Colin Charles Agenda

I don’t know if what the EpiCentre folk told me is true (about sustained sales of RM5 million/month for 3 months), but Apple has created the Apple Store (Malaysia).

I consider this a positive first step. For me now, I will not have to order engraved iPod’s through the Singapore Apple Store – I’ll do it right here in Malaysia (after all shipping in 1-2 days, is OK). In fact, I can’t imagine why I would order too much from physical Apple stores like EpiCentre or Machines anymore – unless I wanted to take advantage of their 12 months 0% interest-free credit card plans (Maybank, HSBC, American Express, Citibank, and probably a few more participate in this).

I said it before, and I’ll say it again – its a positive first step. Why? There’s a good chance, that they’re setting this up for the magical iPhone to come into the market. And in no time, we might see an iTunes Music Store. We might have crippled access, with no music/TV/movies, but its always a progression.

Not needing any Apple products yet (latest purchase: pink iPod Nano; latest gift arrival: new iPod Touch – thanks Sun), I am however still tempted to buy something from their online store. Why?

1. There’s a limited edition t-shirt up for grabs before November 24
2. Supporting their online initiative, to show that there’s a market for this sort of thing, and they should bring in more (like the iTunes Music Store, et al)

It seems there’s only one remaining iPod Classic, with a nice big disk (120GB). The last Classic I had, had a 30GB disk (and couldn’t store my complete music collection). Maybe this is what I need? Its sub-RM1,000, so an easy purchase to make ;)

They even have an education store, which is supposed to normally provide discounts, but from my cursory inspection, seems to suggest otherwise.

What are you waiting for? Go buy your Apple gear already.

I once wrote a plea to Apple about giving Malaysians access to the iTunes music store as well as selling the iPhone’s in Malaysia.

I stepped into one of the Apple Premium Authorised Resellers the other day, and spoke to someone who seemed knowledgeable about these things. I mean, I purchased my MacBook Air in Machines. I purchased an external DVD drive for it from the EpiCentre store, more recently.

The shocker? RM5 million in sales, sustained, for at least three months, before Apple would consider even opening an official Apple store in Malaysia.

Is this hard to reach? I find it hard to believe that this isn’t already reached. I take buying Mac hardware for granted. My latest iPod purchase however wasn’t in the market – I ordered it from the Singapore online store (I wanted it engraved).

If I want it engraved, I can only imagine that a lot more Malaysians want it too. Of course, I also imagined Malaysians spending more than RM5 million on Apple hardware per month.

Anyone know if this is an Apple requirement?

Got the dreaded “Backup failed with error: 11” with Time Machine. Actually, I only got the dreaded message from the Console – the application itself, just kept failing silently with no suggestions (Apple, this is your cue to make Time Machine a little more useful). Nothing in Apple’s knowledgebase. Nothing seemingly useful come up in a Google search (i.e. something conclusive)

Solution? Delete:

/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/nameOfComputer/date.inProgress


It’ll ask for your password, and be gone with the file. Now the backups should start working again.

An example of what the Console showed:


13/08/2008 12:51:57 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4946] Error: (-43) copying /Users/byte/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/Logs/AIM.bytebotdotnet to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/lovegood/2008-08-13-125154.inProgress/424A6617-37A5-4C20-8845-764D9167E317/Macintosh HD/Users/byte/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/Users/Default/Logs
13/08/2008 12:51:57 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4946] Copied 702 files (169 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
13/08/2008 12:51:57 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4946] Copy stage failed with error:11
13/08/2008 12:52:03 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[4946] Backup failed with error: 11
13/08/2008 12:55:31 com.apple.launchd[73] (0x10dbd0.Locum[4961]) Exited: Terminated


I was at part of the Open Mobile Exchange at OSCON today, so here are a few scraps of notes that I found interesting (from various speakers).

While we do live in the shadow of the iPhone now, this is going to change.

Every person in the modern world uses Linux multiple times EVERY DAY (even if you don’t know it). Linux is everywhere.

The AppStore is something that’s making the iPhone rock. The reason Windows is so popular, is because there are so many applications. This is changing in the open mobile world: think Android, for example.

There are 3.3 billion mobile phones (more than PCs, cars, telephones, credit cards, and TV even).

When Apple sends a million phones in the weekend, its a drop in the ocean when Nokia sells a million phones a day! The iPhone is about usage (German iPhone users use 30 times more data; Google notices 50 times the number of searches from iPhone usage)

• User Interface – Vimeo has a video, “OpenMoko train wreck” which compares to why its a FAIL versus the iPhone
• Access to Device Characteristics (camera, location, accelerometer, network, security, privacy) – today you really don’t get access to this, this needs to happen, really!
• Standards
• Performance – Firefox 3 for example, is very performance oriented. Remember, we’ve become bandwidth gluttons (webpage size has tripled since 2003… 22 times since 1995!). We’ve all been spoiled by having high broadband connection… look at Yahoo!’s 14 Performance Rules (34 today).

