| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Sat 12 Nov 2005 Prescience?Category : Commentary/prescience.txt I was following a particular hit, looking through my server log. It's a search through the weblog for the keyword "Wheelock", and it returned three hits, a couple of which I found interesting given what's happening now. First, "Will we get an AppleStore?". I said it's a no-brainer (in a phrase that's already dated). Plus, what are they waiting for? Well, we still aren't going to get one, not the ones run by Apple anyway, but we are going to get the largest 3rd-party-run Apple retail centre in this part of Asia, in about a week's time. That store will open at The Orchard Cineleisure, which is probably the best place in Singapore to open such a store, and that's something to look forward to. Next, "Dull as Dell". Well, Dell's looking not too bright these days, but what caught my eye were these paragraphs in the article: I was at the Sakae Sushi joint next to the AppleCentre at Wheelock. My favourite table is where I can just look across at the action. It was the iPod Live launch. And I'm thinking of the comment by Richard Lim ("Got Singapore") on Sunday that these hand-held devices are going to get ever more powerful and the next natural progression we're going to see is video. Now who's going to be able to build that? Not the kids at Sim Lim Square snapping up their own PCs, looking for the cheapest deal. Not even Dell. I believe that the future favours makers of integrated products. Products that show a tight integration between hardware and software. In all the dark years of Apple's troubles, I still believed they were right. They were criticised for not licensing out their operating system, leaving the field open for Bill Gates and Windows. But what if, having known all that, Apple would still have done what they did. It's in their DNA to build the hardware with the software, as one indivisible whole. So they did. The video iPod has now come to pass. Should we be surprised? Let's move on and look at the next paragraph, Now back again to Dell. Just what have they done? They've not made the pie any bigger. Instead, they've just grabbed more and more slices to themselves, bleeding the competition dry in a painful price war. What the PC user loses is the innovation that Andy Grove talked about that would have made more out of the processor. So what did Andy Grove talk about? In "Co-opetition" by Brandenburger and Nalebuff, Intel's Andy Grove made a rather surprising comment about the other half of the Wintel duopoly, "Microsoft doesn't share the same sense of urgency [to come up with an improved PC]. The typical PC doesn't push the limits of our processors ... It's simply not as good as it should be, and that's not good for our customers." So, who then has been pushing the limits, and what could that mean? But we all know who's always been pushing at the limits of technology. Perhaps it should not be surprising if, one fine day, Mac users are going to be using Intel chips. After all, by several accounts including Andy Grove's, he and Steve Jobs have kept up a rather friendly dialogue all these years. When the migration to OS X is complete, soon, things may get even more interesting. That sent a chill down my spine. Written on 16th June 2003. Am I clairvoyant, or what? We're looking ahead to the first MacTels - Macs on Intel chips - probably as early as January. We're probably going to be able to run Windows at native speed on these machines. They're going to be the only machines that cover all the bases (Mac OS X, Linux and Windows). They're going to be sexy as hell. They're going to be cheaper even than Dells, or in any case, provide unprecedented value for money. And, when we're done crossing over, we'll get to run Mac OS X on those other ordinary PCs. No, I'm not dreaming. Or being inconsistent. Because, by that time, things are really going to be different... Sun 20 Feb 2005 USB Flash Drives & The Little Mac Shop That CouldCategory : Technology/USBFlashDrives.txt I bought a couple of USB Flash Drives yesterday from a Mac shop called SGL Marketing at Sim Lim Square. It's a little, hole-in-the-wall, almost impossible-to-find niche near the overhead bridge between Sim Lim Square and Albert Complex across the road. But Mac users in the know will make our way there because you get the best deals and the most pleasant Mac-like service. I actually bought one 1 GB drive first but I found it was slow and, at that rate, I'll never be able to fill it up. So S. G. Lee allowed me to swap it (even though I've already tried it) for two 512 MB versions, which turned out to be cheaper, and she surprisingly returned me the difference with a smile. (Now where else would you get that? At that AppleCentre at Wheelock? Don't make me laugh). Don't let that dingy, worn carpeting fool you. They're the real class act. I'm really behind the curve with USB thumb drives. I realised that it's great for copying over the course materials quickly when people turn up for our courses. I believe that a very high percentage of the attendees actually own iBooks or PowerBooks. So it's possible to see the day when we don't have to set up the lab machines. Everybody will bring their own. Also, while copying over stuff to the thumb drives, I kept getting errors and I realised that application bundles couldn't be copied over. So something must be wrong. That's when I found that you can re-format the drives to OS X Extended format (they were originally in the old OS 9 Mac-PC Exchange format, I think). After that, things speeded up a lot and the copying errors went away. So the 1 gig drive should have worked well, after all. Wed 06 Oct 2004 A Map Plug-In for Address Book (for Panther users)Category : Technology/addressBookPlugIn.txt I've created an Address Book plug-in for Singapore Maps (based on Stephen Wither's WhereIs plug-in for Australian Maps). From Panther (OS X 10.3.x) onwards, Apple's engineers gave Address Book users a new ability to work with plug-ins. And smart people are starting to exploit it. I modified Stephen's AppleScript code and made it work with Singapore's streetdirectory.com. I also wrapped a one-click installer around it. The installer looks like this and you can download it from here.
Once you've downloaded and installed the plug-in (you can choose to install it at the system level so that it'll work for every user on your Mac), you can go over to Address Book and find a new function in the pop-up menus of Address-related fields :
Choose "Singapore Maps" and your browser will launch streetdirectory.com and point you towards where that address is in Singapore : Please note: you've got to store your STREET field in Address Book in a regular way - "3 Shenton Way, Shenton House #11-05/06" - i.e., Block No. first, then Street Name, and (very important, don't forget) the comma (or a carriage return), then Building Name and then Unit No. for this to work. You need the comma or carriage return to separate the Street Name from the Building Name.
Neat, right? I've always wanted to be able to do this. This makes Address Book so much more useful. With AppleScript, and the ability to extend Address Book with plug-ins, and the ability to move the information around to wherever you want it using either Apple Scripts or Unix shell scripts, the things you can do are limited only by your imagination. Thanks, Steve Withers, for the use of the code. Sat 14 Jun 2003 Holland VillageCategory : Commentary/hollandv.txt It's been a long time since I've been to Holland Village, this little leafy oasis at the Holland/Buona Vista junction. But it still feels good. I've spent a lot of time wondering what makes Holland V work. It has always been my favourite place in the whole of Singapore. I practically camped there in my student days. Tonight, I can see my kid enjoying it. It's so much easier stuffing food into him when, perched on the railing on top of Deli-France, he's going, "Look Mummy, Porsche, BMW, Morgan". Morgan. He's 3 years old and he recognises a Morgan. But not simple words like Apple. There's a book that I read a called "Branded - The Buying and Selling of Teenagers" that discusses this phenomena among the kids. And, there's that distinctive rumble of the Harley-Davidson. So Holland V is a smart place - a good second-hand bookshop, antiques, smart restaurants, banks, supermart, chic cafes, fashionable clothes. It's an expatriate enclave. But before it gets too snooty, it's overrun by the slippered brigade pouring out from the HDB heartland of Queenstown. Then there's the University/Poly students. Arty, crafty, MBA types. And the sarong party girls. All mingling in perfect harmony. A thriving community, united in commerce. You can feel the churn. Just what we need to drive us out of the recession. What does it take to build a community like Holland V in cyberspace? To build it from out of nothing. That will make me believe in magic. |
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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