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Finger Pointing Over iPod Windows Virus
rs232 writes sent us some choice quotes in the finger pointing over the iPod's that recently shipped with a virus on them. "It's not a matter of which platform the virus originated [on]. The fact that it's found on the portable player means that there's an issue with how the quality checks, specifically the content check, was done," Poon wrote in a blog entry. and "Steve, if you need someone to advise on how to improve your quality checks, feel free to contact me 8)."
The surprising thing is that the worst of the quotes, "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses...", is still unchanged on the apple web page. Anyway, http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/ has removal instructions for anyone who thinks they may have been affected by one of these ipods.
It doesn't.
Since the device appears like a hard-drive to Windows, Windows will run any code set to auto-execute as soon as the disk is plugged in. The ipod just acts as a carrier in this instance.
It appears that one of the QA machines used to test windows compatibility had the virus on it, so when the randomly-sampled fully-finished ipod was plugged in for a QA compatibility test, the virus was uploaded onto the ipod's hard disk by Windows, and just sat there waiting until it was plugged into another Windows PC. None of this involves any activity by the ipod itself, it's all being done by Windows.
Not that I think Apple's comment was all-that-great, and they'll have to deal with the fall-out, but I could see Apple being just a tad frustrated about this...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Not necessarily. I've had people ask me if it is okay to type in a password for various things. Anytime I help someone with OS X, I tell them to think about what they are doing whenever it brings up a dialog box asking them to do something.
I helped one of my friends who was very scared of computer a couple years back. I setup a limited access account in OS X and told them to try to mess it up, change the background, mess with all the preferences and just click on things and see what happens. I came back a week later and all the settings were changed. She didn't necessarily like all the settings, but when I actually setup her permanent account, she was much less fearful of changing settings. At this point, I told her to think twice about typing in a password when it asks. She has done very well and I haven't had to help her out with a computer at all in three years. She went from being scared of changing anything to pretty independent and safe at the same time.
So, my point is that there are a lot of people that do actually pay attention to these dialog boxes. I'd much rather have a few dialog/password boxes that are actually relevent than none. At least there is a chance that the person will think about it. Assuming people will click through the dialog without thinking is a rather negative view of users.