Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Tue 15 Apr 2003

Good reads today

Category : Commentary/gdreads1504.txt

What's going on in the music industry these days; why are the music labels losing money, and what's Apple role in all these? Bill Palmer puts together one of the better pieces of analysis I've read about Apple possibly buying Universal Music.

Are you reading this with your freshly-minted Safari with tabs? Go over to the Surfing Safari weblog and read about what's good and bad about this latest release. For instance, I've just realised how usable Safari's History menu really is. Was it always like this? Still not working with DBS, though.

Posted at 7:22AM UTC | permalink

The Multiple-Mac Household

Category : Commentary/multiPChousehold.txt

We've got three Macs at home, one for each of us - I work on an iBook, my wife uses a Tibook, and our kid uses an old Graphite iMac (which doubles as a back-up server) just for fun.

I'm just reading how the multiple-PC household is driving a dramatic growth in wireless home networking. This is Apple's sweet spot, where the whole of its offerings is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Imagine the components - the portability of the PowerBook, the beauty of its design with the Apple logo nicely lit in a dim light, the little touches that makes even a kid want to anthropomorphise a mere machine (my kid calls his iMac Gilbert after the cat in the Caillou kid show).

And I can't imagine anyone wanting to use anything less than the Airport Base Station in the home. Trade a slick milky-white compact beauty (that always looks just about to take off) with a black, clunky, antenna-sticking-all-over-the-place contraption? No way. You are your own IT department at home, so choose the best. It need not cost more, you know.

Posted at 1:47AM UTC | permalink

Mon 14 Apr 2003

SARS

Category : Commentary/SARS.txt

Due to SARS, I'm working quite a bit from home these days. I can do exactly the same things at home, as I could do at the office. There's maybe, at most, five seconds more delay when I update the server. But it's easy to forget where the server is and just get on with the work.

I'm thinking that this would have an impact on the real estate business. More people can and will work from their homes. It's an attractive idea - to convert a part of the home into some sort of a design studio (what the architects would call an atelier). So we need to think then about what sort of function the office ought to serve. I think there is a still a need for an office (if only for the interaction with other people); but we've got to give better reasons for people to want to work out of an office, beyond just being a place to go to.

Posted at 2:53PM UTC | permalink

Sendmail Enabler 1.03

Category : Technology/smenabler103.txt

I've updated Sendmail Enabler. Besides the tabbed feature, I've added the ability to deactivate the services you've enabled using Sendmail Enabler. I've left the config files in place, so that it'll be easier to turn them on again. But I felt that the system should make it just as easy for the user to turn off the services.

Posted at 2:30PM UTC | permalink

Sun 13 Apr 2003

Getting Connected to Broadband

Category : Technology/broadbandoutline.txt

I hope to write something that can help more Mac users find a sure, quick path to getting connected to broadband (at least for those using OS X). I know that there is documentation available elsewhere but I'd like to make another contribution.

I'll need to start by listing the three major broadband services (SCV, Pacific and Singnet), and describing how the Mac works with each of these. I'll concentrate more on the use of Ethernet-based modems (rather than USB-based ones) because it is the Airport Base Station that will truly set you free. The Airport Base Station needs an Ethernet-based modem.

Once the broadband connection is set up, you can set up a server running web and mail services in two ways : (1) with the Mac connected directly to the broadband modem, and (2) with the Airport Base Station coming in-between the Mac and the broadband modem.

Method 2 is a more complicated procedure. It requires the activating of a DNS service on the server, so that the server can be accessible by other machines on the Internet, though it is running behind an Airport Base Station. Since I've already written an update to Sendmail Enabler that will enable the DNS server with just one click, actually doing this is easy. It is the explaining (of how the whole thing works together) that is hard.

Posted at 3:44PM UTC | permalink

Broadband, Airport, and OS X as Server

Category : Technology/dns.txt

I've updated Sendmail Enabler (to version 1.02) to add support for activating OS X's built-in Domain Name Server. This is needed to allow a web and mail server to operate behind an Airport Base Station. Without a DNS server operating on the Airport Base Station network, web and mail services will not be accessible by other machines on the Internet, port mapping by the Airport Base Station will not work, and machines on the local Airport network will not be able to hit the web and mail server by using its domain name.

