Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

The
Ultimate
Business Machine

Technology, business
and innovation.

And, not least, about
the Mac.

Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Tue 03 Aug 2004

Comparing Freehand and Illustrator, OS 9 and OS X

Category : Technology/FreehandAndIllustrator.txt

I used to be a Freehand user. I knew the program well enough (since the time it was called Aldus Freehand) to teach it, in turn, to artists and designers. But Freehand (since it was acquired by Macromedia) seems to have gone to the dogs.

It's still an easy enough application to teach a beginner about vector-based graphics, as opposed to pixel-based tools like Photoshop, but its interface has turned clownish, as if to fit in better with the Windows crowd.

Adobe Illustrator, on the other hand, is a bit harder to grasp. I constantly had trouble re-sizing the graphics until I figured I had to throw away what I had learned from Freehand and learn some new things on Illustrator's terms. That accounted for the couple of trips to the on-line manual. But after that, though I still occasionally got frustrated moving an object rather than re-sizing it, I found Illustrator to be much slicker and better designed than Freehand.

A lot of designers have refused to move away from OS 9. If you look at the state of Freehand on OS X, you would harken back to the good old days of the slick, efficient, clean, Mac-like tool that Freehand was.

But, if you open your eyes and keep an open mind, you may discover a whole new world of productivity, especially when you use the whole Adobe suite - InDesign, Photoshop, GoLive, Illustrator, Image Ready, and Acrobat - in concert.

There are of course, still, a few Windows-centric elements in these programs that mar a Mac user's experience, e.g., icons for the sake of having icons, and an increased use of modes. Mac-like applications try to avoid having a user turn on or off modes to effect an operation because that's the easiest way to intrude into the user's awareness and break the flow of his thoughts. (That was what gave me the most trouble learning Illustrator - I had to switch to an edit mode to change a shape, and it's pretty "iffy" whether you've effected the switch or not. Freehand is a lot more fluid in this sense.)

But when you're doing a web site, you need to have the tools integrated the way Adobe did with GoLive, Image Ready, Photoshop and Illustrator. You're always able to work with the original artwork and GoLive takes care of creating web-ready graphics and updating all the right places on your site folders.

OS 9 hold-outs ought to take a look at what they're missing. There's a whole new way of working. But there's a lot of fear that printers will all break on OS X. I'm not too sure if that is myth or fact. I feel just the opposite - that it'll be easier to find printers that will work with OS X and that they will often cost less because Postscript is not that much of a requirement on OS X anymore. I have a Postscript colour laser printer that works with OS X but I often neglect to use the Postscript option because OS X's built-in Quartz-based rasteriser does a good enough job of emulating a Postscript printer, with maybe up to 95% of its quality.

I don't have time to research this area much. It only comes up when I try to make good quality prints and I get the standard comments from printing companies that they don't like OS X much (as if they've ever really tried to use it). It's irritating but that, I feel, is something for those working for Apple to solve. For now, I think, the migration to OS X has been well worth it. At least for me. I'm tempted to say, OS 9 is for the Luddites. But that may be too rude.

How did the Holy Trinity of Aldus Freehand, Aldus PageMaker and Aldus Persuasion become Macromedia Freehand, Adobe PageMaker and abandoned, respectively? I must have fallen asleep along the way.

Posted at 10:19AM UTC | permalink

Sun 01 Aug 2004

A Mac at Work

Category : Technology/AMacatWork.txt

I've highlighted the work we're doing at the traveler's hostel, Beds Central, because, for a long time, we've been looking for a project that'll allow us to express ourselves fully.

And this is it.

While I'm working on the project, I'll be able to explain how the Mac-based tools we're using allow us to do things a bit differently from the way IT projects are normally carried out. For a start, we get to use both sides of our brain, using the same set of tools on a single computing platform, to solve the widest range of problems, in both starting and running a business.

For example, for budget planning we use, like every company on the planet, Microsoft Excel. But, in the case of businesses like hostels and hotels, budget planning goes hand-in-hand with space planning. So, we're rapidly getting out of the purview of most IT managers when we start to pull out Macromedia Freehand and Adobe Illustrator, to work on top of architect's drawings, to find out how many beds we can optimally put into the space that we have.

