iPhone 5C: The simplicity behind the design

Recently, we saw Apple introduce a new plastic iPhone. Why plastic? Because it's cheaper, sure. But it's also one of the smartest industrial design decisions Apple has ever made. 

Manufacturing the 5C: Harder, better, stronger
I can't put a dollar figure on what Apple's bill of materials for the 5C is, but it's safe to say that by going with plastic, they're saving a lot. And not just on material costs-also on time and labor. An aluminum iPhone has to undergo multiple stages of CNC machining and anodizing. These are very time consuming processes that require an enormous number of man hours to oversee them. In contrast, an injection-molded plastic shell can be produced in just one or two operations. 

But the real key to the 5C design isn't just injection molding it out of plastic. It's injection molding it out of a single piece of plastic. This creates a stronger, simpler part-and it's going to produce much faster yield rates than Apple can currently get with the iPhone 5/5S. 

This efficiency is the key to reducing costs on the iPhone 5C compared to aluminum iPhones. In the time it takes Apple to produce just one housing for the aluminum iPhone, they can make multiple plastic iPhones. The ability to produce iPhones quicker is a key feature for Apple as they try meet demand, especially in developing countries. 

So yes-the iPhone 5C's plastic housing is cheaper because the material is less expensive. But the primary cost reduction is due to the fact that it takes fewer steps manufacture, which reduces the time and labor involved. I have no doubt that the 5C will become the best seller in Apple's iPhone lineup overnight, if for no other reason than that they can produce so many more of them. 

Cheap chic
Is Apple's design team giving up much, in terms of the 5C's aesthetics? Plastic is cheap, but it also feels cheap, right? Well, that depends on the quality of the plastic, but more crucially, the injection molding process. In this area, Apple is world class. Just look at the quality of the plastic housing on Apple TV, AirPort routers, or the EarPods. 

The iPhone 5C's hard plastic back gives us a glimpse into Apple's design process. Most plastic cases are made using a mold that includes holes for the speakers, buttons, and the camera. But with the 5C casing, Apple is choosing to use a CNC machine to create these holes after the shell has already been made. Why? First of all, this yields a stronger part. If those holes were included in the injection molding process, hot plastic would have to flow around them. This creates weak points in the plastic. By machining those holes out, the plastic around the holes is just as strong as the rest of the shell. These cases will be stronger than the norm. 

Second, the CNC solution allows Apple to focus on making the housing as seamless as possible. In most plastic products, you can see a faint line-called a "witness line"-that reveals where the two parts of the mold came together. By not molding the holes, Apple only has to make sure they eliminate one witness line-along the glass display edge of the housing. In fact, you can see the CNC polishing wheel process they use for eliminating that witness line here: 

Third, CNC machining these holes gives them a much tighter tolerance than if they were simply molded into the part. Visually, this makes them look crisper and makes the fit between components like the SIM card tray and buttons feel very precise. 

Apple also added an additional step of spray coating the backplate with a clear lacquer hard coat. This gives the plastic some of the qualities glazing gives pottery: It helps prevent scratching, makes the shell look extremely glossy, and completely changes how it feels in our hands. Instead of feeling like glossy plastic, the 5C should feel like ceramic. 

Even the most minute elements of the 5C were designed to reduce the amount of detail found on the body of the 5S. The volume and lock buttons are the same color as the plastic back, which means they blend into the housing. The headphone jack, lightning connector, and screws have all been tinted black to match the black display glass, too. I'll say it again: Less. Visual. Clutter. 

Hamburger and steak
What will be missing from the 5C, though, is the feeling the 5/5S has when you pick it up. Even a year later, the aluminum iPhone feels impossibly thin and light. But comparing the plastic iPhone to the aluminum iPhone is a bit like comparing a gourmet hamburger to a gourmet steak. Both use the highest quality ingredients, but they're designed for different audiences and occasions. 

I prefer hamburger. In white, thank you. The iPhone 5C has fewer speaker holes, no dual-sided chamfers, no secondary glass pieces at the top and bottom, and no thin plastic dividers on the sides to make the external antenna work. It's almost like Apple decided to use one of those simplified, outlined icons in its "Made for iPhone" program as the basis for this design. 

It's this simplicity that makes the 5C a much cleaner option compared to the aluminum 5S. By making the manufacturing process cheaper and more efficient, Apple has found a brilliant way to actually improve the design of the iPhone.

Read More

Few buyers for BlackBerry: Sources

A handful of potential bidders, including private equity firms, are lining up to look at BlackBerry, but initial indications suggest that interest is tepid and buyers are eyeing parts of the Canadian smartphone maker rather than the whole company, several sources familiar with the situation said. 

