You are the only one making that argument because every one else...
Everyone else being you, because nobody else is involved in this thread at this point and I highly doubt anyone is bothering to read this far down. Bravo.
To keep this post short... well... less long... I'll just touch on what you got wrong in your reply.
Doesn't change that it's a strawman. Apple doesn't claim that Macs are invulnerable, I don't claim that they are.
I never claimed that you or Apple made that claim; I pointed out that many Mac users believe their Mac to be invulnerable.
_You_ are and then saying subsequently that they aren't. Strawman arguments prove nothing.
I am what? The only strawman here is your claim that I ever made any of the above claims.
That most malware has been developed to target Windows is a fact, not an opinion.
It's also one I've not argued against. What's your point?
You're conflating personal experience and sample size. I work in the domain of IT security and thus have a larger sample size than just family. Slashdot is irrelevant in any case.
You've asked all of those people if they believe Macs are invulnerable? You see, I encounter Mac users who mistakenly believe that all the time, so I know they're out there. How many people you've personally interviewed about this is your sample size, that might be why I'm conflating the two.
Well then I question your experience as most of the malware risks are clearly Windows targeted and thus Macs will generally pass through unscathed.
Maybe I instilled the common sense in them before I agreed to touch their computers and that's what kept me from having to restore their systems so often? I mean, really, not everyone has a you or a me they can call on to fix their shit; if Windows systems really needed to be restored every 2-3 months, and there are 1.25 billion of them in use today, there would be almost 28 million Windows PCs being restored every day. There's not, so I really and truly must question your experience. Likewise, you're welcome to question whatever you want, that doesn't make my words any less true.
Again, I'm not claiming that Macs are invulnerable, just less targeted, so less exploited.
Again, I'm not claiming you're claiming that. You tore down that argument I wasn't even making so easily, it's almost as though it were made of straw.
Using 15 year old data doesn't help your case as it is hopelessly out of date and immaterial to almost everyone anyway.
What 15 year old data did I use? I think we're both making the same point, here, though: what was the case 15 years ago is not relevant today. Windows hasn't been the insecure, infected within a minute of going online, mess that you make it out to be for wince 2002; yes, that's 15 years ago, but I'm referring to all of the time that has passed since then, up to and including today, which is certainly not 15 year old data.
Put another way, your point was valid 15 years ago, based on 15 year old data which, as you've said, is "immaterial to almost everyone anyway."
As most modern malware uses the Internet, supervision of what exactly is being accessed is a useful proxy. Backtracking to the malware agent once the traffic has been identified again shows that the vast majority is Windows based (exceptions made for the IP Camera & Firewall botnets that aren't Macs or Windows anyway).
For someone who supposedly works in security, you sure are and ignorant shit. And I mean that as a statement of fact based on my own observations, not as an insult.
When you say "supervision of what exactly is being accessed is a useful proxy", you clearly imply that you are monitoring for known threats. Since most known threats affect Windows (and for the good reasons on which we both agree), surely you see how confirmation bias might play a role in your perception, no? Just in case, I'll explain: if you're monitoring an IP address belonging to a C
My advice for the Windows malware refugees (like most of my family) is to practice some common sense.
That would have been good advice for them when they were on Windows, as well.
Do Mac owners believe in general that they are invulnerable? No, that's just another straw man you're setting up to knock down.
Of course, after meeting me, most Mac users no longer believe that; and those who still do deserve whatever they get. But I do get in arguments over whether Macs have malware issues at least half the time someone tries to tell me how much more safe and secure macOS is than Windows.
Your sample size appears to be your family and Slashdot. My sampling of Mac users is different, so we 're going to have to agree to disagree on this point.
Using a mac an iron clad gives no guarantee of malware invulnerability but renders much _fewer_ problems. I haven't been called to reinstall my relative's Macs every 2-3 months the way I was with windows, so there's that.
My experience shows that, had you instilled that computing common sense into them while they were still on Windows, you wouldn't have been reinstalling their Windows machines every 2-3 months, either. As someone who uses both platforms daily (I'm typing this on the aforementioned MacBook, which I use when I'm not at my desk -- and later, after a massive plate of turkey, I'll probably sit at the powerful Windows workstation in my office and work for an hour or two), I can tell you that the same common sense keeps both of them safe.
