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Bill Gates Brags About Vista, Reacts to Apple's Latest Ads
fr8_liner writes "In an unusually candid interview with Newsweek Bill Gates lays it all on the line, bragging about the benefits of Vista, ragging on Apple for their 'I'm a Mac' ads, and claiming primacy in a number of features shared by Vista and OSX. Specifically, it is Mr. Gates' opinion that the Apple adverts are misleading if not untruthful. He makes the claim that 'security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.' The interview also touches on the future of Microsoft and Operating systems, and some of the company's plans for internet-based computing."
> And then I might edit a high-definition movie
Bill, is that the MPAA on the phone?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
'I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.'
oh don't worry Mr Gates, we will.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"He makes the claim that 'security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.'"
It's almost like virgins talking about sex, I'd question if he actually *uses* his own O/S.
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.'
Yeah, there's one this month.
also here.
No, see, you're just confused. Hackers don't find one exploit in Windows every week. They find 4 the day after Patch Tuesday, then take the rest of the month off.
Marketing has a very close relation to the science/religion debate. Throw out a bunch of information, claiming they are facts, and don't provide any supporting information to prove your claims.
Oh, and dare people to prove you wrong, that makes you sound even more right
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
[Bill] Gates [responded to] questions in an [unusually] candid [interview]. For [some reason] most [of] his [words] were [interjected] by the editor. This [seemed] somewhat [odd and] excessive [to me]. Did [anyone else] notice [this]? [I] mean, a[n occasional] edit for [clarity] is pretty [normal], but it [seemed] like [every other] word was [inserted later].
Great write up at Daring Fireball already: http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/lies_damned_lies _and_bill_gates
> I haven't heard about all those Mac exploits he's referring to, have you?
I have. They exist. (Most of) The exploits themselves would take a phenomenal amount of knowledge about the entire underlying OS to turn them into a full-fledged rootkit installation exploit but they do exist.
> When somebody comes to us [after discovering a vulnerability] we've got [a fix] before there is any exploit
Bill. I thought you were an uber-hacker. You should know better. This is only true if they come to you with the vulnerability before they've written the full-fledged exploit.
> The number [of violations] will be way less because we've done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn't done any of those things.
This statement is borderline libelous. Just the facts, please.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I assume he's referring to the Month of Apple Bugs
"""
Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.
"""
Well first off, this just plain isn't true. But, I believe that it is true (or at least has been) for Windows. A simple search of the security focus archives would reveal if this has been true or not in the past. Any takers?
"""
I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.
"""
As someone above said careful what you wish for. Basically, I remember seeing the ad from Apple about Mac not having any virii. At that point, I wondered how long it'd be before someone did it (NEVER challenge an attacker). I think it was just a few months before it happened.
Basically, if I were Bill, given even just Vista's already sketchy security track record, I'd be careful about making such comments. How long do people here think that it'll take before the month of Vista happens?
Have you ever seen a how a Mac desktop case opens? How all the cables are out of the way for easy upgrading? Seriously... what are you talking about?
ender-iii
I'm the "computer guy" in my family and I've convinced everyone to buy a Mac. So I'm constantly looking around for possible exploits to warn my parents, my wife, and my mother-in-law about. I paid particular attention to the month of Apple bugs.
So I'd know if people were finding "daily" security flaws with Macs. This isn't to say that there aren't any, but three hundred sixty five a year? That's not even happening in Windows. And most of the ones that I've heard about require physical access to the machine, or for the attacker to be on the network. And the very few that have been able to be remotely triggered have been fixed within the month through Apple's software update.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Actually, you can upgrade most if not all the non integrated componants in the new intel Macs. Even the CPU on the new Minis can be upgraded, whereas before it was soldered iirc.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Check out this part of TFA:
Is this a joke? It sure [is weird] to read an [article that] has so [many freaking] edits. I wonder [if Bill] was swearing [like a] sailor throughout [the] whole interview, and they [had to] clean [up] his potty mouth?
Rocksteady, are you ready to ska?
Considering the release date of Vista, I doubt that the stats you are talking about even have .0001 percent of the infected machines actually running Vista. Not that I work for BG's PR team, just a valid point.
On the other hand, Bill just might as well s#@* in both of his hands because he's going to wish he didn't say that.
640 kb to rule them all!!!!!!!!!!
I am not a big fan of the "I am a Mac" ads. Being a Linux user, I don't care that much about OS X or Windows based PCs. So perhaps my opinion is unbiased.
:-(
I think that these ads might offend Windows users instead of getting them to switch to the cool side. These ads do not show the strength of Macs. These focus more on insulting Windows based PCs.
Moreover, don't know why, but I've always felt that any company that really has superior products doesn't have to attack the competition this way. In fact, through these ads, Apple has lost a little respect in my eyes, if nothing else.
ps. I know that writing something against Apple might not go very well with my Karma, though
Newsbytes News Network, April 6, 1994 Yeah, cool new idea there, Bill.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I think the point is that to upgrade a Mac to the latest version of Mac OS X doesn't require rebuilding the computer (nor buying a new one). In fact each version of OS X is a little more efficient and streamlined, so that older hardware may actually run *faster* with the new OS.
(I'm not saying I particularly approve of the Apple ads, but I don't think your comments about having to throw out apple hardware are particularly fair.)
