MacNoob

I know I said I would write some posts with my iPhone while on vacation, but I just never seemed to find the time.  I was in Maui after all.  The condo we rented had a decent internet connection, but instead of blogging and checking e-mail I used it mostly for making snorkeling reservations and getting surf reports.  While I wasn’t physically unplugged, I was mentally.  I think everyone in our business needs to disconnect every now and then, don’t you?  I had grand plans of keeping MacNoob fresh when I first arrived in Hawaii (correctly spelled Hawai’i I discovered) and thought I’d have plenty of time at night in the condo.  The reality was I needed almost every minute to enjoy myself and keep up with my nine-year-old.  Our days were filled with beach trips, sailing, snorkeling kayaking and spending way too much money on “genuine” Hawaiian souvenirs, most of which were made in China.  Our nights, while not quite as busy, included luaus, dinner theater and some of the most beautiful sunset dinners I’ve ever experienced.  When we did finally get back to the condo I typically flopped on the sofa for a while then went straight to bed.  I guess when you spend all your working life behind a desk you forget how much recuperation time you need [after a full day of touring] to be ready for the next day.  Maybe my 52 year-old bod needs a bit longer to recharge than it used to.  Long story short, I just didn’t feel like working on my vacation and IT FELT GREAT!  I highly recommend it for everyone.  A trip to Hawaii is terrific, but not necessary.  Switching gears to something that doesn’t involve your normal routine is very therapeutic and may well be absolutely necessary to maintain good mental health.  Well, I’m back home now and everything should get back to normal soon.  Sorry for the absence.

Aloha!

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The MacNoob family is vacationing in Maui for the next ten days. We’ve rented a really nice two-bedroom condo with a sunset view of the Pacific. I did bring my Mac and our rental does have a solid (if not speedy) Internet connection. I downloaded the new WordPress 1.0 app for my iPhone and I’m going to try to post from Hawaii using it alone. I’ve always found typing on the iPhone a bit problematic since my fingers more closely resemble Vienna sausages than Virginia Slims. What the hell, if this doesn’t earn me some geek cred, nothing will.

Stay tuned…

P.S. : Still no MobileMe e-mail!  Four days and counting…

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I still get a [cheap] thrill when I go to a meeting at work and break out my Macbook Pro.  While everyone else is trying to get through their Safeboot login screen, my Macbook is up and running.  No encryption, antivirus or other assorted nazi-ware required.  It’s the way their machines used to boot before the corporation mandated so much security software.  They ask when they will get their Mac.  I reply, “As soon as you’re willing to fork over $3,000.”  I could, as the IT manager, buy Macs for many of the users at my site, but the infrastructure mandated by the corporation makes it completely impractical if not virtually impossible altogether.  Besides, I’d completely lose my cool factor if everyone had a Mac.

It does get me thinking what the company offices would look like if everyone was using a Mac.

First, I could scrap the antivirus server and all the AV clients on every machine.  That saves the company over $15K annually in maintenance fees and licenses.  I wouldn’t begin to guess the productivity yield increase due to reclaimed CPU cycles and disk access wait times, but it would have to be significant.

Second, I could get rid of Sygate, its server, all the clients and the complete administrative nightmare it has become.  My department has spent ten times the resources installing and maintaining Sygate than we ever spent mitigating threats.  Ring up another $30K.

Third, say bye-bye to the Windows Update Server.  “Patch Tuesday” would become a thing of the past.  No longer would my staff and I spend countless hours figuring out why someone’s network shares got blown away or their MS Office templates quit working after we pushed an update.  $40K…cha-ching!

So far, I’ve already saved enough to offset the price difference of the desktop hardware.  The few software titles that require Windows could run in Parallels, Boot Camp or VMware.  I’d need to spend around $110 per workstation on a Novell client for the Mac, but that’s no big deal.  Maybe Microsoft’s licensing folks would even let me convert my Office 2007 licenses to Office 08 for the Mac.

The help desk calls would be cut in half so I might even be able to reduce the IT staff.  Say a $50K savings for starters.  People may even start liking the IT department!  I could even stop screening my calls!

Then I woke up.

I’ve spent the last several weeks pouring over the iPhone SDK.  It’s been great dipping my toe into the programming pond again.  I’ve been an IT manager far too long.  Spending my days managing a department, fighting budgets, crafting enterprise security strategy and disaster recovery has taken me away from my first love, programming.  I don’t claim to be a great developer.  Maybe not even a good one, but writing code is how I got started in this business some twenty plus years ago and getting involved with the Mac and iPhone SDK has re-invigorated me.

