Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Thu 16 Oct 2003

Mac Meetup in Singapore, 14th October 2003

Category : Commentary/macmeetup14Oct03.txt

Thought I'd place a link to some photos Siva compiled of the recently concluded Mac meetup (14th October 2003, at Burger King at the Millenia Walk).

The Singapore Mac Meetups could be one of the best-attended Mac meetups anywhere in the world. I've enjoyed the last two that I've attended immensely because you can learn a lot in two hours. Man, look at all these Mac users...

Note : This is where you can sign up (if you're in Singapore). They meet every second Tuesday of the month. A week before the meetup, you'll be asked to vote for a place to meet up. Then you get the result of the vote and you just turn up, easy as that.

Posted at 9:11AM UTC | permalink

Tue 14 Oct 2003

Apple Panther Tech Talk

Category : Technology/pathertechtalk.txt

Attended the a Panther Tech Talk by Apple at Raffles City yesterday. The topics covered were : Panther, the G5, porting Unix apps to OS X, Rendezvous, optimizing C/C++ code, developing drivers, multi-lingual capabilties and a securities technologies overview.

I keep thinking, during the talks, about how business writers often miss the point about Apple. They make comparisons with Microsoft, as if the war has been won, and there's nothing else to talk about any more.

Actually, I think Apple represents an alternative way of doing technology that is equally valid. Far from being dead, I believe that it is an emerging model that is going to get even more relevant as we move along.

A lot of what goes into Panther is available in the public domain as Open Source projects - Samba, Free BSD, DNS and BIND, Apache, everything that constitutues the Internet. Apple's genius is in packaging these technologies into a whole that is easy-to-use by an end-user, creating technologies where they don't already exist to glue everything together.

The resulting product is open where it makes sense, and yet proprietary, again where it makes sense.

It has been said that a measure of intelligence is the ability to hold two (apparently) contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time, and reconcile them. Perhaps, Apple's market share is a reflection of the number of people who can actually do that.

One day, countries like China, who're starting to learn how to build and put together the hardware pieces, are going to realise they can take Linux and follow Apple's lead to put together something that is much greater than the sum of its parts. So long as it follows Internet standards and consists of Open Source pieces like Apache and MySQL in the main, it would have a built-in ability to interoperate with the rest of the systems out there. That is, instead of participating in only one layer, take responsibility for the vertical integration and build the whole product.

It's like, we can all communicate with each other because, whether we're Chinese or Malay or Indian, we all agreed to use English as the common language. The current Windows model is like saying we all have to be cast from the same mould before we can talk to each other. Obviously, God had other ideas.

People who argue that products eventually become commoditised forget that we're talking about technologies that are designed to augment human communications. Far from becoming more standardised, we're going to see a demand for these services to grow in complexity to match the variety and richness of human communication.

If you take a perspective where you agree that that is the end you are working towards, that the technologies have to be melded so that it will simultaneously give us better and more powerful ways of communicating while becoming even easier to use, then you may become more sympathetic towards Apple's cause.

If you take that perspective where you're focused on the complexity of creating the software, then it is no idle thing to want to have a tighter control over the hardware, just so you can make the whole damn thing work in the first place.

It is no accident that Apple's stuff is so elegant and the PC stuff is so clunky. You reap what you sow.

Posted at 8:06AM UTC | permalink

Postfix on Panther. Yet another follow-up

Category : Technology/followupPostfix.txt

Okay, just one more thing about Postfix on Panther (from 7B74 onwards). I've noticed that I lose the ability to send mail out after the system wakes up from sleep. So I made this change to /etc/hostconfig - I set MAILSERVER=-YES- (from MAILSERVER=-AUTOMATIC-) and the problem goes away. It's been working great since.

Actually, I'm trying to find the least amount of things I have to change to make Postfix work from a stock Panther installation. I think I'll still do a Postfix Enabler - for what it's worth. Maybe a set of things that go from Basic to Advanced (with SMTP-AUTH) to Pro (with POP and IMAP).

Posted at 6:08AM UTC | permalink

Sat 11 Oct 2003

Yeh! Postfix on Panther works again

Category : Technology/postfix-watch.txt

The following instructions are for 7B74 onwards. 7B74 introduces postfix-watch, which looks like an Apple "innovation", and which threw me off quite a bit.

