Apple gives me new casing with new keyboard, again

I have my MacBook casing changed again, yes, again.

I noticed a small crack on my right hand palm rest, below the trackpad about a month ago. I called Apple, and glad to know that I am still entitled for free replacement, even the notebook is almost 3 years old, and only covered by 1 year warranty.

I sent my Macbook for technical inspection 3 days ago, and got the case replaced today.

This is probably why I am sticking to Apple products no matter how. Interaction with Apple call centre, Apple technical staff is always pleasure to me unlike other BIG tech names, such as Acer, NEC, Samsung, HP.

Now my macbook is like a new one, and it was done in 40 minutes. You can never get this kind of service from any other vendor, trust me.

看看四月会不会败家！

红色的是书签，黄色的是笔记

可以在任何时候加入笔记

在书本目录，书签和笔记一目了然

When Twitter meets World Cup

When Twitter meets World Cup, I surrender..... Not football fan, no nuts about football, and my twitter status update can skip just because:

World Cup is everywhere on Twitter!!!

Why use Word, when you have better alternative

Many of us was brought up with Microsoft Word on Windows or Mac. But MS Word, besides its price, it in many occasion an overkill to most of us.

If we look carefully of those documents we created using Word, I would say almost 90% of them are simple documents, i.e. letters, short articles, etc. that most features on Word are not used at all.

There are also compatibility problem that forces almost everyone using Word instead of alternatives, i.e. if you have Word, you are almost certain that you will be able to open any documents created using Word.

This is a wrong perception however. Documents created using later versions of Word does not necessarily open in earlier version of Word. To maintain compatibility, most of us will fallback to saving Word documents in Word 97-2001 format, instead of the later xml or docx (Word 2007) formats.

Word is also a bulky monster that will eat up your memory without realising, if you open Word and not closing it for long hours, it will eventually freeze and render your PC/Mac slow like turtle, a common symptom for Microsoft products.

But how are we avoid using Word while maintaining compatibility with other Word users?

Look for alternative.

There are a few alternatives one can choose from, and I will concentrate on Mac instead of on Windows.

First, determine your needs, ask yourself what kind of documents you created most, and do you need to share editable documents you created with others, or receiving editable documents from others.

Ask also whether you often write lengthly documents with fancy features like Table of Contents, footnotes, and applying style sheets to your documents.

If the above is alien to you, likely you need a simple word processor to do your job than Microsoft Word.

On Mac OSX, there are a couple of alternatives, one of them is Bean.

The name BEAN looks funny at first, BEAN is an Open Source word processor so simple that you can start working with immediately with no training. The advantage of Open Source allowing you to add features on top of what is already provided, if you are OSX/Objective-C programmer. It provides a solid foundation for you to customize word processor for your own needs.

If you are not a programmer, the core features of Bean covers daily needs on word processor.

Bean is also fast, efficient, able to open and save Word documents. As other Mac applications, saving to PDF is readily available, unlike Windows where you have to rely on 3rd party PDF printing utilities.

Bean gives you an uncluttered view of editing screen, simple, and easy to use toolbar (yes, only one toolbar instead of zillion toolbar or ribbon that occupies half of your screen in the case of Word).

Once open, just type as you would on Word. It is lightning fast, and smooth. In addition, you can type any character as long as OSX supports, means from Tamil to Arabic to Chinese to Japanese.

Bean needs no tutorial, it is not a monster like Word. Go explore yourself, and you will soon fall in love with.

Better than expected - MacBook Air

I was skeptical about MacBook Air. Although it's appearance, size, and weight makes it a must have gadget, I was still doubt about its performance after reading a string of bad press.

Until recently, I have a chance to play around the lower end model, ie 1.86GHz with 120GB conventional hard drive. My doubt disappeared.

It is really a wonderful machine, I would say yet another well thought machine from Apple.

Unlike criticism that most reviewers written, MacBook Air is certainly the machine to carry around, with good keyboard, and large screen as compare to the netbooks in the market.

Yes, I admit that it is far too expensive when comparing with netbook, the point is: you use a tool to ensure that you are productive and not counter productive with all sorts of physical limitation. And the biggest limitation as far as netbook is concern is its compromised quality for cheap selling price, crammed keyboard, and screen that hardly fits your work.

I am doing a lot of typing, a lot of internetting, and a lot of emails. I believe most road warriors are using their on the move gadget as me.

MacBook Air doesn't squeeze your shoulder when typing, you can type as fast as you can with comfort found only on high end, heavy notebook or desktop.

