How on Earth? How?

The more I think about it, the more intriguing it becomes. How on earth can a company get everything - just about everything - right, in the mind-bogglingly complex world of consumer electronics, with established deep-pocketed players, a demanding and hence extremely fickle consumer mindset and booming technology that renders every novel thing "so yesterday" in a few months (or even few weeks) time?

I am talking about Apple. The half-eaten fruit that has fully eaten up many players, digested them and thrown them out of its arse.

I am so overwhelmed while writing this that I don't know where to start. But because I have to start somewhere, let me begin with some quite shockingly iconoclastic traits that the Apple devices possess:

• When everyone is asking for more features to be packed into the tiniest of packages, how can an iPod have just one clickwheel, no in-line recording and no FM radio?
• When it's all about showing off your personality and hence the colour of your device, how can you have a music player with just one colour (the colourful iPods came much later, it was just plain white for a very long time)
• Apple has legendary marketing and branding skills. We all know that. But then, how can you create probably the only portable device in the entire history of portable devices that doesn't have your name and logo on the front of the device (and lose the opportunity to have it appearing in photographs across the print media when a new device is launched)
• When variety is the flavour of the season, how can you have just one kind of iPod for a long time? Even today, there is only one iPhone. One look, one set of features. (if we ignore relatively minor things such as OS upgrades, internal memory etc., that is). Look at Nokia. Look at just their N series. How many varieties? How can just one phone model give all other high-end phones a run for their money?
• Today standardization and flexibility is the name of the game. Give us standard micro USB chargers and USB interface. Give us standard bluetooth control. Standard memory cards. Standard video support (e.g. DivX support). In such times, how can you create a device that doesn't support any standard video formats, doesn't allow you to put a memory card of your own, doesn't support standard bluetooth control features, doesn't allow you to replace battery or memory and doesn't have a standard USB interface? How?

I have probably said enough. Apple is by far one of the greatest iconoclasts of our times that has repeatedly proved several trade pundits (who tried to predict consumer preferences and market trends) wrong, left, right, top and bottom. I can't help but marvel at the ability of Steve Jobs to make decisions that in retrospect could have looked like an organized suicide.

Now-a-days, every time a new top-end phone is launched, News headlines go ballistic crying "iPhone killer" all over. Let alone killing, these phones are not even within close distance of iPhone, a phenomenon that it is. While most of these much-publicised devices have failed to latch on to consumer sentiments, iPhone has only grown. And grown fast selling millions each year. There are phones out there with all kind of features that are in vogue today. In contrast, iPhone releases just one feature at a time and still consumers suck up to it. And every time it releases a new feature, it makes a lot of money charging for additional features. Like the recent OS 3.o upgrade for iPod touch owners.

How can you get ideas seemingly from nowhere on how to wade through this horrifyingly complex business and get it right every time?

Thinking simple. That's all I can make out with my humble brain. Quite surprisingly, Apple works for all the reasons that one would predict it would fail for.

Here is why apple works:

• Simplicity in features (or rather lack of features) with a very high focus on design, usability along with a big price tag makes apple devices exclusive and help them clearly stand apart in a race of features (No more "Does your player have recording facility? Mine has") People who own iPods just have iPods. Not a set of features cobbled together in a device.
• Limited variety (just one iPhone, just one kind of iPod..well for the most part) generates more media focus, instead of being dissipated across multiple model launches. It also helped create an astonishingly large array of iPod/iPhone compatible accessories (such as docking stations, arm bands, cases etc.) creating a further consumer pull. Others, because of their varied models, lost out on accessories.
• On the software front, developers are going crazy over Apple software because both iPod touch and iPhone have the same softwares in them and are of the same exact size. This creates a large ecosystem of users who they can target. Multiple sizes / softwares wouldn't have worked this great
• Avoiding working with multiple partners: Sure Apple doesn't provide GSM services. But look at it...it has its own music store, own music transfer software iTunes, own hardware and own OS on that hardware and its own Application Store (talking about flexibility, you can't put a software on your iPhone unless you hack it and void the warranty). It therefore has an incredible control on the quality and features that it delivers to its customers. All that an iPod ever needs by way of service is a reset. Nothing goes wrong in that device or its software. My other mp3 player died in an year. I have vowed not to touch anything but iPods, at least for the foreseeable future.
• Inflexibility for greater profit and feature/quality control: You allow people to replace batteries and they would put cheap Chinese ones. Allow them to put memory cards and they would put corrupt or virus inflicted ones. Limiting experimentation on the device make sound sense for greater control on device design (how can you expect a shiny polished flawless steel back-cover if you wanted a replaceable battery?) and build quality. It also helps prolong the life of the device and earn extra bucks for Apple through supply of original Apple spares / accessories.

There is only one rule to reach the top. Break all the rules. You will either sink or you would lead. You won't drift at least. If you just drift, you can never lead. Large companies (I could mean the Sony's, Samsung's and LG's) may not be breaking too many rules today, but they must have on their way to become what they are today.