To enable Postfix on Panther, make sure you have eveything set as Apple had intended things to be. If you had ever changed things around in a bid to enable Postfix, and was not successful, try reverting everything to the default and start again. Specifically, the files that need to be reset to the original are : /etc/hostconfig, /etc/postfix/main.cf, and /etc/postfix/master.cf. I needed to do this before I could find the answer.

By default, in /etc/hostconfig, HOSTNAME=-AUTOMATIC- and MAILSERVER=-AUTOMATIC-. Leave these as they are, to keep your sanity.

Then when your Mac boots up, /usr/sbin/postfix-watch will be launched. If I am right in my guessing, Apple is being very thoughtful here. At this point, the usual Postfix processes are not yet launched, thus conserving CPU processes.

But, try using the "mail" command from the command line in Terminal.app. You will find that, unlike the case in Jaguar where you're required to enable sendmail first, the "mail" command is already working out of the box. I think postfix-watch's job is to watch for the need to call Postfix and it will then lauunch the required Postfix processes on your behalf.

So why can't you telnet port 25 on localhost? That's because Apple has commented out the smtp line in the master.cf file. Use BBedit, open /etc/master.cf, look for the smtp line and take out the leading "#" to uncomment the smtp directive.

Then do a "sudo postfix reload" from the command line to activate smtp. Do a "telnet localhost 25". You will find that your Mac will now listen on port 25.

So, launch Mail.app, create an account that will allow you to send mail out from localhost (i.e., by setting the outgoing mail server to either "localhost" or "127.0.0.1"). You will find that you can now send mail out from Mail.app using your own Mac as a roving smtp server. This is what Sendmail Enabler does for people on the road, but we're able to get here much faster by editing just that one line in the /etc/postfix/master.cf file.

Just one more thing. Add these lines to the end of your /etc/postfix/main.cf file :

myhostname = iBook.cutedgesystems.com

myorigin = cutedgesystems.com

Replace "cutedgesystems.com" with your own domain name. Now, myorigin acts like the Masquerade_As field in sendmail. Do a "sudo postfix reload". Now, use Mail.app to send mail out again, perhaps to yourself, so that you can examine the headers. You will find that you're now able to make the message look like it's coming from "bernard@cutedgesystems.com", say, rather than "bernard@iBook.local", which was what you would get before you made that last change.

A bonus : with Postfix, using myorigin, you don't get the "May be forged" warning that you may sometimes get when using sendmail with the Masquerade_As feature. This is what I found from a test that I made.

So, it's really quite easy to enable Postfix on Panther. I like to think that, maybe, Apple learnt from the response to Sendmail Enabler that there is a demand from Mac users for the ability to do such a thing. So they've made it easy, this time.

So where does this leave Postfix Enabler. I don't know. Maybe there's no need for Postfix Enabler, now. It's gotten so ridiculously easy. But then again, who knows, maybe people will still find this hard to do. Also, I've only once managed to get SMTP-AUTH to work with sendmail, and even then, only fleetingly. But with Postfix, I've got SMTP-AUTH working on the cutedgesystems and roadstead.com server that four of us are using for more than a month now. And it works great.

I hope this helps. I think Apple has done a great job on Postfix and Panther's really going to be a must-have upgrade.

Please note : if you write to me for trouble-shooting help and I don't respond, please try to understand. It's really hard to help everyone.

Posted at 3:37PM UTC | permalink

Thu 09 Oct 2003

Efficient SpeedStream Model 5260 End-of-Lifed

Category : Commentary/SpeedStream5200.txt

I got a message from Mike at ABF Technical Support (ABF is the local distributor of Efficient products) that the ADSL Modem Model 5260 has been replaced by the newer 5200 model.

Interestingly, Mike signs off with a line, "We support Macs". So, maybe we should support them back. I've updated my Mac OS X Broadband tutorial page to reflect the change.

Posted at 8:06AM UTC | permalink

Mon 06 Oct 2003

The Millionaire Next Door

Category : Commentary/millionaire.txt

There's this book "The Millionaire Next Door", by Thomas Stanley and William Danko, that I enjoyed reading and just realised that, if I had looked carefully, much of what they described also happens here in Singapore.

The other day, we were talking to the owner of a noodle shop about why he's decided to move his operations somewhere else. He said that he's paying $10,000 a month in rent and the landlord refused to cut the rent by even $500 to help him out of the current recession.

As we were talking, he pointed out the landlord, and it was the little lady who runs a fruit stall in the next shop. Not only does she own the two shops, she also owns the third and all three are in a high pedestrian traffic area. And as we were talking, she was clearing up what's left on a table. It can't be true, can it? Yes, it can, because a few days later I met her in the lift, on her way to a management meeting for people who own units in the building, and she confirmed it.