It's easy to get the architect to produce copies of the floor plans to a certain scale, then scan these in, and within minutes, we're on a roll. We're able to constantly come back to these drawings, and using layers, we're able to position the air-con ducts, electrical points, lockers, partitions, lighting, etc., and use these as the basis for detailed costings, and to describe the scope of the work more accurately to the contractors.

Once the budget is settled, it gets entered into an accounting system. With the company registered and bank accounts opened, it's going to start paying people. So, the accounting system is invaluable for maintaining financial controls and forcing everybody to watch the budget.

Of course, there's a need to communicate all these things to so many people and get them organised. But watch how these things are so much easier to set up in our day. We need a web site, a site on the Internet that we can do business from - with a mail server, a web server, and an ability to program things so that you can exchange information with the intended audience, and also an ability to link these transactions to the accounting system, which sits on the server and is accessible to all the right people across the Internet.

There's an inversion of some sort here. The technical infrastructure are the easiest to set up - literally within minutes. Once you've got an active broadband line, getting the web and mail servers up, registering a domain name and activating it - all these can be done in one session without getting off the chair. The web content and the programming are on-going stuff - they need to be constantly updated for the life of the business. But the reservation system (protoyped using PHP but written eventually using Java) is largely done. So, the thing that took the longest time to do was actually coming up with the name of the hostel. Even then, we have Google and this gives us tremendous power to do so much research over the web.

Coming back to web sites. Most IT people think only about Linux, etc. But how do you make maps on those machines? I mean, I mocked up the site quickly, using maps I "borrowed" from map sites and photos that I scanned in from books. But these won't do, once the site is offically up. I have to quickly replace them with original work. I've been using Adobe Illustrator to make my own maps. It's the first time I've ever used Illustrator but I've only had to refer to the on-line guide twice. Illustrator's integration with GoLive and Photoshop is so wonderful, I save a lot of time by using them together.

The Lonely Planet guide-books call their map-makers cartographers. So, now I'm a cartographer, designer, programmer, writer, and anything else.

It's all due to these tools.

On the Mac. On my iBook. And on Hai Hwee's Titanium.

Is there any computing platform more productive? Macs for business? Are people still laughing at such a notion?

Posted at 11:52AM UTC | permalink

Wed 28 Jul 2004

Some Updates

Category : Technology/LucaReleased.txt

Luca - Hai Hwee has released a full working version of the Luca Accounting System for Mac OS X, with no time limit. You can find it here. Enjoy!

Mac@Work Live - this is the birth of Mac@Work Live - a space housing a permanent collection of live demos of all the technologies that make Mac OS X a great platform to run a business on. This is also where we're going to do Mac OS X developer training and seminars in conjunction with the Apple World Wide Developer Relations group here.

Beds Central - And, this is the name of the traveler's hostel that we're helping to set up, using all the technologies that I've talked about in Mac@Work. It's called Beds Central and it's in a very interesting part of Singapore, housed as it is in a truly authentic historical building at the edge of Chinatown. I've just settled on the web site's look and I think I'm going to enjoy building on it to tell the story of Chinatown and it's role in the history of Singapore. Of course, there are other things still to do, like making it a really fun, clean, safe, and well-run place for travelers to want to stay in. But the journey has started and, hopefully, the journey will turn out to be, at least, well worth taking.

It's been a real busy week and there's so much to do and so little time. Life is meant to be lived to the full.

Posted at 6:55PM UTC | permalink

Thu 22 Jul 2004

Waterworks for the Mind

Category : Technology/waterworks.txt

As if to underline the idea that we can learn almost anything we want off the world wide web, I saw this entry in the web server log :

GET /weblog/index.php?entry=/Commentary/GoodbyeSanFrancisco.txt

Referer : http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&
q=how+long+does+it+take+to+fly+from+San+Francisco+to+Singapore

Even without following the link, the guy who made that query would have found the answer he was looking for : 18 hours - that's about how long it takes to fly from San Francisco to Singapore - because Google displays this in the result line : "But, first, there's a long 18-hour flight to endure tomorrow". You can try it yourself.

Now, as if to prepare for this moment, I had just noticed a very old mouldy dust-stained book, as I was going through my bookshelf, just before reading these server logs.

So I went back to look it up because it is pertinent to the discussion. That book is Literary Machines by Theodor Holm Nelson, first written in 1980. And, if that name doesn't ring a bell, try Ted Nelson. Way before the Internet and way before Tim Berners Lee, Ted Nelson was already writing about hypertext, hypermedia and hyperworlds, about what has since evolved into the semantic web, though not quite exactly as he had envisioned it.