Private equity firms are mostly interested in businesses such as BlackBerry's operating system and the patents around its keyboard, two of the sources said. However, one possibility is for a Canadian pension fund to team up with an investor to buy the whole company, which is currently worth a little more than $5 billion, one of the sources said. 

BlackBerry's biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd, has approached several large Canadian investment funds about forging a deal to take the smartphone maker private, Reuters reported last week. 

Fairfax has a 10 percent stake, and its chairman and chief executive, Prem Watsa, has left BlackBerry's board already to avoid any possible conflict of interest as the company assesses its strategic options. 

Nevertheless, in recent days a few private equity firms have signed confidentiality agreements or have agreed to meetings with the company to gain access to the company's books, the sources said, adding that the sale process was expected to start in a few weeks. 

BlackBerry declined to comment. 

The apparent lack of interest among private equity firms in the whole company underscores the challenges BlackBerry has been facing in competing with rivals such as Apple Inc's iPhone and devices using Google Inc's Android technology. 

Its new BlackBerry devices hit store shelves this year just as the high-end smartphone segment was showing signs of saturation in markets such as the United States. Samsung Electronics recently reported results that fell shy of expectations, while Apple earlier this year reported its first quarterly profit decline in more than a decade. 

The new BlackBerry device has so far failed to gain traction with consumers, and the company - which pioneered mobile email with its first smartphones and email pagers and was once a stock market darling - has seen its shares plummet. Its market value has fallen to $5.4 billion, from $84 billion at its peak in 2008. Shares closed down 1.4 percent at $10.28 on the Nasdaq on Friday.

Last month, the company said it was weighing its options, which could include an outright sale, after Reuters first reported that company's board was warming up to the possibility of going private. 

Industry sources said several of the biggest private equity firms and some of the Asian hardware makers had decided against a deal for the company. Still, the sources added some BlackBerry's assets could be of interest to buyers. 

According to analysts, BlackBerry's assets include a shrinking, yet well-regarded services business that powers its security-focused messaging system, worth $3 billion to $4.5 billion; a collection of patents that could be worth $2 billion to $3 billion; and $3.1 billion in cash and investments. 

Even at a conservative estimate, that is more than the company's $5.4 billion market value. Analysts said the smartphones that bear its name have little or no value and it might cost $2 billion to shut the unit that makes them. 

Many hurdles remain to a deal. Private equity firms have circled the company for more than two years and have tried without success so far to figure out ways to structure a deal. 

Moreover, Ottawa reviews any big takeover of a Canadian company for competitive and national security reasons. Government officials have often said they want BlackBerry to succeed as a Canadian company, but concede they do not know how things will play out.

Read More

Internet access is a vital healthcare tool

When Mark Zuckerbergannounced a new private sector initiative last month to make affordable internet access available to people in developing countries, he breathed new life into a long-simmering debate within the global development community - what is the value of technology in societies suffering from urgent social, economic and humanitarian challenges? Familiar voices of criticism have been heard, pointing out that in communities lacking food, clean water and medicine, getting people online is hardly a priority.

Some of these critics are trusted friends and colleagues within the healthcare and humanitarian sector. But as someone with over thirty years of field experience in developing countries, I humbly disagree with them. Achieving greater internet access in developing countries can save lives, transform communities and revolutionize the quality and provision of healthcare for hundreds of millions of people today. Not only should connectivity be part of the global development agenda, it must be recognized as a vital enabler of the entire agenda.

There are several important reasons for this.

First, better tools for diagnosis and communications can lead to differences in health outcomes. One group of students at Stanford, through our Liberation Technology course, recently produced a mobile app to improve clean water delivery in a large slum in Kenya, allowing users of the app to locate the cheapest prices for water in their community, comment on quality and identify sources of water that make people ill. Another app for community workers targets cholera treatment in areas without any physicians. While many of us in the developed world use our mobile phones for triviality, in developing countries they can be the first line of defense in a public health emergency. This isn't about cat pictures or Angry Birds - mobile phones can be the difference between life and death.

Second, the internet has a vital role to play in supporting the broader socioeconomic changes in developing countries necessary to improve quality of life. Disease, malnutrition and poor health are products of poverty, and countries that struggle with these challenges need jobs and growth as much as they need the right drugs and treatments. According to McKinsey, the internet accounted for around 21 percent of GDP growth in developed countries over the past five years, and in countries in economic transition the internet already accounts for an average of 1.9 percent of GDP. But according to the International Telecommunication Union, only around 16 percent of people in Africa are online today. To unlock the full economic potential of the web, Africa must be fully connected.

