Linux users have been posting this stuff for 10 years. Maybe in another 10 years, it will come true, and in stopped-clock fashion, they can claim they were right all along.
Meanwhile, back in reality, Solaris and PC-BSD (whatever that is) ain't exactly threating Microsoft, and a new release of Windows can only strength MS's market position rather than weaken it.
It worked fine for Apple. Customers and developers were happy and the problem is solved.
Apple wasn't trying to solve security problems with existing apps, and they didn't.
I think your error is that you are thinking "Classic==XP, just copy Apple". Well, Classic MacOS is nothing like XP. MacOS was a ridiclous obsolete system that Apple gave up on 12 years beforehand when they started the "Pink" project. XP is a fully modern OS (with some implementation issues, sure), that does 99% of what Vista does. Even the fancy transparancy libraries are being backported to XP.
Rather than Classic, virtualizing XP on Vista would be like virtualizing MacOS X 10.2 on top of 10.4. It would be a load of complex bloat with twice the security issues and no "incentive" for the user not to run the virutal environment.
. The point is to provide an incentive short of breaking them, one that will allow users to run as a non-admin user but also bring developers around.
IBM has had a "crap" consumer ThinkPad line for at least 10 years, and the R-Series is just another in that line -- it's just some generic model with a few thinkpad touches.
Re:Gotta wonder how IBM feels about this...
on
Lenovo To Shun Linux
·
· Score: 1
IBM never seriously pushed Linux on their desktop computers. There was one Linux ThinkPad model (cancelled several years ago, IIRC), and no desktops. Sure, you could pay their consultants to support Linux, but the PC group wasn't pushing it. It's pretty clear that IBM felt Linux was only useful for servers and workstations.
For all the advertising noise IBM made about Linux, HP actually has more comprehensive machine support, offering Linux on everything from laptops to desktops to Superdome servers.
No Electronic Theft Act. I guess it's OK for the US Congress to call copyright infringment "theft", but it will predictably get your ass flamed off on slashdot.
Generally when people use the word "theft", what they really mean is "I think infringment is as bad as actual theft", which is just an opinion that's not worht arguing about.
(And thanks to the NET Act, copyright infringment is a more serious crime than actual larceny.)
So? It's already been demonstrated that the vast majority of the market doesn't think OS X is worth the premium that's charged. "It's cheap for a Mac" pretty much makes my point that it's not cheap.
Even the OpenGL games run slower on the Mac. Apparently it's because Apple optimized the drivers for the desktop aqua effects rather than blasting out the videogame polygons.
??? The G4 Mac Mini did not sell well. I've heard it argued that because it was intended as a price leader and it succeeded in selling a lot of iMacs.
The Intel Mini looks more attractive spec-wise, but it's also basically twice the price of similar PCs (ignoring the formfactor).
[And no, I don't feel like arguing the point, so if you wanna believe the Mini is a fabulous bargin, you just go right ahead and don't bother rigging up some dell price comparison.]
Which is correct. If you change settings in some app, it should be local to your profile, not global. The main problem is apps writing to HKLM rather than HKCU.
It also allowed insecure apps to run within a single user's space, thus restricting them.
That's not true. Classic is setuid root -- you have more rights under classic than you do in the regular shell (for example, you can open privledged tcp ports and certain file permissions are ignored).
People will prefer native apps so companies would be motivated to change,
A XP app isn't any less "native" than a Vista app, so there is really no incentive. These companies have had 13 years to fix these stupid permission issues, and it hasn't happened because they keep working as Administrator. Virtualizing XP just gives them another 13 years to ignore the root problem -- all while leaving all the old security holes on the system. Spamware don't care if your OS is virtualized or not.
I'll agree that on Planet Ideal, all software would be up-to-date and well-designed, but here on Planet Reality, the Vista approach seems reasonable -- it's more secure, it's compatible, and there's an incentive for people to fix their apps short of busting them.
other than what they have been trying to do for years: increase marketshare.
Yeah, maybe when they aren't busy counting their record profits, they worry about increasing marketshare. A little bit maybe.
