Magic Mouse scores big



Apple’s new Bluetooth mouse looks smart and pulls off impressive tricks, but it doesn’t come cheap

Magic Mouse, Apple's new offering, looks a bit like Dove soap. The attractive contouring is the first thing you notice when you open the box. But beyond aesthetics, the USP of this wireless mouse is its touch technology, adapted from the company's more iconic products such as the iPhone and the MacBook.

Many believe the Magic Mouse is a huge improvement on the Mighty Mouse, Apple's earlier Bluetooth tracking device. I tried out the Magic Mouse on the iMac 24 inch, Apple's top-end home desktop till recently. (They now have a faster 27-inch model).

The installation wasn't easy. To make the iMac Magic Mouse-ready, I installed Snow Leopard, Apple's latest software upgrade (also called OS 10.6), but the mouse just continued doing basic things, and wouldn't reveal any of the great tracking features it was being praised for.

The Magic Mouse comes bundled with the new iMac series, but I had heard that it would be compatible with the previous generations of Macs as long as they were running on Snow Leopard. It was puzzling why the mouse wasn't coming alive fully even after I had installed Snow Leopard. I googled again and found on a user forum that Apple had put out a patch to make the mouse work. I downloaded that as well.

That didn't help either. I then went online and got software updates for the OS that came with the nine-month-old iMac, which took overnight to download. All this took me approximately two working days to accomplish (since I was busy with other tasks as well). But once I had restarted the system, and activated the Bluetooth mouse option in Systems Preferences, the mouse worked perfectly. A little demo pops up the moment you configure the Magic Mouse, and that is a thoughtful touch, since many users would be new to wireless mice.

The scrolling is very smooth on the Magic Mouse, and is much better than on the brand new Apple button mouse I had been using, which tended to scroll inconsistently. If you want slower scrolling, like when you are reading an e-book or a PDF, just uncheck the momentum option in mouse settings. It also gives you a circular scroll option. Using the Control button, you can also zoom in and out.



The mouse understands left and right clicks without actually demarcating spaces for them, but the right click needs to be activated first. The double-finger left and right swipes are a nice surprise: on Firefox, for instance, you could use them to navigate to sites you have visited previously.



The Magic Mouse isn’t designed to work with Windows, but as always, there’s the friendly online hacker who can help you find a way around the problem. It runs on two AA batteries, said to last about four months, and some users are upset it can’t be charged from a USB.

Overall, this is a mouse that looks good, and works well. But at Rs 3,890, it can’t be your idea of an economy accessory (when you can pick up a decent mouse for Rs 200). But then, if you’re looking to indulge in a luxury mouse, this is the one for you.

India's car festival

Suddenly, the Indian market is awash with new cars. For a country that once had to choose between just two dowdy brands, Ambassador and Premier, 50 new models in a year is something.

Well, more than something. It’s spectacular. Not just because all this action is happening in India, but also because it’s happening at a time when America and other big car markets have entered their worst year in living memory.

Many things are going in favour of carmakers in India. General Motors, once held up as a great model, is today looking like a shameful profligate in the US. But it is flourishing in India, and hopes to do better this year. By 2010, it wants one in every ten cars sold in India to be a GM car.

That may be ambitious, considering the aggressive competition from Suzuki and Hyundai and scores of other manufacturers, but overall, GM feels this country "holds the key" to its recovery. Many big car manufacturers the world over are eying India with similar optimism.

The collapse of American car manufacturing is widely attributed to its refusal to accept frugal cars. But here in India, the GM’s Spark is available in a petrol-LPG variant, putting it firmly on the wish list of the budget-conscious middle class. The kanjoos Indian is finally getting his own back at the arrogant, splurging American.

Two cars rolled out to high expectations last month: the Honda Jazz and the Fiat Grande Punto. They have got the B segment, one step up from entry-level cars such as the Alto, all excited. That’s a hot segment because of the numbers they can sell, and everyone wants to be there. Volkswagen is coming out with the Polo later this year, and it will compete with Suzuki’s Swift and Ritz, Skoda’s Fabia, and Hyundai’s i20.

The recession is forcing many self-indulgent economies into considering smaller cars. The Grande Punto, for instance, would never have impressed the Americans, who are used to huge SUVs, but it’s available in that country today. The Americans were driving SUVs such as the Hummer, with a grand mileage of 1 km a litre, when the rest of the world was switching to cars that could do 10 to 15 times better.