1. Vista is real kewl.
2. I can't believe how apple is lying about being superior.
3. In the future we'll lock in customers by offering our applications as services and by storing the user's data on our servers.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I'm running 10.5 on a 7-year-old G4, among other systems. It is in the same configuration as when it was purchased (dual-500 g4's, 1 GB Ram) except that the hard drive has been replaced (40 GB -> 60 GB).
It might have been a large machine when it was purchased, but it wasn't all that unusual for a Mac. It might not be the fastest computer but it will run the OS faster than it ran the OS it came with (or any other since).
Let's see you run Vista on a 7-year-old Dell.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
Gray. Seattle thinks the rest of the world is insane for insisting that the sky is blue.
Gates mentions Linux, without really any prompting from the interviewer, in his second answer. He doesn't really say anything, but just the fact that he mentions Linux without having to is going to make Linux seem more like a serious contender to many people.
Heh, I was thinking the same thing. "What else could he have possibly said [here]?" (nothing else made any sense, other than swearing).
I haven't seen Bill Gates this scared of Apple/Mac since the ramp up to Windows 3.x. Perhaps not coincidentally, I saw this pointed out earlier today.
I can't imagine with his wealth and the importance of what the Gates Foundation can be doing why he bothers to show up to work at Microsoft anymore. You'd think he'd have graduated from that position a while ago.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
OK couple things about his statements that jumped out at me from reading TFA: The number [of violations] will be way less because we've done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn't done any of those things.
Um, Bill, Apple hasn't had to fix DLL hell, and processes run by a user blowing away system things, because they didn't build those problems in in the first place. They didn't have to block open ports with vulnerable services listening on the by default, because they're not _open_ by default. And so on. Next?
Question: How about the implication that you need surgery to upgrade? Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done.
How so, Bill? What are the hardware requirements for your new OS? How many 5 year old boxes, or even 3 year old boxes, meet that?
You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it's superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.
So Bill is saying, that there's no truth to the statement that you need to make hardware changes if you want to upgrade to vista. NO truth to it.
Tell that to my inlaws; they'll need a new box entirely.
I mean, it's fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.
OK Bill, show me the figures. Show me a total exploit on OSX. Now, show me 365 of them for each year it's been out. Back up your figures or be shown to be the liar you are.
I just can't keep going through this, I think that one says it all about the guy's outright lies, and/or complete lack of clue. So, windows fanbois, is he lying, or is he clueless?
.... Given his reaction when questioned about the look of Vista by Miles O'Brien of CNN:
a tes-always-say-no-no-no-when-he-hears-os-x-232750. php
t es-tells-jon-stewart-why-he-should-buy-vista-yes-i t-was-as-boring-as-this-headline-232403.php
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/bill-gates/does-bill-g
and his "performance" on The Daily Show:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/the-daily-show/bill-ga
I'd say that Bill is a bit scared that Vista will flop, or worse, people will just buy a Mac.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Last I checked, being dramatic in an interview (though I really felt like this was more of a press release) has absolutely no effect on code security. Your code base? As far as the Windows code base (past, present & I'll bet future), I have one comment: "All your bases belong to us".
I thought he played with some code, made a mess out of it, bought someone else's code, then licensed yet another third party to replace his original attempt at coding?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"Bill. I thought you were an uber-hacker."
Ha, after watching these DOJ testimony tapes of Bill Gates, you could conclude he doesn't know a thing about what his company was doing, what e-mail was sent to him or what the definition of an operating system is to name a few. Watch Bill dance around even the most simplest questions trying to spin his company in a favorable light.
When the OS you feel comfortable with results in my inbox filled with spam from zombied machines, my firewall and server log files are filled with lame Windows attacks on my non-Windows machines, or the accessibility of a web site or portion of the internet becomes pathetically slow as one of those bot nets goes on a rampage, your choice of OS sucks ass.
If your not connected to the internet then choose what ever crappy OS you want, if your going to be part of a public network, consider how your choice will affect others on that public network.
The MOAB actually only came up with three or four Apple bugs, the rest were in third party software that also applied under Linux and Windows!
The most serious exploit (Quicktime) could only be replicated by one in sixty people, and that was when RUNNING A CUSTOM EXECUTABLE LOCALLY, generating the attack file from the binaries on your computer - again, which only worked for one in sixty people.
Ridiculous. Now we know exactly what projects like MOAB lead to, idiocy at the highest levels of the executive quarter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the point is that to upgrade a Mac to the latest version of Mac OS X doesn't require rebuilding the computer (nor buying a new one). In fact each version of OS X is a little more efficient and streamlined, so that older hardware may actually run *faster* with the new OS.
Tell that to anyone who's been running an OS9-based G4, who then upgrades to the latest version of OSX.
You're comparing OSX to itself. It's like saying Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows XP SP1. That's not what we're talking about; we're talking about major OS upgrades. The Mac OS existed before OSX, and it wasn't very long ago in the grand scheme of things. The last version of OS9 was released in December of 2001. I don't know about you, but I've got two separate PC's that were originally built long before 2002, and my wife's laptop dates to about that period also.
Upgrading from OS9 to any version of OSX can be *painful* unless you have upgraded your computer. OSX is notoriously memory-hungry (as is Vista), and it requires a graphics card with decent 3D capabilities to really shine (also like Vista).
I think the point made was valid - Apple themselves seem to be assuming that all of their customers bought OSX-based Macs, which means they either tossed out their old Macs or they're n00bs. Otherwise, they couldn't *possibly* expect anyone to update from OS9 to OSX without at least a RAM upgrade, probably a video card upgrade and probably a hard drive upgrade. So it's a little disingenuous of them to suggest that this is unique to the PC world.