MacBook Air allows you to view from a distance, unlike notebook that you will have to touch your nose to the screen to read.

Overall, the performance is satisfactory. Compare to full blown notebook like MacBook, I hardly notice any speed difference when I do my daily stuff.

The only noticeable lag is from the 1.8inch 4200rpm 120GB hard drive. I believe a SSD will definitely solve the issue, and consume less power.

Battery life? Some of you may ask. I got a full 5 hours + before I need to recharge. Our Samsung netbook N310 claimed 10 hours battery life but actually draw much faster, effectively around 4 hours for the same productivity work, not because Samsung battery does not last, but time spent to look back and forth, time spent to correct typo on miniature keyboard is something that one will want to avoid especially they have flow of thought to pen down.

And MacBook Air makes it a perfect companion for those who write a lot, without scarifying your eyesight and strain your arms and shoulders.

Some of you may argue that I am not comparing apple to apple as Netbook are far cheaper than the MacBook Air.

Let's be realistic. If you can afford, you would like to measure performance of your gadget based on productivity, not its price.

If you are price sensitive, then MacBook Air is not for you, but if you are goal oriented and productivity oriented, I would strongly recommend MacBook Air.

Contradict to people who had bad experience with Apple support, I never had the problem with all my Apple gears. Apple support is far superior than any other brand that I dealt with.

In short, if you have some cash to dispose, MacBook Air is the choice, else you may have to confine yourself with tiny netbook that productivity is in doubt.

Try working on netbook for a good 3 hours, you will know what I mean.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

iBooks finally arrived!

Have been using iOS4 for quite a while, and was eagerly waiting for iBooks, which will opens up the world of books in my palm.

Earlier rumor that iBooks will not be made available to iPhone 3G is now crushed, iBooks in here, is in my iPhone 3G NOW!!

The iBookshelf

the PDF Library, where my WWDC slides are kept that I can refer anytime.

PDF slide in action

The Project Gutenberg book, downloaded from iBooks Store

As advertised

Is iPad an interim product?

iPad is selling like hot cake, and Apple seems to have difficulty keeping up with the extraordinary strong demand.

I must admit iPad is a product that change the way we interact with the Internet. However, I am still having doubt whether iPad is an interim product to be the industry leader and set the bar for competitors, instead of what it is supposed to be in the mind of Apple.

Let's take a look at the iPhone 4 alongside with iPad.

iPhone 4 is revolutionary as Steve claimed during the recent WWDC keynote that:

1. It is the thinnest smartphone;
2. Battery life lasts longer;
3. Excellent exterior which is essentially a piece of technology art;
4. This is by far the most important component in iPhone 4: the Retina Display.

You may argue that others will soon to catch up with Apple on high resolution screen. Yes, I do agree. But Retina Display is not just the high resolution LCD, it Is the combination of high resolution LCD + OS screen driver that makes a perfect presentation of what you find on iPhone 4.

Now back to iPad. It is kind of curious for Apple not to include the above on iPhone 4 onto iPad, especially the Retina Display and iOS 4. Isn't Apple positioned iPad as ebooks + entertainment + Internet, ie content consumption device?

What makes a good content consumption device? First and foremost: an extraordinarily good display!

Isn't Retina Display fits into this perfectly?

Let's look at other ebook readers and tablets in the market. Monochrome ebook readers like Amazon's Kindle and Sony's ereader both using e-ink technology for 2 main reasons:

1. Conserves battery life;
2. Reduces eye strain on long hour reading.

Of the above, Retina Display is closely rival e-ink in terms of pleasant reading/watching/consuming while battery life may still lagged behind e-ink technology.

But the plus point for Retina Display is color, and e-ink is not, and will not be, in the foreseeable future, that will have the ability to display in color.

So iPad with Retina Display, the same exterior design as iPhone 4, and iOS4, will certainly blown the competitors, even TV and netbooks away.

Then why Apple does not want the first version of iPad to have Retina Display?

It may be too risky a decision to
Make as no one know how well the costumer will response to iPad;

It may be kept for iPhone 4 since iPhone market is proven;

It may simply be a supply problem that Retina Display is not available in production quantity for iPad.

But I am almost certain that next generation of iPad will
Include all the cool features of iPhone 4, and more.

And I am expecting the next Gen iPad to be introduced next Feb, a year after its launch to ensure no strain in supply chain, and Apple to rip the year end holiday season with current generation of iPad with iOS4.