Thanks to the recession and a sudden awakening of environmental conscience, the car snobs are now encouraging people to exchange their fuel guzzlers for leaner, meaner cars. India’s largest car exporters, Hyundai and Maruti Suzuki, are cashing in on European subsidies (of between Rs 50,000 and Rs 3.5 lakh) for people buying fuel-efficient cars. Life’s good for Maruti Suzuki, whose exports rose 176 per cent in June over the same month last year.

Everyone knows our roads can’t take the traffic, and we need better public transport, but our love affair with cars seems to have just been ignited.

Diabetes Day thoughts

November 14 was World Diabetes Day. Diabetes is overwhelming India. We have the largest number of diabetics in the world, and no one knows why.

Every year, on this day, doctors and pharma companies talk about diabetes in the newspapers, but sadly, their advice isn't really making a difference. You can make out it isn't because the numbers are increasing, and corporate hospitals are opening centres exclusively for diabetics. These centres are actually big hospitals, all set to cash in on the epidemic. Officially, India has 41 million diabetics, and the national prevalence is between 9 and 14 per cent.

As Diabetes Day approaches, marketers invariably find ways to give their products a diabetic spin. Take green tea. It's a good product, and is considered an anti-oxidant (said to put the brakes on ageing), but can it treat diabetes? Every season, we read articles about its benefits for both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics. It is possible green tea has some peripheral benefits, but to promote it as a panacea for diabetics is surely an irresponsible bit of exaggeration? You will run into hundreds of such products, each claiming to magically help diabetics. Be warned that they all have an eye on the huge diabetic market, and may not help all that much in glucose control, even if they are good for non-diabetic consumers.

I do a bit of reading, mostly on the Net, to keep abreast of what is happening in diabetes research. Over the past year, I have stumbled across some startling reports. Doctors have found, for instance, that diabetes is a neurological problem, and that inflamed nerves in the pancreas could be the cause of diabetes. Just last week, an Australian research student found how insulin helps fat and muscle cells absorb sugar, and his peers say he may have found a missing piece of the diabetes jig-saw puzzle. A gastric procedure is ridding many Type 2 diabetics of their problem, but it isn't yet considered standard treatment. Many of these developments go against what our doctors routinely tell us, but you can't place all the blame at the doctors' doors because they have probably seen hundreds of promising discoveries just fizzling out.

Some researchers now believe doctors should aggressively start controlling blood sugars and prescribe insulin the moment a patient is diagnosed with diabetes. Is insulin better than the pills? A school of thought believes it is, but even doctors who subscribe to this school are prompted by patient reluctance to go with the pills.

The most surprising book I have read in recent years is Dr Bernstein's The Diabetes Solution, which postulates that the only way to deal with diabetes is to go low-carb and combine it with some exercise. This American doctor has his share of critics, most of whom believe that eating too much protein puts pressure on the kidneys. But he has a staunch following, and is a living example of what diabetics can achieve if they follow his methods. (He began his career as an engineer. When he realised his diabetes was killing him, he started experimenting on himself. He finally did an MBBS, and developed a dissident protocol for treating diabetes. He practises in New York).

Diabetes is a boon to the medical trade -- diabetics live for years and years after they are diagnosed, and spend heavily on doctors and medication -- but a nightmare to sufferers. Every now and then, we hear a cure is around the corner, but cynical diabetics believe the vested interests won't let it arrive.

Is the CD on the way out?

The CD celebrated its 26th birthday yesterday. It wasn't exactly a cheerful, forward-looking birthday, because many are convinced the glory days of the shiny little wonder are over.

The compact disc, as we know it, was born in Germany in 1982. It was released by Sony and Philips Consumer Electronics as a medium for music. It was later adapted to store other kinds of data. The CD took a long time coming to India.

In 2002, that's just six years ago, a blank CD cost upwards of Rs 50 in Bangalore, and not all computers had CD drives. The floppy drive was still much in use, and CDs were considered an expensive option. Today, you can buy a good blank for less than Rs 10, and an unbranded one for half that price. The floppy is dead.

The CD is used to store many kinds of data, but the music CD, many believe, will soon be obsolete. For many music lovers addicted to mp3 players and mobile phones doubling up as music players, the CD is already history.

Listening is constantly being redefined. If you asked my father's generation, owning a private music collection meant buying vinyl records. In the 1970s, the first cassette recorders made their appearance in India, and vinyl records began struggling for survival.

Around this time, middle class families were eager to ask relatives returning from abroad to fetch them a Panasonic or a Sony tape recorder. The CD is now ubiquitous, but the cassette still holds its own in the villages and towns. Lahari Recording Company, south India's biggest record label, continues to release both cassette and CD versions of all its titles.