When Apple releases a Pentium-D stripper similar to the developer box they loaned out, then it might be plausible they are concerned about marketshare. Otherwise it's clear that they are maximizing their own profits over those of 3rd party Mac developers (which is fine but we should state what is really going on).
Of course, you left out the difficult part where you tell us how you will convince devs to not use DirectX. They certainly like it, so it must provide some advantage to them (lower costs, faster time to market, etc).
Now with even John Carmack singing the praises of MS's "XNA" XBox360 stuff, OpenGL seems headed back to the workstation market.
That group is totally out of Apple's reach. However, there are people who want to spend $800 on a computer and not end up with a MacMini with Intel Extreme Graphics.
Well, the average "Macs Have Games" post brags about 2-3 year old stuff like Unreal Tournament 2004, so I can't really blame the publishers for charging full price for old titles. It's not like there's an abundance of new titles drawing peoples attention.
Note that the price disparity also exists for mainstream programs like MS Office. Mac users are not price sensitive.
First thing Apple could do to improve the gaming situation is to sell an affordable Minitower computer with a accessible PCI-e slot, just like every other PC manufacturer on the planet.
Of course that would never happed because it would undercut all of their high-margin botique formfactors, damage the brand, etc etc etc. Style Nerds have more money than gamers.
I knew someone would bring that up. Yes, Classic adequately solved the compatibility issue. However it did not resolve the inherit insecurity of the old MacOS, which is today's topic.
Of course MS could just virtualize XP on top of Vista, but that does nothing to fix the underlying problems with applications expecting admin rights. Instead it just carries all of XP's baggage forward for basically forever (unlike Apple who dropped Classic after 5 years without complaints from their small customerbase.)
Until Microsoft finally stands up to its lazy, demanding users and says "enough is enough! take your 8-year-old binary image and shove it!"
Considering there's only a few million Windows applications, that action would likely crash the world economy. Or at least prevent large swaths of the market from ever upgrading.
Apple has a small and highly loyal group of users, so their upgrade policy works for that ecosystem. But it's also a huge self-limiter on their marketshare, because they throw old users overboard all the time, and no corporation wants to stay on their 2 year cycles.
Just to put it in perspective -- Because of the application investement, there's still a large number of OS/2 seats out there, and everyone knew that was dead 10 years ago.
The only thing those links show is that you're a ignormaous flamer that doesn't know how to use linebreaks. And that you managed to hook a "microsoftie" with your low-wait slashbot-style trolling. It's pretty pathetic that you are bragging about that little exchange, because it shows you in an extremely poor light.
SYSTEM is probably closer to the Unix Superuser, but it still not quite as all-powerful. IIRC, it can impersonate other users, but it's still restricted by ACLs.
And it sounds like that SYSTEM shortcut was a screwup in Vista installer, becuser there wouldn't be an normal way to create such a file.
Another thing is surprising: how can you do privilege escalation without entering your password/authentification of any kind? How is it more secure if there is no user entry? It's just like a sudoers file with the "NOPASSWD" directive on your user;
Perhaps someone can correct me, but my impression is that it did ask you for a password if you were a normal user. But as an Administrator, it just prompts yes/no.
So this would be more like logging into Unix as "root" and rather than just ignoring permissions, the system would prompt you if you wanted to break them.
Well, Apple required everyone to rebuild their applications for OS X, and when they did so, they fixed all the stupid single-user assumptions. Which is great so long as your apps were ported to OS X.
Windows, on the other hand, has hundreds of thousands of apps that expect to be administrator. The software companies don't want to fix them, and Microsoft doesn't want to break them.
So MS defined a middle ground -- annoying prompts which you can't get rid of. Since there isn't a special security level which hides the prompts. presumably people will complain to the software authors and the software authors will fix the apps. And if they don't fix the apps, at least the programs will still run.
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Linux users have been posting this stuff for 10 years. Maybe in another 10 years, it will come true, and in stopped-clock fashion, they can claim they were right all along.