So I will wait for next year for an iPad.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Why I am so comfortable with Apple products

I have been dealing with manufacturer's support for the past years, ranging from Acer to NEC, to HP, and Apple.

Frankly, I have not been using Windows PCs/notebooks since I bought my first iBook some 10 years ago, I stick to Apple because of their support response, and no-question-ask attitude, makes Apple support stands out.

When I bought the first iBook, it was a G3, and it is a tool to me, not luxury glamor to show off. My iBook G3 was having problem with the LCD, and since, the motherboard has been replaced 3 X.

The 4th time it broke, local Apple rep refused to replace a new unit claiming that their have extended my warranty from 1 year to 3 year without charge, and replacement motherboard, although is free, will not carry warranty of 1 year, or 3 month (standard for replacement part). It has only less than 1 month warranty.

Knowing this is design fault, and after having argument with local Apple rep, I decided to write to the top man in Apple you know who.

2 days later, I received a call from Apple regional HQ, telling me that my brand new iBook replacement is on its way to me.

The replacement comes complete with everything, and it is a G4, someone has quietly upgraded for me, and as complement, I can keep my mul-function iBook G3.

Unfortunately the new G4 was robbed, and discovered, but have to lie in the police station 1 month after I received.

I bought another G4, using for a few weeks, somehow I shocked the unit, and LCD backlit broken.

I called Apple, and brought the unit to service center, and got it fixed free of charge.

Entered the MacBook age, my current MacBook is late 2007, warranty have since expired without Apple Care when I noticed that the casing cracked.

Call Apple, and got it replaced for free.

Today, I noticed that the casing cracked again, call Apple, and still got free replacement without much words.

So tell me, how can I live without Apple for its excellent support?

To learn my experience with HP, read :

What's going on, HP?

HP LIED! BIG LIE!

Where are you heading, HP?

It looks like new, it works like new, but it is not NEW, HP!

Look like new, work like new, but it's not new, HP!

Finally, a new monitor from HP!

Any unhappy experience with Acer, NEC, even Samsung....

CakePHP, restrict Ajax access to some functions

I am recently writing a system using CakePHP, with Ajax requests from another page outside the CakePHP installation.

The purpose is to make it difficult for would be hacker to retrieve information that I wanted to hide beneath the hook, while exposing to granted parties, including of course the web server itself.

Examples found online are largely into 2 categories,

a. Blanket security, i.e. access to protected areas requires password, which is good if human users are interacting with the system. But it adds complexity for ajax to do a few requests, atleast 2, one to authenticate, and the other to request data.

b. Check referrer URL to determine if requests is coming from itself, else show error message.

I am minimalist by nature, and will find ways to squeeze performance to the last drop. This is certainly not ideal.

Instead, I have put up a little piece of code to decide if the requester, be it ajax, or human, is allowed by checking their IPs. Ajax requests can only be done on local, ie. any other requests will have to route thru the usual user login path.

Below is the sample which you can insert into any function you wish to protect, that gives you flexibility on how much information is allowed to expose.

function ajaxview($id = null) {

$allowedIps = array('localhost');

if(!in_array($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],$allowedIps)) {

$this->Session->setFlash('Sorry, you are not allowed to access this area');

}else{

$this->layout = 'ajax';

$this->Registrant->recursive = 0;

$this->set('registrant', $this->Registrant->read(null, $id));

}

}

Simple, right?

Why is MYSQL ODBC slow?

I encountered a strange issue today, when we migrated data from one server to another.

Users are connecting to MySQL server via MyODBC connector for Windows. The application seems hang when it hits the MySQL.

The issue seems complicated but easy to solve. I added the following to My.CNF on the server:

skip-name--resolve

skip-host-cache

With these directives, ODBC connection is much faster now.

Why?

MySQL has built-in security to ascertain whether request from a given hostname is genuinely from its IP address, instead of from IP spoofing.

When a client request hit MySQL server, the server will first resolve the hostname to IP. With this the server will again do a reverse lookup from DNS to ensure that IP in the request packet tally with IP given by the DNS.

In our case, the new DNS does not keep the record of the hostname after DHCP issue a leased IP to the client.

Thus, MySQL will have to wait for timeout to response to the request, this makes MySQL seems slow.

Who is Tomorrow?

When Apple's market capitalization overtook Microsoft last week, became the largest IT company on earth, the IT world is entering to the Apple era.

Apple was a near bankrupt company a decade ago, with share price as low as USD6 at the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple, compare to average of USD250 now.

