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Apple's Device Model Beats the PC Way
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Walt Mossberg argues in the Wall Street Journal that Apple's model for PCs and devices is beating Microsoft's. In early battles for dominance of the PC market, Microsoft's component-based platform crushed Apple's end-to-end model, he says. But in today's post-PC era, where the focus is on music players, game consoles and cellphones, the end-to-end model is the early winner. From the column: 'Even the Mac isn't as closed as its critics charge. It's still designed to work with Apple's own operating system and software. But it can handle all the common files Windows uses, can network with Windows machines, and can use all of the common Windows printers, scanners, keyboards and mice. The Mac gives you the same access to the Internet as Windows. Heck, the newest Macs can even run Windows itself.'"
Which is why Apple is dominating the PC market share...oh wait.
Am I the only one who can't understand why newfound "Intel Apple fans" are the only ones thrilled about running Windows ?!? After decades of Mac zealotry ?!? Even MS's own employees have a thing called Mini Microsoft http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ .. Somebody must pay hard cash to keep up the good blogging of Macs running XP ...
http://revj.sourceforge.net
They just happen to have an os.
But really what makes OS10 so much better than Windows?
What possible value does your latest article offer to us the readers? It is merely an unwarranted defense against an attack that never came. If Apple is so great, shouldn't their products and services speak for themselves? Why do you feel the need to toot Apple's proverbial horn and bash their competitors? Is there a specific product or service that you are recommending to us, or did you just want us to know that on a general basis Apple is better and more sophisticated than it's Redmond based counterpart?
Given this latest fluff piece, and the new "I'm a PC, I'm a MAC" commercials that reference your reviews from the WSJ, I would say it's pretty obvious that you are no longer an objective technology critic. The only real question left is how much Apple is paying you for these product endorsements.
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Actual Response less then 15 minutes later....
From: Walt Mossberg [mailto:mossberg@wsj.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 2:14 PM
To: Dan Knox
Subject: Re: Get off of apple's nuts
I am a subjective opinion columnist, and for 15 years, I have been writing the occasional essay, in addition to reviews, to help frame tech trends for my readers. I have been flooded with comments and compliments on this one. As of this moment, it is the most-read and most-emailed story on the Journal's web site today. So people seem to be finding it interesting.
As for you, you seem only able to smear me. You are perfectly welcome to tell me I'm wrong. But you have no right to accuse me of corruption. I take no money, goods, or services from any company I cover, even those (including Microsoft and IBM and many others) that quote my columns in their ads or on their product packages. I don't own a single share of stock in any of them. I don't even accept discounts. If I buy an iPod or a ThinkPad or a Treo, I pay full retail like everyone else.
Are you always in the habit of assuming that anyone with whom you happen to disagree must be crooked?
Walt
======================
Walt Mossberg
Personal Technology Columnist
The Wall Street Journal
mossberg@wsj.com
http://ptech.wsj.com
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Actual email sent to Walt Regarding this weeks Mailbag on Apple "Viruses"
Walt,
Aren't you endangering users by not discussing security exploits instead of focusing in on the "viruses" specifically? The term "virus" in reference to modern security flaws / exploits is really a misnomer anyhow, the real threat to Mac users is the incredibly lazy approach they are taught when learning best security practices. As a systems administrator that maintains a network of both Windows (based) and Apple computers I was shocked at how long the most recent safari exploit took to fix and how even now it's a band-aid. Looking at the apple website (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61 798) I can see a number of "bundled security patches" over a period of months. If you believe there has been no serious exploits for OSX take a look at this sans.org article from February (http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2006-02-20 Wow! That certainly doesn't look like a "theoretical" flaw). It appears as though apple is working extra hard at creating an even less educated user base then Microsoft. Apple went through a lull with OS9 and early OSX user numbers and now that their user base is growing exponentially with the assistance of border-line fluff pieces such as today's Q&A mailbox it appears the real security approach apple is taking is "security through obscurity". I'm not at all defending Microsoft but in their case it's much harder to obscure the facts. They don't have the luxury of releasing "security update bundles" on a freewheeling schedule because of hundreds of thousands of users rely on them for mission critical applications and require a certain level of transparency and standardization. Like I said, I am in no way calling Microsoft's system perfect or even good but it is evolving and it is a major concern for the compa
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