Opening thoughts. There was a time, as kids, we’d make all sorts of fantasy overlaid landscapes, cities and buildings with our Lego blocks sets. We may probably no longer own as many Lego sets anymore, but that era may be returning in the form of the Lego Skylines game. This city builder title will be available for will be available on Steam, Sony PlayStation 5, Microsoft Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, as well as the Nintendo Switch 2.
The Lego Skylines announcement trailer does give us a glimpse of the colour we’d forgotten, and will put you in the city builder hot seat. You’ll cover not just the overall planning and architecture, but also get bogged down by basics such as electricity, water and food supply (after all, you don’t want your city looking like Gurgaon does after a sharp shower). How about a donut shop adjacent to a park? And how about a nice school for children? It’ll be a rather interesting mix of planning and creativity coming together. Believe me, hours will go by, once you get started. Hopefully that’s not too far into the future, though no release date has been officially mentioned yet.
EDITOR’S MARGIN
CHANGE OF GUARD
On September 1, a change of guard at Apple. John Ternus took over as CEO, from the legendary Tim Cook, who transitions into the role of executive chairman. A magician redefining the art of stewardship. I’d noted earlier in the year that Cook’s leadership style is the particular kind of courage that corporate history rarely celebrates. The courage of the custodian. Not the founder’s fury, not a revolutionary’s conviction, but a much quieter, studious, and equally strange bravery of the person who inherits a raging fire and decides, against every instinct of ego and against the lure of the blankness of a clean slate, to tend what’s already been made rather than tear everything down to replace with their own vision.
He took Apple from $350 billion to $4 trillion in value during his 15-year tenure as CEO, and notice what Apple didn’t do during his time. First, Apple never inserted ads into iOS or within apps as a source of revenue. Many phone makers do that. Secondly, Apple never sold customer data. Third, despite criticism of walled gardens and whatnot, customers could choose whether or not to buy an Apple product or not but once they did, Apple never took advantage by making subscriptions inordinately expensive. Apple has brilliantly upheld ethics in business.
📖: John Ternus: The making of Apple’s new CEO
On September 1, John Ternus, 51, is no longer only a person who builds Apple’s products, but also becomes the person responsible for all of them. Ternus has been at Apple since 2001, and pretty much embodies Apple’s way of thinking. The parts nobody sees are exactly the ones worth getting right.
During his first year at Apple in 2001, John Patrick Ternus found himself at a supplier facility late one night, far from home, with a magnifying glass for company. He was counting grooves on the heads of the screws that were to be packaged with the Apple Cinema HD Display that would eventually launch in early 2022. There were 35 grooves chiseled. Apple’s specification called for 25. Ternus argued. Perhaps needless to point out, he won. The supplier changed the screw design to have exactly 25 concentric grooves.
Cook is handing over Apple to Ternus in perfect shape, financially as well as in terms of product scope. Apple reported its strongest June quarter ever, with double-digit revenue growth across iPhone, Mac and Services, and in every geography. For Ternus, with the Mac mini and Mac Studio refreshes done in August, the focus now shifts to getting the iPhone keynote just right. This adds another milestone for context in Apple’s 50th year.
📖: A 25 groove philosophy: John Ternus built his way to Apple’s top job
For years, every single product Apple has released has had Ternus’ signature. Helping define the products through which millions of people interact with technology. Now, he will be responsible for defining everything Apple does next.
THE LATEST, ON NEURAL DISPATCH
TECH SPOTLIGHT
QUBO SMART AIR PURIFIER R700
The annual pollution nightmare in most cities in India, is an inevitability. That is when the atrocious air quality is a visible entity. Rest of the time, things aren’t really any better even if you can make out which shade of blue the sky is. Take any serious air quality study, and you’ll find upwards of 50 Indian cities in the global list of the 100 most polluted cities in the world. Indoor air purifiers are a necessity, not a luxury. I’ve been saying that since 2015 or so, but only recently has that realisation really set in. That said, not all home air purifiers are the same. Some are better than others.
In a space that was long dominated by Xiaomi, at a point in time abandoned by the likes of Philips and Honeywell, Indian tech company Qubo has delivered a genuinely smart air purifier for medium sized halls, at an affordable price point. The Qubo Smart Air Purifier R700 builds on the brilliance of the Qubo Q1000 and Q600 purifiers, with the key ingredients being a consistent—high quality filter, a genuinely useful companion smartphone app, effective performance and the sort of performance that’d be equally useful in a bedroom as well as a living room.
Qubo has done the opposite of cost cutting which many purifiers around the ₹10,000 price point have resorted to over the years, such as removing a digital AQI readout. The R700 that’s priced at ₹14,900 gets that, as well as a five layer filtration process underlined by the H13 HEPA (high energy particulate resistance) filter and even an AI mode. Do not think of this as a compact or small air purifier, because the performance in a very active living room is impressive. While we tested this in somewhat better air quality days, the outdoor AQI still hovered around 200 and this cleaned the indoor AQI that stood at 181 in a living plus dining room L-shaped hall to as low as the 32 mark, in about 4 minutes in the QSensAI mode.
Speaking of which, the algorithms have been fine tuned to detect even the finest of indoor air composition changes (this includes people movement in the room), and the R700 speeds up the fan speed to clean up a larger volume of air and disperse it further. If you intend to place the Qubo R700 in the bedroom, the silent mode is exactly what the name suggests—whisper silent enough, to not disturb a child’s sleep. The use of a BLDC motor has paid dividends, another illustration of Qubo not cutting costs where many air purifiers brands have habitually done.
The Qubo Home app (available on Android and iPhone) is incredibly useful and utilitarian. You can manage and monitor everything from the current AQI, modes of operation, AQI changes in the last 24 hours and notifications about suggested filter change. All in all, the Qubo smart air purifier R700 is absolutely worth considering for a room in your home. The long filter life, almost a year (and not sooner, like some of its competitors) even if the AQI in your city is as bad as Delhi NCR, means long term ownership convenience.