iPhone 3G, Software 2.0, SDK, MobileMe ...

So it's now official - Apple has announced the iPhone 3G. It'll be rolled out first to a few privileged countries on July 11. But very soon, before this year end, it'll be available in 70 countries, including our very own India! Looking at the features and the price of this phone, the impact this will have on the handset market will be tremendous.

The iPhone 3G looks almost identical to its predecessor. Looking at the front of the device, you wouldn't notice any difference. The back of the device has a plastic panel. We'll have to wait & see if this is better than the previous metal casing. The biggest hardware changes are - 3G HSDPA, A-GPS, improved audio & battery life.

All the other major features are as a result of iPhone 2.0 software. And the biggest selling point of this device is this software and the SDK platform that it provides. 2.0 software also brings the promised enterprise features, which include - MS Exchange ActiveSync, push email, calendar and contacts, Cisco IPSec VPN and other enterprise class security features. Other software features include - contacts search, Office document support (view only), bulk delete/move of emails, saving images received in email (both to iPhone library & PC), scientific calculator, parental controls and international language support. You can visit the apple website for a detailed description of all these features.

The power of the 2.0 software platform for development was also demonstrated by a number of companies. There was Sega, EBay and many more. There were also some medical apps that were demonstrated which highlighted the wide variety of domains where the iPhone would be useful. Some of the games shown were awesome, and it was hard to believe that this was a mobile phone and not a game console! The "Push Notification service" is also a nice way to manage application notification without really consuming too much battery life or CPU cycles. The AppStore was also discussed, which is a way to distribute applications. It's an easy way to reach out to all iPhone customers to buy applications, and it also offers a nice deal for software developers. And of course, don't forget MobileMe! This service replaces .Mac, and is fully supported on the iPhone.

And finally, at $199 (for the whole world), this phone is too much to resist!

It's not all about the good things, here's a list of things that's missing or bad about the iPhone:

• A2DP - C'mon almost every other smartphone has this!
• Front facing camera
• Video conferencing - Why is this missing?! It's 3G, and we can't do video calls?! 
  
• Video Recording - The camera still does not support this basic feature. That's a shame!
• Internet tethering - This would enable me to tether the iPhone to a laptop & use it as a high-speed modem.
• And, still no copy and paste.

To conclude - You need to get an iPhone!

iPhone SDK

It's been a long time since I last posted something. Mostly as blogging got boring & routine. But now, for no particular reason, I've decided to get active again. So lets get started with the iPhone SDK.

Unless you've been living under a cave, you'll know that last week Steve Jobs announced to the world the new iPhone SDK. The lack of an SDK to develop native applications on the iPhone & iPod Touch have been a major point of ridicule for these products with the critics. Well, Apple did release the SDK, though a tad late. The SDK meets most if not exceeds the expectations of the developers. The $99 price-point for joining the developer program is pretty aggressive. And, with the already announced Enterprise features, and the inevitable 3G version to come, it looks like the iPhone is all set to dominate the smartphone market. Lets wait & see, as the future unfolds!

Dual boot Vista and Linux

I've been running Vista on my Home PC for the last couple of weeks. Now, before installing Vista, I was running Windows XP with Ubuntu installed on a separate partition. Grub was installed in the MBR, and I could choose either to boot into XP or Ubuntu. When I installed Vista, I made sure it installed over my XP partition. Vista re-wrote the MBR with its own bootloader, no surprises there! In the history of windows, it showed scant respect to any other bootloaders or OS for that matter. So now I couldn't boot into Ubuntu. I had to figure out a way to get back to dual-booting.

I decided to use Vista's bootloader to boot Linux. On Windows XP, you only had to modify boot.ini. On Vista this has been replaced with Boot Configuration Data(BCD). To make changes to BCD, we need to use a command line program called Bcdedit. Bcdedit /help displays the help for this tool.

First I needed the grub bootloader information to be copied into a file. So I pop in any linux installation disk, and reboot my machine to boot from the CD. Then I enter the rescue mode. On my PC, Ubuntu was installed in partition 4 of my hard disk. But Grub was installed only in the MBR, which was over-written by Vista. No problem, first I install Grub to partition 4 of my hard disk!

# grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/sysimage /dev/hda4

Note that my root partition was mounted under /mnt/sysimage. Now to copy the bootloader into a file, I ran the following commands.

# cd /

# dd if=/dev/hda4 of=./boot.lnx bs=512 count=1

Now I reboot into Vista, and copy the file "boot.lnx" from my linux partition to Windows. To do this, I used the program Explore2fs. I saved the file in "C:\". Now I had to run Bcdedit to add a new section to the BCD. I started a command-prompt with Administrator previliges and ran the following commands.

