Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Articles

  • A Modern Hindu Brahman Scholler in America & His Salary in USD Affecting His Religious Beliefs

    A Modern Hindu Brahman Scholler in America & His Salary in USD Affecting His Religious Beliefs

    A Way of American Life: My First Experience of Indian Citizen Going Abroad

    Almost 22 years ago I was a student at the Sir J. J. School of Applied Art. I was learning BFA Applied Art (Advertising & Marketing)

    On the same campus, there was the Sir J. J. School of Art & Sir J. J. School of Architecture.

    One story that I experienced and was inspired by was about one Sir J. J. School of Art final-year graduate student who got hired by Disney Animation Studios in America. We all Applied Art students went to meet him shake his hand and saw his sketchbook. We were amazed by his achievements as Disney just doesn’t take Indian Art Students out of graduation as their employment standards and quality of work that they require are high. Disney normally takes Animator with 20 Years of hardcore Animation Industry Experience. But one day out of the blue same J. J. student returned from America after 6 Months as he was depressed saying no Disney Studio colleague said hi to him or waved in gesture in recognition of his existence in the company. It was the year 2001 at that time there was no iPhone, WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram to talk with his parents and siblings. So he was lonely at the tender age of 22 years. This is the psyche of a young man who went to America for a better quality of life than to be in India forever.

    (more…)
  • I am married now, And here is how I choose the perfect spouse for my life.

    I am married now, And here is how I choose the perfect spouse for my life.

    It was the year 2012 when discussions about my marriage started happening in my home. Proposals of engagement between the prospective bride and me arrive every month or in other’s marriage ceremonies. So I started thinking and planning about it.

    My society, school or college friends were getting married at that time. But something strange things were happening in their married lives. My seven friends, including girls and boys, were having a divorce for unknown reasons.

    1. One girl was proposed to on Facebook she accepted it when they had their real-life engagement ceremony. Unfortunately, her groom’s previous girlfriend showed up to stop that engagement as the groom had been having an affair with her for the last three-four years, So my friend felt heartbroken and betrayed and cheated.
    2. One of my male friends was married to a girl who never cooked or did home-related tasks or never showed the night at home after time out. Then when my friend encountered her for asking about divorce and breaking the marriage, she told him she would launch a law suite and a police case for defamation, sexual harassment and abuse. Moreover, she wanted marriage alimony of 50 lakhs.
    3. One of my friend’s husband was not doing any job and was physically abusing her as she was earning a thousand times more than him.
    4. One of my friend’s husbands was unfaithful and had multiple extramarital affairs.
    5. One of my male friends had multiple sexual encounters with his female friends before marriage, so he wanted a bride that accepted that allowed them to have sexual encounters outside of marriage after marriage.
    6. One of my friends lost his job because of the financial crisis or recession in the year 2008. Then somehow, his engagement broke as the bride stopped talking with him and her parents. But after two or three months, he got a job in a better company with a more excellent salary. So if the bride understood the situation of a lost job, then disengagement of marriage would not have happened.
    7. One of my friend’s brides was suspicious and doubtful about having affairs in office. So she broke the engagement, and he was heartbroken as there was no clear communication between the bride and her family. So then he got married after one year to a different and more perfect girl.
    (more…)
  • International Women’s Day and the Significance of Indian / Hindu Sanatan Sanskriti or Culture

    International Women’s Day and the Significance of Indian / Hindu Sanatan Sanskriti or Culture

    Christianity or Muslims don’t have goddesses. God Mohammed had multiple wives even from teenagers. Jesus Christ was crucified and then declared god after that torture. After Christ’s death, his daughter supposes to be a priest but then leaders don’t allow that.

    But in Hindu Culture we have Goddess Sita, Parwati, Laxmi, Sarvasti and more who are worshipped for their diety and deeds.

    So in India, we are already worshipping and celebrating women’s lives for more than millions of years.

    But in today’s world women are made to believe they are victims of Male Dominance or Patriarchy or Brahmin Patriarchy in society. New digital media make women believe in playing victim cards.

    (more…)
  • Choosing your correct online Music distribution and streaming service provider

    Choosing your correct online Music distribution and streaming service provider

    In the old golden day, music came on cassettes and compact disks (CDs).

    With the evolution of better, faster, stable internet with Gigahertz processing power for computers, better/stable computer applications came along. With the invention of gesture-based high-tech mobile devices like the iPhone, modern, always accessible pocket-friendly apps emerged.

    With faster 4G and 5G internet mobile data, internet-ready cloud-enabled apps came with better interactions. Moreover, even if mobile devices got more than 64/128/256/500 GB and 1 TB of internal storage, people will never have to come to desktop/laptop computers to back up and free up storage.

    Apple first introduced Apple iTunes with a CD Ripping facility to convert already bought music cd collections to mp3 for easy listening on Mac computers and then a range of iPods. iPods didn’t have to have internet in the early days then. They were internet ready after a few years, the video on iPods and then an iPhone introduction.

    (more…)
  • Males and Females in Human Resource (HR) Recruitment in the Era of Feminism / Illusion of Patriarchy or Illusion of Brahmanical Patriarchy in Brahman Hatread Society

    Males and Females in Human Resource (HR) Recruitment in the Era of Feminism / Illusion of Patriarchy or Illusion of Brahmanical Patriarchy in Brahman Hatread Society

    With the invention of Feminism. The female audience was introduced to the term called Patriarchy and, for Hindu haters Brahmanical Patriarchy. Feminism tells young female audiences to blame Male dominant society for their natural human body periods of pain. They somehow ask why boys should not suffer the same and why just girls or women.