Illogical Involuntaries

I tore open the packet hoping nothing except what I thought it would contain. And then as I was about to throw the envelope into the trash can, a neatly folded paper floated out, settling quickly onto the floor. I picked it up and there it was! A letter. A Letter in the truest sense. An old-world letter. The kind that is written with fingers joined. When an impatient pen touches a waiting paper. Not the kind that is punched onto raised plastic buttons throwing some random sequence of 0's and 1's into a heated mess of silicon junk. With fingers separate.

A Rakhi. With a letter. From a sister I speak to on phone every week.

I initially thought it was stupid. Or completely silly. Or may be just a thought. A false thought. Illusion. How can my eyes be moist? I speak to her so often. Now-a-days, we are meeting a bit more frequently too. What difference can a letter really make when I spend megabytes of airwaves talking to her?

And then a drop lands on the unfolded sheet. Oh no! I can't cry like this. It's so embarassing. And for what reason? A letter?

Yeah, a letter. I realize.

Rakhi is the only occasion when sometimes, just sometimes, I receive letters. From my two sisters to be precise.

A little bit of enquiry. How my brother is doing in an alien land. Is he taking care of his health. Is he eating properly. Is he sleeping well and trying to work a bit less.
A little bit of lamentation. We aren't fortunate enough a tie a Rakhi on his wrists. We are'nt lucky enough to share a sweet broken by our teeth.
A little bit of wish. Let the Gods shower flower on the road he takes. May he be the happiest person on the earth. May he have no obstacles ever on his way.

These are the letters I have grown up with. Since my childhood, I have compared my notes with my elder sister. I have corrected the notes of my younger sister. The letters have a face. They have an old identity in them. There is a smell in them. The way the "Bha" of "Bhai" curls or way the sentences droop. The way typos are corrected or the way words are chosen. It's our childhood that the paper carries with it. Unlike an email, it carries with it bits of my sister. The motion of her hands that is so familiar to me. The memories of those days.

How can it be compared to an email? Or an SMS?

How have things changed! In the times of instant gratification, the charm of waiting is gone. But if you think, waiting is not such a bad thing after all. I remember the days when I used to write letters to someone who I was trying to establish a romantic relationship with (albeit unsuccessfully). You write a letter and wait for a reply. You wait for days, sometimes weeks. But somewhere in the corner of your heart you believe that a reply would come. In the pile that the postman dumps in the common room, one day you would have your name written. It set offs possibilities, expectations, fears and excitements. The process of waiting is not waiting really. There is no waiting for something. It is the thing.

I look around my cubicle. No. No one is looking at me. I wipe my eyes by the sleeves of my shirt with a flick of my shoulder. It's so illogical, I am tempted to think. But I could do nothing to stop my tears, even though I kept on telling myself that this isn't happening.

We are today a crowd that swears by words such as voluntary, logical, methodical, certainty.

But sometimes involuntary things do happen to us that we might want to call illogical. But sometimes they are as logical as anything in the world can be. Just that we fail to make a distinction. Between what is logical and what isn't.

Have You Arrived?

How do you really define "Success"?

What do people mean when they say someone is successful? Do they mean that the person they call "Successful" has reached a certain threshold that they aspire to reach themselves? Or there is an absolute minimum to be reached? Is there a threshold of achivement beyond which one could be called 'Successful'? Who decides that threshold? Why can't I call myself successful?

Let's take an example. Is a man who is just declared "Successful" by newspaper headlines today not one yesterday? Why not? What did he to today to become sucessful? Assuming that he is capabable of achieving more and there are already people who have achieved much more than him, why are we calling him successful today? Would a film star be called successful if he gives just one hit? If not then how many hits? If yes, then why? He could give five flops tomorrow and his career might be finished. Are we being premature?

A young man, who leaves his village for a decent paying job in a city like Mumbai might be called successful back home. His folks back in his village might look at the way he dresses, the way he talks and the way he spends money, and marvel at it. "Look at him", they might say, "he has become a big man". But this guy would be a nobody in Mumbai. A nondescript face in a vast sea of humanity.

The example above probably was an extreme case, but the point is if success is so relative, how can I find my place in the hierarchy of life's achievements? Is it a constant attempt to define and redefine yourself? Your priorities, your happiness, your contentment? If I am happy with myself, am I successful? Or, let's say if I think I am successful, but I am not happy at all, am I really "Successful"?

When I think I could one day lead a happy life doing what I love to do, I am always assaulted by the fact that I can meet someone one day who would tell me that I am happy with myself because I have stopped trying to reach greater heights. He would say people who want to reach heights of success are in a perpetual state of unhappiness. And this unhappiness drives them further.

But this confuses me further.

Given that each of us lives a different life under different circumstances and contributes differently to the society we live in, is it possible that we have as many definitions of success (if not more) as there are people?

When I look at myself and try to find my own definition of success, I am assaulted by conflicting theories that I myself put forward and many cases people around me throw at me.

Am I successful? Am I not? Do I want to become one? Do I not?

What?