You try running OSX with 256MB of RAM, which was a high-end machine back in 2001.
What hasn't sunk in with Bill and probably never will is that most Windows users are pragmatists and not fanboys. There simply isn't much in the OS to incite rabid love and loyalty, just the sober realization and acceptance that it's an OS with the widest hardware support, the most available software, and which runs on a cheaper and more open hardware platform. Other than that, there are plenty of more elegant and emotionally engaging operating systems out there.
I've never seen anyone claim he was a genius programmer. But at least at one time he was a pretty good programmer. In fact Altair BASIC was the first and pretty much forever the smallest BASIC interpreter (4kB.) Gates was one of two primary authors of the software.
So yes, Bill did know computers... when they were much simpler. And he knew how to code, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let's get this straight. The fact that Macs can be hacked makes exploiting Windows okay?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, "Bill, why upgrade to Vista?" what would be your elevator pitch?
Bill Gates: The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that's got photos. As I went through, they'd think, "Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?"
I'm a developer, but even I know the sales-jargon phrase elevator pitch. I don't know many 30-second elevator rides that afford a chance to sit down with someone for a couple of minutes. They must have really nicely furnished, though slow, elevators in Redmond. (Wow, is that allegorical to Vista, or what? ;-)
Anyway, there is no way on God's green earth that Bill Gates doesn't know what "elevator pitch" means. So the answer really is, no, there is not a quick and compelling explanation for why one should upgrade to Vista. Instead, there is a long, laborious demo that ends in a rhetorical question about whether there's anything useful.
To which the answer is probably, "No."
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
Seriously, come on. The ad where the PC buys the Mac that C++ reference manual that he secretly lusts after himself is just so much blatant false image building it's ridiculous. Are they implying that Mac programmers live in a glorious world where technical manuals are unnecessary? Or that every windows user is a technical programmer? It's ludicrous.
The point, of course, is that it takes being the kind of person that wants a C++ GUI programming guide to actually enjoy and really understand Windows.
The "home movie" comparisons where the shapely woman is the mac one and the ugly unshaven guy in drag is from the PC is just dumb.
Easy to say, but I defy you to make a movie in MovieMaker that looks anything close to as good as one made in iMovie. Have you even used iMovie?
The PC going in for surgery is another joke. At least he PC CAN be upgraded instead of simply requiring replacement for a major OS update.
Any Mac made in the last five years can upgrade to Tiger without more than a memory upgrade and actually run many things faster. I speak from personal experience on this and the iMac I had was actually six years old. The point was that you don't *need* a hardware upgrade to upgrade the OS.
When you call someone a liar you need to provide evidence to that effect.
Boom Shanka
Yep... mine was used as a server when it was purchased. It's still aa server, but just for a test environment.
You may have found different information, but the first search I came across listed the PowerEdge 2400 at a price of $8,994 in June of 2001. This G4 was $3199 in July of 2000 from what I could find.
Your comparison is not quite equivalent, but I wasn't comparing price in my comments, just timeframes of technology.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
When OS X 10.3 (Panther) discontinued support for the Beige G3s, the line was six years old and had been discontinued for four. It makes sense that Apple chose to abandon support for a line of machines that wouldn't have run the new OS acceptably anyway.
Linux can get away with supporting ancient hardware because, well, because they don't actually have to support it. Nobody calls up the GNOME foundation complaining that 2.16 crawls on their PIII-450 with 256MB of RAM. In comparison, Apple actually has to live up to the specifications they outline on the box.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
That particular case was when 10.3 came out and allowed accelerated graphics to be used on computers that had AGP slots in them (since AGP allowed for enough bandwidth for this feature to be useful). Some people did find the trick to enable it on PCI-only machines (like yours), and found that because of the lack of bandwidth between memory and the graphics card it was actually slower.
So... is your argument is that Apple should have made your computer slower, or that Apple should have somehow caused your PCI clot to become a AGP slot using software only?
And since then there have been a number of changes in this sub-system. Each time Apple has allowed older computers to continue running they way they were, and allowed newer computers to be faster with a very few extra eye-candy touches (like a rotating cube). They have not created distinctly different functionality (yet). Vista does go a little further down this road, and there is a chance that 10.5 will too with CoreAnimation (I have no non-public information on this: pure speculation).
Which also means physical access to the machine.
Hell, I can just yell "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all" and hose a Vista machine.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
There was absolutely nothing I could do to make the system run it. Oh sure, the system could be upgraded with a new processor, memory, hard drive or whatever, but no upgrade would allow [my beige G3 Mac to run OS X 10.2].
I feel ya, brother. I mean, I'm trying to get Vista Home Edition to run on my 486DX2/66, and it just won't, no matter which components I upgrade!
Elevator pitches are supposed to be short - you have less than a minute to make someone invest more time in understanding you product or proposal.
Bill states that he needs minutes to sit us down and explain blah, blah, blah.
For F**k's sake, at least throw out "We've learned to copy better," "We admit that XP will always be full of holes and changed everything to give ourselves a head start to the bad guys," "It's pretty." Anything other than giving us a pie chart where the light grey shows the amount of time of hanging out and the dark grey shows the amount of time "kickin' it."
I'm not sure Bill would be a convincing sales guy at CompUSA.
