Silly question, but just take a look at the people who have answered, and you'll get a glimpse of what's amazing about Quora…
Since life in Silicon Valley ends at 35 unless you hit it big or move up in management (and simple logic tells you that most won't), I'm curious what people younger than this think they'll be doing at that age.
I finally got the Amber update for my Lumia 720 yesterday (check availability here), and it brings a few visible features like Data Sense (data usage monitor) and Glance (show clock when the phone is locked) along with some under the hood tweaks like Bluetooth LE support. On the whole, the experience doesn’t seem to have changed much, but the phone seems to respond to touches a bit oddly after performing certain operations like switching off Bluetooth and taking a screenshot.
The update process took about 45 minutes including the download, and in true Windows fashion, the phone restarted then did some data migration and prompted for another restart. iOS updates do take a similar amount of time, but there at least no restart prompts. One of the first things I did was use a workaround to install the Nokia Pro Cam and the Nokia Smart Camera on my phone. Instructions in brief:
1. Change your phone region to United States (Setting->Language+Region)
2. Connect to a WiFi network
3. Under Settings – WiFi, click on the WiFi network you are connected to
4. Switch ‘Proxy’ to on. Now type “117.135.139.179” into “Server/URL”. In “Port”, type in “8888”, then click on the tick at the bottom of the screen
7. Go to the Store and click on ‘Nokia Collection’
8. Download Nokia Pro Cam (after disabling the proxy)
9. Turn Proxy off, set your phone region back to normal, and Restart.
They seem to work without much of an issue and can even be set as the default camera app (they require you to enter the PIN though if you have one set, unlike the default camera app). The on screen controls do seem a tad small on the 4.3″ screen of the Lumia 720, but this should be tweaked once we have the official launch on the lower end devices (non PureView branded ones). There doesn’t seem to be any technical barriers for this.
As for Data Sense, it works as promised and the usage meter filled was up to date right from the initial configuration indicating that the underlying hooks were already in place before the update.
My display on the first use also seemed to be a touch more saturated than before, and I tweaked it in the new Lumia Colour Profile option under the Display setting. A touch of warmth with neutral saturation seems to be my preference (having the crimson theme on a red Lumia 720 is probably the reason for the low saturation preference).
Let’s see if this solves the Bluetooth freeze issue I have been facing, or leads to any new ones.
Begin with the end in mind…
Answer by Andrew Udell:
An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, that it only took a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish. The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.
The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor."
The American scoffed. "I am a Wharton MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."
The Mexican fisherman asked, "But señor, how long will this all take?"
To which the American replied, "Fifteen or twenty years."
"But what then, señor?"
The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions, señor? Then what?"
The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."
Answer by Vinit Hase:
"Research! Change the world! Try your hardest not to do an MBA. Look at what it did to Chetan Bhagat"
This one was when one of my seniors was slightly inebriated:
"Don't just look for the person who pays you the most; you're not a prostitute!"
:p
As with the “S” iPhone releases so far, the iPhone 5s continues the trend of looking practically the same as the previous version while making radical improvements under the hood. I have never had and iPhone of my own so far, but that should not stop me from sharing some thoughts on the new release:
Update: Some very interesting thoughts by Cringely as well about Apple outmaneuvering Microsoft on the no compromises PC model:
Jump forward in time to a year from today. Here’s what I expect we’ll see. Go to your desk at work and, using Bluetooth and AirPlay, the iPhone 5S or 6 in your pocket will automatically link to your keyboard, mouse, and display. Processing and storage will be in your pocket and, to some extent, in the cloud. Your desktop will require only a generic display, keyboard, mouse, and some sort of AirPlay device, possibly an Apple TV that looks a lot like a Google ChromeCast.
I managed to install iOS 7 on my iPad mini over the course of last night. Some initial thoughts on the experience so far :
Below are a few screenshots of the iOS 7 on my iPad mini.
I have been quite happy with my Lumia 720 other than the Google contacts problem that I managed to solve recently. However, there is another issue that’s been bothering me – the phone freezes after I have used my Bluetooth headset with it. The sequence of events goes something like this:
The only way to make the phone useable is to reset it by pressing the volume down + power keys for 10-15 seconds. I am not sure whether this issue is specific to my handset or the Lumia 720 or Windows Phone, but have faced this problem quite a few times. My research on the web indicates that Windows Phone can have some issues with Bluetooth, Wifi and Airplane mode. In fact, one of my recent resets after a freeze had the phone stuck in Airplane mode that just wouldn’t turn off. Another reset thankfully set that problem right.
