all the time. Initially when I started going in bus, once or twice I flashed smile on some of these people, but the kind of cold response I got scared me and that was the last time I ever smiled at any stranger in the bus.

After much of search I managed to get a mobile with FM but no camera and now its mainly the FM (some station) and sleep along with economic times whenever I am awake that has become my companions for my bus life.
More on life cycle as life goes on ...

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Karnataka-Goa Road Trip!

Mini Version!

The use of some catchy words especially "DushkarmigaLu" by our guide in Chitradurga fort, bad roads from davanagere, worst roads from dharwad to goa, beautiful beaches in Goa, surprisingly cleaner than expected beaches along the karnataka coast, tasty food in Gokarna mess, long long drives and much more were a part of our Karnataka-Goa Road Trip. Driving 1900 KMs over a period of 9 days doesn't seem like a big thing, it is hardly 211 Kms per day to take an average. The bad state of roads added to my fears of car performance and repairs but to my delight, the car was extremely good in good and bad roads and had absolutely no problems over the long drives.


Started from bangalore @7 in the morning and reached Chitradurga at 11.

<22-nov-2008>
Don't think, will continue as its almost an year... so posting whatever writtein :)


Karnataka-Goa Road Trip

Friday, September 07, 2007

Morning Blues in BTM!

After much negotiations with my laziness from 6:45 in the morning, I managed to get out of bed at 7:00 AM to get ready to catch 7:45 bus to Office. I had to run and stop the moving bus as I was slightly late, late by a minute to reach the bus stand which is next to my house. Looking at my discharged iPod, I thought I could sleep through for an hour to electronic city. One hour was the average time it used to take for 7:45 bus. When I opened my eyes, our bus was just few yards behind Jayadeva Flyover and traffic had stopped all the way till there. After sometime, I realized the road was choked all the way till Silk board and traffic hardly moving. It took over an hour to reach Silk board, a distance of 3-4KMs and I could see scores of IT people with badges hanging around their neck waiting for their company buses with available seating. Our Bus finally arrived at company campus after 2:15 mins travel.


Total Distance: 20 KM
Time Taken: 135 mins
From my high school knowledge, an average speed of 8.8 KM/Hr, pretty cool. The improvement in timing here could be result of lot of factors - continuous increase in people inflow to Bangalore, construction work on Hosur road, traffic (mis)management, (in)sensible driving etc. I heard from one of my friends that they have reduced the green signal time at silk board junction for traffic entering Hosur road to make Hosur road clearer. Well, I haven't stood there and measured the timings, but if that is the case then the recent increase in traffic on BTM road is well explained. As more traffic gathers on BTM road and less traffic is let out to Hosur Road, can we expect a day when traffic is still from Silk board all the way to Banashakari Temple? This could be something for Limca or even Guinness Book of Records.