That might not have been the case in the first year after XP came out (longer, if you insisted on doing fresh installs from a pre-SP1 CD) and I seem to recall somewhat severe issues if you used IE or went online without at least closed NAT between you and the internet before that, but Windows hasn't been the swiss cheese you imply since the end of 2002. Of course, it's not like macOS was so clean in 2002, either.
If you only consider the types of malware listed in that list, there aren't alarmingly more for Windows than there are for macOS (pre-OSX). When you adjust for target size, the Mac took a disproportionate number of hits; I mean, Apple only held 5.8% of the market in 2006, and that was after OSX had been released and they had been had been blowing up for a while. I can't find market share numbers for OS 9, but
I'd say we should compare infection rates but, again, since most people just don't run any sort of antimalware on their Macs, well... we can't.
Contracting for a company that primarily writes Mac software, we do gather those statistics and I have a large enough sample size (over 300k) to say that no, most people do not run any sort of security software on their Macs. Call it a strawman all you want, but reality disagrees with you.
Re taking it on the chin: You used the expression in referring to Apple. That kind of makes people thing that you thought that when writing it.
I had to search through posts as I did not remember having said that. Yes, I'll fully stand behind my words; it's difficult to take it on the chin if you don't stick your chin out there. When you start getting all smug (which you have to admit Apple has been since OSX came out) and keep looking up, your chin just sticks out there, ready to catch a fist or a load of -- something -- whenever someone wants to throw one your way. Microsoft used to have the same attitude, also unwarranted, and took just as much crap for it.
Re Jobs the Angel/Cook the Devil: You do remember the Lisa, the Newton & the Mac Cube right? Jobs had his share of missteps.
So 3 failures you can quote over his entire career and he's as bad as Cook, who's been destroying product lines for 6 years solid? Cook has made more missteps in 6 years than Jobs did in his entire career; yes, Jobs
You also don't appear to have done any testing on a clean OS install without installing anything else.
Again, how much cleaner of an install do you get than a brand new machine?
No Dtrace logs showing what Spotlight is indexing?
No time when I have actual work to be doing. By the time I had time for that, I had money to replace the machine and put it in a secondary role where I just wouldn't care anymore.
SSD or HD?
2014 rMBP. You tell me.
My experience & that of the vast majority of former Windows & now Mac users is that while the threat of malware isn't zero it's sufficiently small that Apple's marketing is justifiable.
If it leads to Mac users blindly clicking because they believe they're invulnerable (and it does), it's hardly justifiable. It' every bit as dangerous as I said it is.
That won't stop nitpickers from pointing out that there are a few example of infected macs, but the difference between reinstalling relatives PCs every three months and them being trouble free since moving to Macs is flagrant.
Huh, funny, I'm the tech guy in my family and I can count on one hand how many systems I've had to clean malware off of in the past 2 decades on one hand. Aside from my wife and I, my mother is the only other Mac user in my family -- and only since I gifted her a MacBook 4 years ago. Did you ever stop to think, though, that more infections are detected on Windows than Mac because actual installations of antimalware applications on Macs are virtually nonexistent? You can't take detection rates on a platform where nearly everyone uses antimalware tools and a platform where almost nobody does and pretend that's a valid comparison of infection rates. It's not.
The truth is, we have absolutely no idea how many Macs are infected with this, that, or the other thing. Because nobody is looking.
Further, it's hardly a nitpick to point out that, despite the vast majority of Mac users thinking their systems are invulnerable because that's how they interpret the marketing behind them, they're just as vulnerable to the user installing trojans, adware, and all sort of other nasties as any other platform. Anything that might make the user think they don't need to take care in what they click is inexcusable.
I think you overestimate your influence if you think that Apple is "taking it on the chin" from people trying to make mountains out of minor bug mole-hills.
What makes you think I think they're taking it on the chin, or that the even should be? It should also be worth noting that the difference between a mountain and a molehill is relative; when Apple insists that the land is flat, the tallest hill you can see is, indeed, a mountain.
Hopefully 2018 will bring changes.
We can hope, that's what most of us who are speaking out are doing, but we have 5 years of solid history under Cook indicating that we should, perhaps, not hold our breath. Yes, I realize we've had Cook for 6 years; most of what came out in that first year, though, was formulated under Jobs' lead.
The first change we need to see from Apple is a change in leadership.