It's a bit hard to explain this. So I'm looking to set up a "Broadband and OS X" page to help people connect their OS X machines to a boradband network, with or without an Airport Base Station.

Posted at 7:21AM UTC | permalink

Sat 12 Apr 2003

Business Interruption Planning

Category : Commentary/bip.txt

I keep getting this junk to attend a Business Interruption Planning seminar for IT managers and CEOs. Fortunately OS X's Mail.app shoots them over quickly to the Junk Mail folder. But now and then I read some junk to see what turns up.

If you can make something simple sound convoluted, you can make a lot of money, for example, by creating a seminar around it. I'm not sure what you get the other way round. What does Apple get for making difficult technology look simple? The undying enmity of IT managers?

But let's still try to make difficult things work simply.

I've set up broadband access for my home. With Airport, my wife could work on her TiBook anywhere she likes, and still keep an eye on the kid. We're working with somebody else who lives in a condo. Everytime I call her up to work on something, I could hear kids playing by the pool. In seconds, her updates are reflected on the server sitting by our office. It's such a great way to work.

But, small as we are, we have (not one, but) two fully-functioning disaster recovery sites (in the parlance of the IT managers). We keep copies of our server stuff on our Powerbooks. So I could actually run a server off a Powerbook from any of the three locations just described. Just one update to our DNS records at dyndns.org and I'll have our information served physically from a different location, with no break to business.

It's way too simple, right? But in a real disaster (which makes it impossible for us to get to our office), the procedures that will work are those that are the simplest to follow. Think different, anyone?

Posted at 7:01AM UTC | permalink

Thu 03 Apr 2003

On Being an Entrepreneur

Category : Commentary/gatesjobs.txt

I've found the quotes I was looking for in the Jager and Ortiz book.

Start-Quote :

Bill Gates.

... If "entrepreneur" means people who love businesses, this group fits. But if it means people who said, "I'm going to be excited every day because I'm going to be like one of these big businesses," it just doesn't work. You've got to enjoy what you do each day for itself and for its excellence.

... I've always rejected the term "entrepreneur" because it implies that you're an entrepreneur first and a software creator second. I didn't say, "Oh, I'll start a company. What will it be? Cookies? Bread? Software?" No. I'm a software engineer and I decided to gather a team together. The team grew over time, built more and more software products, and did whatever was needed to drive that forward.

... Articles love to play on toughness or competitiveness, or slogans, or things like that. Software is about millions of details. You've got to have people that love dealing with those kinds of details and then taking feedback. Tha's what makes it a fun business.

Steve Jobs.

... A lot of people ask me, "I want to start a company. What should I do?" My first question is always, "What is your passion? What is it you want to do in your company?" Most of them say, "I don't know." My advice is go get a job as a busboy until you figure it out. You've got to be passionate about something. You shouldn't start a company because you want to start a company. Almost every company I know of got started because nobody else believed in the idea and that last resort was to start the company. That's how Apple got started. That's how Pixar got started. It's how Intel got started. You need to have passion about your idea and you need to feel so strongly about it you're willing to risk a lot.

End-Quote.

Posted at 9:27AM UTC | permalink

Conversations with Visionaries of the Digital World

Category : Commentary/visionaries.txt

I've been looking for my book, "Candid Conversations with Visionaries of the Digital World" by Rama Jager and Raphael Ortiz. I've found its link at Amazon. I'm recommending this for people thinking of starting their own companies.

Among the people who contributed their thoughts about technology, leadership, and management were luminaries like Andy Grove (Intel), John Warnock and Charles Geschke (Adobe), Charles Wang (Computer Associates), and of course, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They each had a unique voice and an original vision. The editors did a nice job of preserving their cadences (eg., Charles Wang on making deals : "If you lay down with dogs you get fleas.")

