| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Wed 07 May 2003 AppleScript StudioCategory : Technology/smsourcecomments.txt I encourage anyone with even a cursory interest in programming to take a look at the Sendmail Enabler code, if only to get a feel for how much AppleScript Studio can do with so little code. Yet it is not a toy. It's quite possible to build quite intricate stuff with it. The important thing about AppleScript Studio is that while you're playing with it and going through the sample code, it may start to dawn on you just how much of a breakthrough object-oriented programming really is. With object-oriented programming, you think like a manager (or blasphemously, like a minor god): you create your objects, imbue them with intelligence, and then you can get them to work together by sending them messages to work with each other. It's not just more fun. It's a lot more productive. Apple's very fine visual development environment, Interface Builder, plays a very important role in this. It helps maintain the illusion that you're working with intelligent objects that you can grab hold of and move around the screen. Once you've worked with interface Builder, you only have to do some Java programming using Swing to see how often you have to do a double-take when this illusion of working with objects is broken (e.g., when you have to hand-code the parameters of an object, like size, shape and position of an object on the screen). It's not just object-oriented programming that will make you productive. It's the whole package of little details that have been designed to work so well together. In other words, it's the "gestalt" thing again. Does Apple have a monopoly on whole-brain thinking? Tue 06 May 2003 Sendmail Enabler Source CodeCategory : Technology/smsource104.txt I've updated the Sendmail Enabler download page with the latest version's source code. It's a Project Builder project, using AppleScript Studio and the Unix command line. If you've ever downloaded Sendmail Enabler, please let me know how you are doing. I've made the source code available in case it doesn't work and people may want to poke around to see how it was supposed to work. In my experience, most of the time, the problems come from errors with the domain's DNS settings rather than with Sendmail itself. Mon 05 May 2003 SingNet Broadband May Support Mac Users, At LastCategory : Commentary/singnet.txt I've got a note from SingNet saying that they plan to put in place official support for Mac users for their broadband plans in a week or two. It may be only for Mac OS X users who use the SpeedTouch Home Ethernet ADSL modem on SingNet's list of approved modems, but it's worth at least a start. Until this happens, Mac users have had to live with often derisory support from SingNet's tech support. For example, the only approved modem for Mac users is a USB-based Eicon modem that costs almost S$400. Much cheaper Ethernet-based modems (e.g., the SpeedStream from Efficient Networks) already work very well with the Mac but they're not, as yet, officially supported. I've been lobbying SingNet to make a change, for example by putting up this web page to show how easy it is to support Mac users (at least for those running OS X). I'm looking forward to getting their confirmation. If I can cause this change to happen, it makes me wonder why the people who actually work for Apple hadn't already done so. I believe that companies like SingNet or DBS, etc., are not monolithic companies. While there are elements in the IT end, for example, who have an aversion to Macs for one reason or another, there are others in those companies who would love to get the business of the Mac users. They just don't want to have to work too hard to get it, which is fair when we're just a minority. But the great point about the technology that is embedded into the Mac is that it makes Mac users so easy to support. If you can demonstrate to the service providers that the Mac user is so much easier to support than their normal PC user, you'll see that they'll want the Mac users' business. This was what I set out to show SingNet. There is a sense of betrayal that the people who are paid to do the job, i.e. to market and sell the Mac, barely seem to try. Apple technology is great and this engenders almost fanatical support (and, dare I say it, love and affection) from among the legions of Mac users. To simply ride on this energy and just coast by can seem offensive and parasitical when compared to the lengths ordinary Mac users are willing to go to defend their choice of computing platform. Fri 02 May 2003 A Gestalt StrategyCategory : Commentary/gestaltstrategy.txt That's a strategy, coined by some business guru, where you are able to deliver something whose whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts and where the parts are melded in such a unique way that it makes it hard for other competitors to duplicate. Let's see how the following fits into the definition (again from the Time interview with Steve jobs) : TIME: Can you say anything about [Music Store's] development costs or