Steve managed to get Bill Gates, his rival for many, to inject fresh fund on Apple. With products such as iMac, iPod, iPhone, and the recent iPad, Apple sweeps everyone in the tech world, Nokia, Google and Microsoft included, to be the No 1.

Coincidently, it was Apple and IBM brought Microsoft up to its size and influence today. Microsoft made the CPM/80 card, bundled with MBASIC for Apple II. Excel and Word were developed for the Macs back in 1980's before Windows firm its dominant position with Windows 3.0.

IBM on the other hand spurred the growth of PC by opening up the PC hardware design, allowing others like Compaq (now HP) to use the design and compete with IBM.

Microsoft benefited most from IBM and IBM's openness on PC hardware, and eventually took over IBM as the largest IT company with its PC/MSDOS and Windows.

Thus, it was IBM, the largest IT company of yesteryear, brought Microsoft up.

It was Microsoft, the largest IT company of yesterday, brought Apple back on track with its financial and products (Word and Excel for Mac) support on Macs.

Who will Apple groom to eventually replace its dominant position?

Anyone?

Remote failover

We have a couple of offices around. Recently a department located in HQ is moving to another location, miles away. But they still need to refer to data from HQ.

We put up a Linux server replicating some part of our MSSQL server data using PHP. Since we have multiple ISPs connected at the HQ, I was having the idea of making sure that pulling data from HQ should continue as long as 1 line is up.

In the pass, we have to mess around with the PHP code to change the server IP, or change our DNS forwarder to redirect to a working line should the main line goes off.

So I told myself there must be a way to deal with the situation.

OK, I found a solution from the Net here.

The author uses a simple trick to see if there's reply from a HTTP socket connection. If there's a reply, then the server is alive, else, the server is off.

I took the code below:

// Function to check response time

function pingDomain($domain){

$starttime = microtime(true);

$file = fsockopen ($domain, 80, $errno, $errstr, 10);

$stoptime = microtime(true);

$status = 0;

if (!$file) $status = -1; // Site is down

else {

fclose($file);

$status = ($stoptime - $starttime) * 1000;

$status = floor($status);

}

return $status;

}

?>

and added the below to my main PHP code, to decide if the server is accessible via a given line.

$line1="X.X.X.X";

$line2="Y.Y.Y.Y";

$siteport=":1433";

if(pingDomain($line1))

{

$MSSQL=$line1.$siteport;

}elseif(pingDomain($line2)){

$MSSQL=$line2.$siteport;

}

echo $MSSQL;

with the above, my code is now with failover function, even if is not really polished, it does work well.

iPhone 4.0 Beta 3 installed

Ok, I admit that I am quite frustrated with iPhone 4.0 beta 2, sluggish, crash often, cannot charge at times.

Worse, it sometimes just jam the baseband. Yes, I still get signal, but cannot call or receive calls, cannot receive SMSes, cannot even get push notifications when it jammed up.

I never notice until I want to make calls, or just wondering why no one email me.... The solution is: reboot the iPhone.

So in a day, I have to reboot donkey times to make sure I get connected, sigh....

Entering beta 3. Everything seems well. Camera now works, although no zoom feature as yet. Phone is responsive, so far. I am glad.

But I am just wondering why Apple pulled off beta 3 a few hours after it is made available, no message, no notes, nothing.

Don't care. I will keep beta 3 until the next cycle comes, I had enough for beta 2.

Last note: the folder feature where apps can be arranged in folder does not seems to work well with iTunes.

iTunes will somehow screw up, and mess up the whole thing.

Good to have folders, but it is not the priority.

Next post, I am going to write something about JQuery.

iPhone 4.0 Beta 2, goodies and screw-ups

These days are kind of stress: work pours in, datelines to meet, speed and accuracy are most important for assignments in my hands now.

I was tempting and eventually updated the beta 1 earlier last week. Overall, the impression seems good, except that some of my favourate apps ceased to function.

This drive me to update to beta 2 when it was released yesterday. Apple dropped me a mail yesterday morning that beta 2 is ready to download, I have virtually no time until this wee hour, where I can have about 1 hour without accessing to the Internet, working on my MacBook, then I initiate the download, and update.

What do I have with beta 2?

Well, my MobileRSS works now, it crashes like nobody's business in beta 1. It is not the only RSS/Google Reader app facing the problem. In fact almost all free RSS apps are having the same problem. Thus, it is apparently Apple's problem and glad that they fixed it.

Another problem fixed is photos deleted from MacBook after importing to either iPhoto or using Image Capture, will still leave a black spot as if the photo is still there. This is clearly the index/sqlite problem with Photo app on iPhone 4.0 beta 1, which is now fixed.