But this is my favourite passage from the book :

"SYSTEMS HUMANISTS

"As you may have suspected, I see another point of view. As far as I am concerned both the Technoids and the Fluffies are in their own little corners. In the broader view, the goals of tomorrow's text systems will be the long ones of civilization-- education, understanding, human happiness, the preservation of humane traditions - but we must use today's and tomorrow's technologies. We who believe this are systems humanists, striving to further the ideals of the humanist perspective by the best available means. This means finding the ways that human literature, art and thought-- including science, of course-- may best be facilitated, preserved, and disseminated.

"Consider the analogy of water. Civilization as we now know it is based in part on running water-- supplying it, distributing it, and turning it off and on where you need it. That overall system had to be thought out. Similarly, someone now must design waterworks for the mind.

"The literature we envision, described in this book, is meant to be a utility, a commodity, a waterworks for the mind; your computer screen will be the spigot (italics added)-- or shower nozzle-- that dispenses what you need when you turn the handle. But that system must be based on the fluidity of thought-- not just its crystallized and static form, which, like water's, is hard and cold and goes nowhere."

-- Ted Nelson, Literary Machines

Posted at 10:54AM UTC | permalink

Wed 21 Jul 2004

Contributors to Postfix Enabler

Category : Commentary/PFEContribs.txt

I've not updated the list of people who've paid for Postfix Enabler for some time.

Here's to :

Jason Bode, Warren Jacques, Saikee Wong, Dirk Kring, Rajiv Wickremesinghe, John Farrell, James Schaaf, Jerry Bannon, Masatoshi Tsunoda, Kevin Moloney, Erik Klein, Paul Earle, Andrew McLaughlin, and Glenn Sugden.

I get a kick out of seeing the PayPal notifications coming in, with all these names. It's like the United Nations. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

Posted at 7:19AM UTC | permalink

Tue 20 Jul 2004

Mac@Work Live

Category : Technology/MacAtWorkLive.txt

Leon Chen of Apple's World Wide Developer Relations sent over these iMacs and a few other G4s. These iMacs are very nice because they're all G4s, have enough memory and hard disk space, and already have airport cards - they're all ready to do training on.

We're preparing our place to host developer training for Mac OS X, Java, Xserve, and all the other OS X technologies. We've found that the biggest drag about doing training is spending a whole day beforehand preparing all the training workstations, and then packing them back in the boxes at the end of the sessions. So we thought why not do it at our office where we have enough space, is conveniently located downtown, is easily accessible, and where we're also able to host seminars.

And, because of the projects and systems we're working on, we're able to set these systems up with good demos, ready to run, showing Oracle, MySQL, mail servers, web servers, Java servers, e-commerce applications, etc, all the things that could convince people that the Mac's a really powerful tool to use in the enterprise.

Sort of like Mac@Work Live, because we're really focused on getting the most out of the Mac, at work in the enterprise.

So that's another nice project to work on, together with the traveler's hostel project where we're going to use all the technologies that I've written about in these pages. If I could have chosen just two projects to work on at the beginning of the year, these would be it.

Posted at 1:46PM UTC | permalink

Mon 19 Jul 2004

Freeing Luca

Category : Technology/FreeingLuca.txt

We're thinking of releasing Luca (our accounting application) as a donation-ware, un-crippled download. We're constantly improving Luca. It hasn't got stuff like nice icons for the buttons, but I feel these can wait. I believe that the user interface has to work well first. And I'm constantly pruning away at the interface so that the things that are there are the things that are absolutely necessary to have. Like the Zen way, I'd like Luca to have a very sparse look. But that doesn't mean it isn't deep. You'll know it goes pretty deep when you start using it.

Why are we thinking of doing this? I'm thinking that the more people who are using it, the better it will get. And it'll get there faster, too. When I look at Postfix Enabler, and consider the amount of features that it grew to have, I think about how so many people were willing to contribute good constructive suggestions.

So, Luca has got the stage where it already works well, but it could do with some polishing by having many people use it.

Also, the Mac is still not what most people think about when they think about a machine to run their business on. Perhaps Luca could be an agent to help jump-start the movement back towards using it. I've always believed the Mac to be The Ultimate Business Machine. But you can't run a business without having an accounting system to run it on.