C:\> bcdedit /copy {ntldr} /d "Linux"

The output of this command is a hex number which is a reference for the new entry. Copy this hex number.

C:\> bcdedit /set {HexNumber} device boot

Replace {HexNumber} with the hex number displayed previously.

C:\> bcdedit /set {HexNumber} path \boot.lnx

C:\> bcdedit /displayorder {HexNumberl} /addlast

Now I was able to boot into Ubuntu using Vista's boot menu.

iPhone theme for Pocket PC

No matter how people critisize Apple for iPhone (closed source, price, locked etc.), there is no dispute on one item. Everyone simply loves the iPhone interface! So how about theming your Windows Mobile 5 based pocket pc to look just like the iPhone !?

This is exactly what many bloggers have been doing for the past few days. But Apple has gone after the people who ripped the iPhone icons to be used on the pocket pc! I can point you to this link, which still contains all the instructions. But all the copyrighted material has been removed. It is enough to get you started. The ripped icons are all over the net, so I wont link it here again.

All I can say is, my iPaq now looks very much like the iPhone! Looks great!

Shane Warne retires

Shane Warne announced his retirement from international cricket recently. Surely, the game will be a lot poorer without him. Warne had single-handedly revived the art of leg spin bowling. No man had such command over a cricket ball as Warne. Before Warne, no one could comprehend that a cricket ball could behave in manners as shown by Warne. All the best in your future Warnie!

Below is a small video where Warne describes his greatest wickets.

Man vs Machine

Last week, the human world chess champion lost a six game match to a computer "Deep Fritz". This is the second time that a reigning world chess champion has lost to a machine. The last time it was Garry Kasparov (he lost to Deep Blue), this time it is Vladimir Kramnik. But last time when Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, the machine was a super computer with custom hardware for calculation. This time it was a much lowly workstation(4 processor Intel) machine. In addition, Kramnik had full access to the final version of the program a month in advance! During the game, Kramnik could also see the opening book used by Fritz, which literally ensured he never came out bad out of the opening. Yet he lost by a margin 4-2.

Let us do a more qualitative analysis of the games and come out with a score.

• Game 1, Kramnik outplayed the machine and looked to have a winning ending. So 1-0! Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 2, Kramnik again outplayed the machine, got a very good position, but the game was always a draw. Kramnik missed a mate in 1 and lost. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 0-1.
• Game 3, Kramnik defends a difficult position against the machine, the game was a difficult draw for Kramnik. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 4, same story as game 3. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 5, an eaqual game with chances for both sides. The draw was a logical result. So 1/2-1/2. Actual result 1/2-1/2.
• Game 6, Kramnik is outplayed by Fritz. Nothing more to say about the game. So 0-1. Actual result 0-1.

So qualitatively, the match was drawn. But if we proceed a bit further into this superficial analysis, Kramnik played an open sicilian in the last game. This is akin to chess suicide against a computer. He played this since his blunder in Game 2, cost him a point and he had to win the last game. Kudos to Kramnik, for playing this way for atleast a chance, than playing a quiet Petroff. If Kramnik were leading the match going into the last game, he would have definitely settled for a quiet queenless ending, with a draw being the most probable result.

So is the window of oppurtunity for a human to beat a computer closed? Is this the end of human computer matches. I don't think it is. This match has been a great success in terms of a scientific experiment. We should certainly have more such matches, preferably with a diverse set of human players with different playing styles. Maybe, the machine needs to be handicapped a bit in future. This can be a bit embarassing for the human GM's, but this is the reality. With the way hardware, and chess software are progressing, humans will not be able to win a single game against the machine. Some form of handicaps are required to make the matches more interesting, and to give the human player a chance!

More on XGL + Compiz

I've been experimenting with xgl and compiz the last couple of days. My take on this whole deal - Microsoft should be worried! With xgl and compiz not only can we get all the fancy Aero stuff, but even more. There are already so many effects plugins and 'cgwd' themes, that by the time Vista is released 'Aero Glass' might look ordinary. To add to that, xgl works on most current and legacy video cards. You don't need any Directx9 or LDDM to get all these fancy graphics. In short, one can get all of Vista's Aero stuff and more without investing on new hardware! From my own experience, I couldn't get Aero Glass to work on my home PC due to lack of LDDM driver for my graphics card. But xgl and compiz had absolutely no problem with my hardware. They work great and the performance is not bad either. All the sleazy graphics work smooth. Seeing all this, I don't see how Microsoft can justify people to buy new hardware if they want the full Vista experience.

Below is a screenshot of my current desktop. And no, this is not Vista. It is Fedora Core 5!