Meanwhile, back in reality, Solaris and PC-BSD (whatever that is) ain't exactly threating Microsoft, and a new release of Windows can only strength MS's market position rather than weaken it.
It worked fine for Apple. Customers and developers were happy and the problem is solved.
Apple wasn't trying to solve security problems with existing apps, and they didn't.
I think your error is that you are thinking "Classic==XP, just copy Apple". Well, Classic MacOS is nothing like XP. MacOS was a ridiclous obsolete system that Apple gave up on 12 years beforehand when they started the "Pink" project. XP is a fully modern OS (with some implementation issues, sure), that does 99% of what Vista does. Even the fancy transparancy libraries are being backported to XP.
Rather than Classic, virtualizing XP on Vista would be like virtualizing MacOS X 10.2 on top of 10.4. It would be a load of complex bloat with twice the security issues and no "incentive" for the user not to run the virutal environment.
. The point is to provide an incentive short of breaking them, one that will allow users to run as a non-admin user but also bring developers around.
How does the Vista security prompts not do this?
IBM has had a "crap" consumer ThinkPad line for at least 10 years, and the R-Series is just another in that line -- it's just some generic model with a few thinkpad touches.
IBM never seriously pushed Linux on their desktop computers. There was one Linux ThinkPad model (cancelled several years ago, IIRC), and no desktops. Sure, you could pay their consultants to support Linux, but the PC group wasn't pushing it. It's pretty clear that IBM felt Linux was only useful for servers and workstations.
For all the advertising noise IBM made about Linux, HP actually has more comprehensive machine support, offering Linux on everything from laptops to desktops to Superdome servers.
No Electronic Theft Act. I guess it's OK for the US Congress to call copyright infringment "theft", but it will predictably get your ass flamed off on slashdot.
Generally when people use the word "theft", what they really mean is "I think infringment is as bad as actual theft", which is just an opinion that's not worht arguing about.
(And thanks to the NET Act, copyright infringment is a more serious crime than actual larceny.)
lah blah blah OSblah [apple.com]
So? It's already been demonstrated that the vast majority of the market doesn't think OS X is worth the premium that's charged. "It's cheap for a Mac" pretty much makes my point that it's not cheap.
Aspyr's doing it for love, not money. If they fold, that's a big chunk of games that you just will never see on OS X.
Even the OpenGL games run slower on the Mac. Apparently it's because Apple optimized the drivers for the desktop aqua effects rather than blasting out the videogame polygons.
??? The G4 Mac Mini did not sell well. I've heard it argued that because it was intended as a price leader and it succeeded in selling a lot of iMacs.
The Intel Mini looks more attractive spec-wise, but it's also basically twice the price of similar PCs (ignoring the formfactor).
[And no, I don't feel like arguing the point, so if you wanna believe the Mini is a fabulous bargin, you just go right ahead and don't bother rigging up some dell price comparison.]
Which is correct. If you change settings in some app, it should be local to your profile, not global. The main problem is apps writing to HKLM rather than HKCU.
It also allowed insecure apps to run within a single user's space, thus restricting them.
That's not true. Classic is setuid root -- you have more rights under classic than you do in the regular shell (for example, you can open privledged tcp ports and certain file permissions are ignored).
People will prefer native apps so companies would be motivated to change,
A XP app isn't any less "native" than a Vista app, so there is really no incentive. These companies have had 13 years to fix these stupid permission issues, and it hasn't happened because they keep working as Administrator. Virtualizing XP just gives them another 13 years to ignore the root problem -- all while leaving all the old security holes on the system. Spamware don't care if your OS is virtualized or not.
I'll agree that on Planet Ideal, all software would be up-to-date and well-designed, but here on Planet Reality, the Vista approach seems reasonable -- it's more secure, it's compatible, and there's an incentive for people to fix their apps short of busting them.
other than what they have been trying to do for years: increase marketshare.
Yeah, maybe when they aren't busy counting their record profits, they worry about increasing marketshare. A little bit maybe.
When Apple releases a Pentium-D stripper similar to the developer box they loaned out, then it might be plausible they are concerned about marketshare. Otherwise it's clear that they are maximizing their own profits over those of 3rd party Mac developers (which is fine but we should state what is really going on).
