What's it all about, Alfie?

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about several things that are scheduled for the coming year, and we got around to a very significant re-write that I've advocated for about as long as I've been at the Shop. It's something that's needed very badly, but the problem is that it would take several months to get a re-write to the point of the existing application (which I support). This delay of months for "nothing" new, while it's still possible to add things to the old application, makes it a very hard sell. So hard, in fact, that I've become convinced that it'll never happen.

Really? You ask.

Really.

Why? You ask, and I'll be glad to tell you.

'Good enough' is the Enemy of Great. - Anonymous

Doesn't sound right, and in fact, the original saying is French:

'Better' is the Enemy of 'Good Enough'

and that is true, but anything - taken to an extreme, is bad. And this motto is no exception. Imagine this: a company starts off small, hungry, willing to take risks to get things done. They succeed, they grow, and life is good. Now the company is doing "good enough". It could certainly be worse - many people are still there that remember the lean days. So the willingness to risk like they did in the past is lost. They don't want to risk the "good enough" for the possibility that things get worse.

There's nothing wrong with this... it's up to the people involved. If you have achieved something, and wish to protect it, there's nothing wrong with that. But don't fool yourself. Someone out there is going to be in the same place you once were, and they will be ready, and willing, to risk a little in order to gain a little more. If you can protect your gains, that's great. But if you're still in a competitive environment, you've just become the target, and you're standing still.

Dead meat.

So rather than grow, you stagnate. Maybe that's OK, and you get out of the business altogether. Lots do. Nothing wrong with it. But if you expect to stay a leader, then you need to act like a leader, and that means you need to continue to improve and take the same kind of (appropriate) risks that you did to get to this point.

Our conversation got to this point on many fronts of the Shop. It seemed very puzzling to me why this would be the case with the original founders still with the company. Why would they stop? And as I was thinking about it, it might be because they (and others) are still with the Shop.

They all remember the "bad days", and so are fearful of returning to them. They aren't thinking that today is a new baseline for the future. They're probably thinking that today is 'good enough' - compared to not too long ago. And that's not a good philosophy to run a business by. Pretty soon, your competitors are going to make your 'good enough' a lot more like the 'bad old days' because you're too fearful of the kind of risk that got you to this place in the beginning.

As a university professor, I didn't understand why a university would not hire someone that got all their degrees from that school. I mean, who better to lead the school than someone that's been through it? But that's exactly the person you don't want. Get some new blood in there... see the world from a different perspective... refine the vision. If you're managing people in an international business and the only place you've ever worked is the one employer, then you're doing everyone a grave disservice. You need to move on.

Of course, this isn't welcome opinion, but it's good advice. You are a product of the environment, and as it has grown, you have grown, but you have no basis of comparison for your actions. When people come in to a business, and you only know how this one place functions, you have no idea what they are expecting. Even if you ask them, the myopic views you'll have will end up causing the 'good enough' to slip in and degrade the business.

There was a question I didn't understand when taking all those entrepreneur tests - What's your exit strategy?. Mine was always: Retire, but that's a bad plan, and it misses the reason for the strategy: an exit. If it gets really successful, you are most likely going to have to take yourself out of the day-to-day operation as it's going to outgrow you. I see it now, and I'll be sure not to make that mistake, but it's a lesson I think several people here should take to heart.

This morning I noticed that Apple released iPhone OS 3.1.3 through iTunes, and it includes the nice feature that the battery monitor is supposed to be more accurate - which is good, even if the time I can use it is shorter. I need to plan what I can do with my phone, and this is just essential information to that planning. There were other security fixes, which is great, and I was always going to upgrade, it's just nice to know what it was about.

I got an email (as a beta tester) from Cabel for Unison 2.0.4. Seems there were a few issues with the PPC support, and he wanted folks to test it before releasing it. I got it and my old issue of a GUI imperfection is still there, but I got a reply from them about this and know that they are working on it as time permits. This morning, I got a

I love their applications, and can only hope that the way they code is as elegant. Wonderful work.

I've worked in a lot of different circumstances, and while I can function in just about any of them, there are some that certainly make it harder to excel and take personal initiative. Look at the military - it's not about personal initiative in the chain of command. It's about following orders, and while there may be room for personal interpretation in the execution of the orders, the fact that they are orders makes it pretty clear that the person following them is not expected to take responsibility for all of the consequences of the thought and planning that lead up to those orders - after all... he was given them.

Take another extreme, the entrepreneur. He's on his own. All decisions are his, all consequences are his. He's it. If there's a problem in the execution, or planning, or anything, he's all there is, and will live or die by those decisions.

When in corporate life, I've found that many times people want to believe they are in a military system ('...just follow my orders...') when what they might really need is a little more of the personal creativity and initiative that comes from some sense of ownership in the process.

No doubt - there are times that unpleasant things have to be done. They need to be done, and hopefully, the management will see that their role in this is just as much as those that might ultimately end up executing these unpleasant tasks. I've seen this handled very well, and I've seen it handled very poorly. I've seen the "boss" be there... after hours... walking around getting pizza and helping keep folks drinks filled and running to the printer for output. It's not a lot, but it shows that the manager believes he's part of this group and will be there pitching in however he can.

I've seen folks hand out the assignments and then walk away. Period.

One of the most frustrating situations I've been in lately was micro-management in a culture whose primary tenets include the entrepreneurial culture of self-empowerment. It was a classic case of the manager not "getting the memo" on how he needed to handle assignments and responsibilities in the larger scope of the organization.