Third, the internet provides an amazing opportunity today to spread greater knowledge that can help save lives and transform approaches to global health. On the simplest level, the internet can be used by local physicians, community workers and ill patients in developing countries to find information and resources cheaper and faster. Recipes downloaded online for homemade oral rehydration salts that prevent dehydration and death from diarrhea can be just as effective as more expensive imported vaccines. More complex education projects have huge potential for transforming the quality of health infrastructure in developing countries. The Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes for Health is running one initiative that develops electronic training for researchers in poorer communities, demonstrating protocols for conditions such as diabetes, HIV and malaria.

Achieving access to clean water, food and healthcare are essential priorities for developing countries. Connectivity isn't a substitute for these things. But no one suggested it should be. All the evidence today suggests that connectivity is an enabler of the broader development agenda. Today, the internet can not only help mean the difference between eating and starving, sickness and health, or life and death, but can help defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor and promote economic development.

As we work to continue advancing global health and humanitarian initiatives, let's move beyond the false notion that we must face a choice between "serious" development goals and connecting the world. Getting the world online is a serious development objective. The internet might not be a sufficient tool to make the world go to bed happy, healthy and well-fed each night, but it's an essential one - and Zuckerberg's mission is well-worth pursuing.

Read More

Now, text messages without leaving a trial

A new messaging app calledAnsa has been developed for those who take their online footprint seriously.

Ansa, the new messaging app, launched atDisrupt SF, which is one of the biggesthackathon events of the year hosted by tech blogTechCrunch, allows people to chat "off the record", which enables the phone to delete all messages sent within 60 seconds of it being read, News.com.au reported.

Natali Bryla, Ansa founder and CEO said that "the difference with other texting apps is that everything you say is permanent", unlike this app, which has been developed for those who are paranoid about their privacy.

This app, which comes in handy for those who have sent a text message in their weaker moments that they come to regret later, also allows one to delete a message from the recipient's phone, hours, days or months after it has been sent using the "sync deletion" option.

Ansa features include photo filters, which allows one to draw silly images before sending them. Also, once can send and receive Google images and YouTube videos without leaving the app.

However, Ansa will store any text messages that have been deemed on-the-record.

Read More

Dell to focus on emerging markets

Dell chief executive Michael Dellsaid in an interview with CNBC, that the focus of the company, which he is taking private, will include expanding sales capacity and growing in emerging markets and tablets. 

Dell, who won a battle with activist Carl Icahn to win control of the computer company, also said he will shift from a quarterly focus to a "five-year, ten-year focus." 

He does not foresee a Dell entry into the cellphone market.

Read More

Twitter investors to reap reward with IPO

In June 2007, Evan Williams was looking for investors for a quirky internet communications service called Twitterthat he had co-founded. 

He had signed up a number of well-known Silicon Valley financiers, but he also dashed off a note to his old friend Dick Costolo, who had just sold his company to Google, asking if he would like to put in $25,000 or $100,000. 

"I'm on the $25k bus," Costolo replied three minutes after receiving the email. "Thanks Ev, this will be a lot of fun." 

Costolo, who is now the chief executive of Twitter, is one of a handful of individual investors who stand to reap the rewards of a potential initial public offering of stock in the social network. The company said Thursday that it had filed early paperwork with regulators to conduct such a sale, which will probably occur late this year or early next year. 

Although many details are still unclear - most of all the offering price of Twitter's stock - Costolo's initial investment is probably worth more than $10 million, with additional shares he has received as an executive worth many millions more, according to people knowledgeable about the company's finances. 

Twitter declined to comment on its finances, citing the confidential nature of its IPO filings at this stage in the process. 

Williams, who provided crucial early financing for Twitter and remains its largest shareholder, will almost certainly become a billionaire. The venture investor Chris Sacca and at least two venture capital firms, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, will also very likely end up with stakes exceeding $1 billion each, according to an analysis of financial documents and interviews with people who know about Twitter's finances. Others could make tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Not everyone will be so lucky. 

Twitter struggled in its early days, even laying off employees as it tried to conserve its cash. Just two years ago, there were questions about its viability as it tried to figure out how to wring revenue from the endless stream of 140-character messages generated by its users. Many early investors and employees sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stock in 2011 to a Russian investment firm, DST Global, that was eager to buy in. 

"To see it come to life and have it taken away, I was devastated," said Dom Sagolla, an early employee of Twitter who was laid off in May 2006 and never received stock. While Sagolla has made some money by proxy from Twitter - he wrote a book that tells newcomers how to use the service and is doing some paid public speaking - he does not stand to benefit as Twitter heads to Wall Street. 

Twitter's IPO will not be nearly as large as Facebook's $16 billion offering last year, but it will still create a multimillionaires club of dozens of early believers. 

