What victims will Smartphones claim?

When television was introduced, initially, there was no impact. Then, there was a seconday impact on our social habits - we stopped visiting relatives and friends as often, lest we disturb their watching Chhayageet or the Sunday movie. Apart from that, the generation gap between children and their parents grew wider - with TV viewing being the commonest friction point.

When Desktop Publishing arrived, for some time, it was a curiosity - because only 2 fonts were available and the software was terribly slow on PCs. But within 3-4 years, jobs of "Cut-and-Paste Artists" at phototypesetting units disappeared totally. Of course, they were replaced by KPO Companies offering Pre-Print Services.

Similarly, when the Internet and mobile telephony was upon us, we did not initially realise the impact. Then several impacts happened:

• Email went from being an esoteric, nerdy mode of communication, to an absolute essential (What?! You don't have an email account?!) in less than 5 years.
• The Post Office lost one major source of revenue - post, now pejoratively dubbed "snail-mail" - almost for ever. In the same period of time.
• Porn - an deluge of it - was upon us. The parents of teens among us either remained blissfully unaware, but kept wondering why their wards had become so withdrawn or rebellious; or wrung their hands with worry about the warping influence that it could have on our kids. Now, it has become so commonplace that few parents, if any, worry so much anymore.
• When adoption of mobile phones (more or less contemporaneous with the Internet) exploded, the Post Office got another body blow - how many send greeting cards today? We use SMS or MMS or e-Mail. We innovated the "missed call". 

Now, smartphones, phablets and tablets are well and truly upon us. They have already washed away the PDAs - PIM devices that were not mobile phones. Now, I am counting what else has been washed away (at least as far as I am concerned) by the computing revolution that the smartphone represents:

• No more "mobile stereo music devices" like Walkman, Discman, or Radio. Even iPods are on their way out. 
• No more radios or even Car FM Radios for music - we can choose what we want to hear on a 16GB USB stick that can carry a zillion songs. And we can get FM Radio on some of our smartphones. 
• For important news on the go, now, there is Twitter - anything that I really need to know will be on Twitter quicker than I can hear it on radio. 
• No more wristwatches except as a style statement. 
• No more alarm clocks. Anyway, I can no longer imagine leaving home without my Google Nexus 7. 
• If there is a choice, today, I would choose e-Books over physical books. Imagine book that can be read at night with the lights off, without disturbing your spouse! And that does not burden you any more? I am now reading more books than since my college days - due to the sheer convenience. A book often weighs more than a Tablet.  
• Newspapers and Magazines will die out too. Newsweek, and Martha Graham are two big marquees that have gone online only. There are several online-only publications like Huffington Post (which recently bagged a Pulitzer) and Business Insider.  I am still to wean myself off newspapers, it is too ingrained a habit - but that can happen, very, very soon. Already, I don't remember when I last bought a magazine at a newsstand. Not because I don't read them -  but because I get a host of Indian and foreign newspapers and magazines on Flipboard or Google Current; updated automatically every time I open it. Sameeer and Vineet Jain need to really worry - their huge, profitable franchise is likely to decline, but before they do, almost the entire newspaper industry in India may wither away. 
• I now use my Netbook (already written off by many as a dodo, but still surprisingly useful and convenient) only to write - and rarely to read. That includes work-related reading as well. So probably, PCs and laptops will fade from my memory. Already, all working in my office have their own tablets and smartphones. They often share documents using Google Drive, which could be done using a Tablet as well. 
• Much less spending on movies - with smartphones capable of HD video, Teenagers will watch movies in cinema theatres only for the company, or for new movies that they cannot download and watch. For the older generation, it is easier to watch old movies or song clips, or listen to old songs on the Internet; and what can be more convenient than watching it on a tablet in Hi-Def? 
• The jobs of watchmen and security personnel will disappear - but not so fast - what with cheap DVRs and security cameras with output viewable on a Tab wherever you are, proving to be more efficacious - my friend, an industrialist, keeps tabs on his factory using his Tab over wi-fi or using a SIM-based Internet connection, no matter where he is. He actually caught one of his security guards stealing copper wire by playing back CCTV footage; and nabbed the thief before he reached home!  

Can you add to this list of possible victims of smartphones? 