I'm not out to wage war against the iPhone X so I haven't been compiling a comprehensive list. You can find the examples pretty easily on YouTube, though; if you truly care to be enlightened, you must put forth some of the effort yourself. If I do it for you, it just comes of as an attack on Apple and, well, that's just silly.
I dare say the jerk who insists on talking (loudly, to be heard over the high noise floor) to their computer in an open office environment while people are trying to concentrate on their work is arrogant and self righteous, maybe even hostile. I mean, how self-important and holier-than-thou must one be to refuse to touch a damn keyboard? Unless you don't have use of your hands, in which case you probably didn't get hired for a position that requires lots of typing, so... point still stands.
You're describing a level of financial life planning that would be remarkable if found among the intellectually challenged.
If it worked out, perhaps; but the reality is much different. While the check might get bigger with each kid, so do the expenses, and those grow faster than the checks.
There are people who won't pay off their payday loans because it would cost them more in the short term.
Indeed, the same kind of people who would pop out another kid for $42/mo in WIC benefits for 5 years and maybe another $100/mo in TANF benefits for 6 months, without stopping to consider that the kid is gonna cost them an average of $1135/mo over the next 18 years.
If you're going to exclude Apple's own statements then how could I possibly have a citation?
Of course I'm going to exclude statements which have been categorically proven false. You could cite someone having actually tested it. Thus far, every time I've seen it tested, failed unlock, enter PIN, next unlock is successful, regardless of how similar or dissimilar the two people happen to be.
So instead apply some logic.
Yes. Let's.
If it weren't true then the cases of false positives would be rampant.
Only among users who happen to enter the correct PIN after a failed face unlock, thereby triggering the learning process.
And, well, guess what: it's pretty damn rampant among those users.
Sadly, I was 14 at the time and my dad made the ultimate decision to trash it.:(
WinSTon is good enough if I just want to relive old memories; which, honestly, is mostly what I'm interested in. If it's ever not, I can pick one up on eBay, anyway. My money's not as tight as it was 21 years ago LOL
What kills me is that Apple allows you to respond to a text on the lock screen. No security needed. By default.
Not that I did not know! I don't sift through my wife's messages, nor do I text from my iPad, so I'd likely never have learned that had you not just said it. That's... scary. I mean, I have the option with Android, as well, but it's certainly not the default, at least on any device I've ever owned.
I really want to like iOS, but...
there's a host of other interesting choices they made under the guise of idiot usability.
Well, you know why I don't.
I recognize that Android isn't a whole hell of a lot better, but if I have to choose between an insecure system that appears to work the way I want it to (Android) and an insecure system that tries to alter my behavior (iOS), I'm choosing the one that at least pretends to do what I want. My wife's the same way; it's just that iOS happens to work more like what she wants, so that's what she uses. Even she sees what's wrong with the last 3 generations of iPhone, though, and I haven't even been able to get her to look at an iPhone X.
I get what you're saying, that the old CPU design with today's fabs could probably make a CPU that requires even less than 15W.
Then you don't get what I'm saying. My point was more about software constantly bloating to the point that it needs all available CPU resources just to, in the user's eyes, sit idle. That 15 watt CPU is never going to sit at less than 10% utilization in Windows or macOS and you'll see a massive boost in OS responsiveness going from that CPU to its non-gimped 65-or-higher watt big brother. Your OS should not be CPU-intensive enough for that to ever be the case; and every other piece of mainstream software out there is just as guilty.
The reality is, in the comparison between say a 15 watt Ryzen mobile chip and its 65 watt desktop counterpart, at idle you can expect them both to consume next to nothing; but they're never truly at idle. Performance per watt, matching a Ryzen desktop chip to its mobile counterpart, is nearly identical -- close enough to make my point. The 65 watt desktop CPU will have roughly 4x the performance of its mobile counterpart; that is, when the mobile chip is pegged and drawing a full 15 watts, the desktop chip will be chilling at 25% an drawing just a hair more than that. And there's no reason what the user sees as an idle system should be using 10% of CPU (2.5% in the case of the desktop chip), but there it is. You've got 2 watts of idle power consumption and 1.3 watts (10% of the remaining 13 of 15 watts) of power consumption due to mostly unnecessary cruft running in the background of a clean install of macOS or Windows, even after letting indexing services and such settle down. Why?
