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A Six-Step Plan for Apple
An anonymous reader writes "Open letter from Alex Salkever to Jobs. One thing in particular strikes me: 'The latest round of attacks on Microsoft software is terrifying. If using a Mac means servers in Russia are less likely to harvest my passwords and offer my identity to the highest bidder, I think that's an offer I'd like to hear more about.' I think he's got something there."
According to these statistics Firefox's "obscurity" is disappearing quickly. We (Firefox users) currently hold 12.2% of the market, which is a 4% increase this year. Great news for us developers who are sick of IE work arounds.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Even if that weren't a crap argument, which it is, that's no reason not to switch.
John Gruber effectively demolished that claim in this post.
You can most certainly install an application in Unix without needing an admin password. You just install it locally. Windows will ask you for a username and password if you attempt to run an install without having administrative rights. Of course many people just use accounts because it is easier. I have no confidence they wouldn't run as root if they had OS X or one of the Unices.
Reserved Word.
I'm speaking from a linux point of view; I would guess the Mac is similar.
Surprisingly a lower price than other light weight notebook competitors. With her student discount she will get a 1ghz G4 ibook with 12" screen, 512 megs of ram, 60 gig drive, combo DVD-ROM/cd burner, 802.11g, firewire, usb, etc. for just over $1200. It's unfortunate that Apple doesn't have competitive pricing for desktop models and other notebooks like they do for the 12" iBook. It's really the best bang for the buck in the light weight market now.
Less aggravation and thus lower TCO- On her current aging PC I had to clean viruses and spyware off at least a half dozen times. She just can't get it on the iBook(at least not yet at any rate). My experience with modern macs has been that once they're configured they work and stay that way. Her sister's iBook from three years ago is heavily used but still works just as good as it did on day 1.
Awesome MS Office ImplementationThe latest Office edition rocks and it's cheap for students too ($149). Completely compatible, and a lot more slick too.
It runs Unix :)
Apple would be best advised to begin touting the fact that these machines are really immune to the tons of crap that are being heaped on Windows units. If they can get their prices in line with the market, they'd have a slam dunk on their hands.
www.lonseidman.com
*nix systems tend to handle mutli-user environments much more gracefully. I run as a non-privilidged user on all *nix machines I touch. I tried to do the same thing in Win2K but ran in to so many hassles with it that I eventually gave up and followed the advice of more experienced Windows users - added my account to Administrators.
Most of the time you don't need to put in a password if you are an admin. You just drag the app to the Applications folder.
Also, it is not just security througth obscurity. Try portscanning a Windows box and a Mac with a default install.
Macs ship with the root account disabled, and even if you're an admin user it still asks for your password to install programs globally.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But Windows has everyone log in as an admin user by default!
"Admin" users on OS X are like regular users in the wheel group, while Admin users on Windows are like root.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
She was initially opposed to the mac until she looked at the following benefits
Before you buy, consider this. My girlfriend recently switched from PC to Mac, too. She had about $1300 and got an old-model refurbished (they call them "refreshed" at the Apple Stores) 12" Powerbook. Faster bus, better screen, and same 60G/512MB as the iBook your girlfriend is contemplating.
When you get to the store, make sure to ask about the refreshed units in stock. They, too, qualify for the educational discount and have the same standard 1-year warranty. With the money she saves, she can get 2 years of AppleCare if she's nervous, or a copy of Office or something.
As a side note, one of my friends got a 15" PowerBook from the same Apple Store. It was the model before the 1.5 GHz speed bump, so it was like $200 less. The Apple Store also knocked an additional $100 off because, get this, the packaging was damaged.
blog
First--you're making the far-too-common mistake of equating "market share" with "installed base". They're not the same. Market share means what percent of computers being sold are Macs. Installed base means what percent of computers being used are Macs. The latter number is much higher than the former. This is largely because Macs last longer than PCs.
Second, perhaps you should think about just what "sheep" means. It means following the majority opinion without thinking for yourself. Your answer sounds very much like the majority opinion--speaking of a 1% marketshare, when most unbiased estimates put it at at least 3 to 4 times that, saying that raising marketshare is the only way to "save" Apple--and most importantly, thinking that a low marketshare means that Apple needs to be saved.
Here's a hint: it doesn't.
Apple's doing just fine.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Uh, you mean I should just drag it into "drwxrwxr-x 40 root admin 1K 16 Jun 10:54 /Applications"?
Nothing magic about this, just good old unix permissions. The closest thing to magic is that if I attempt to drag something in there as a non-admin user, the Finder won't just fail with an error; it will pause, ask me for an admin user's auth, and proceed if I can supply it. Which of course is not technically groundbreaking, just good design.