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

Mon 05 May 2003

SingNet Broadband May Support Mac Users, At Last

Category : 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.

Posted at 2:25PM UTC | permalink

Fri 02 May 2003

A Gestalt Strategy

Category : 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.

Posted at 9:39AM UTC | permalink

We Just Make Stuff

Category : 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.

Posted at 1:26AM UTC | permalink

Wed 30 Apr 2003

Simplicity

Category : 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.

Posted at 6:00AM UTC | permalink

Tue 29 Apr 2003

Samizdat

Category : 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.

Posted at 5:20PM UTC | permalink

Books

Category : 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.

Posted at 11:24AM UTC | permalink

Mon 28 Apr 2003

Black Out, Power Off

Category : 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.

Posted at 3:08PM UTC | permalink

Sendmail Enabler 1.04

Category : 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).

Posted at 3:05PM UTC | permalink

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.

Posted at 3:31AM UTC | permalink

Fri 25 Apr 2003

Information Anxiety

Category : 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.

Posted at 3:49PM UTC | permalink

Linking Back

Category : Commentary/linkingback.txt

I've created a weblog monitor so that I can see who's been coming over to this weblog. Since having it, I've been surprised that quite a few visitors are Windows users. So, hey welcome there. My interest in the Mac is as a serious business machine; so you may get a different viewpoint from what is usually associated with the Mac. Hope it's been worth your time reading this.

Also, where I can see links being made to this weblog (from the Referer information in the access log) I'll make a link back to that site, as you can see from the left side-bar. Just paying back the compliments. Not only that; I'm learning something new, like a new piece of music at sooundingblue.

Finally, I've improved the weblog code further and I'm going to release it for anyone to use over the weekend. It doesn't yet have comments and trackbacks, but other than that, the other stuff works smoothly. I just wanted to show how we could create a system that allows the artist and the technician (it could be the same person) to work together to build something useful.

So, with an Internet line and a Mac that you're willing to leave on all the time, you can have a web server, a mail server, a weblog system, a calendar system (more about this in future), and a database system, most of them free, on which you can build a business around. Remember an old Apple saying, "The Power to be Your Best"?

Posted at 10:09AM UTC | permalink

Thu 24 Apr 2003

A Weblog of My Own

Category : Technology/ownweblog.txt

I finally had time to go through this weblog code. In the end, I re-wrote a large chunk of it - enough, I think, to call it my own.

I'm doing this because I'm going to release it (a weblog) as yet another feature one can turn on using Sendmail Enabler. And I thought I shouldn't foist it on people without knowing what it does in its entirety.

In fact, I had a bug from between 12 noon and 12 midnight where my permalinks (links to individual articles) were all screwed up. But that's fixed now.

I hope, through doing this (since the PHP code is there for all to read), that I can show how a system could be designed so that it will give a web page designer all the leeway to express his (or quite likely, her) creativity in the layout of the information content.

I think more and more enterprise systems will work across the web using the browser as the user interface. I've seen quite a lot of exciting web page layouts (not the Flash kinds but clean static pages) where the eyes are guided smoothly through the flow of the information.

If we can put this interface on top of data that is dynamically generated from the enterprise's databases, we may find we've found a better way to communicate business information clearly and concisely, and by several orders of magnitude.

Actually, I've seen quite a few Mac-based companies move their home page to a weblog format. A weblog is designed to be easily updated and most weblogs produce an RSS syndicate feed which the company can use to deliver press releases which are automatically aggregated by software like NetNewsWire. So it's quite a low-overhead way to get something meaningful done.

Posted at 5:19PM UTC | permalink