Apple's investment? Jobs: I had somebody comment today, "Now that you have introduced your store, do you expect a lot others?" And I guess our answer is no. This is really hard. Over the last several years we've created an infrastructure to pump oceans of bits out in the world for movie trailers and stuff, and that's tens of millions of dollars for server farms and networking farms - it's huge - and we've already got that in place. And to have millions of transactions, and to get our online store all tied into SAP and have the auditors bless it, that's tens of millions of dollars. We have one-click shopping, only us and Amazon have that, and then to make a jukebox - how much does it cost to make iTunes and make it popular? A lot! But we've got that. And then iPod, if you want to make an iPod, what does that cost? Well, nobody has done it but us, people have tried, but they haven't even come close. That's a lot of money. So we've already made these investments and we can leverage them. And then we've invested more on top of that to make a store. But to recreate this, it's tens of millions of dollars and years. That's why I don't think this is going to be so easy to copy. Did you notice the : "... And to have millions of transactions, and to get our online store all tied into SAP and have the auditors bless it..."? A lot of companies (that I've helped built systems for) don't seem to grasp the importance of this part of the process. Most people just slap together a system and think, "That's it." They don't realise that you could have figures produced at the accounting end that bear only a fictitious relationship with the reality. You've got to build an ability to verify the figures deep into the system. And that, I feel, can only happen if you come to the job knowing you're there to work with the information rather than computers. When I read business books, I feel that there is an amazing disconnect. The gurus will start describing how to do things right and start quoting from Microsoft and slam Apple. A lot of the time I can argue the other way round. It's like, "I am rich therefore I must be doing right. Or, might is right." If you're struggling to establish a business, not just any business but a business that can also "make a dent in the Universe", you can learn a lot from studying Apple and immersing yourself in its travails. We Just Make StuffCategory : Commentary/jobstimeinterview.txt I love this quote from Steve Jobs when he was interviewed by Time magazine for the iTune Music Store launch : TIME: The Wall Street Journal recently fashioned you as a "digital music impresario." How do you feel about that? Jobs: I didn't know what it meant. Does that mean I run a carnival? What we do at Apple is very simple: we invent stuff. We make the best personal computers in the world, some of the best software, the best portable MP3/music player, and now we make the best online music store in the world. We just make stuff. So I don't know what impresario means. We make stuff, put it out there, and people use it. Wed 30 Apr 2003 SimplicityCategory : Commentary/simplicity.txt It's the aftermath of the iTunes Music Store launch. A quick glance through the articles indexed by MacSurfer shows mostly gushingly favourable responses from the PC-centric business press. What could they say? This is show business and, if it's good enough for Sheryl Crow and The Eagles, saying anything else would quickly push them out of their depth. But they also waste no time in reassuring the PC users that it'll soon work them also, Apple's market share being so minuscule it's not worth a consideration. (Maybe Apple should make it work for the other Mac users around the world before doing that.) But let's not argue about that. What I'm looking for is whether this is going to be the breakthrough that will finally help the masses "get" (as in "do you get it?") Apple. I mean, it's not Everyman who will ponder about Zen and Simplicity and Karma. I really think that this is Apple's big problem. Ironically for the maker of "the computer for the rest of us", it's such a radically different way of thinking that it has aroused such hostility over the lifetime of the company. But I believe, like many Apple fans, that such a thinking will win out - eventually. Because it has enough truth about it and, like the child of the sixties that I am, "it'll make the world a better place." The signs are encouraging. Listen to an unlikely source, "Storage Supersite", for this gem of perception : "Above all, the new online service, the iTunes software, the iPod and even this integration appear simple to the user - an attribute that sometimes seems to have a bad name in the technology business. We're used to comparing long check-off lists of features (unsurprising in a market founded on frequent upgrade cycles)." "We're used to ..." Just because we're used to doesn't mean it's right. Difficult technology can be made simple to an end user. Apple has kept this mantra going. What is needed is care, and a willingness to put doing the right thing above mere commercial gain. I think Apple's