"For me personally, this is a once-in-a-decade or once-in-a-career kind of investment," said Bijan Sabet, a partner at Spark Capital, one of the earliest investors in Twitter. 

If history is a guide, the money generated by the Twitter offering will also provide the seed money for the next generation of scrappy tech companies that could grow to compete with Twitter. 

"When you have a successful IPO, it gives people confidence both in the public and private markets and they are directly correlated," said James A. Moore, a senior executive at Columbia Business School's entrepreneurship program and founder of J Moore Partners, a technology mergers and acquisitions consulting firm. 

Indeed, Williams and his other two co-founders, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, are no longer involved with daily operations at the company and have moved on to new ventures. Dozens of other very early employees have also left, although many still hold stock worth millions. 

How many millions will depend on the final valuation placed on the company for the stock offering. Investment bankers will gauge investors' interest in the stock and work with the company to set a price. 

In March, Twitter set off a frenzy of interest after it said it was valuing the stock it was offering to employees at $17 a share, according to VC Experts, a private company data provider. That price implied that the company was worth more than the $8 billion valuation it had when it raised money in 2011. 

Since then interested parties have been willing to pay as much as $30 a share for a piece of the company in private transactions, according to Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.

On the public stock exchanges, Internet companies have been surging. This week, investors have plowed money into companies like Facebook, Netflix and Pandora, sending their stock prices to record highs. 

"Internet valuations are crazy right now and investors are willing to pay a lot for equity in Internet stocks," Pachter said. "Twitter is taking advantage of this." 

In hindsight, some Twitter shareholders who cashed out early have expressed regrets. But "in our case, we are early-stage people, and we had had a remarkable run," said one early investor who sold millions of dollars of stock in 2011, when the Russian investment firm was buying. 

And then there were those who never got any stock at all, like Florian Weber, one of the earliest programmers at the company. He worked on the project before it was even fully separate from Odeo, the now-defunct company where it was hatched. 

Weber, a German citizen, said he was hired as a contractor, not an employee, so he never received any stock options. 

"Coming from Germany, it's not something that I pushed terribly hard for," said Weber, who often worked remotely from Hamburg and eventually tired of telecommuting. 

"As far as I know, I'm the only one who does not have stock options," he said. But he has no regrets. He eventually started his own company, Amen, in Germany, which was just sold to a bigger firm, Tape.tv. "I'm very happy with my life."

Read More

How Lehman Brothers collapse impacted IT pros

Two months after the Lehman bust and just two weeks before his wedding, in November 2008, Rahul Bhargava lost his job. The IT professional, based in Bangalore, couldn't get himself to tell his family, or his wife, because of the stigma of suddenly finding himself unemployed, and went ahead with the wedding anyway.

Every morning, he would leave home, but spend the day at a friend's office. For two months, Bhargava kept up this charade. Then, in January, he got a job after accepting a considerable pay cut, and told his wife and family what had happened. Bhargava was lucky to land another job so quickly. 

According to Karthik Shekhar, former general secretary of Unites Professionals, a now-defunct union of IT workers, about 50,000 techies were benched or pink-slipped during the meltdown of 2008 and most were without work for years. Many of them—crippled by fast-depleting savings and mortgages on cars and homes—settled for whatever offers came their way, while some turned entrepreneurs, with varying degrees of success. "It was a time of intense fear and insecurity," says Shekhar. "IT professionals were scared, not only of losing their jobs, but also of losing a certain kind of lifestyle they had adopted during the preceding years of bullishness. They suddenly found themselves about to lose it all." 

Shekhar says the axing in 2008 was brutal. "Some staff was given a few hours to clear out their things and leave. Employees also began to dread the weekly Friday meetings, where senior managers would walk into the room and literally hand out pink slips, just the way their counterparts did in the US." 

Employees, says Shekhar, were often let go with a month or two in salary, and it was difficult to challenge the decision as the companies had individual contracts with each employee—the terms being different for each person, and usually kept under wraps. "There was no unity among the sacked IT workers," says Shekhar. "They could not, as an aggrieved group, fight for their rights." 

Some techies, like S Raju and 10 or 12 colleagues, did challenge their sacking. But they were confused about the legal route. 

They started by approaching the local cops seeking payment of arrears. They then took the case to the labour court, where it dragged on for some years, till both sides got fed up and allowed the case to fizzle out. 

Unites tried to reason with some companies to not sack en masse, but slash salaries or move employees into skilling programmes. 

"But only one organisation tried this out," he says. Shekhar, however, sees Lehman as just a catalyst— a pin-prick that burst the IT bubble that would've deflated anyway. "The process got sped up because of Lehman," he adds.

Read More