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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."
As if the people who buy the servers really care about whether or not their customer's information is stolen.
Is that why about 50% of the laptops at the USENIX Advanced Technical Conference last week were Macs?
Seems like lots of geeks, at least the ones that go to USENIX (people like, er, Rob Pike, who might know something about innovative software) use Macs.
Her #1 use for the thing was
Apple knows what they're doing. To most people, a computer is a computer--and without their smooth design Apple is just as much a part of that commodity market as anyone else.
Or, it could be the fact that the operating system is built with security as a primary concern, instead of as an afterthought. Unix was designed, oh so many years ago, to provide shared resources among many users, keeping their respective workspaces separated from the underlying guts - in other words, it was built on the philosophy that one user of a system shouldn't be able to take down the entire system(unless that user is an admin, in which case they've shot their own foot).
Conveniently, this philosophy has spread into many operating systems, such as all of the BSDs, Solaris, Linux, etc... and given that MacOS is based off of BSD, that means it falls into this category.
Windows, on the other hand, does not. Windows was designed to be idiot-friendly, such that an admin can read a 1-page sheet of instructions to get their server up and running. Features were piled on such that when you download files off of the web, they should be automatically opened... why else would you have downloaded it?! I can keep going on, but there's really no reason to - anyone who claims that Windows is more secure, by default, than MacOS/Linux/etc is on crack.
Try and make a worm that propagates through MacOS X, or Linux, or anything other than Windows and we can talk. Until then, accept what most of the world already has - Windows is not a secure operating system, regardless of how many people are using it.
-agent oranje.
That's not going to happen, and it's not going to work either. Just think about it....
OS X is a very nice OS, and has some very nice software running on it, and it's got a great API and IDE. As a niche player, it's working great.
Now you make it instalable on any old PC. You're a PC developer and you've got the choice of developing for windows on PC or OS X on PC. Are you going to change your development practises to something new and untested, or are you going to go the safe route with the devil you know and keep on developing for windows PC?
Now, just imaging Apple put something like WINE in with OS X on PC, so that you can run your PC apps as is, but under the new GUI. Now there's no incentive to write specifically for OS X on windows, but without the ability to run existing PC apps, there'd be no sales of OS X for PC.
It would be a disaster for Apple and anyone who bought it, and would only strengthen the Microsoft monopoly. Jobs has more sense than that.
BTW, Macs are not 3x the price. Price up a new G5 and a comparable PC from a decent manufacturer and you'll see that the G5 is really a bargain in the computing world.
What Apple really needs is an affordable entry level machine with no monitor, but can be bought bundled with a lovely flat screen. Fill the hard drive with lots of easy to follow video tutorials and apple will cash in big - especially if they do a "test drive an iMac today" type program.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Now, you would be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn't know a Macintosh owner.
I have to disagree here. I don't know any Mac owners, and nobody I know has a friend with a Mac either.
You are correct that Apple does have a "test drive" program though, the shiny Apple Stores in malls around the country. People play around with the display models, and that increases public awareness. Now it's not as good as bringing it home to try out, but it's a start. They just need to get better at convincing Average Joes WHY they should pay a premium for a Mac.
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
I talked to the marketing head of Apple in Norway about why they did not use the awful track record of Microsoft as an advertisment opportunity. He stated that it is not that easy, and if a similar problem was to surface in MacOS X, they'd lose any credibility they had harvested from the PC community.
The target for this machine would be the digital hub that Steve Jobs keeps going on about. It would sit in the living room, play DVDs, play music (either ripped from CD or bought from iTMS), show photo albums on the TV and (perhaps most importantly) be used as a PVR (capturing either an analogue or FireWire input) with the option to burn recorded movies to DVD (using iDVD). It could also be used for email and web browsing, especially when combined with a HDTV.
