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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)."
Who cares how it happened? It's Apple's problem. It's Apple's fault. End of discussion. Apple's comment was childish and absolutely un-called for. Apple should apologize publically, announce that they will improved their QA, and move on.
Only a very small number of a specific model of iPod were affected by these Windows viruses. The entire blame rests with the factory making the iPods for Apple and putting the software image Apple prepared in advance not following good practices with respect to how they set up the empty drives before Apple's software went on them. The problem has been entirely fixed and you cannot even buy one of these infected iPods in the retail market today.
In other words, this is old news. And the size of the problem (the number of units affected) was so small, I would put good money down that we would not even know about the existence of this Windows virus problem if Apple had not disclosed it.
And everybody's blaming them for not noticing. But if you think about it, it was a pretty absurd thing for them to have had to "notice". As I understand it, the virus was implanted by one infected machine among a number of machines at a Chinese manufacturing shop they'd contracted iPod manufacture to. Apple said, "here's a thing that looks like an external disk: please put these bits on it for us". A simple and straightforward enough task, one would think -- but in a world where autorun exists and is or has been enabled by default, perhaps not so straightforward.
It's as if I had a letter to mail to 1000 of my customers, and I took one original down to my friendly print shop and asked them to make 1000 copies, and I or the print shop used an automated machine to fold the 1000 copies and stuff them in envelopes and mail them, and only after they were mailed out and opened by my customers did we start discovering that for some strange reason 1% of them had "FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE" overprinted on page 2. And then found out that the "strange reason" was that one of the copy machines at the print shop, among the several that the print shop divided my job among, was "infected" by a "virus".
If that happened to me, I'd be annoyed, too. (It'd be even more annoying if I were accused of ignorance for not having protected myself against this "obvious" threat, that evidently everybody else knows about and makes allowances for.) And I know my response would not be to ask the print shop to be more careful next time, or to run an "antivirus" soluton, or something. I'd take my business elsewhere, and more importantly insist that my future printing contractors use a different brand of copier, one that's not susceptible to preposterous failure modes like that, because even if there is some alleged way of papering over that particular flaw, who knows how many other equivalently egregious bizarre flaws it's got that haven't been discovered and papered over yet?
It's not just the iPod, viruses on shipped hardware seem to be getting more common. For example see below. Can't give other documented articles, but remember similar cases this past year. Anyone? The swipe at Microsoft sounds a lot like Jobs, looks like his personality has infected the company too. But Apple could win this by instating new controls over subcontractors and making a PR campaign in which they force them to use Macs or otherwise emphasize steps they've taken to minimize infection from Microsoft-based hardware. :)
Quote from article:
Earlier, McDonald's and Coca-Cola faced a similar problem in Japan during an MP3 player giveaway, though the events are unconnected. The iPod virus only affects Windows machines, and does not alter the behavior of the portable device itself or Mac operating systems.
This isn't a "hardware manufacturing" problem. The iPods got hooked to a Windows machine, probably during some QA process, and got infected. The hardware is fine.
The buck stops with the label on the cover. Sorry, whoever you contract to do stuff with is your business; when you're selling something with your trademark on it, any problems are between YOU and the CUSTOMER. In Apple's case, their problems are between APPLE and the CUSTOMER. Blaming third-parties, whether those contracted to, or those completely uninvolved (Microsoft), is just unprofessional. I know Apple was itching to score points at an easy target like Microsoft, but guys: this is a screwup, APPLE's name is on the front, not whatever podunk assembly in the Hunan Province, and not Microsoft. Even a "minor" attack like, "Bad Microsoft, Worse Us" is out of place in PR copy. Leave that bit of trollwork to professionals, like Dvorak.
It happens because Apple doesn't make their products. Subcontracters do. Apple doesn't have any factories.
Absolutely agree. So the remaining question is: aside from the ill-advised potshot, has Apple done right or wrong by those customers? Have they (a) disavowed all responsibility, told customers it's their problem, told them to go talk to the "podunk assembly plant in Hunan Province" if they need help, or (b) done everything they can to mitigate and prevent future recurrences of the problem?
Hardly a cheap shot really, if the OS wasn't such an open door this wouldn't be possible. I dock a poratble hard drive and get an exploit? Not a single prompt from the OS that something is going on? An application asserts itself as a start up process with zero sanity check? If Windows treated this properly it wouldn't try to manipulate files on removable media with no input from the user. If someone could craft an auto-executing file for other OSs, on OS X it would ask me for a password at least and name the process in question; Linux would do the same thing, or just fail silently. Doesn't happen on any other platform, it is a giant shortcoming of Windows as a platform. Stuff like this was supposed to be resolved in SP2.
So, by your logic, somebody who is shot and killed is immediately at fault because he/she isn't immortal? Oh, and the killer gets to insult the victim, too!
Insults don't have to be false. Actually, in general, if they're clearly false they're rarely insults.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
If the "more upset with ourselves" phrase was in the original quote and people left it out to make Apple look [more] arrogant [than they actually are], shame on them.
If I make a product that screws up something in a typical environment that it's supposed to be in, then it's my fault and no one else's, no matter how cruddy that environment is. This isn't like an unknown flaw or something that's unforseen. Windows is what it is, and if a known shortcoming isn't worked around by your product, then your product is at fault.
Although it's true that windows has security flaws, this is true of most platforms. For instance if Apple had released a worm that exploited SSH instead, would we be arguing who's fault it was?
I'm sorry but as a developer myself I see this as extremely irresponsible. Admiting your faults is a core fundamental of software, you acknowledge and adjust. You don't finger point or make excuses for your own blunder, that's what amateurs do.
Common, your product gets infected because of some slopiness, and you blame another company??
If Jobs doesn't like it, then stop making the iPod work on Windows. How would he like it if all of a sudden the iPod would be "disabled" by MS? He'd sue the living hell out of them (and for good reason).
Take the responsability for the screw up and fix it.
It doesn't matter what the operating system is; if it's XP, Vista, OSX, Linux, the next Windows or even the next, it's Apple's responsibility to put checks in place to prevent such things from happening. This is just as much Apple's fault (more so in my opinion) as it is Microsoft's. What if the reverse had been true? What if the Zune shipped with OSX viruses, I bet the tune of Apple would be completely different.
The difference is that Dell's press releases don't mention Sony batteries, but _their_ batteries, which Sony happened to manufacture. Ford sold trucks with Goodyear-branded tires, and recalled same.
I repeat, for those fanboys who are hard of hearing: it's the job of the professional media trolls to place the blame. Apple coulda scored tons by just profusely apologizing for the Windows virus getting into their distribution system. There are plenty of press hacks who will "go the extra mile" and explain why Windows sucks. This has nothing to do with fanboys and everything to do with business sense. Sorry, Apple screwed up. Don't cry too much, or your tears might crack your G4 cube.