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Apple @ 50

Resurrecting my blog for a special occasion…

So, Apple. 50 years old today and I can genuinely say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. And that “where” is in New Jersey, visiting my partner who I met over 25 years ago when we both worked for the same Apple reseller and she came to he UK to train some of my Windows using colleagues how to support Macs.

My Apple journey started in 1986, when I arrived at Aston University and first used a Mac. Aston was part of the Apple University Consortium and even had an Apple Reseller based in the Guild of Students, more about them later, so there were Apple suites all over the place. The first time that I got on the Internet was using an SE/30 in the library and logging onto sites such as FUNET and WUARCHIVE to download fonts and sound clips. Not that we could download them directly back then. First you had to get on a VAX terminal, log onto the site remotely, get it to push the files to Imperial, from where you could download it on to the Mac.

Come 1989 and we bought a Mac Plus, with a second-hand 400K external drive, from Ruth and Dilip in that reseller in the Guild. Two years later I would find myself working alongside them at Second City Systems. Originally I was there providing temporary cover for someone who had gone to Afghanistan to get married and never came back, the rest is history as they say. I think he was offered a large tract of land as a dowery, or something like that. That was my second attempt to work for them after Jon Tack declined to hire me to work in sales, and I ended up doing demos for the person that got the job. I was tasked with learning an early version of Quark XPress in a day or two so in order to demo it.

After SCS were wound up I moved on to Leicester Computer Centre and I have to thank Steve Birch for vouching for me when Nick Lowe called him to see what I was like.

Hard at work at LCC

LCC was fun and I not only go to play with kit like the QuickTake 100, which was used to take the first pic (above) that I have of my journey, behind a Quadra 700 with a portrait display and early CD writer, but I also set up two of the not very many AWS 95 servers (running AU/X) that ended up in the UK as well as getting to design and implement a rather hacked together system which regularly dialled up to Demon Internet to download email and then distribute it to the QuickMail servers at the three offices by having them dial each other a couple of times an hour. This was cutting edge stuff at the time.

After LCC it was on to MicroWarehouse / MacWarehouse and more new tech to play with when we launched the first iMac at The Capital Cafe in Leicester Square. It was about a week after the US launch, which meant that by the time we ran the event you could actually print to a USB printer as the relevant drivers had been updated. After NeXT were purchased by Apple I was sent not only a copy of OS X Server 1.0 but also a multiport ethernet card to play with so that I could familiarise myself with things like NetBoot. Having a room of 20-30 multi-coloured iMacs all booting up together from a Blue & White G3 for a client who was setting up a web publishing business was a sight to behold.

It may not look like it but there is a Mac under the desk

MicroWarehouse was also where I got to learn how to run a phone queue when we were descended on by a number of colleagues from the US who came to tell us, as we saw it, what we were doing wrong. All my PC colleagues were cross trained on Mac, the Mac support people already having to cover Windows, by Melissa Drew and my head was certainly turned, though we weren’t to actually get together for another 17 years or so, and we bonded over Apple and sci-fi.

Apple didn’t have any courses for OS X to begin with, so I convinced my boss to send me on RedHat training, on the basis that OS X was BSD UNIX under the hood. My AU/X experience also helped and it was Zero to RHCE in six weeks flat.

There was more NetBooting, plus NetInstall, in 2008 when I used it to deploy 50+ MacPro video editing workstations for a satellite broadcaster. These were editing directly off an Xserve over ethernet. Performance was OK but it would have been much better if we had deployed Xsan. Never mind, I got to put in a few Xsan infrastructures and even got called into Abbey Road to fix one that another company had set up. I always liked playing with the new stuff.

I also got my first taste of product management and marketing after the UK arm of MicroWarehouse were bough by DSG and I was tasked with taking all of the packaged PC services that DSG offered and making replicas for the Mac. Artwork designed, products merchandised and training for a lot of field engineers organised. I also got my first taste of writing commercially, regularly contributing multi-page articles to the MacWarehouse magazine as well as having a monthly column in MacFormat.

In the Tech Centre at MicroWarehouse Runcorn

On to Insight as Technical Manager and, later, Apple Business Manger. Where I was regularly writing advertising copy, presenting to customers and colleagues and even coming up with the concept for several stands at client showcases. I also got to architect and manage what was, at the time, one of the the largest iPad deployments in the UK, something which also took me to Singapore and Hong Kong to teach the local teams what we were doing.

One of the first stands that I had a hand in designing
In between presentations

For a couple of years after I was an independent consultant, helping resellers navigate working with Apple and businesses understand how to get the most out of their investment in Apple.