Of course, you left out the difficult part where you tell us how you will convince devs to not use DirectX. They certainly like it, so it must provide some advantage to them (lower costs, faster time to market, etc).
Now with even John Carmack singing the praises of MS's "XNA" XBox360 stuff, OpenGL seems headed back to the workstation market.
That group is totally out of Apple's reach. However, there are people who want to spend $800 on a computer and not end up with a MacMini with Intel Extreme Graphics.
Well, the average "Macs Have Games" post brags about 2-3 year old stuff like Unreal Tournament 2004, so I can't really blame the publishers for charging full price for old titles. It's not like there's an abundance of new titles drawing peoples attention.
Note that the price disparity also exists for mainstream programs like MS Office. Mac users are not price sensitive.
First thing Apple could do to improve the gaming situation is to sell an affordable Minitower computer with a accessible PCI-e slot, just like every other PC manufacturer on the planet.
Of course that would never happed because it would undercut all of their high-margin botique formfactors, damage the brand, etc etc etc. Style Nerds have more money than gamers.
Clarification: Legacy security issues with Windows is today's topic, not MacOS. Oops.
I knew someone would bring that up. Yes, Classic adequately solved the compatibility issue. However it did not resolve the inherit insecurity of the old MacOS, which is today's topic.
Of course MS could just virtualize XP on top of Vista, but that does nothing to fix the underlying problems with applications expecting admin rights. Instead it just carries all of XP's baggage forward for basically forever (unlike Apple who dropped Classic after 5 years without complaints from their small customerbase.)
RedHat gives away their software and sells support agreements, and AFAICT, there's no SLA. You get patches and maybe 1 phone call and that's it.
Until Microsoft finally stands up to its lazy, demanding users and says "enough is enough! take your 8-year-old binary image and shove it!"
Considering there's only a few million Windows applications, that action would likely crash the world economy. Or at least prevent large swaths of the market from ever upgrading.
Apple has a small and highly loyal group of users, so their upgrade policy works for that ecosystem. But it's also a huge self-limiter on their marketshare, because they throw old users overboard all the time, and no corporation wants to stay on their 2 year cycles.
Just to put it in perspective -- Because of the application investement, there's still a large number of OS/2 seats out there, and everyone knew that was dead 10 years ago.
The only thing those links show is that you're a ignormaous flamer that doesn't know how to use linebreaks. And that you managed to hook a "microsoftie" with your low-wait slashbot-style trolling. It's pretty pathetic that you are bragging about that little exchange, because it shows you in an extremely poor light.
SYSTEM is probably closer to the Unix Superuser, but it still not quite as all-powerful. IIRC, it can impersonate other users, but it's still restricted by ACLs.
And it sounds like that SYSTEM shortcut was a screwup in Vista installer, becuser there wouldn't be an normal way to create such a file.
Apparently they do this, see "File System and Registry Virtualization":u rity/uacppr.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/sec
(Actually, the whole document is interesting if you want the PR overview of teh security changes.)
Another thing is surprising: how can you do privilege escalation without entering your password/authentification of any kind? How is it more secure if there is no user entry? It's just like a sudoers file with the "NOPASSWD" directive on your user;
Perhaps someone can correct me, but my impression is that it did ask you for a password if you were a normal user. But as an Administrator, it just prompts yes/no.
So this would be more like logging into Unix as "root" and rather than just ignoring permissions, the system would prompt you if you wanted to break them.
Well, Apple required everyone to rebuild their applications for OS X, and when they did so, they fixed all the stupid single-user assumptions. Which is great so long as your apps were ported to OS X.
Windows, on the other hand, has hundreds of thousands of apps that expect to be administrator. The software companies don't want to fix them, and Microsoft doesn't want to break them.
So MS defined a middle ground -- annoying prompts which you can't get rid of. Since there isn't a special security level which hides the prompts. presumably people will complain to the software authors and the software authors will fix the apps. And if they don't fix the apps, at least the programs will still run.