Hai Hwee's working on overlaying a point-of-sale/inventory system on top of it. We're finding that there are so many things we could do, just by having an accounting system, and having the ability to integrate all other business processes into it.

So we could release Luca just like we did the Enablers, as donation-ware, for as long as we can remain viable as a business concern through our consulting projects, though we won't be able to provide much tech support.

Are there anybody using Luca now who feel that they will definitely use it seriously if it doesn't have a time limit? If we dropped that time-limit, would you pay us for what you think it's worth?

And I'm also wondering why there are not more people building Cocoa applications using Java? In my opinion, that's the best position to be in. We have some Cocoa using Java course notes that I'd like to find time to build on. There's so much work and so little time.

Posted at 2:58AM UTC | permalink

Switching Servers

Category : Technology/switchingServers.txt

We've switched back to the server at the office. It takes less than 5 seonds to deactivate DNSUpdate at the iMac and reactivating it at the office server. This switches our IP address record at dyndns.org to point to the office's server machine. Add another minute or so to make sure any new changes to the server during the weekend get updated to the office server and we're back to normal operations.

And I'm thinking, again, this is a most powerful way of arranging things. Why don't more IT people get it and stop thinking of the Mac as a non-business machine?

I remembered there were some talk at MacSurfer a few days ago about Mac users being smarter than PC users, and I went to look it up - "Overall, the results are pretty clear: Mac users might not actually be smarter than PC users, but they certainly use better English and a larger vocabulary to express more complex thinking." Reach your own conclusion.

Posted at 2:40AM UTC | permalink

Sun 18 Jul 2004

Disaster Recovery

Category : Technology/disasterRecovery.txt

This web site's domain names (cutedgesystems.com and roadstead.com) are hosted at dyndns.org. There are a couple of advantages to outsourcing your domain name hosting to a third-party provider, rather than running a DNS server yourself.

One is, of course, if you're running everything out of an Internet connection with a dynamically assigned IP address - which makes running your own DNS Server impossible in the first place. With a piece of software like DNSUpdate, you can get your server to update dyndns.org regularly whenever its IP address changes, so that people can continue to find you via the domain names no matter what happens with your IP address. A connection with a dynamic IP address is cheaper than one with a fixed IP address. So, there's a cost saving that comes from being able to do that. Plus, most home broadband connections are of the dynamic IP address type - so this makes it easy to set up a home office. Wherever you hang your hat, that's where your server is.

The second advantage is not so obvious. You may only realise how useful it is to have this dynamically updateable DNS service if, by any chance, you're not able to run your server at its current location for any length of time - e.g., if power is unavailable, as in the case of our office where the building's management has decided to shut down the power again, over the weekend, to complete the installation of the new air-conditioning system.

So, once we're told we have to bear with another long weekend shut-down, it took less than 10 minutes to get ready the iMac at home (where we have a broadband connection) to take over the server's job. With SSH (Remote Login in System Preferences->Sharing), we can copy over most of what we need and set up the MySQL database remotely. With Postfix Enabler, we could get whoever is sitting at the iMac to set up the mail server, just by entering a couple of domain names and hitting the Start button. And with DNSUpdate, we can switch the servers over the same way (enter domain names and hit OK). The process is simple enough to walk someone through by phone.

Come Monday, all we need to do, when we get back to office, is to get someone to deactivate DNSUpdate at the iMac, and then we'll be able restart the server at the office, and we'll have everything back as we have left it. Of course, some details remain, like bringing over the new stuff that were saved to the iMac over the weekend, but these are easy enough to do.

In most IT organisations, mention Disaster Recovery, and it will evoke images of a tactical manoeuvre involving a cast of thousands, backed up tomes of Standard Operating Procedures that have been vetted by layers of "information architects" to meet ISO-9000 standards. I've always felt weighted down by these initiatives. It's got to be much simpler than that. After all, by definition, a disaster means there's no time to think. Why are large organisations so stupid?

We often wonder what we're doing, slogging away, running our own little company, when we could have remained the good salarymen. So, now and then, having the liberty to work a bit smarter brings its own little pleasures, and short of becoming as rich as Bill Gates, this will have to do.