This machine would not be sold as a computer, it would be sold as an appliance (which also happens to be a computer) much like the iPod.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I also have yet to find a multi-button trackpad I consider even remotely usable (and, believe me, I looked). The single button trackpad, combined with an OS and apps that only need one button, was one of the features I rather liked about the PowerBook. Maybe a design with a button at the top and one at the bottom would work (index finger for one, thumb for the other), but every PC laptop I've seen puts two buttons at the bottom (or occasionally, in a fit of insanity, at the top), where they are all operated by the thumb, making it far more awkward to press the right button than it is to press the left button and hold down a keyboard modifier (assuming that the other hand is on the keyboard, which it usually is).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The parent of this post was modded up "funny" but it it actually makes an interesting point. The most interesting comment on Mac v. Windows security issues, or just mac security more generally, was at
s
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_window
Addressing the common line about mac's being more secure only because no one uses them He had the following to say:
"------
The reason this argument is so popular with Windows apologists is that it's a convenient bit of rhetoric. They say it's so, we say it's not. You can't get past this argument, because it can't be disproven without the Mac OS actually attaining a Windows-like market share.
So, let's concede the point, just for the sake of argument: OK, fine, if the Mac had the same market share as Windows, the tables would be turned and there'd be just as many Mac security exploits as there are Windows exploits today.
Now what? Given that the Mac is never going to attain a monopoly share of the operating systems market -- that merely expanding its share to, say, 10 percent would be universally hailed as an almost-too-good-to-be-true success -- isn't it thus only logical to conclude that the Mac is forever "doomed" to be significantly more secure than Windows?
------"
Of course you would be hard pressed to find someone to grant in reality the points he grants for argument's sake, but it is an interesting comment on the argument itself.
By default, /Applications is only writable by administrators (and root). If you wish for it to ask for password when you drag the files, you could always change the permissions to 755 (this works only on Panther). But the question remains; why do you run as admin? Administrator account is meant for administrative tasks and not for web browsing. You should treat the OS X administrator account as a root account with a extra security check.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
Wired Magazine's cover story of June 1997.
100 ways to save Apple.
Let's go through the top 20, shall we?
1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Okay, this didn't happen.
2. License the Apple name/technology to appliance manufacturers and build GUIs for every possible device. Or build the killer app for listening to music, the iPod.
3. Start pampering independent software vendors. The open-source roots of most of OSX and related items fills this need quite well.
4. Gil Amelio should steal a page from Lee Iacocca's book - work for one year without a salary, just to inspire the troops. Jobs' salary is still only a dollar a year.
5. Straighten out the naming convention. eMac, iMac, iBook, Powerbook, PowerMac. Done.
6. Apologize. You've let down many devoted users and did not deliver on the promise of the Macintosh platform. Hmmmn, hard to call this one.
7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Two words: Apple Stores.
8. Buy a song. Or build the first sucessful online music store. Whatever.
9. Fire the people who forecast product demand. Still a problem, given the recent iMac troubles.
10. Get a great image campaign. Switch. The colored iPod ads. The spinning iMacs. Done.
11. Instead of trying to protect your multicolored ass all the time, try looking forward. Done.
12. Build a fire under your ad agency. Given the Clios and other awards that recent Apple campaigns have one, I feel safe in calling this one done.
13. Exploit every Wintel user's secret fear that some day they're going to be thrown into a black screen with a blinking C-prompt. Advertise the fact that Mac users never have to rewrite autoexec.bat or sys.ini files. See: Switch campaign.
14. Do something creative with the design of the box and separate yourselves from the pack. Done. Oh boy, is this one done.
15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners. Done.
16. Take better care of your customers. You need every one. Make customer service a point of pride. Many Mac users feel alienated and have jumped ship. Done.
17. Build some decent applications that the business community will care about. Maybe not business-related, but the iLife series trumps anything out there in the Wintel world.
8. Stop being buttoned-down corporate and appeal to the fanatic feeling that still exists for the Mac. Power Computing's "I'll give up my Mac when they pry it from my stiff, dying fingers" campaign hits the right note. In the tech world, it's still a crusade. Support the Mac community, and the Mac community will support you. Done.
19. Get rid of the cables. Go wireless. Done. 802.11, Bluetooth, you name it.
20. Tap the move toward push media by creating a network computer with state of-the-art technologies, e.g., videogame support for Nintendo 64, top notch graphics such as QuickDraw 3D, and the best possible bandwidth. Okay, is anybody supporting push media now? Let's just cross this one off the list, k?
So, all in all, they've done 17 of the first 20, with 2 maybes and a no. Not bad.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."