On May 30th, Apple released Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 - a long awaiting, and highly anticipated update to the Mac OS X Server product line. Some of the most important points addressed: 

-Addresses an issue that could cause the AppleFileServer process to stop accepting connections while consuming most of the available CPU time on the server.

-Addresses an issue that could cause the Apple File Service refuse new connections after DirectoryService becomes unresponsive, and improves stability of DirectoryService.

The man in 41C yawns, and leans back in his seat. The lights are down, the display from the laptop lights his face, and blinks off the rim of his glasses. A stack of papers sits on his desk, and a scribbled note on the back of an Apple Store Repair confirmation stands out in red ink against the grey Helvetica of the Terms and Conditions.

He calls his calendar up on the screen of the computer and fiddles with the date range, and titles the event. “AA99 To Chicago” stands out as the first entry of the day. Get there for going on ten am local, and a five hour lay over at O’Hare. Not ideal, but it’s preferable to the otherwise mad sprint to the other end of the airport, And that’s not forgetting the joy of Immigration Control. 

41C checks his booking, and selects the seat for his flight out. The seat is free. And now, confirmed. Our hero adds the seating plan to his calendar and syncs. Flight booked. Tickets sorted. Passport found. 

Six weeks to go…

Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a stinging letter to the Yahoo! Board of Directors. Some of you may remember, back in January, there were rumblings of Microsoft’s intentions to buy Yahoo! - this was put into motion on the 31st of that month as Microsoft sent this letter that set the cat amongst the pigeons. The next day, MSFT issues an official press release and the rest of the world gets invited to the party.

Now, more than two months later, Yahoo! has responded with little more than a press release telling Redmond to go fuck itself. And Microsoft is getting impatient.

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

As John Gruber said,

This is the white collar equivalent of Steve Ballmer showing up at Yahoo’s door with a baseball bat in his hand.

Like many others, I eagerly await Yahoo!’s response. This is going to get interesting.

Reading the BBC on my late evening rounds, I caught the very sad news that Neil Aspinall passed away earlier today at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Neil, commonly called the fifth Beatle, was until last sumer, Chief Executive of Apple Corps, the Beatle’s music label. Aspinall was the driving force behind the Beatle’s sales after the band split, and also was pivotal in ensuring that the 1987 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on CD (the band’s first CD release, and a massive rework of the original Mono recording) was surrounded by a media and publicity frenzy.

In the time I spent working with Apple Corps, the few times I dealt with Neil were all wonderful. Likewise, working with his wife Suzy was always a pleasure, and I would look forward to the calls. Neil will be missed, but his influence on one of the greatest musical acts of our time will not be forgotten.

Between this, and the passing of Geoffrey Quinn (alias Paul Raymond, another former employer) it’s been a sad month. Here’s to hoping that the next is somewhat more cheery.

The man from 41C stood on the platform, and looked up at the dirty orange LED display. The wind and drizzle made a light haze of colour around the sign, and turned the reading of “18:02 to East Grinstead” resemble something more akin to “18:85 to Bast Grlnstead”. The sky grew darker, and people poured out of the Tube station after the crush on the Victoria Line an hour before. 41C tucked the end of his scarf into the top of his overcoat, and walked slowly up the platform, bundled up as though in the depths of a Midwestern winter, with the top of his head and nose peeking out of the roll top of the woolen sweater. He reaches into his pocket as he pushes the button to open the door, and pulls out his mp3 playing phone^[i], and wiggles the ends of the headphones into his ears as he walks into the carriage. He finds a seat, and kicks up his walking boot covered feet onto the hot air vent under the little table by the window. Bag by his side, he pulls out the newspaper for the day, and a bottle of water.
The train, late as always, pulls out of Victoria, and rumbles through the City and a snail’s pace, heading southwest from Victoria to Croydon and Clapham, passing the towers of Battersea. The working lights shine up the chimney stacks, and makes the dirty white paintwork burn brightly in the early evening rain. The phone bleeps softly in his ears, and he reads a message about runways and sheriffs. The man from 41C sits back and thinks of the girl on Flight AA 3676. He wonders how it’ll go, and where she’ll end up. And where, in a few months, he’ll be. 41C leans back and listens to the clatter of the carriage over the rails, and the rain on the windows. The train rolls on into the evening, and the dirty orange of the station fades away. It’s time for another journey.

1. an iPhone, but it sounds silly in the context of the story [↩]