Apple CEO Tim Cook is dipping a crispy belinjau chip into a delightful concoction of hot honey and fried shallots. “Wow,” he pronounces, twice. Dressed in a navy Dzojchen collared shirt and grey jeans, Cook goes in for another satisfying bite. We are in the halal Fluff Bakery along North Bridge Road one morning, alongside female entrepreneurs and content creators Faz Gaffa and Amiera Raushan. Gaffa and Raushan have concocted ‘Honey Embe’ for Cook, a sweet and spicy condiment born out of a collaboration between their two businesses.
Gaffa works a full-time job as a Global Content Writing Lead for local womenswear brand Love, Bonito and runs Hot Fuzz, a home-based business selling hot honey, on the side. Raushan, on the other hand, is the creator of four different types of sambal, which she launched four months ago under her brand Kami Budak Sambel—two months after giving birth to her son, Aaman. She also does floral arrangements under Budak Bunga, which translates to “flower kid” in Malay. Gaffa and Raushan have been friends since 2019, are both mothers to one, and relish the empowerment and flexibility running home-based businesses bring.
The trio are deeply engaged in discussion about the flourishing nature of home-based businesses in Singapore. “I buy kueh from an older lady who lives 10 minutes from me—she has two grown sons with special needs,” says Gaffa to me afterwards. “It’s all about supporting the community, especially a minority community, and is an important part of our culture. You realise there may be a great home-based business that sells halal barbecued ribs, which you may never get in a store.”
Apple products are designed for the community, be it for work or play, and the other invisible thread that ties Gaffa and Raushan is that they use their technology—such as MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone—in tandem with their day-to-day lives. “Apple products are an integral part of what I do, just because the Apple ecosystem is so seamless. I can write something on my iPhone and it’ll be on my iMac at home; I never have to transfer anything,” explains Gaffa. “There’s no barrier to entry. My 72-year-old mother can operate the same system as my six-year-old son.”
Gaffa proceeds to pull out her iPhone 15 Pro Max and shows me her various Focus Modes, which includes time for Hot Fuzz, her son, Jackson, and sleep. She also shows me Freeform, which Cook likens to a whiteboard, an app designed for creative brainstorming and collaboration, where users can organise and visually lay out content on a flexible canvas. You can then invite as many people as you want to work on a board together. I take a few mental notes myself on how I can utilise this function better in my life, as a working mum with two young children.
“I love it. It makes my heart sing,” says Cook with a smile, when asked about seeing customers employ Apple products in their businesses. “For us, we’ve always been about making the best products that enrich people’s lives and you can only do that if you focus on both their personal life and their professional life. For most people, these things blend. You don’t have one computer for home and one for work.”
Raushan offers to takes Cook through a photoshoot which she is in the midst of. She styles and photographs her sambal products with fresh vegetables on a countertop, as Cook thoughtfully observes, before showing him several product images and videos on a MacBook Air. The sleek device is Raushan’s weapon of choice, especially when it comes to editing videos on CapCut. She loves that importing images and videos is quick and easy, and with small businesses, time is always of essence as things are often shot on a tight timeline.
“It’s thin, it’s light, it’s unbelievably powerful with the new M3 update,” affirms Cook. “The battery life is long-lasting so you can use it all throughout the day and not worry about having to plug in. You can take it on the go; you look at it in action here and it’s doing everything from heavy-duty editing to everything else.”
