| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Thu 12 Jan 2006 Truth Will OutCategory : Commentary/TruthWillOut.txt "One way or another, in spite of all efforts to conceal it, the truth will come to be known." From the comments page in Blackfriars' rebuttal of Clayton Christensen's "Apple will fail again" interview : Now if we could just convince people to stop repeating that old saw, "Apple lost the computer market to Microsoft because standards eclipsed Apple's proprietary technology." It just ain't so. The world may be starting to come round to this idea. In Business Week : "... some management experts say it may be time to rethink that view. Sticking to its proprietary approach [Apple] has succeeded wildly, at least in digital music. Even in computers, Steve Jobs's strategy has its advantages." For years, management consultants had dispensed advice that resulted in wholesale dumping of perfectly usable Macintoshes on the back of such "proprietary architecture" arguments. I've always felt that one day the truth will out. But, then, what a waste. And the time we've lost to use computers creatively. For years, also, my standard way of judging whether a management book is worth reading is to go to the index, look up Apple or Macintosh and read what the author has to say. If it repeats the "old saw", it goes back to the shelf. What else can I learn from so small a mind? Now, even Microsoft may be forced to consider building their own machines : "Microsoft will decide to develop its own digital media hardware that's hard-wired to work with its software to provide iPod-like ease-of-use -- much as the software king did in the game console market with the Xbox. So PC makers should get started developing their own proprietary systems." Bring them on. Lure them to a terrain, not of their own, and watch a bloodbath. That would only be the best revenge. MailServe UniversalCategory : Technology/MailServeUniversal.txt I've compiled a Universal Binary version of MailServe :
Anybody wants to try this out? Hai Hwee is compiling one right now for Luca, which will need a bit more work because she's got her own SQLite frameworks embedded within it. Will release that when she's done. Wed 11 Jan 2006 The Pundit's DilemmaCategory : Commentary/PunditsDilemma.txt The dilemma faced by every management pundit is, how to account for Apple's success in music, digital convergence and personal/home entertainment - pummelling their competitors, Creative (not so creative) et al, into rivers of red ink - when they're basically following the very same philosophy that the pundits have long derided. You can have it one way or the other. But not both. One must be wrong. So which way is it? In Clayton Christensen's case, it's to go into denial. "I think it will allow them to survive for a bit longer", says the author of The Innovators' Dilemma (which I happened to think is an important book to read). But what do you make of it when he says that "Apple will soon fail again with their proprietary technology"? As if Microsoft's is not proprietary. Blackfriars gave a very good retort, e.g. that Microsoft is the true case study for the lessons in The Innovator's Dilemma. While watching Steve Jobs' demos of the iLife apps in the MacWorld Webcast, I was thinking that these pundits are not so smart, after all - if they can't tell the difference between what is commodity and what is not, what needs to be "commoditized" and which areas are more desirably kept proprietary. The Intel Core Duos are commodities. So are the disk controllers, flash drives, power supplies, etc. What is not a commodity is the genius to put everything together so you can set up a web site in five minutes. And bring joy to the life of Grandma across the Internet. Try making all these work. Instead of just talking about it. It's like herding cats. Things are always breaking into entropy. It takes love, care, passion. And empathy. Looking at iWeb, it makes so much sense. That's why we cheer Apple on. It's about the triumph of the human spirit. It's the pundits with their cookie-cutter, lemming-like, soul-destroying responses who are the real dime-a-dozen commodities. Macs on Intel - riding down the cost curveCategory : Commentary/costcurve.txt "Time is the friend of a good business, The day is finally here. We've got Macs on Intel, a move that strikes at the heart of the Wintel duopoly. The MacBook Pro has got Intel inside but not Intel prices. But the Core Duo chips are still new. From now on, the more PCs (with Core Duo chips) that are sold, the cheaper the Mac will get. Apple rides down the same cost curve as Dell. It's like "going with the flow", the Aikido philosophy of "protecting oneself against aggressive attacks by blending and neutralizing them". Turn your opponent's strength to your own advantage. Mac OS X 10.4.4Category : Technology/10dot4dot4.txt I've upgraded a couple of systems to 10.4.4, just released today, and tested them. They look OK - SMTP, POP, IMAP, Fetchmail, WebMon and DNS Enabler. Thu 05 Jan 2006 Another year over, a new one's just begunCategory : Commentary/YearOver.txt So this is Christmas Together with Hai Hwee, we've managed to get five pieces of software done last year - Postfix Enabler for Tiger, DNS Enabler, WebMon, MailServe and Luca Accounting. I'm trying to create a set of tools that will allow people to run a business on top of the Mac platform - tools that will allow the business to communicate with a potential customer base (through email and a web site), build a community around the use of its products, transact business on-line and in real-time, as well as account for the money flows. And I'm using this Mac@Work site to demonstrate what I mean. So what I hope to do in the coming year is to deepen the value of each of the products, cover the gaps between the products (if that is something we can do), and make the pieces easy to snap together and set up quickly - always with the objective of helping people get going using the tools to serve their businesses better. There are obvious things that can be done - if you're a user of WebMon or MailServe, you probably have a very good idea of what I should be working on to help you manage or exploit the web and mail server better. But there are other things that can be done - e.g., Luca. I believe that the most important thing about managing one's life is to get a firm grip on where all the money has gone - whether you're an individual managing your personal finance, or a small business owner, or a large corporation. I think we've got a very good double-entry engine built into Luca. And it's got a nice interface for traversing through all the figures, drilling down into the details and making cross-references, so that you'll get a good picture of where all the money has gone. But it needs a little more work to make it suitable as a personal finance tool for individuals, especially when it comes to data-entry. Do we need another accounting application for the Mac when there is Quicken and MYOB? I don't know. What I know is that they're not Mac-centric and I'd rather do my own since we can do it, and having control over it, I can tie it in with all the other stuff we're doing, building tools for Mac business users. And managing the business means managing the business's finances. There is one more thing I'd like to do. Bundle all of Hai Hwee's work interfacing with PayPal into a package people can download and set up so that they can also do business on the web the way we've done. There is quite a bit of negativity surrounding PayPal, about its susceptability to fraud and all that, and that's probably deserved. But in the realm of powerful ideas, I can put forward a case that PayPal is probably the most important test-bed we have right now for deriving A New World Currency. I think, in the scheme of things, PayPal is more important entity than eBay, its parent, and may end up being a whole lot more valuable (if eBay doesn't kill it first through mis-management). So, I'd like to do a PayPal-based, PHP-based, eCommerce solution. But PayPal has a more interesting web-services-based solution that we haven't been able to access yet because we're outside the US. I think that would make for a neater solution and so we'll wait until there's a better time to work on that. Mon 02 Jan 2006 MailServe 2.0.2Category : Technology/MailServe202.txt I kept getting problems with the mail queue. Then I realised that I couldn't count on the fields in the mail queue log to follow fixed widths on different machines. Sometimes the queue ID of the message takes 10 characters, sometimes 11, and so on. So I had to find another way to parse the fields into table columns. I think I've killed this problem once and for all. 2.0.2 is out. The Good Books GuideCategory : Commentary/GoodBooksGuide.txt
Look, you can get all these books from our Library. It's been a lazy December but I did get a lot of reading done. The great thing about using the Library is that you can try out lots of different stuff - God knows I've got tons of great-looking but utterly useless books strewn all over the house. (Guess what a second-hand book store would pay for them now? 30 cents each, I just asked). This is how I found "The Cloud Sketcher" by Richard Rayner. Architecture, jazz, New York in the early 1900s, Finland, and a skyscraper - the cloud sketcher. It looked interesting and I enjoyed it. Quite like Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. Only in Ayn Rand, the characters are concepts (like creativity, power, individualism, even love), not people. Here the people are a little more accessible. Imagine you're little Esko, disfigured by the fire that took your mother, uncomfortable in a suit, an outsider at a local dance, and somehow a pretty girl is making her way towards you, she's got a little mirror in her hand, which she uses to ward off the other boys like a gypsy, and she's asked you to dance, beautiful Esko. And you're smitten. Fate brings her back to your life when you're older and you know that there's such a thing as a soul mate. Esko grows up to be an architect and he builds his skyscraper for Katerina. Rayner's evocation of the early years of the 20th century - where cars, elevators, street lamps, electricity, ocean liners and airplanes are novelties, as well as the invention of the steel that allowed skyscrapers to be built - reminds me how much of human technological progress had been compressd within the last hundred years. And it made me pick up another book - about oil. Oil was what made all these things possible. In many ways, world history in the last 150 years was the history of oil. Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" is how history should be written - clever, entertaining and illuminating. Exxon, BP, Shell/Royal Dutch, Rockefeller, the Shah of Persia, Iraq and Kuwait, Tony Blair and the George Bushes. You can see how the actions of today are made inevitable by decisions in the past. And just as the basis for our digital technology could be traced to the exigencies of World War 2, automobiles and mechanised transport could be traced to the necessities of World War 1. ("The British Expeditionary Force that went to France in August 1914 had just 827 motor cars and a mere 15 motorcycles. By the last months of the war, British Army vehicles included 56,000 trucks, 23,000 motorcars, and 34,000 motorcycles.") I understand things a lot better now. Sun 01 Jan 2006 MailServe 2.0.1Category : Technology/MailServe201.txt I've updated MailServe to 2.0.1. This is from the Release Notes : The Fetchmail launch daemon was re-spawning itself when launched on the faster machines due to some timing issues. This has been fixed in this release. (Thanks, Klaus Nielsen, for helping out and pointing the way to the solution. Really appreciate it). Also, Fetchmail could not deliver mail to machines that have been set up to receive mail for more than one domain. This has also been fixed. It's been a busy day. By the way, Happy New Year, everyone. Thu 29 Dec 2005 MailServe ReleasedCategory : Technology/MailServe2Released.txt I've released MailServe 2.0. It costs $19.99 but Postfix Enabler users will be able to upgrade for $9.99. I've been feeling rather unwell since coming back from Bangkok, so it was all I could do to get the final testing done and the documentation updated. But I'm glad that's all done. It's something about Christmas. I've been sick I think eight out of the last ten Christmases. But November, December and January are, for me, the best months for living in Singapore. I start to feel the cool breeze in November, and the light on the leaves sparkles when we're not wet with rain. I don't think anyone else that I've talked to feels quite the same way but I look forward to December. I relax, savour the days, and get knocked down by flu. Maybe that's my body's way of keeping score - making sure I'll catch up on all the rest that I need. Lazy days and December. But it doesn't last. The heat, humidity, and awful glare of the equatorial sun will all come back once Chinese New Year is over. Tue 13 Dec 2005 To Bangkok, ThailandCategory : Commentary/toBangkok.txt I'm going to join my family for three days in Bangkok. There should be a wireless Internet connection at the hotel that we're staying in. Hope I can keep in touch with those that need to reach me, then. It was so quiet at home the last few days that I managed to finish the MailServe documentation, at last. It still needs more polish. But it'll do for now. Tue 06 Dec 2005 This is usCategory : Commentary/us.txt This is a picture of all of us here - from left, my long-time collaborator and friend Hai Hwee, my kid Brendan, and my wife, Bee Khim. We were going to sneak over to Johor, at the southern end of our neighbour Malaysia, for the day. That's always going to be fun and don't we look like it?
Next week, Brendan and Bee Khim are going to spend a week in Thailand but I'm only going to join them for the last three days, in Bangkok - in case I can't find a good Internet connection and the support for Postfix Enabler, WebMon, DNS Enabler and all, starts to languish. So, I'm a long way from having this business run like a well-oiled machine, able to run for much of the time on its own without me. One day, I hope to get this figured out. Actually, Cutedge was the name we used when Bee Khim, Hai Hwee, and I were writing software for insurance companies for most of the last twelve years, together with a couple of other people. We've spent the last two years "recuperating" (I've almost managed to never touch a PC or cross an IT manager's path in two years and I think it shows - I feel fresher and happier). But business seems to be re-awakening in the region. Who knows where the journey will lead? The Journey is the Reward, remember? 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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