Steve Jobs, RiP

He was a technical AND marketing genius. I do not remember a single person who has had such deep impact over such a sustained period, as Steve Jobs has had, on the state-of-the-art in multiple consumer-facing industries. Personal computing, animation films, portable music players, music and entertainment marketing, smartphones, and hand-held tablet computers – all these are markets which he created, and in which he led his company to success at a level that can only be dreamed of by other companies. He did not make products – he made objects of desire. He changed the ways of working of every industry that he touched.

He built the first commercially successful personal computer in 1982 – the Apple II, after first developing the prototype in a garage, along with another technical genius, Steve Wozniak, whose autobiography is titled iWoz. This was the first commercial computer to have a mouse and an OS with graphical user interface. For several years – maybe 10 years, no machine came out on the market with comparable graphical OS. This probably represents the longest period of a technical monopoly ever.

He then went on to build the successors, called Macintosh computers, or Mac for short, which has been through several avatars. They became the gold standard for ease of use and stylish looks. Like every product that Jobs introduced, they were objects of desire, that sold even though they were usually far more expensive than the competition.

The famous story of how he got thrown out of the company he had founded is too well-known to recount, but genius that he was, he continued to develop cutting edge technology, in a company appropriately called NeXT. While the company never did come out with a commercial launch, several technologies developed there were incorporated into later versions of the Mac OS and other products. During that phase when he had nothing to do with Apple, he also bought and spent time on building a young startup company called Pixar Animation, where he learnt and taught the world how to to create full-length ultra-realistic 3D animation feature films using cutting edge computing technologies that his company used, as well as nifty software that it developed for internal use. The only other company that had successfully made animation films before, Disney, had made 2D films. Toy Story, Pixar's first film, was a blockbuster hit heralded a new genre in personal entertainment. It was inevitable that Disney and Pixar would merge, especially after Apple Inc reclaimed Jobs as its own. However, the success of Pixar and the deal with Disney made Jobs wealthy independent of Apple – an important factor that allowed him to dictate his own terms when he came back. Apple had become a basket case in the nearly 10 years that it ran without Jobs – to the extent that Jobs got arch rivals Microsoft into the company to continue to make Office for the Mac, and also a significant stake in Apple. This horrified Apple loyalists, and people felt that Microsoft had bought into Apple at a throwaway price, that allowed Apple to raise some much needed money and to stay alive, something that Microsoft also needed to defend themselves against charges of monopolistic behaviour. The reality was that Microsoft needed Apple to be alive, not kicking. But he had not contended with Jobs' steely determination to reinvent Apple.

Jobs' speech at Stanford's commencement, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, is an all-time classic with advice for anyone who aspires to be a creative success. It is a story of persistence and resilience, along with curiosity and willingness to question the weight of collective wisdom. It is something that every young person on the threshold of a career would be well advised to read and internalise.

Jobs' second innings with Apple has been even more exciting than the first, by almost any measure. He revived a moribund company to become the most valuable company on Earth by market capitalisation and profits. Jobs has left behind a company that has more liquid cash resources than the US Government. It sits on the largest cash pile in the world of any manufacturing company. It may be surpassed probably only by Berkshire Hathaway, which is mainly an investment company.

Jobs' second innings at Apple began with the i-Mac – with transparent plastic-encased monitors, computers and peripherals, not much functional difference, but great looks that evoked gasps at first sight made it the first hit product that gave Apple its second wind. Thereafter, there has been no looking back. i-Pods,i-Tunes, i-Stores, i-Phones, i-Pads, and the yet unheralded i-Cloud have all followed in monotonous succession; each redefining rules of the marketplace, and creating new standards to such an extent that Apple blazes the trail, and the entire world simply plays catch-up. It seemed as if Apple was unstoppable – till, cruelly, cancer took hold of Jobs. He battled on for a few years, but all the medical knowledge of humankind could not extend the life of this great man.

I don't envy Tim Cook – while he has been Jobs' close aide and confidante for several years, and been the de facto day-to-day head at Apple for a long time,  stepping into Jobs' shoes won't be comfortable – he will feel like a pygmy wearing three-league boots. The world will keep comparing him with Jobs. Like the i-Phone's latest version (4S) released a couple of days back, even though it has almost all-new innards, looks no different from the earlier version. Early reports suggest that Apple loyalists seem to be disappointed – quite possibly because it was the first product in more than a decade to be launched without Jobs' involvement, either at the launch or in its making.

Steve Jobs, RiP.