What are the problems?

Camera is gone, I mean it is still there, you can still snap pictures, but after the shutter closed, that's it! Nothing is saved, and the camera just jam there, much like mechanical camera when the shuttle stuck.

I cannot get into International settings to change my Hong Kong region to other country, it keeps booting me back to the home screen.

This is what I have thus far, need to go back to work again, sigh!

More screw-ups:

I cannot use 3G unless I enabled Data Roaming. This is not a big problem for me as I do not travel, but it can be serious for those who are traveling.

Even more screw-ups:

My iPhone refused to sync or charge when connected, after running a few apps. It will charge/sync again when I restarted the phone.

iPhone tips: How to make your iPhone fly

You may noticed that your iPhone becomes slower each day. Sometime it is so slow that you will probably wait between key presses, i mean touches.

Some suggested that you need to restart your iPhone preferably every day. This is partially correct.

Restarting your iPhone, or rebooting will clear cache stay in the memory, thus applications will run a little faster.

Like Safari, it is best to clear cache and history under Settings/Safari option.

But this does not help your iPhone back to the speed as it was when you first have it in hand.

The best way to make your iPhone like new, is to clear all unnecessary podcasts, videos, songs, SMSes, and call history.

You will notice respectable speed gain once you clear these regularly.

You may ask: How am I going to archive SMSes or call history since I need them as record.

Answer is simple, google iPhone SMS extractor, you may find tons of applications, either on Windows or Mac, that do the job with condition that you backup your iPhone regularly.

SImple, isn't it? My iPhone like new when I cleared all SMSes kept since 15 months ago, you may achieve the same by doing so.

iPhone 4.0 Beta 1, internet tethering using unofficial carrier

I restored the iPhone 4.0 beta 1 again on my iPhone 3G. To my horror, after restoring and treat the iPhone as new, I lost the Internet tethering option that I am so dependent on.

The primary suspect is that my carrier, Celcom, which is not the official iPhone carrier, screwed up again.

I have tried rebooting a few times, reseting the iPhone, with no luck.

Almost wanted to give up and look change my carrier to Maxis or DiGi from Celcom because of this.

However, I decided to give myself another try:

What I did was to beg someone for a maxis SIM, insert the SIM to my iPhone and reboot. After confirming that the Internet Tethering is available, I turned off the iPhone, removed Maxis SIM and put in my Celcom SIM.

Pray..... Reboot..... Viola! Internet Tethering comes back, even with Celcom SIM card!

Conclusion:

Should you need Internet Tethering and not using the official carrier's service, you just need to pop-in the official carrier's SIM, reboot your iPhone to make sure Internet Tethering option is available, then turn your iPhone off, put in your unofficial carrier SIM back, and you are done!

Do you think Malaysian are crazy on iPad?

Do you really think Malaysian are crazy, i.e. insane getting iPad for USD907, which is almost double the street price of USD499 back in it's homeland??

Wait until you read the piece below from Bloomberg:
------

IPads in India Fetch $2,250 as Apple Fans Refuse to Be Patient

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Anthony Agius says his decision to pay A$2,500 ($2,300) to travel to New York from Melbourne to buy 20 iPads is something only fellow Apple Inc. fans will fully understand.

“Any sane, rational person shouldn’t do it,” said Agius, 25, who edits a Web log about Apple products. “Some of my friends, who I wasn’t able to get an iPad for, are in pain right now.”

Agius’s passion and the frustration of his friends are shared by technophiles from Mumbai to Germany. The company will begin sales outside the U.S. later this month, though Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs hasn’t given an exact date.

The Apple iPad

Amit Jain has capitalized on that uncertainty. Jain, who owns an electronics shop in Mumbai, said he sold five 64- gigabyte iPads for 100,000 rupees ($2,250) each as of April 7 after they reached India through the so-called gray market, or unofficial distributors. That’s triple the $699 the touch-screen tablet computer retails for in the U.S.

“We have customers who are willing to buy,” said 30 year- old Jain. “So we maintain our margins.”

The iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. in late April, Apple said March 5. The Cupertino, California-based company sold more than 450,000 iPads in less than a week after its introduction, Apple’s Jobs said April 8.

Outside the U.S.

Consumers outside the U.S. will account for almost half of iPad customers this year, according to Brian Marshall, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech Inc. in San Francisco, who predicts a total of 4 million of the touch-screen devices will be sold worldwide by year-end.