I don't think the argument is that PC hardware upgrades are easier than hardware upgrades on the Mac, but rather that Vista requires very substantial hardware upgrades while Leopard won't. Each release of OS X tends to be faster than the previous one, on the same hardware (though they usually use more memory). Tiger runs perfectly fine on a circa-2001 PowerMac G4 (composited windows and all), and so will Leopard. Meanwhile, Vista is going to crawl on a circa-2001 Athlon XP with a Geforce 2, and won't do Aero Glass on that machine at all.
To put a sharper point on it, Apple's upgrade cycle is very gradual, and very incremental. They release a new major version every year or two. Each new version obsoletes a couple of the oldest supported models, and breaks a minor number of applications. An upgrade is generally not very traumatic. Meanwhile, Vista is being released half a decade after its predecessor. It's instantly obsoleting a huge amount of hardware, and breaking a lot of applications in the process.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
And I'm not being funny, but it's easier to upgrade a PC than a Mac.
Umm, in what way? If you compare Apple machines to comparable PCs, they are about the same ease of upgrading hardware. Now Apple sells more all-in-ones, laptops, and small form factor machines than average, so I suppose you could argue that Apple makes more machines that are harder to upgrade, but that is pretty, bloody weak.
for example if you want you can change the motherboard etc. - can't exactly do that with a Mac tower.
Actually you can, they're just expensive and you have more limited hardware options. Having limited hardware option != harder to upgrade though. They are different issues.
How about some counter points. When upgrading hardware on the mac, you never have to worry about calling Apple to get a new key, because your OS decided you are a criminal. You never have to worry about reinstalling the OS, or OS's in succession because you only have an "upgrade" version. If you are replacing the whole machine, say you got a new laptop, moving all your files, software, certs, accounts, etc. from the old one to the new one is an order of magnitude easier with a mac.
This statement is borderline libelous. Just the facts, please. Well, in a lawyer-logic kinda way, he's right. Apple has done NONE of the exact things Microsoft has done to their OS.
Like, if Microsoft fixes a flaw in their security that doesn't exist on a Mac, then obviously Apple has not, nor will it ever take that step. Can't you see how risky it is to pick a Mac, which didn't benefit from years and years of exploit expertise?
Would you want to risk getting infected on a machine without any known exploits? You should really pick the one with a lot of known exploits... better go with the devil you know!
[end lawyer logic]
I'd rather pick the one where holes are patched before they're exploited, but that's just me.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'd show you the output from uname -a and a listing of the files in
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Paul Allen was the brilliant programmer. Gates was the mediocre one.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
In nearly every single Vista article, there is mention of OS X and how it's had these features for years, which is a refreshing change. It's been extremely frustrating for Mac users the last six years because they had this OS that, despite early flaws, was years ahead of its time, but the tech media continued to ignore it. Maybe this started after OS X Tiger was released, but since last year's Vista delay, the media has been really harsh toward Vista and praiseworthy toward Apple. It's like they're finally giving Apple some long overdue credit for keeping the momentum going on OS X while the "biggest software company in the world" couldn't even squeeze out an update to its aging Win32 codebase.
It's like the press finally realized how behind Windows is and how it never really came to dominate the market based on its merits. Microsoft just got lucky with a braindead IBM contract in the 80s and rode the commodity PC wave. Everybody has realized that Microsoft isn't that big and scary at all, and now that they're being forced to compete with Google, Apple, and others, we see just how floundering they are. The tactics they used to use in the 90s (announcing vaporware to freeze the market, releasing buggy 1.0 versions and getting OEMs to bundle them over competitors, etc.) don't work anymore.
Vista is a headache to use. The interface, the extra dialogs, the multiple menu styles, the redundant buttons...it's a schizophrenic OS, and it even runs your games slower. Apps like Windows DVD Maker are a pathetic joke compared to iLife. I bet we didn't see an iLife '07 announcement at MacWorld because it's going to be bundled right into Leopard as part of the OS, just to stick it to Microsoft even further.
Seeing Bill's reaction is just funny. This isn't the first interview he's been asked about OS X--there's a clip on YouTube where a CNN guy asks him about it as well, and Bill just pauses and reacts. It's funny. The press is finally waking up.
My guess is that he is reasonably aware of the hundreds of millions of people who barely notice that their os is some version of Windows. It isn't real surprising that many people who have switched away from Windows, when you ask them, actually have a reason...and further it isn't that surprising that they feel the need to be 'emotionally engaged' by their computer.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I have a Dual 400mhz G4 with 1 gig of ram made in 1998 that runs the newest apple OS faster than my Dell P4 2.8 gig (with HT) with 2 gigs of ram running XP,
I don't believe you. Well... that's not really true. I think your Dell needs a good tuning.
Regardless, I have in my previous life been on the front lines of Macintosh support, all the way back to replacing endless numbers of power boards in the old beige Mac Plus's. I think I've still got my certificates somewhere. I never saw a performance increase from an OS upgrade. Admittedly the most recent years are out of my experience, as I moved on from support before OS X was released. OS X I'm familiar with mostly through helping people with it as favours.
We can talk about all the people left in the cold by the System 7 update, or the growing pains of OS 9 - I remember that. I recently put OS X on a early mode G4, and found that even after a memory upgrade it was clearly unhappy.
I remember selling upgraded motherboards for ridiculous prices to Mac LC owners back in the day. And I mean RIDICULOUS. I couldn't believe people paid it. And they had to send back the original motherboard to be used as refurbs or pay even more.