One of those clients took me on full time with the goal of sorting out their Mac device management, which is how I find myself now working for BluePrism and lately SS&C Technologies after they purchased them.

In my New Jersey home office, where I spend around half the year

Today I spend almost half of every year in the US and fill my time with using Intune to manage PCs, iOS and Android, though I still work on a Mac and I’m using everything that I’ve learned from working with Apple for over 30 years to make the experience for my users as good as I can. Just because they use Windows doesn’t meant mean that we can’t make their experience as good as possible.

And all thanks to Apple.

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The Joys of Bangernomics

The other day I picked my car up from the garage, where it had been having its timing chain replaced, something that was noticed when it passed its most recent MOT with just a few advisories. In the last few years, I’ve had the underside cleaned and treated with Dinitrol, both sills patched up and several other repairs. I probably have a repair bill in three figures at least twice a year.

My Jag is 19-years old with 342,000 miles on the clock, of which I’ve been responsible for 15-years of ownership and about 280,000 of those miles, and, if the latest insurance estimate is to be believed, it is only worth about £650. I used to do about 2,500 miles a month until I stopped commuting about 7-years ago. Now I work from home and spend about half the year in The States so I put about 2,500 miles on it in a year.

So why then have I just paid for work which cost about twice what it is supposedly worth?

Let me introduce you to Bangernomics, a different way of looking at the cost of motoring. 

The usual wisdom would say that I should simply replace the car because it isn’t economical to repair. My garage doesn’t suggest that to me anymore, they just give me the price and let me decide. If I was to replace it, what would it be with? I’d want something of a similar level, not an econobox or a car that is screaming its little heart out on the motorway. My Jag happily rolls along at the national speed limit, or thereabouts, doing less than 2,000 revs and has plenty of pull if I need it. So, something like a 3 Series, and not too small an engine. A 325i or something like that. 

Heading over to AutoTrader let’s look for something a good few years newer, a 2012-2014. There’s a 2012 fairly near me with 90,000 on the clock for about £5,000. It’s an automatic, which I’m not keen on, but it looks OK. It may have a full service history but at 14-years old things break, believe me I have the invoices to back that up, and I could easily be buying someone else’s problem. My car has been regularly serviced and maintained, and I know exactly what work has been done on it, and what hasn’t, that wouldn’t be the case with this one, no matter how full the service history may be. So, I’m £5,000 in and I could easily still get a bit bill for something breaking. Vanos anyone?

Right, let’s look at something that is only a couple of years old, that way it ought to be a lot more reliable. My car was 4 years old when I got it so let’s look for a low mileage 2022 3 Series. I found a 320i M Sport with 27,000 miles on it in Borehamwood for a shade under £26,000. It doesn’t say that it has a full service history but it is from a main dealer, so you’d hope that it has been looked after.

They are offering it on a PCP for £463 a month, that’s over 4 years with £2,598 down and a maximum of 10,000 miles a year. Oh, and don’t forget the final payment of £10,845.77. So, after paying £22,000 over four years it’s still not mine unless I shell out another £10k. No thank you, I’ll have a look at hire purchase instead. That’s an eyewatering £628.13 every month for four years. Or, looking at it another way, a new timing chain for my Jag every other month.

An issue that I have with new cars, which you’ll possibly find odd coming from someone who has spent their entire career working with computers, is that there is far too much tech. Far too much “stuff” to go wrong and more big bills when those bit of tech do fail. I do basic maintenance myself and I don’t want to have to break out an Autel when I change the brakes, because you can’t release the electronic parking brake and wind back the pistons in the callipers without it. Electronic parking, or emergency, brakes are another bugbear of mine. In an emergency I want something mechanical, pulling on a steel wire to put the brakes on, and not something that could go fzzt as I’m heading towards trouble. I watch a lot of car videos on YouTube and the concept of having to code a replacement headlight, which could in itself cost up to £1,000, before the car will even acknowledge that it is there really gets my goat. 

Long story short, and it has been a long story, the reason that I just paid £1,300 to repair a car that is worth just half that amount is that it simply makes financial sense. If I get away with just one or two big bills a year, then I’m happy that it’s cheaper than the alternatives.

Not only that but I get it repaired by a garage which is just a 15-minute walk from home, where I’ve built up a relationship with the team and I know that the money I pay for repairs is going into the local economy and not into a corporate.

And here’s another benefit. Because I spend so little on the Jag, compared to the alternatives, I also have a second car sitting on the drive. A 15-yr old Hyundai SUV which I use for trips to the dump with garden waste etc.

And that, is Bangernomics.