“The international component for the iPad will be important,” Marshall said in a telephone interview. “This is going to be a wildly successful product.”

Listings for iPads on EBay Inc.’s Web site surged fivefold in the week ended April 3 as early buyers in the U.S. targeted consumers who can’t yet buy the device in their home countries. One purchaser from the U.K. paid $5,500, more than 10 times the $499 asking price for the least-expensive iPad, EBay said.

Apple may sell 7.1 million iPads worldwide in 2010 and double sales to 14.4 million next year and 20.1 million in 2012, researcher ISuppli Corp. said this month. The estimates are conservative and factors such as “swift feature enhancements” may help sales exceed its initial projections, ISuppli said. Sales in North America will account for most iPad shipments in 2010, ISuppli said.

“While non-U.S. sales will contribute a decent amount when you aggregate all of the other regions, the primary driving force will be U.S. sales,” said Francis Sideco, an analyst at El Segundo, California-based ISuppli.

Apple rose 2.5 percent in the five trading days after the U.S. release, compared with a 1.4 percent gain in the S&P 500 index.

Willing to Wait

Not all Apple fans are willing to pay a premium to have an iPad early. Claire Espinoza, 41, who works in marketing in London, plans to wait.

“It’s a very slick-looking device and I’d love to have one,”

Espinoza said. Still, “I’ll wait until more people have them and any bugs are worked out.”

Apple began selling three of the six iPad versions it plans to offer, with first buyers getting models that connect to the Web via Wi-Fi. IPads that support so-called third-generation mobile-phone networks will go on sale in the U.S. later this month.

Hong Kong, Germany

Aggole Leung, 35, a graphic designer in Hong Kong and self- professed “big fan” of Apple products, said he ordered one through the www.bundlebox.com Web site, which enables customers overseas to buy products in the U.S., paying about HK$4,000 ($515) including shipping cost.

“I think it will be a hit here,” said Marcel Pimentel, 40, a preschool teacher in Germany who has used other Apple products including the iPod Nano. He said he’s not concerned about the iPad’s release date in the country “as long as they provide it.”

In Mumbai, Jain, the electronics store owner, is in no hurry to have the iPad widely available in India.

“We have the ability to get the product anyway,” said Jain who has a colleague in the U.S. to buy it for him. “The hype will sell.”
He said he had 30 customers waiting for the next shipment.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kevin Cho in Seoul at kcho2@bloomberg.net


-- Post From My iPhone

iPad landed in Malaysia!

I went to Low Yat plaza this evening to fix up my iPhone 3G touch screen. (yes, it happened again after fixing up last Wednesday. This time is the top half having problem, not the bottom half as earlier)

While waiting for the friendly technician to fix my iPhone, I saw iPad boxes displaying in quite a few outlets.

One of the outlet let me took a shot of the unit.




You should have an idea of how big the iPad is :)

Frankly, I've never seen any web browser, even Safari running on top of the range Mac Pro, screams like iPad's Safari. You get every page almost instantly with no waiting!

For that one hour I was hanging around at another outlet, I saw not less than 20 units sold.

Remarkable! Isn't it? Given the price set at RM2,888 (approximately USD907) for 16GB WiFi only model (selling in US for USD499), and without warranty (these are units brought in by third party, not Apple nor other official channels).

So if you are interested, below is the calling card of the store I took the picture.




-- Post From My iPhone

My first day with iPhone 4.0 beta 1

Just upgraded my iPhone 3G to iPhone OS beta 1 yesterday.

In my opinion, it is a very stable beta release compare to 3.0 series.

Due to NDA restriction, I am barred from disclosing details but the below should not violate the NDA hence my developer status.




It is 4.0 beta 1, runs on Celcom network, non official Apple carrier.



-- Post From My iPhone

In the name of Automation

Everyone is saying, everyone is doing, but what have they achieved?

Every system vendor will tell you by using their system, you will increase your productivity.

How true is true?

Are those vendors really understand your business? Is your current processes optimized? Is there new processes created when old processes eliminated, that leads to overall optimization?

Almost all automation implementations fell short of expectation and usual escape is always: human factor.

But system vendors never realized that if they cannot solve the problems for people, they failed.

Managing expectation, change management is academic, most important is whether automation reduced workload for everyone, instead of passing the bulk from A to B, then claimed as processes optimized.

Even worse, most system vendors rely on nice looking front end but created a whole new manual processes, and named it automation.

These vendors should either be sent back to school learning what automation is all about.




-- Post From My iPhone