Our store went through a boom in Mac sales each OS revision.
I tried, unfortunately he did not make it through surgery. He did give me his peripherals, though.
It ships with a lot of stuff, but very little of it is turned on by default, and most users will never change that. I don't even think that OS X ships with sshd running by default. It's a very minimalist configuration, in terms of enabled services.
It's not a totally fair comparison; saying that some of the installed software on Mac OS X has vulnerabilities, is like saying, if you turn off Windows' firewall, and run these services, you can get rooted. Well, duh, in both cases. What's really important is the default configuration, (or the 'minimal configuration necessary to get real work done') because that's what 90% of users will ever have running.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
this is late to the party but: the LAST piece of actual code that I knwo of that Bill wrote was the port of Microsoft Basic to the Tandy Model 100 Portable, and, I also knwo the 2 glaring bugs he left in it.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Maybe you should get someone that knows what they are doing to set the servers up?
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I don't know if there *was* a virus on OS X, but...
I challenge all those virus-writing bozos to write one! Clearly they haven't got the faintest idea how to create something truly malicious when they don't have a bunch of pretty scripts already written for them. Not a single virus? That shows these bain-dead hacks can't write real code for peanuts. They're hopeless jokes and OS X users laugh about them all the time. And their mothers are too fat.
There. I said it.
Someone had to.
"Never challenge an attacker" ?
In the case of security, I *want* OS X to be the subject of intense scrutiny. I want people combing the OS for hooks they can hang malware on. This will force Apple to respond and make the OS more secure. If this doesn't happen, the OS will stay as it is (and that's not a bad level of security right now).
The MOAB fizzled out to a few third-party issues (most fixed by now) a few categories of Apple issues and a *lot* of invective from those bozos. They were useless hacks unfit to call themselves researchers. They failed comprehensively to find that "smoking gun" which would have catapulted them to the notoriety they sought.
So, who's next? Any wanna-be virus writers looking for a challenge? Or are you all too chicken? Are you all incapable?
I double-dog dare you!
Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally.
They're feeding those exploits to Apple so that they can improve the Mac.
That would be an example of "responsible disclosure", which Microsoft is so much in favour of.
Wouldn't it be irresponsible not to do so?
Gates' claims are so absurd, they're not really worth refuting. So instead I'll go to bed and let Gruber do the job.
Good night.
It ships with a lot of stuff, but very little of it is turned on by default
Actually, NONE of it is turned on by default.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Anyone else thing Bill is starting to sound more and more like the Black Knight?
BLACK KNIGHT: Come Here.
ARTHUR: What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT: I'm invincible!
ARTHUR: You're a looney.
BLACK KNIGHT:The Black Knight always triumphs. Have at you!
And so on...
blah blah blah
"Mac ads are as inaccurate as Microsoft ads"
Lemme fix that for you.
"Ads are inaccurate."
By definition.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
A: I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.
Bill's never done tech support, has he?
If he's referring to the Month of Apple bugs, then the premise an outright lie in the first place. Most of those are denial of service, priviledge escalation, arbitrary code with non-root permission, potential exploits, etc. On top of that, they've thrown in 3rd party apps to fill out the month. I'm not saying the MOAB people are doing a bad job, but it's a shame to see them being used in this way, because MS shills they are not.
As for getting what he wishes for, he already does - on a scale that OSX will never see. People measure the cost of the MS disasters in the billions of dollars. Way to miss the point Microsoft.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
candid - carefully articulated, with purposed reference to selling points and marketing terms, avoidance of meaningful response to questions, and absolute denial of facts.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Mind you, that's after all of the denial, anger, bargaining and depression.
Mr. Gates, do you actually mean you are planning on stripping OUT all that shiny new DRM technology you are so carefully putting IN now, presumably because, by the time your next OS comes out (in five to ten years), all your fat corporate sponsors will have finally figured out that treating customers like common thieves and criminals is, well, sort of bad for business?
Your Servant, B. Baggins
And did you know that part of their solution to keep Vista from being hacked is:
"don't dual boot linux (this is how viruses spread)"
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
We'll see if Microsoft can follow-up the initial Vista release with upgrades that are as consistently good as Apple's.
I'm certain he was referring to MoAB. My OS X setup is unaffected by the majority of MoAB "bugs"; as you said, many rely on third party apps (and therefore aren't really "Apple" bugs at all). That's not the only reason Mr. Gates can rightly be accused of a lie: "every day"? As in "every single day" since a particular date? MoAB had a hard time stretching a full month out of the few security flaws they were able to find in Apple's software, but a full year? And given the restriction of operating system (Tiger) bugs ONLY?
I was opposed to the MoAB project because I thought it irresponsible. I would say the same of YoAB (Year of...) but my hat would come off to anyone who could accomplish
Gates lied about several other things in this interview, even contradicting himself: he claims he hasn't seen the Get A Mac campaign ads (which are broadcast during some of America's most popular prime time television shows) but knows full well what sort of creature Apple paints Microsoft Windows to be.
Apple has done more than they could hope for with their Get A Mac campaign: they've really really pushed Bill's new Aero-skinned captionless Start button.
And? Good craftspeople are often fanatical about their tools, and very devoted. Mac fans aren't Mac fans because it's shiny - they are fans because Macs are great tools. great tools truly make life a breeze. What's not to love? Quality tools are highly satisfying.