Down the street where I live, there are a couple of other little old ladies who have no evident sources of income, who have no cars, and who wear the same clothes almost everyday. Yet their houses are always well-maintained. And they seem happy and they do live well, if not ostentatiously. How do they do it? Passive income, from either property or other investments that they or their family had made.

So I asked my friend Hai Hwee who would she rather be? The guys who are visibly rich with their beemers and condos bought on credit. Or one who is really rich though nobody can tell? Her answer? She'd rather be that little lady. Of course.

Posted at 10:04AM UTC | permalink

Java and Cocoa

Category : Technology/javacocoa.txt

My colleague, Hai Hwee, just found an answer as to why simply opening and closing windows will eventually crash an application written in Java that uses Apple's Cocoa framework for creating the user-interface.

It's got to do with "garbage collection". Java has automatic garbage collection that will reclaim memory that is not in use. But garbage collection needs to be explicitly specified in Objective-C, which is the language Apple used to build Cocoa.

I've often wondered how you use these two conflicting schemes together. The answer is : you get crashes - unless you manage it in some way. Now we know why, the crashes have stopped and we're happy coding again.

So the bottomline is: it's really possible to create "native" OS X applications using Java. There are tons of stuff in Java out there for which the cource code is available. And there are a whole lot more Java programmers than Objective-C programmers. This is one religious argument for which I will gladly take the side of the pragmatists. So, Java is it, for us. It brings the Mac back to the mainstream and every little thing helps, if you want to see the Mac accepted by the enterprise market.

Posted at 8:59AM UTC | permalink

Postfix breaks in 7B74

Category : Technology/postfixbreaks.txt

I like the look of Panther so much that I'm now running it permanently on my iBook. Otherwise I can't start work a Postfix Enabler, can I?

But Postfix seems to break with the 7B74 release. It's hard to find answers because everybody is supposed to be on NDA. Will have to see if the problem goes away in the 7B80 or 85 release.

Other than that, everything else that I need survived the upgrade (even the rsync command that I use to update this weblog). I think Panther really does improve the Mac experience, in terms of end-user productivity. So there's no going back, as far as I'm concerned. Panther is going to be good for the Mac.

Posted at 8:31AM UTC | permalink

Fri 26 Sep 2003

News Gothic

Category : Commentary/newsgothic.txt

Actually, as a follow on from the previous article, I just realised that the font I used to simulate the classified ad pages is News Gothic, not Times. It matches the font used by the newspaper most closely. So, the ability to play with all these typefaces on the Mac has other direct commercial uses besides just benefiting graphic artists and DTP designers.

While on the same subject, I just used a system that allows you to see how the ad will look, directly, while you're submitting the advertising copy. And it does away with an operator entirely. The ad gets queued up for publishing on the dates you specified, exactly as you had set it. And the cost is 70% cheaper (30 cents per line as opposed to $1.00). Score a point for technology.

Posted at 8:31AM UTC | permalink

Abracadabra

Category : Commentary/abracadabra.txt

Words are like magic. When we were children, we read stories about how sorcerers could cast a spell or make something supernatural happen just by chanting the magic word.

Words do hold real power. The key is to find the right combination that will unlock the power. Am I talking nonsense?

I'm putting out ads in the local newspaper to find tenants for some office space that we manage. But the market is bad. Last month, I managed to find a suitable tenant for an apartment that we own. But it took two months of searching when, only the previous year, we found a tenant within 45 minutes of taking the calls.

Advertisements cost money. The effectiveness of the advertisement is measured by the number of calls that you get. And the effectiveness of your handling the calls is measured by the number of viewings that you get. Like Dennis Wee, our real estate guru says, "Only when buyers come, can the home sell." The more calls you get, the more your chances of getting a viewing, out of which, hopefully, one will result in the sale.

You can see how words can affect the number of calls you get. Put aside a budget, write a series of ads in diifferent styles. And watch how many calls each one pulls. In today's market, an ad put out without any idea of how to push the right buttons in the mind of the busy, fussy, squeezy, tenant-to-be will most likely result in zero calls. That's $40 to $50 bucks down the drain. Better not to have put it out, unless it has thought you something.

Now, back to the Mac as the Ultimate Business Machine. How do we use our favourite toy in this situation?