There are numerous mobile web browsers, and so little documentation about them today.

Leveraging Mobile Open Source for New Wireless Apps and Services
Stefano Maffulli, Funambol Community Manager
(instead of Hal Steger)

• Push email, PIM synchronisation
• Younger generations are using more than just voice, in mobile – its SMS, data, chat
• Nokia Ovi (http://www.ovi.com/) – Nokia is using this to monetise user generated content

Average American gets 3,000 visual stimulus messages per day. That’s a lot of advertising!

In Singapore the last few days, I found some time to visit Orchard Road on Sunday. I thought about the best place to get an iPhone 3G and headed to Lucky Plaza. To my surprise, zip, zilch, nada.

Disappointed, as a long-time Apple user and developer, who has bought a lot of Apple gear, and been to several WWDC’s, and still continue to buy Apple gear (latest acquisition: MacBook Air), that Apple constantly assumes that there is no world outside of the USA.

So I asked myself over a very late lunch, why am I roaming the streets of Singapore, just to get myself an iPhone 3G, and have to go thru the hassle of “cracking” it? I am a legitimate user, who’s willing to pay the actual fees, yet I’m shoved for being in the wrong country.

Sub-Rant
I’ve recently changed my location from Melbourne, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This is a problem for the iTunes Music Store, because while the iTunes Music Store is commonplace in America, it wasn’t long ago that it came to Australia. It still doesn’t exist yet in Malaysia. In fact, my Malaysian-issued credit card is discriminated against by Apple’s online store.

This I consider to be a large failure – I guess this will change at some stage, as the iPod Touch is sold legally in Malaysia, and applications for it must be available now (I haven’t checked this week, I’ve been pre-occupied).
</Sub-Rant>

I was extremely overjoyed that I got invited to a Facebook group (this doesn’t happen often, believe me), called iPhone 4 Malaysia. Louis Pang compares Malaysia against Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Madagascar, showing the number of mobile phone users, GDP per capita, and population of each country. Impressed I was, seeing the Malaysian statistic:
Population: 25.3 million
GDP per capita: USD$13,000
Mobile phone users (2006): 19.4 million

77% of Malaysians have a mobile phone! This statistic is surely a fib (I think; then again, some people have more than one mobile phone), as the adult population in Malaysia is nowhere near 77% (I’m unsure what the statistic is, I’m wondering where the census data is…)

Then again, if true, how is it possible that Apple is selling iPhones in these other countries, and not in Malaysia?

Naturally, I looked at the article at The Edge Daily, and Sharmila states that Maxis gets right to distribute the iPhone 3G. There is no reason to speculate, but the cost is expected to be under RM1,000. Will this happen by year end? Who’s to say…

So, if you’ve read this far down, and you’re Steve Jobs (or someone close to him, and will pass the message on), here’s my advice:

• Give Malaysians access to the iTunes Music store – Seriously, you’re missing out on a good opportunity. With disposable incomes amongst the large majority of the iPod toting crowd, buying music via the iTunes Music Store will definitely be easier than firing up a BitTorrent client, and waiting for the download, thanks to the throttling of traffic
• Malaysian credit cards are not fraudulent – Amazon, Paypal, and the list goes on, they all have no issue accepting a Malaysian issued credit card. Why should you be any different, Jobs? With the proliferation of Visa Debit cards, surely you can’t be worried about fraud?
• Don’t cripple access to the iTunes Music Store – by this, I mean, it should not only be for applications for the iPod Touch, but also music, TV shows (I imagine people buying BBC’s Top Gear rather than downloading it), and movies

After all, proliferation of broadband is great. There is already a large amount of users who are on the Internet. There are more and more Mac users, after all, there are a tonne of new shops selling Macs (Apple Authorised Resellers/Partners). Everyone in urban areas is using the latest, greatest, mobile phone (I dare say, the average Malaysian in urban areas are more mobile phone crazy than the average Australian in urban areas),

Make a bang with your presence, Apple.

— Current multiple-time Apple customer, dormant Apple developer, iPhone 3G owner-to-be

Update: There’s also an online petition to sign. And the Facebook group is standing at 1,019 members now…

Dear (mac/bsd) Lazyweb,

Any idea how I can do the following, on Mac OS X?

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d my.pop.server —dport 110 -j DNAT —to-destination 127.0.0.1:1235
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp -d my.pop.server —dport 110 -j DNAT —to-destination 127.0.0.1:1235

Does ipfw(8) work in OS X? What magic will I have to use for this to work? All I really want is for my.pop.server:110 to point to localhost:1235, so if the SSH tunnel isn’t up, I can’t POP my mail. I wrote about this in Secure travelling tips with iptables and SSH port forwarding, as that’s what I do on Linux.

Why do I ask? I’m thinking that my personal laptop (currently a Dell Inspiron 640m running Linux) might actually be replaced with a MacBook Air in the near future (lighter, easier to carry, etc.). Oh, if you have comments about the Air, don’t hesitate to tell them to me as well.