It's hard to feel that it's going to be worth you going the extra mile, or coming up with a unique and interesting way to solve a problem when there's very little chance you'll get this done before management is over your shoulder asking you to explain this approach, and to compare it to this idea they had "last night". It's possible, that this manager is really good at the job, but most often times, that's not the case. It's possible that this employee is really playing off the reservation too much, but most often, that's not the case, either.

What I've found is that it's a misplaced sense of self-worth, or value to the company. A new manager will often think they need to be "hands-on" to help "their people" get the job done. But the opposite is often far closer to the ideal solution: back off... let the people come to him with questions, problems, clarify points... all those things that a only a manager can do. An employee typically doesn't need help doing their job, they need help getting their job done within the organization.

This is the "paper-pushing" that most managers hate. Well... guess what guys? That's what you're supposed to do! You're supposed to make each member of your team's like a little better. A little less full of paperwork and crud. That's your "value add" to the organization. They don't need you to type for them... or design for them. They need you to be their voice in the organization - their advocate.

And I guarantee that there's nothing that will crush creativity and initiative more than you, the manager, standing over their shoulder and asking them to explain every last detail of their work. If you wanted to know that badly, then grab a chair, check-out the code, and start coding yourself. But if that's not what you wanted to do, then realize that what you wanted is what you got. Accept it and live with it - or change, that's up to you.

I am not a manager now for exactly that reason. I enjoy the doing not the managing of the doers. I can do it, but it's just not as fun. So I choose not to. My choice. My consequences.

Just wish more managers understood this as well.

Like a lot of the Mac Faithful, I've been watching the discussions about Flash on the iPhone, and now the iPad, with interest and a little bit of a foot in both camps. There's a strictly technical viewpoint to think about, and then there's the reality when multi-billion dollar companies get involved.

From a technical standpoint, Wil Shipley said it best in this series of tweets:

Honestly, I don't understand Flash-haters. It's a content type. It's prevalent. The iPhone and iPad should understand it.

Want to know what we did at Omni when there wasn't a flash player for Rhapsody? WE WROTE OUR OWN FLASH PLAYER. It's not that hard.

Apple: Get off your ass and write a minimal Flash player. Everyone else: Stop acting like not being able to see video is cool.

And yet, the counter argument is valid as well: that anything controlled by one company (Adobe) can't be a real "standard" for the web as it's possible that it could be modified/licensed/changed by the company for their own commercial goals, and that's not something that should be supported and encouraged.

Wil is right - Apple could solve all this by putting in a Flash player into QuickTime. But then is that really in Apple's best (commercial) interests? Probably not. Then when Adobe changes, Apple has to change to keep "compatible". That is putting Apple in a constant game of catch-up. Not a great place to be. And then there's the legal angle. Say they did this, and then Adobe came after them. It's Adobe's property, after all, and while there's an open source Flex compiler, there's a lot that's missing from that project as well.

It's a battle of Titans, and we're pawns in this game. They are far more interested in control than they are in the customers. If Apple really wanted to make folks happy they'd work with Adobe to make Flash supported in QuickTime. Easy. But that means someone has to "flinch" first. Apple? Not likely. Adobe? Can't see that, either. But it would be pretty easy to clear this up.

On the other hand, it wouldn't bother me a bit of Flash became a niche player. Sure, there will be folks that will use it, but again, if it's below 80%, then it's just another plugin system. There will have to be others supported by the developers. Like YouTube's HTML5 video. Things like this will move in to create open alternatives to Flash.

So it wouldn't be horrible if the stand-off continued and HTML5, and it's successors, made Flash something less than a defacto standard. But then again, it's just a content type, after all... just support it, Apple... Or Perian... Someone.

Well... VLC 1.0.5 is out and because of a lack of Mac developers, there's no 64-bit version of it available. This means that HandBrake - which now sees itself as a media converter and not a DVD ripper, running in 64-bit mode can't load the libdvdcss.2.dylib that's in VLC, to decode the DVD. Sure, there's FairMount - again in 32-bit mode, but that's just the same problem. It looks to /Applications/VLC.app/ for the file, and if it can't load it, then it, too, bails.

So it seems that no matter what I do, the version and build of VLC is the key. If it's 64-bits, then it's OK for HandBrake and FairMount. If it's not, I can still use FairMount 32-bit to unlock the DVD, and the 64-bit version of HandBrake to convert it, but we're still dependent on the build of VLC. And as long as it's 32-bit, there's really no reason to use the 64-bit HandBrake. I don't rip that many DVDs, and when I do, I just want something that runs.

It's disappointing that they create HandBrake the way they do... removing the critical file, but that's life. It's their choice. For now, I'm running HandBrake 32-bit with VLC 32-bit because that's all they have. And it works.

Maybe someday there will be a 64-bit VLC, and then I can move to 64-bit HandBrake.

Still a EE geek at heart, it does my heart good to see that MacSpice 2.10.23 is out, and still kicking. It's not going to win any Apple Design Awards for the UI, but the graphs work, and are clear, clean, and legible. The numbers are SPICE and spot-on. It's hard to complain about the app. It's something that could use a nice face-lift, but it's still great to see that they're working on the engine, and making it better. Fantastic!

This morning I noticed that iTunes 9.0.3 was released to Software Updates, and this time it wasn't about a new device - it was about fixes to features. Imagine that! The changes aren't dramatic, but really annoying - like not respecting the "save password" for purchases, these are things that people complain about day after day.

I haven't really hit any of the listed issues, but I'm glad to see that they aren't treating iTunes like nothing more than a delivery vehicle for their content. Make it better, guys... we'll all love you for it.