Ads are charged by the number of lines that you use, which is not exactly determined by the number of words that you use. To see what I mean, use something like InDesign. Create a column that is about the size of the column in the newspaper classified page. Then use a font like Times that corresponds as closely as possible to the font the newspapers use. Then set the appropriate font size and kerning (the space between the letters).

Take an ad that you've submitted previously, and type it into the column. Then adjust the font size and column size until the words break just like way the ad looked on the newspaper. You can test it by simulating other ads on the same page.

If you can get similar line breaks and the same number of lines as they appear on the newspaper, you've got a really valuable tool. Because, when you next write an ad, you can use this column to get a feel for how many lines it's going to take and, therefore, how much it's going to cost you to place the ad.

You can see how making just one change in the wording (for example, by finding a shorter word - the Bartleby site is a great on-line resource for finding synonymns) can save you a whole line. Or where you've got space to use a longer and more appropriate word without adding to the line count.

The benefits don't end here. When you submit your ad (the smart kids use e-mail rather than the phone because you can get an idea how much you've spent on adverts to date just by counting the ads you've sent), you can have the InDesign column ready when the operator calls back to confirm that you did get the number of lines that you've planned for. More times than not, you would have got it right. If you don't, you can look at your own copy to suggest dropping or changing words, and you should be able to do it fast enough before the operator gets impatient.

It's magic. It's now possible to really concentrate on finding the most impact you can make with your words, at the lowest possible cost.

Note : See how fast we can switch from talking about technology, and sendmail and SASL, to English, and design and artwork, and commerce and business? If the Mac is not a machine for those who want to live life to the full, I don't know what else is.

Posted at 8:31AM UTC | permalink

Wed 24 Sep 2003

A Hiatus

Category : Commentary/hiatus.txt

Just realised that it's been some time since this weblog was last updated. But I've needed to take that break. I remember reading about how William Gibson ("Neuromancer") has stopped writing a weblog because it interfered with his writing. When writing gets to be a chore, we should stop. Fullstop. And give time for the daily impressions to settle. And germinate. And hopefully, sprout fresher ideas.

I've just finished reading "Artful Making - What Managers Need to Know about How Artists Work". I believe that it's an important book, putting aside the rather clumsy phrase, "Artful Making". It describes, quite accurately, what we actually do in software development projects.

But I've realised that it may be totally at odds with my objective of making my business work like a well-oiled business machine, like a MacDonald's.

I know it's possible to help our clients make their businesses work like a smoothly efficient business machine - we know we've done that - but it takes a whole lot of care, improvisation, and not a little bit of doggedness on our part to do it.

It does not help that, at the end of the book, the authors (Rob Austin and Lee Devin) describe how artists often do their work for the sake of doing their work - as if the need to uphold the standards of their craftsmanship takes higher precedence than the mere thought of remuneration. ("Most actors earn considerably less than $20K a year doing acting.") Shades of the starving artist. And that's what sends a chill through me.

I often see the Bangladeshi workers toiling under the sun, being paid pittance, yet their work is the hardest any man can do. It may surprise people but high-tech is not any different. The guys who work out the programs, design the loops, fix the bugs - the software coolies - they're paid, if at all, rather grudgingly. The legions of Linux programmers contribute their work for free, yet it's the people at Red Hat who, by and large, benefitted from being able to do an IPO.

Maybe craftsmanship does not pay. Just look at Apple. But I never want to be the starving artist. It's silly. If you're smart enough to make a complex piece of software work flawlessly, you must believe that you're smart enough to make yourself reasonably rich. How do you make this work? That's the question.

Posted at 9:35AM UTC | permalink

Fri 12 Sep 2003

SMTP-AUTH actually works on Postfix on OS X

Category : Commentary/postfixsmtpauth.txt

We've finally got SMTP-AUTH working on Postfix on OS X. So it's really going to be exciting this move to Panther. We're going to have this first-class Unix system to work on that loses nothing to Linux.

It wasn't easy and I wanted to give up a few times. But I felt that this was going to be a key piece of technology, if the Mac is going to be accepted as a first-class computing platform for the enterprise. I can imagine corporate IT departments frowning on the use of a roving SMTP server enabled by either Sendmail or Postfix Enabler. They'll be pushing to have all mail sent out exclusively from the corporate server.

So we'll always want have this SMTP-AUTH option working when we need to. And this is just the start. Imagine being able to authenticate against an enterprise-wide LDAP server or against a MySQL database, or both. The tools on OS X just gets better and better.

Posted at 9:52AM UTC | permalink