Posted at 9:58AM UTC | permalink

Sun 11 Jul 2004

Java on OS X

Category : Technology/javaOSX.txt

Just a word about WWDC. It seems like we're all on our own in the way we're using Java on OS X. We're building Cocoa applications using Java.

Attend a Cocoa talk, and it's all about Objective-C. Attend a Java talk, it's all about J2EE (which we are using) and things like Swing (or call Cocoa using, horrors, JNI).

If you're doing Java, there's no CoreData API for you (yet). Neither WebKit. Nor Cocoa Bindings.

So one can't help feeling that Java programmers are second-class citizens in the Cocoa world.

Then why do I feel, even more, that we're on the right track?

Well, if you're on Objective-C, even with Cocoa Bindings and CoreData, you're still only going to be allowed to call a SQL database locally, on the same machine as the application. Whereas, using JDBC, we can already call our accounting database from half-way around the world.

And you've got to wait for Tiger to come out. Because, then, OS X would have SQLite bundled in. But we've already waited four years for MySQL to get almost all the critical functionality of Oracle. I'd hate to have to wait another four years for SQLite to catch up. Apple may have valid reasons for their choice but SQLite doesn't interest me at all.

And I've heard people asking for better XML and WebServices support in Objective-C. Well, we've already got that, right now, in Java. And try writing a web server application in Objective-C. Or modelling the business workflows and business rules.

I wish Java is as elegant as Objective-C. But we've got to get something done now.

Wouldn't it great to concentrate all your efforts in one direction? And not trying to re-invent the wheel. Not Invented Here? It's funny that WebObjects programmers are headed in the other direction (from Objective-C to Java). And DashBoard widgets are written in JavaScript. And so on.

We're going to continue walking to the beat of our own drum. Probably the best way of maintaining our sanity. Luca proves that you can write a complete, full featured Cocoa application using Java. And you can do a bit more and make a web-server based application out of it. Or a cross-platform Swing application. And that's probably all we need now.

Posted at 1:35PM UTC | permalink

Crash

Category : Commentary/crash.txt

The server was down for about ten hours yesterday. The building we're on switched over to a new air-conditioning system yesterday and we had to switch off everything for the recommended ten-hour stretch - if we didn't want anything to be damaged in the event of a power surge.

It would have been easy to switch the server over to the spare iMac I had running at home (I've done that before and switched servers, on the fly, within 30 minutes, in the ultimate test of disaster recovery) but somehow, this time, I just let things crash.

It's been difficult to get going the last few days - so many things to do, along so many axes. So it's good to crash and start all over again.

Sorry, if you were trying to get hold of something here. Normal services are resuming and the process of recovery starts now.

Posted at 12:36PM UTC | permalink

Wind

Category : Commentary/wind.txt

I have the answer to my own question. It takes longer to fly back to Singapore than to fly to San Francisco because there is a constant headwind that reduces the speed of the aircraft by about 15-20%. (When flying to San Francisco, the plane was aided by a slight tailwind.) That's why it takes about 20% longer to fly back, increasing the journey by more than 2 hours.

So the next question is: why is there a headwind? And I believe it's like that the whole year round because it always takes longer to fly back. Why does the wind always blow from west to east, at least at high altitudes? What makes this puzzling is because I know, from sailing dinghies off Changi, that the wind usually blow in-shore from the east?

That's why the Peranakans of Singapore - the Straits-born Chinese - made their home along the east coast. Having got to this region longer than the later Chinese immigrants, they know where to get the nice sea breeze, over there at Katong and Changi. But I digress.

A quick search through Google turns up these two articles : What makes the wind? and Weather Systems from West to East.

So the earth's rotation is indeed the cause. But it's counter-intuitive. We should expect to reach Singapore faster when coming back from San Francisco because the earth's rotation swings Singapore back towards us.

But the earth's rotation also causes the hot air that rises from the equator, on its way towards the poles, to move east. This is because, due to something called the Coriolis effect, they maintain the speed of rotation at the equator.

"So, as these winds travel away from the equator, they move eastward relative to the ground beneath them - since the winds have a greater rotational speed than the ground. This explains why high altitude winds blow from west to east. And it is these high altitude winds that, to a large extent, control the weather."

So, mystery solved. But the point I'm getting at is that we can learn almost anything we want from the world-wide web, without going through formal school. Here's to Tim Berners-Lee.

Posted at 12:23PM UTC | permalink