The CD had many advantages over vinyl records and cassettes. It could hold 10 songs, or an hour of music, and play it all without a break. After the mp3 format made its appearance, the CD became so cheap and commonplace that it was sold at street corners. Loaded with songs in this compressed format, a CD could just go on and on.

For those of us who had heard music on the LPs, there was something about the CD that just didn't seem right. It did not match the quality of sound that vinyl could produce. Audiophiles call it warmth. The CD played everything clean, with no distortion, but it was clean in a surgical sort of way.

In lay language, the CD is made up of a sequence of closely aligned blocks. But however closely aligned they are, they are still separate, and so, experts said, digital could never match the smoothness of analog (tape or vinyl).

The convenience of the CD helped it eliminate the cassette in the West. "CDs were smaller, faster and digital, the perfect product for a new era of hyperconsumption and hyperspeed. But that era has come to an end," wrote Scott Thill in Wired magazine.

Now, observers such as Thill believe, the greatest challenge to the music CD is broadband, which enables people to share music without it ever having to be burnt on to a disc.

Thill believes CDs will go because they use too much plastic (for the jewel boxes) and too much paper (for the jackets), and so are environmentally unattractive. He also argues that technology will emerge to help people send and receive high-resolution music on the Net.

I don't know about the environmental bit, because concern for it hasn't really deterred the world from using cars. But I do hope the technological leap to high resolution happens soon, because I love the vinyl sound. Software wizards have developed plug-ins to make digital sounds resemble analog ones, but it still isn't the real thing.

Meanwhile, here's a useful lead for those interested in digitising their vinyl records. A company called Ion has produced a record player with a USB line out. This means you can play your old LPs on the turntable and record the output directly on to your computer. The Ion USB turntable costs about 100 dollars (Rs 4,000). That isn't a big price if you are longing to listen to vintage music but have no way to do so because nobody sells styluses for your old record player any more. Know anyone coming down from the US?

Fear in a barrel of oil

We all know what's happening because of inflation. Everyday items are getting more expensive or scarce. The poor and the middle class are struggling to pay their household bills, while the affluent are cutting down on lifestyle spending. There's hardly anyone who isn't talking about the price squeeze.

The larger picture is gloomier. The Sensex is sliding down and interest rates are shooting up, prompting finance minister P Chidambaram to make brave efforts to calm the nation's nerves. Yesterday, he appealed to oil-producing nations to stick to a price band and help the world pull back galloping prices. (Not that anyone's going to listen.)

The damage is there for all to see. Inventories in manufacturing are building up, and jobs are being cut in almost all sectors. Airlines are pruning their schedules, and even companies with deep pockets are scrimping and scrounging.

In India, inflation has crossed 11.3 per cent and put the Manmohan Singh government on the defensive. Things are not so bad in Europe, where inflation is at 3 per cent and the US, where it is at 5 per cent. Yet, the West is more worried than India and China, and is contemplating the terrible prospect of oil soaring to 200 dollars a barrel in the near future. What does it all portend?

You might think we still have some things left to smile about. Costlier petrol means we stop burning it so merrily. More citizens start using public transport (a majority in India always do, in any case, because they can't afford cars!). We build smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles, try to find alternatives to fossil fuel, invest in research. And in the process, environmental concern pays off not just for the planet but for our household economies as well.

But what the West sees is a chilling vision: a change in the world's power equations.

As oil prices rise, some countries make windfall profits, while others descend into wretchedness. Countries that suddenly make a lot of money behave like the noveau riche, and can boorishly start fighting at the smallest provocation.

That's why America expects wars among oil producing countries. What scares the West the most is the prospect of oil prices making life miserable beyond endurance, and forcing governments the world over to reverse the trade liberalisation of the last 30 years. That's real bad news for the West.

A Newsweek report says the Americans, known for their wasteful ways, are cutting down on driving this year for the first time since 1991. The magazine also estimates that the more the Europeans spend on fuel, the less they will spend on furniture, clothing and white goods.

Banking giants expect an "increase in corporate failures". Citibank's equities economist in Europe is quoted as saying, "We expect … a lot of M&A. You might well see flush emerging-markets firms swooping in to buy up ailing Western firms on the cheap."

Newsweek interprets "emerging-markets firms" to mean companies such as the Tatas. As India slowly establishes control over the world automobile industry, it will also gently participate in tilting the balance of power away from the West.

High oil prices may mean a richer Iran, and that isn't something America likes either. America fears that a stronger Hizbullah would mean an end to culture and civilisation as now understood in the English-speaking world. As Newsweek puts it, "Western ideas about civil society, the environment and women's rights could be displaced with new sets of values."

The oil price hike may already have changed what you eat and how you spend your weekend, but just you wait! As the Americans say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"