continued ability to survive is proof enough that God exists. Tue 29 Apr 2003 SamizdatCategory : Technology/samizdat.txt I've just updated the Weblog article. I'm making the PHP code I am using to run this weblog available for download. I must emphasise that I did not write the original code. That was done by a guy called Robert Daeley who ported the Perl-based Blosxom to PHP. If I had actually written this system, I would have called it Samizdat. BooksCategory : Commentary/books.txt Chanced upon an interesting new book store at Goldhill Centre, diagonally opposite Novena Square. It's got a nice though smallish selection of books, many of which I hadn't seen before. It's called ResearchBooks Asia ("your best source of specialist books"). I noted a few books on technology and history that I would love to find time to read. My first thought was about how long it's going to last, considering we've got the two behemoths - Borders and Kinokuniya - and the Word Shop and Dymocks, Times and MPH, have all either bite the dust or are faltering. But I'm sucker for bookshops and I think this is a good find. Mon 28 Apr 2003 Black Out, Power OffCategory : Commentary/poweroff.txt Had a power failure at the office, where this server is kept. So we switched the server's domain name address to point to my iBook at my home, which contains an exact mirror of the server's contents. Total time to switch the mail and web servers to make them run off the iBoook - less than 10 minutes. We ran the servers off the iBook for a while until we found that the power had come back on at the office, at which point we switched back over. It's not rocket science, yet it has tremendous power in its simplicity of execution. It's hard to explain but if you've done this yourself, you will know. Is this why IT managers hate the Mac? It makes what they think of as their job way too simple. Sendmail Enabler 1.04Category : Technology/php.txt Updated Sendmail Enabler with a new tab to check OS X's built-in web server to see if PHP is enabled (it's not by default since 10.2.x). If it is not, it will make the right incantations to turn it on. Actually, it just copies a file containing the PHP-related directives to Apache's /etc/httpd/users directory. This file can be easily deleted to reverse the process. It doesn't touch Apache's main httpd.conf file. With PHP enabled, a user can easily make a stock OS X Mac run a weblog, in addition to the web, mail and DNS services that I've already described (in the articles on the right side-bar). Sat 26 Apr 2003 Decline and Fall and what has this got to do with MySQL 4.1?Category : Technology/MySQL41.txt A new version of the free Open Source database, MySQL, was released yesterday, bringing with it "subqueries and derived tables", two major pieces that were needed to make MySQL complete in a feature-by-feature comparison with Oracle. It's now possible to replace Oracle entirely in a system we've been porting to Java ("we" is the company I'm part of in my "day job"). In years to come, MySQL 4.1 may be remembered as the release which heralded the beginning of the end for Oracle. Or at least Oracle's dominance of the database market. MySQL is more programmer-friendly in the sense that you'll find things that are there simply because hordes of programmers had needed them. In the Open Source world, if you need something that isn't there, you build it yourself and contribute back to the source so others can use. And it's hard to beat a competing product that is "free". MySQL is more than just free. It often feels superior to Oracle. We're seeing a process that is akin to what Clayton M. Christensen described in The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Read that book and watch this play unfold. Fri 25 Apr 2003 Information AnxietyCategory : Commentary/infoanxiety.txt In the field of marketing, there is a saying attributed to Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, who said, "In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope." This is often taken to mean that we ought to know what business we are in. Ask anyone in the IT industry and they'll say they're working with computers. Very seldom do they say they're working with information, or trying to understand the nature of information, so that they can choose the right tools to shape, channel, and marshall it. But if you're willing to understand the distinction, if only to refute that there's a distinction, try reading Richard Saul Wurman. Ten years ago, he coined the term "Information Anxiety" and described a business he calls "The Understanding Business". That helped me build a context around the work I was doing with computers and the kind of business I wanted to be building. That book is out of print but I see from Amazon that he has a follow-up called Information Anxiety 2 which appears to be just as good. I hope to read that too. I see people reading ".Net" or "C#" or "Oracle" and all these stuff on the MRT. It may be easy to miss the forest for the trees. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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