So far the only workaround I have found to this problem (not tested extensively) is to disconnect the headset from the phone through the settings before turning it off. This seems to keep the phone happy. Hope that the problem is fixed in a future OS update (Amber update for the Lumia 720 should be out soon), but till then got to keep in mind that Windows Phone does not like abrupt Bluetooth disconnects.
Have you been facing similar issues? Let me know in the comments section.
Ever since I got my Lumia 720, I have had issues with missing phone numbers for some of my Google contacts. The same contacts showed up with all their details on my Galaxy S3. Since practically all my contact data are stored on Google this was a real downer in an otherwise excellent experience with the phone.
Thankfully, a bit of research on the web along with some experimentation led me to the problem and the eventual solution. The problem seems to be phone numbers that have been categorized as Main in particular on Google contacts. These are not recognized by Windows Phone and don’t show up in the contact details. The only solution to this is to categorize the number as ones recognized by Windows Phone like Home, Work or Mobile.
You can also see from the screenshots that while some categories are common to Google contacts and Windows Phone, quite a few are not. In such cases, you should opt for the Windows Phone option as Google contacts is quite flexible since it allows user defined categories (Android phones also seem to be flexible in this regard) while Windows Phone does not recognize ones outside its list.
A couple of other things to keep in mind:
One thing that has been made abundantly clear over the last decade is that technology critics have endless amounts of advice for the leading companies rooted in conventional wisdom. Somehow, companies that have kept their ears shut or added liberal doses of salt to the advice seem to be the ones that have done better.
Want examples? Here’s what one had to say about Apple in 2004:
If Apple is really the brains of the industry–if its products are so much better than Microsoft’s or Dell’s or IBM’s or Hewlett-Packard’s–then why is the company so damned small?
Regarding mobile devices:
Newton had its problems–it was clunky, hard to use, and probably ahead of its time. But it still seems baffling that Apple failed to capture a meaningful stake in the $3.3 billion market for personal digital assistants (PDAs), a business that by some measures is now growing faster than either mobile phones or PCs.
And iPod & online music:
That’s why recent releases of competing portable music players take on great significance. Selling for as little as $299, the Dell DJ is about $100 cheaper than the iPod with the same 5,000 song capacity. (A $500 iPod holds 10,000 songs). A third product, a 20-GB unit made by Samsung to work with Napster 2.0, costs $100 less than the 20-GB iPod, or about $300, and boasts a lot more features, including a built-in FM transmitter–to play songs on a car radio–and a voice recorder.
…
And the competition is swarming. Dell and Samsung are challenging enough, but this business is about to turn into a battle of the titans. Wal-Mart is launching a cut-price online music store of its own–and now Microsoft and Sony, no less, are joining the fray. So Apple’s venture into online music is beginning to look like yet another case of frustration-by-innovation. Once again, Apple has pioneered a market–created a whole new business, even–with a cool, visionary product. And once again, it has drawn copycats with the scale and financial heft to undersell and out-market it. In the end, digital music could turn out to be just one more party that Apple started, but ultimately gets tossed out of.
Ending it with this note:
If Apple teaches us anything, it’s that effective innovation is about more than building beautiful cool things.
The rest as the conventional saying goes is history, starting with the iPhone in 2008 and iPad in 2010, and of course iTunes is the defacto online music resource. Also, not to forget Apple’s brief stint as the most valuable company in the world last year. The entire article makes for some very weird reading in hindsight.
Fast forward to the present and critics have upgraded their conventional wisdom to what Apple\Google\Amazon have done, and here’s what one has to tell Microsoft that slipped up on the web and mobile revolution:
Ballmer oversaw a decade of missed opportunities, and he very well may have hastened Microsoft’s decline. But it might have been inevitable. The truth is that for all its claims of innovation, Microsoft never generated much in the way of profits by innovating. This then is a tale of the long, slow death of an enormous cash cow.
And so Apple and Microsoft have had their fortunes reversed in less than a decade, and the critics have been having a ball over the last couple of years as they dish out unsolicited advice to both. Google and Amazon are gradually beginning to receive their share as well, as people try to figure out their long term strategies.
AB's Reflections 