A conversation with Morris Chang

[Photo of Morris Chang] I just got back from a Computer History Museum event: a conversation with Morris Chang (張忠謀), founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known as TSMC, and Jen-Hsun Huang (黃仁勳), co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, the last independent graphics chip company. Morris Chang is a pioneer in the computer industry: TSMC was the first dedicated silicon foundry, which manufactures integrated circuits for customers — it does not have any products of its own. Not surprisingly, Nvidia is one of TSMC’s most important customers. Dr. Chang made a couple of points that struck me.

TSMC is fundamentally a customer-focused company. One of the most important metrics for evaluating its fab managers is how many complaints that manager gets from its customers. Dr. Chang said this makes the culture of his company totally different from other semiconductor companies such as Intel, and this would impede their entry into the dedicated foundry business.

Dr. Chang also said Americans and Asians start companies for different reasons. Americans want to promote a new idea. Asians want to be their own boss. As an example, Dr. Chang used to go to a barber shop in Taiwan with two barbers. The younger barber decided he wanted to be his own boss, so he left and started his own barber shop, three doors down. Each of them had to work much harder than before, for the same number of customers. On top of that, the two barbers got into a price war, so they also made less money. Not surprisingly, the former partners became very bitter. The atmosphere became so unpleasant that Dr. Chang now doesn’t go to either barber. He joked, “That’s entrepreneurship, Asian style.”

Both were eloquent and humorous speakers. I’ve heard that Dr. Chang’s reputation is that of a very strict, demanding businessman, so this interview showed a more human side.

As an aside, the food at the reception for Computer History Museum members was great, too: seared tuna, crab cakes, and crostini with brie. Oh yeah…

Apple opens up the iPhone

Looks like my prayers (and those of many others) have been answered: Apple will release a software development kit for the iPhone and iPod touch in February, enabling developers to write their own native apps for those devices. I’ll be curious to see how the third-party iPhone/iPod app market will develop; I bet it will be huge.

News flash: Cupertino housing is expensive

From the Cupertino Courier:

Higher prices make it harder to buy a home in Cupertino

A concern frequently expressed by some city council members and planning commissioners is that Cupertino homes are become so expensive many families cannot afford to move here….

“In the first six months of the year, it was a seller’s market. There was a scarcity of homes,” [said John Miner, sales manager for Van Vleck Realty]. “Now there are not so many buyers. We’re still seeing a good market, but now what it was six months ago….”

[Darlene Phelps of Raintree Realtors] maintains Cupertino is a desirable place to live because of its access to freeways and a “good” school district….

I forgot to mention the date: January 1, 1975. The article states that the average price of a house in Cupertino was $39,170 in January 1974, and $46,660 the following June. In 2007 dollars, that’s about $165,200 and $196,800, respectively. Fast forward to last month: the median price in Cupertino was $1,025,000.

Adobe Thermo

At its Max developer conference, Adobe gave a sneak preview of a new tool code-named Thermo that allows designers to create the front end to Flash-based rich Internet applications without writing code. For example, you can import a layered Photoshop image and convert parts of the image to real UI controls. You can also create dummy data so that you can test out your design without needing the database code to be finished.

Someone posted videos of the Thermo demo on YouTube. I highly recommend watching them; the demo is one of the most impressive I’ve seen, especially in the end-user programming area.

The resurrection of Lotus Symphony

IBM made a big splash a couple of weeks ago when it released a new productivity suite based on the Productivity Tools in Lotus Notes 8. I joked with my colleagues that it should be called “SmartSuite for Notes.” But I never dreamed Lotus would reach back even farther and dub the them Lotus Symphony.

I remember the first incarnation of Lotus Symphony. A integrated software package for DOS, it included a spreadsheet (of course), word processor, database, charts, and communications program, although if I remember correctly, all of the modules looked suspiciously like a spreadsheet. I bet I still have a couple of .WRK files on some floppies somewhere. But eventually our family settled on Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets and Microsoft Word for DOS for word processing (at a time when everyone else used WordPerfect).

Even though John Dvorak dubbed the original Symphony “one of the bottom 10 worst software disasters,” I think enough time has passed for Symphony to have largely shed its negative connotations. In fact, it probably doesn’t have any connotations anymore. And I find it fascinating to see new life breathed into this old brand, along with the resurgence of Lotus itself.

What’s the next Lotus brand to be resurrected? Agenda? Magellan?

Could you pass the U.S. citizenship test?

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services introduced a new citizenship test, which takes effect in a year. To pass, you are asked ten questions randomly picked from a list of 100, and you must answer 6 correctly. USCIS has posted the questions (PDF). Some organization should do a survey to see what percentage of Americans would pass the test. Would you pass? (I think anyone running for office should be required to pass.)

Jonathan Coulton

My colleague Jeff clued me in to a singer-songwriter, Jonathan Coulton. His gentle voice and smooth delivery belie lyrics that are often twisted and bizarre. Good stuff. He has a good introduction to his music on his web site. I recommend “Code Monkey,” especially if you’re in the software industry. His music video, “Flickr,” shows the creative heights (or depths) one can achieve with Creative Commons.

My life in two days

This past weekend kept me quite busy. On Saturday I met a college friend for lunch and then went to a potluck dinner with my high school friends. On Sunday I met up with another college friend to go the dragon boat festival, where a friend I’ve known since elementary school was racing. Afterwards I went to a housewarming of a friend I met when I was in graduate school, and a co-worker of mine was also there.

So that’s at least one person from five major phases of my life. If only I’d met up with someone from my birthplace — it would have been a clean sweep!