When I bought my Mac last October one of the biggest surprises was discovering the developer tools that ship with OS X.  I’ve been a Microsoft Developer Network Universal subscriber for over ten years and quite used to shelling out several hundred dollars per year for access to Visual Studio and Microsoft’s SDKs.  Granted, the MSDN subscription included several operating systems, all the Office versions and servers and a host of other tools plus an extensive linked documentation library.  After all, it is Microsoft we’re talking about.  Even if you did only want a version of Visual Studio comparable to the XCode suite that ships with Leopard, you’re going to have to fork over three or four Ben Franklins to Mr. Softie for the privilege of writing Win32 code.

Since enrolling in the iPhone SDK beta program I’ve realized just how much of my programming skills have fallen by the wayside.  The “use it or lose it” truism absolutely applies in my case.  As I said, I’ve been an IT manager way too long.  I’ve had to go back to my bookshelves and dig up all my old C and C++ books because even though I’ve written twenty to thirty thousand lines of code in my life, some of even the most basic syntax escapes me.  One book in particular, Herbert Schildt’s “Teach Yourself C” was instrumental in shaping my professional life.  Working through the first edition of that title is how I learned to program.  Opening it again after fifteen years was like shaking hands with an old friend and it was very refreshing to see the XCode environment still supports even the most rudimentary terminal application building.  It didn’t take long for me to realize how much standards had changed, so I went to Amazon and bought the latest edition.  You see, I absolutely believe in the “crawl before you walk” theory and would never try to take on Objective C (the programming language of the iPhone) without a sound refresher in ANSI C fundamentals.  I think there are way too many developers out there that code things without really knowing the full extent and implications of their actions…but maybe I’m just old-fashioned.

I know I’m rambling, but it’s important to understand the context of this post.  I see the iPhone SDK as the third rail of platforms.  Windows, Mac then iPhone in that order.  With Microsoft’s utter failure to entrench Windows Mobile as a viable platform they have left the door wide open for Apple to establish an ipso facto standard in the mobile space.  With the release of the iPhone SDK early next month they’ve done that in spades.  For those of you Gen X folks out there, think back just ten years ago about the computer hardware running on your desktop.  Never mind, I’ll do it for you.  A really good PC sported a 300 MHz P3 processor, 128 MB of RAM and 4 to 8 gigs of storage.  Now consider the iPhone.  It beats all those specs quite handily and the very near future promises a doubling of that capability.  Also consider Apple’s uncanny ability to deliver devices that define their own niche.  In other words, products and software that create market where none [or very little] existed before by virtue of their well-designed and beautifully engineered user experience.  The iPod + iTunes comes to mind of course, but this goes all the way back to the Macintosh and arguably the Apple IIc.

Giving away the development environment and SDK is absolutely the right approach.  Other players in this market are already behind the proverbial 8-ball.  One thing they can never match is the near rabbidly enthusiastic developer base that Cupertino enjoys.  If Apple can get someone like me excited about developing again, just imagine the impact it will have on seasoned OS X code monkeys!  Given the richness of the iPhone SDK, it won’t take long for these many thousands of talented developers [who have already registered] to create magic beyond anything we can imagine today.  I feel the iPhone and iPod Touch are just the beginning and the mobile space is now Apple’s to lose.

I’ve been married to my lovely wife now for almost thirteen years.  Before we started dating, she was my boss for almost four and we worked together for two years before that.  Point is, we’ve known each other for almost twenty years.  I never believed the old axiom about someone knowing you better than you know yourself, but in her and my case, I’ve discovered it is absolutely true.  Sometimes she says things to me that ring so true they cause a total reset of my psyche.

First, a little background information.  I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, almost to the point of being anal retentive.  I have little or no tolerance for under-performance from the products I buy or the ones I produce.  So far, this trait has served me well.  I’ve been successful professionally, my daughters all excel in school, sports and for the most part, in their personal lives.  I obviously married “above myself” to a woman who I perceive to be nearly perfect.  The other day, utilizing her uncanny insight she made the observation, “Everything you own has to be the best.”  At the time, she was talking about the Italian granite I picked for the new kitchen counter tops.  I had selected the rock from a huge outdoor lot of building materials where nothing was marked by price.  By some twist of fate I had managed to pick the most expensive granite there.  My wife obviously believes my taste exceeds our wallet but she also loved my selection and we went with it.  My retort to her was, “Of course, I picked you!”  What I didn’t say was that her statement hit me like a bucket of cold water.  It was an epiphany of self-discovery.

In short, I am an excellence junkie.  My HD TV is a Sony. My motorcycle is a Harley.  My car is a BMW.

Now, my computer is a Mac.