Why does my OS need to perform 1.5 billion calculations per second when I'm giving it no input and asking it for no output? This isn't a "make CPUs faster while using less power" problem. And when my phone can go from 100% to 80% in 20 minutes with the screen off, it's not a display panel efficiency problem, either. It's a "make software more efficient" problem. Period.
P.S. -- I loved my ST 1040 and miss it dearly. It suffered a catastrophic failure of the floppy drive and I couldn't source a replacement part.
The FaceID debacle (if one wishes to call it that -- it may be a bit extreme of a term) might be what pushes them to finally implement a guest passcode; and Apple implementing it might be what triggers Android to do it. If that happens, an absolutely huge number of people will be thankful for FaceID, whether they know it or not, even if they don't have an iPhone X.
I do not, however, believe that it is indicative of anything other than engineering ROI calculations.
They could use the logic board from the 13" or 15" model, fill the remaining space with batteries, and hell, they run the CNC lathes that churn out the cases, they can produce 1 or 1,000,000 of those with the same exact unit cost. They might lose volume pricing on the retina displays, but they're well positioned to sell 17" laptops as a custom-order option and charge considerably higher prices for them. We'd still have a 17" option, ti would have insanely better battery life, and they could still make them profitable in any quantity; those of us who fit the niche that wants them would pay the premium for them and be willing to wait 2 weeks or longer for them to source the display and tool out the case.
I do believe you are correct, though. Someone did engineering ROI calculations and didn't take into account marketing. It may well turn out that Apple could sell a lot of Mac Pros to someone who wants a single-platform solution and a 17" laptop and that may well make it worthwhile to write off losses on 17" models as a marketing expense.
Of course, without the numbers to back up that assertion, that's just a wild-ass guess, but I have to believe there's some way they could have made it work.
They axed the XServe and 17" MBP just as OS X was becoming stable enough for the kind of work people would do on the XServe and 17" MBP. In other words, they killed them both just as they were set to blow up. A missed opportunity, IMO, but I'm fairly sure I'm preaching to the choir.
Android does have the concept of multiple users, and has for a couple major versions at least (I don't recall when I first saw it -- and I've never used it beyond testing it once to see how it functioned) but it really wouldn't help in this instance, anyway. Each user has their own set of accounts and their own storage, so I couldn't ask my wife to, for example, sign in to my phone with her PIN or passcode and check my gmail, as my gmail would be assigned to my user; she'd still need my PIN or passcode for that.
IMO, that make the feature nearly useless (thus why most people don't even seem to know it exists) on a phone, as very few people share a single smartphone, and those who do probably also share accounts. The only legitimate use case I see for this is a half-assed implementation of Kid Mode, and we already have Kid Mode, so... why implement this the way it was implemented?
I mean, I suppose I could give my wife a user account on my phone and set up my gmail and messages and whatnot on it that I might want her to have access to at times, but then I'm storing two copies of everything in already-limited storage and she still can't unlock the phone to change playlists in Pandora without triggering a logout due to multiple logins, as the app would be running under my user.
At least Android gives me that option, though. Where's Apple's implementation? I expect someone to posit that they don't have one because they havne't figured out how to do it right and I expect to agree with whoever says that, if only because I don't believe there is a "right" way to implement multiple user accounts on a phone.
A guest PIN/passcode which allows restricted access to only a subset of apps, features, data, and settings would be ideal on both platforms. Let's wait and see who implements it first. My bet? Neither of them, it would simply be too useful (and cut down on purchases made by kids who no longer have mommy's passcode).
Wake me up when we have that idealistic system. Until then, well, I'm just not the kind of person who'd choose to subject a child to the output of the system we currently have. It's bad enough that I have to deal with these people, why would I put someone else through that?
As a business owner, I'll do my part, but I'm but one drop in a bucket of millions.
I predicted this would be cracked with relative ease, but I had no idea it would crack itself. My prediction was based on FaceID using the exact same tech as Microsoft Hello, which was cracked within days of its release. I was more than a little surprised that FaceID was able to be cracked with only a partial mask, when Hello required a full mask. It could very well be that nobody tried the partial mask against Hello but, either way, this is truly disheartening as many people will rely on the feature as though it is actually secure.
The common defense, of course, is that "they trained it by entering the passcode." On its face, this seems a valid defense, but...