Jager and Ortiz were in search of an answer to the question, "was it just luck?" that allowed all these people to become successful. The answers we get acknowledged the role played by luck, but there was much that was humane, insightful and passionate and, surprisingly considering the egos here, not a lot of hubris.

For myself, I was actually in search of something more. For example, listen to Bill Gates : "Take PC ownership cost as an example. It's too high today. A PC is too hard to install. We must work a lot to make sure that PC cost of ownership is low and that the PC is a great appliance... We have too many stores of data today. We have file systems, message systems, directory systems, database systems, and all sorts of different software that optimizes all those things. That just isn't going to cut it. When you say to a small business, "Hey, get a server," they're not going to pick a database, a mail package, a communications package, read about them, install them, and learn about them independently. They are going to need one integrated thing that hides all those differences."

But there are businesses like Symantec that depend on the PC being hard. Listen to Gordon Eubanks at Symantec: "Having books about your products didn't mean the product was deficient, but it just helped the product's market. Our business adds value to operating systems. It's the most proven software business in existence. We add value to knowledge users. We have a tremendous infrastructure that works closely with Microsoft. This is a tremendous barrier to competition..."

So there is a diversion between statements of ideals and business realities. I'm actually trying to understand technology leadership or, "Why did something so difficult to install, manage, and use (Windows) become so popular in the face of something that is so much better (Mac)?"

Does it always have to be so? At stake is the question, "How do we do right by our users?" How do we make money and still do good and know that we had not neglected a better way?

Posted at 9:14AM UTC | permalink

Wed 02 Apr 2003

Catch 22

Category : Commentary/catch22.txt

My customer's DELL broke down today and we had a DELL technician come change a hard disk. I've done this before and so I'm watching him. You format the hard disk, then load in Windows 2000, then restart.

What happens? Your fresh copy of Windows doesn't have the driver for that particular monitor and for that particular the network card. You can barely make out what's on the screen. There are so many drivers available, from so many vendors, stored in so many CDs, even the DELL technician doesn't know where to look.

It's on DELL's web site. But with the network card all but dead, tough luck. If you're lucky, you can use another PC nearby to download the monitor driver and copy it over. But, after spending gollops of time figuring which monitor driver's the right one and downloading it, you realise that file's too big to go on a diskette.

So the DELL technician, he's smart, he figures he'll download the network card driver first because it's small enough to go on a diskette, and then, when he's got the network working on the PC he's repairing, he'll use that to downlaod the monitor driver.

The network driver downloads alright. But this time, he finds the diskette drive is spoilt, so he still can't copy it out. The drive had not been used for so long, it's just not working anymore.

So he has to look for another PC and the search and download starts again.

Finally, the Good Lord takes pity on him and the chain of events is allowed to go off without any further hitch. The PC's finally repaired. But it's two hours since he started.

The DELL technician had two things going for him that a normal user usually doesn't have. He knows which drivers to use even though they had such unlovely names like 3Com 3C900B TPC. And he could use other PCs nearby that were already conveniently hooked to the Internet.

Any other mortal would have spent the whole afternoon doing this or most likely would have given up.

I watched the traffic flowing across Sheare's Bridge and the boats milling around Marina Bay. Life goes on outside.

Posted at 2:13AM UTC | permalink

Tue 01 Apr 2003

"Not for MacIntosh User"

Category : Commentary/NotforMac.txt

How often we hear this. I subscribed to SingNet broadband for my home today. I got the usual "Macs not supported" thing from the counter staff. But I managed to speak to a technical staff and we agreed that the Alcatel Speed Touch Ethernet ADSL Modem, which they only support for the PC, should work with the Mac.

I got the modem and, not willing to wait till next week (which is when my SingNet line gets activated), I did a test using my current PacNet broadband line. I swiped out PacNet's SpeedStream Ethernet modem and swiped in SingNet's Alcatel, all on the fly. Everything works.

Posted at 12:42PM UTC | permalink

NetNewsWire

Category : Technology/netnewswire.txt

This is how this weblog looks like inside NetNewsWire, which is an OS X-only application that allows you to pull in information from a lot of websites, so long as they have an RSS feed.

Posted at 4:17AM UTC | permalink