The problem with Windows is that it is a very poor tool, and frequently gets in the way of doing the job.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Hmm, Mr. Gates, I'd definitely like some of those features. Perhaps I should go pick up a Mac. (In black, please.)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
It is good to see more tech-specialised media having a go at him. Still, his reaction majorly upsets me - page 2 of TFA in particular, where he first whines about the lies of mac. Then he goes and makes blatant lies such as implying that OSX stole concepts which they announced, because Vista security took too long... (erk), and So.. MS came up with File, Edit, View and Help... while Apple came up with the GUI and the DESKTOP.
And also I have yet to see any interviewer get to the hard issues - DRM, WGA, licensing, and so on. All the media focusses on is the visible issues - HD media, parental controls and aero.
OS X was disruptive because it was a completely different OS from previous versions of Mac OS. When you replace the OS completely, you get a little wiggle-room in the disruption department. Microsoft doesn't get to play that card with Vista, though. XP *was* Microsoft's "OS X 10.0". It was the OS that accomplished the painful transition from the Win9x kernel to the WinNT kernel in consumer-space. Vista is just a continuation of that code-base.
Vista isn't disruptive because it had to be. It's not a rewrite, it's not a replacement, it's just a new version. The reason it's disruptive is because Microsoft took five years worth of new features and new APIs and instead of developing them incrementally over half a dozen releases, like Apple did, they stuffed them into a single mega-release. The result is that instead of updating apps gradually as new APIs come out, developers have to massively overhaul their apps for all the new APIs in Vista. And consumers, instead of dealing with a few apps breaking with each incremental release, have to deal with a huge amount of software breaking all at once.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Speaking of Hodgeman and sympathy, did you see Gates on The Daily Show? The instant the interview was over, Gates did an about-face and high-tailed it out of there. Didn't even sit down and do the faux-chat thing during the transition to the commercial break. The guy couldn't generate sympathy if he tried, he has no social graces at all. He didn't even use any humor during the interview - he spoke like it was a advertisement for laundry detergent, not an interview with Jon Stewart.
I agree. A couple of years ago I heard him speak in person at WinHeck. At the beginning of the speech he did sort of a "light introduction" (for a normal person I would say "joke" but for Gates that would be aiming too high) where he talked about the story of him saying that people didn't need more than 64K. (Or was it 640K, I don't remember.) And basically I was waiting for the punch line - there wasn't one. He basically just said "I never said that". And the whole thing was so completely irrelevant that it was just stupid.And then his keynote was so boring that I actually fell asleep.
I've been to WWDC several times and seen Steve Jobs speak and I have never fallen asleep. Steve Jobs may not be the best jokester in the world, but he is a very good communicator. In fact, I can't picture him going on Jon Steward's show because: Jobs isn't funny enough to do the show well, he doesn't do self deprecating humor well, AND he is smart enough to already be aware that he couldn't pull it off. Gates is the sort of nerd who just doesn't know/care that he is not funny or interesting or tasteful.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I am. but it is still funny ;)
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
really needs to get out a lot more.
The "right" OS for you is the one that runs the apps you need with a minimum of personal hassle.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I hate it when people make foolish claims like this. NO, ads are not inaccurate "by definition". People, quit using phrases like "by definition" and "literally" etc. with such carelessness. If ads are inaccurate, it is a *tendency* and nothing more. Inaccuracy is an accidental property, not essential property. For example, if I show a commercial saying, "Battle-of-The-Bands event at City Expo Center, 9:00pm on Saturday. Tickets for $20" ...there is nothing inaccurate or deceitful about that. Simply because (especially in America) businesses believe that profit is justification for any action, especially immoral ones that will convince customers to buy, doesn't mean that advertising *must* be inherently designed to misinform. That is a cultural practice due to a (non)value system that doesn't even understand why ethics and morality are worthwhile.
This really adds a new chapter to the Apple vs Microsoft product design debate. In the past we could compare Apple and Microsoft products, and also compare the process and methodology that both companies use to design products. But, fools that we were, we were comparing shipping products only. Of course if Bill Gates decided that Windows should have Parental Controls in 2002 and Apple shipped Parental Controls in 2005, and Microsoft in 2007, then it is actually Apple that is three years behind not Windows that is two years behind. Thanks for clearing that up, Bill.
Also I like how he says that the only reason why Apple has been shipping all these new features and iterating upon them again and again regularly is that Apple has been leaving out security. Isn't that classic projection? This is like when the town's biggest drunk picks on the town's workaholic by calling him a "drunk". It's like the workaholic may have problems, but you're the town drunk, buddy.
LOL, well said. I went through that a decade and a half ago when I switched from the moribund Amiga. If you think Windows isn't thrilling today, you haven't switched from a multitasking OS to Windows 3.1-on-DOS.
Gates is simply following in the footsteps of other robber barons, like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Sam Bronfman (of Seagram's - he started out as a bootlegger) by trying to purchase respectability through charitable acts. It's not a case of people "alleging" MS has committed criminal acts; it's been tried and found guilty in more than one court. And since Gates is the top man, he is just as responsible as Ken Lay at Enron.
What was once true, is no longer so
The media will kiss the ass of anybody who payed for as much ADVERTISING as Microsloth. Microsoft was treated so nice that when the EMAIL macro virus problem hit-- nobody reported it only existed on OUTLOOK.
Now Apple spends more than they ever did on traditional advertising. I hardly watch TV and I see plenty of ipod and mac ads.