    Even with the disclosure of Twitter Files by Elon Musk. Vijaya Gadde from Twitter also got sued in court for her bias Twitter’s social media administration or moderation. (Vijaya Gadde is an American attorney who served as general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter. – Wikipedia) I remember her saying, “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy”, out of nowhere. Why are American companies’ social media heads blaming or shaming Brahmins from India / Bharat / Hindusthan for no harm they did?

    (more…)
  • My side of the story of selling Apple iPhone apps on the Apple App Store while doing a day job…!!!

    My side of the story of selling Apple iPhone apps on the Apple App Store while doing a day job…!!!

    I am selling apps on Apple App Store since 2012, Tried free apps with excellent sales but no revenue or no Apple iAd revenue or very little. I kept doing that for two to four years. Then I removed all of my apps from the sale and kept my account inactive with no apps on ready for sale for almost one or two years.

    Then Swift language was introduced with support for Unicode while watching Apple’s Keynote presentation, I got the idea of Learning Devanagari Script apps with support for Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Languages.

    It got almost 3 months of the year 2016 for me to record 500 audio samples and videos with proper code to get to the level of MVP i.e. Minimum Viable Product.

    Next three years I finished recording audio and designing videos and vector illustrations. So it was a total of 700 Audio Recordings with statements and alphabets (Vowels, Consonants and Barakhadi), and 422 animated videos for stroke by stroke guide. Then almost 500 vector and raster illustrations.

    With Covid and Corona Epidemic and forced leave from March to November I finished and upscaled all of my apps with visual and performance quality for my Mudrakshar, Swarakshar and Chitrakshar apps.

    (more…)
  • Accion Labs Employee Churn, Their Hiring Process & Corporate Culture. My Professional Experience with Accion Labs.

    Accion Labs Employee Churn, Their Hiring Process & Corporate Culture. My Professional Experience with Accion Labs.

    I worked in AccionLabs for a year. I worked on a single long project for my whole tenure.

    At that time, they used to have offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. And they were supposed to open an office in Pune when I left the company.

    I joined AccionLabs as a Senior User Experience Designer. When I started interacting with my senior staff, who were UX Architects or Project Managers, all were over-stuffed with projects out of their capacity. I was working in the Mumbai office, so I don’t know about office culture in other offices. There was a sense of uneasiness everywhere. Employees were allowed to play cricket outside during office hours. One employee never showed up to work but received a salary for the last four months. My project manager and CTO were rude in every meeting. They will discuss some random employees’ performance and why they should warn them to install PIP (Performance Improvement Program) or why they should have been fired. They were a few billable employees who sat ideal doing nothing.

    It was such a situation that three or four employees resigned and left the company every two or three days. The company ask them to resign but hosts a send-off party somehow out of no shame. Even two colleagues told in the send-off party’s last speech that they had no work since joining or for the previous four months, and the company asked them to resign, so they did. The churn rate was high.

    (more…)
  • My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

    My experience in converting my paid educational apps to a subscription business revenue model.

    After experimenting with various apps, I ventured into an educational language-earning app in 2013/14. I developed three apps Mudrakshar for tracing Alphabets, Swarakshar for Pronouncing Alphabets and Chitrakshar for Alphabet Charts with Illustrations and audio pronunciation. All three apps were dedicated to Devanagari Script—mainly Marathi, Sanskrit and Hindi Language. For Chitrakshar, I added the English Language with Latin script.

    I am developing my apps for Apple iOS, iPadOS and macOS platforms. Here is my Apple Developer Profile if you want to check it out.

    I think the In-App purchase / StoreKit framework was not introduced back then. That’s what I remember. So I used paid app business model to support my app development and time invested.

    Maybe because I started sailing my apps with an upfront paid pricing model, I was forcing my users to purchase them without allowing them to try them before they bought. As a result, I had significantly fewer downloads or sales. But over the years, I sold almost 1,000 units of apps or more. I also utilised App Store Connects’s App Bundles feature at that time. App Bundles undoubtedly helped me to sell more apps with discounts.

    (more…)
  • My Solution to my year-long back pain and health issues

    My Solution to my year-long back pain and health issues

    Since I started my health and fitness journey, I have been facing issues with tremendous back pain and mobility.

    As you may have guessed already, I started walking, but the pain was not going anywhere whatever I did.

    I took physiotherapist assistance, machine exercises, long distance and long time walking but with no relief.

    But one day, I just turned off the air conditioner for the whole night in my room for one or two weeks, and somehow, my back muscle was relieved, and I had no pain or muscle stiffness issues. But after that week, I turned on the air conditioner for the next three-four days, and the back pain was back again.

    (more…)

    by

  • Removing the Title Bar from the Mac Catalyst App

    Removing the Title Bar from the Mac Catalyst App

    Learn how to remove the title bar from your Mac Catalyst app.

    We are using Swift Programming Language.

    The code will look something like this:

    #if targetEnvironment(macCatalyst)
        if let titlebar = windowScene.titlebar {
            titlebar.titleVisibility = .hidden
            titlebar.toolbar = nil
        }
    #endif
    
    (more…)