Now the media is somewhere in the middle of two large customers. Back when windows XP came out, that was not the case.
If SLASHDOT or MOZILLA payed for a chunk of ads, we'd hear about how much better Firefox is, evil Windows Vista DRM, how Vista can never be secure, ODF, and how MS bribes politicians.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
This demonstrates one of the fundamental differences between Mac users and Windows users. Mac users love their platform far above any available alternative. This means that Jobs can inflict substantial amounts of pain on them when he deems it necessary, and not lose his user base. The CPU architecture of the Mac has changed twice since 1990 (MC680x0 to PPC to x86), and the OS has undergone a similar number of changes that rendered all existing software "legacy". Even so, the Mac users take the whipping because they love their Macs.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been very careful indeed with its compatibility issues. For Microsoft, compatibility and incompatibility are key tools in managing their user base. Smooth compatibility in the direction you wish to shepherd your user base, and errect compatibility barriers in the other directions. The compatibility oddities you note in your post exist because they influence the user base in ways beneficial to Microsoft's monopoly. You're thinking in terms of Microsoft serving the user base, which simply doesn't happen unless it coincides with Microsoft serving their own monopoly.
With that in mind, consider what would happen if Microsoft did what was necessary to clean up their OS: had a MacOS 9 to X style of transition. Their user base can already do that: it's called migrating to Linux, and has the advantage that it also frees them from Microsoft lock-in. If Microsoft themselves threw down the gauntlet and proclaimed that it was time to break compatibility, the dam holding their monopoly would burst: the pain of migration is the only thing keeping many of them off Linux now.
That's not to say that everyone would migrate to Linux, but enough would that real competition would re-enter the market, and the additional support that Linux would receive as a result would make it even more of a viable competitor. It's taken Microsoft a very long time to build the monopoly they enjoy, and they will not discard it so lightly. If "[continuing] to support a fundamentally broken design for eternity" is what it takes to maintain the monopoly, then expect them to so continue.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I've never met one of these mythical "I like Macs because they are shiny" people. Perhaps you live in a very strange neck of the woods, like Beverly Hills or something?
The vast majority of Mac users I know are people who like them because they make a lot of money out of them - in areas like publishing, music, photography and video. Macs have only become "shiny" recently. They used to be beige, just like PCs. So why did people buy them then? Why did so many Mac users switch to Mac clones that were boring and fairly ugly, when Apple licensed the OS?
Remember the world before Photoshop, the laser printer, and Desktop Publishing? You could only get Photoshop for the Mac. Apple brought the Postscript laser printer to the masses, and revolutionized the publishing industry. Same with music. For a long time, Pro Tools on a Mac was the only thing worth using for professional-grade digital recording. And today Apple has powerful and easy-to-use video editing software. Most Mac users are users first - they care more about their field of work (often a creative field) than they do about the Mac itself. It's just the Mac makes otherwise complex things very easy, so you can focus on the work, and not "operating a computer." There's a whole generation of filmmakers who are growing up on Final Cut Pro right now, because they want to make films, not because they want a shiny computer.
I think most likely it is you who has the superficial tastes, and are projecting your own interpretation onto people, rather than trying to understand their true motivations. Sure, users might appreciate the looks as well, they might like the Aqua interface. That doesn't mean they bought it because it is pretty. I doubt they wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't a great system as well as being pretty.
In fact, that pretty much sums up how Microsoft thinks, and how a lot of Windows users think. They think if they copy the "look" of the Mac, then they can have the Mac's appeal. But that's just superficial, "skin deep" beauty - the Mac offers form and function together. I'm reminded of when the original iMac was a huge hit, and other companies thought they could capture market-share by adding colored panels to their machines, while maintaining the same clunky form-factor and Windows OS. Notice how you didn't see Mac users buying those machines based on appearance, and they ultimately failed to interest anyone?
As an example of this in user-space, why do so many Windows users use absurd animated cursors, or elaborate screen-savers, or "skins" on applications? Why do so many Windows gamers "pimp" their PC with neon and case-mods? Those trends never caught on in the Mac world - especially the "skinning" thing. So, what explains the desire of Windows users to change the surface appearance of their system, without improving the functionality? Often these appearance mods actually get in the way of usability, let alone enhance it.
... and then they built the supercollider.
"Apple for using DRM on iTunes because they are assuming you are going to be a criminal and file share your downloads."
This would be mostly because the RIAA companies required it. As for independent artists, I don't know (I don't use iTunes), but if they are also DRM'd then I agree that's wrong (unless the artist asks for the DRM).
Just sayin' because a lot of people here seem to think Apple hoisted DRM on iTunes just for the fun of it.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
No, that'd be Xerox. Actually, they were the first to implement it. The basics of the WIMP concept were first proposed by Doug Engelbart.
This isn't something I ever thought I'd have to point out in a Slashdot discussion. Apple makes great stuff, but most of their "innovations" come from elsewhere. They just do a great job at implementing them.
No, it's true! Apple hasn't edited a single line of Windows code to improve security.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
I thought he played with some code, made a mess out of it, bought someone else's code, then licensed yet another third party to replace his original attempt at coding?
Not quite - he copied and stole code. He broke it, got some financing from his Father to hire someone to fix his breakages. He stole more code, got lucky with the IBM deal, and persisted in stealing code into the '90s. By this time, his company was rich enough that they didn't need to steal code any more - they just bought the companies that owned what they wanted!
MS still has stolen code in their products...
> What I see is that nearly every review of Vista is written by a Mac user.
No, I think what you are noticing is that every IT writer in existence in 2007 has run a Mac at least a little bit, whereas in 2001 when Windows XP came out, Mac OS X was just a few months old, and it was rare that any IT press knew anything existed other than Microsoft. Especially over the last couple of years the combination of iPod success and Apple-Intel switch has created a situation where many IT writers are writing about Windows all day then going home to their Macs. You can't put a new Windows with a Mac skin and Mac features in front of these guys and they don't notice. These are also the same guys who were chatting up WinFS and now have to explain why certain dialog boxes in Windows still look like NT 3.1.
When Windows 95 came out, very few people noticed that the way the UI looked was a complete rip-off of NeXT, because hardly anybody had run a NeXT system, or even seen a screenshot from a NeXT system. The Vista skin is similarly very much like Mac OS X, but the problem for Bill Gates is that everybody in IT knows that. You can't just wink about it anymore. The Mac is running the same 64 bit Core chips as everyone else and there are even 4-way Xeon 1U servers so it is really disingenuous to play the same old game that Bill Gates plays of pretending Apple doesn't exist. IT used to play along but like you say, they seem to all be Mac users now.
> Ditto for Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, respectively...
... if they complain to Microsoft it is Dell's fault, but ultimately it is the consumer holding the legal and technical responsibility. That's a really big moneymaker there, because you're taking retail money from the consumer but you're only shipping them wholesale parts.
No, Steve Wozniak is an accomplished design engineer and Steve Jobs is an accomplished product designer. They are both successful separately from their business concerns such as being founders or CEO. If Steve Jobs didn't want to be any kind of business man he could still work at Apple on their product design team. Similarly at Google you find the CEO is a technologist, not a sales guy. This is how it's supposed to work in Silicon Valley.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are sales guys. They design pyramid schemes, not products. Their innovations are in software licensing, pricing, marketing. One of the big things they innovated was putting a disk in a big empty box and selling it for a lot of money to people who had never before paid for software. Another innovation was taking the cost and responsibility of system integration away from "system integrators" and putting it onto the consumer. Instead of buying a personal computer that just worked, you bought computer "hardware" and computer "software" and you "installed Windows" and you began troubleshooting. If it doesn't work it is the consumer's fault. If they complain to Dell it is Microsoft's fault
When I first saw these new Mac vs PC ads I was very disappointed that Apple was doing the whole "Mac vs PC" thing. That felt tired and still does.
... you don't ever upgrade a Mac and lose your audio.
However they have steadily won me over because they are communicating some really important technical stuff in a non-technical way. I know many of us here would rather see a 5 minute video where user A upgrades Tiger to Leopard and DONE! and user B gets started upgrading XP to Vista, he is still typing in a product code and user A is making a movie already. What they have done instead is anthropomorphize the computers themselves and therefore Mac goes "upgrade? isn't it just straightforward?" and PC goes "oh, no, you've got to do this and that and this and that" and he is in a hospital gown and scared about losing functionality. That's the actual fears of Windows users who are thinking of upgrading to Vista, and that is actually something that Apple should be telling its customers about its competitors' products. You have this guy George Ou who is an IT writer who knocks the Mac in a ridiculously inaccurate way, and he got Vista recently, and after a week of not being able to install it, he gave up and put XP back on his machine and put Vista on the shelf and this guy is an IT writer with a name-brand 2006 PC. You just don't have that on a Mac
Upgrading the zif socket in my 350MHz G4 to 800MHz cost about $40 and took less than 5 minutes and one reboot. About 4 minutes were spent apply thermal glue. You can go on about upgrading your motherboard all you want. To claim you can't buy a Mac motherboard and install it in a tower just shows you aren't a serious Mac user. Take a trip over to xlr8yourmac.com and inform yourself.
I've spent hours adding a video card to a pc before, and XP has NEVER recognized the card in only one reboot. I've upgraded video cards on Macs, once using a PC version card and flashing the ROM in about the same amount of time it takes to install those ram chips. You stick the card in the slot and boot-up. Done. If I could get all the time back from clicking through Nvidia driver install screens in XP, I'd be a year younger. I've had PC components that refused to work with XP work just fine in my G4, even when designed for XP (and not Mac). This isn't necessarily because a Mac is so well designed. Rather, it demonstrates just how poorly Microsoft designs stuff in their quest to dominate everything, while being good at nothing.
"Upgrading" a hard drive is a freakin' joke in XP. With a Mac, you can borrow your friend's Mac-loaded hard drive and it boots up. No configuring, no restarts, nothing. You get a working desktop in about 30 seconds. The last time I took an XP hard drive out of one machine and dropped it into another, I didn't have working video card, network card or audio for a couple hours and about 10 reboots.
You can go on about "propietary" this and that, but the fact remains that this is a much easier way to perform upgrades.
This Christmas, I tried to hook it up to either my mom's Dell laptop or my brother's HP desktop. Neither one had drivers for it, neither one could find any drivers for it when I let it do whatever wizard-thing it tried to do. I finally had to find them online myself, download them, run the program to install them *twice*, and then it would finally recognize my camera.
The odd thing is, I think I've hooked my camera up to my mom's laptop before with no problems. But since then it's had a couple viruses and a couple reformats, so I guess whatever drivers it had got lost along the way. That's also not an issue on my Mac.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I'm seeing File/Edit/View in the very first version of Mac OS.
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/3.html