My wife asks me to do things on her phone all the time while she's driving, so she can keep her eyes on the road. I know her passcode so I can do these things, and FaceID tries to scan every time the screen is turned on. That means, intentional or not, if she had an iPhone X with FaceID enabled, I'd be training it to recognize my face every single time I unlocked it using the passcode. Eventually, we'd both be able to unlock it.
Since her and I look nothing alike, the phone would ostensibly unlock for anyone with facial features similar to hers or mine, in varied combinations; possibly even within a range between her facial features and mine. Since we look so different form each other, I would be less than surprised if the odds of a random match were way greater than 1:1,000,000, or even the 1:50,000 odds Apple claims for a random fingerprint match, on a device used in such a manner.
And I wouldn't think that usage pattern is too uncommon; most couples I know who are in healthy relationships ask each other to check messages and whatnot from time to time, which necessitates the sharing of passcodes.
The "learning" aspect of FaceID is its primary weakness. There are solutions, of course, and a proper implementation would apply them.
One possible solution would be a "guest" passcode, which does not trigger the learning mechanism. This could also lock out purchases and changes to certain settings. It would just be a good security measure, in general, regardless of FaceID. But, in the context of FaceID, it would all but solve the PIN/passcode "learning" weakness.
Doesn't do anything for kids or people with siblings, of course. Nor does it do anything for the fact that the 1:1,000,000 claim is explicitly limited to "random matching"; that is, if you pointed the phone at 1,000,000 random people, one of them would unlock it. If you point the phone at 5 people who look a lot like you, one of them will unlock it, as well, and we've seen that borne out in reality. I can take a picture of you as I'm stealing your phone and use it to find 5 people who look enough like you to likely be able to unlock it.
What I can't to is take a picture of you as I steal your phone and use it to find 5 people with similar fingerprints. The 1:50,000 odds are actually stringer than the 1:1,000,000 in this case, because there's no way around the randomness, other than a direct attack on the scanner itself. Of course, that's entirely possible and not all that difficult; but we've also seen that it's entirely possible and not all that difficult to attack FaceID, so the point is relatively moot, anyway.
I'd venture that it's easier to, say, walk down a busy city street with your victim's phone and photo and approach someone who looks similar enough to them and ask "have you seen the new iPhone yet?" as you hold it up to their face... than it is to find a clean enough print and reproduce it accurately enough to fool the fingerprint scanner. That's sad, here, is that the bar for fooling the fingerprint scanner was already too low. Apple must be trying to win a limbo competition with FaceID.
DERP. I jumped the gun on that reply. You were replying to serviscope_minor, not the AC above you. Damn/.'s broken nesting at this level and carry on. My apologies.
Something tells me your actual problem with me is that you do not want anyone who has a different opinion in the workplace.
Considering that the AC you're replying to just stood up to defend someone's right to voice their differing opinion in the workplace... I'd guess you probably couldn't be more off-base if you tried.
It's more like saying that when a caterpillar in Uganda farts, Bill Cosby rapes someone. That's a really dangerous path to go down, because it results in the caterpillar being punished and Cosby being allowed to keep racking up victims.
And you have no idea if it was consensual. As the AC above you pointed out, your coworker is presumably an adult and capable of reporting it herself if it was not. At the very least, you could, you know, ask her if it was consensual before reporting it; if it was, you'd be the one in the wrong for speaking up.
At least, that's one perspective. Another is that both her and the other coworker involved would be in trouble, given that it was consensual. Most companies have policies against sexual acts on premises, including at company-sponsored events and, unless you've made verified with the alleged victim that she was, in fact, being victimized, well... By reporting it, you're making her your victim, when she has to find another job over what may well have been a consensual act.
Of course, if your whole point it to ensure that company policy is enforced, you can drop the white knight facade and just admit that. Then, of course, you report what you saw with no regard for whether it may have been consensual: rules were broken and those who broke them must be punished, after all.
People who think and act like you have the (I'd like to believe unintended) effect of watering down real issues like rape and molestation in the workplace by pointing to anything even the slightest bit off-color and screaming that you see these major offenses in their place. By pointing at something as minor as a coworker putting their hand on another coworker's shoulder (a sign of trust) and screaming "rape" over it, you begin to give the impression that rape is nothing more than a touch on the shoulder and should be ignored as harmless, when the reality is anything but that.
Ask a victim of an actual sexual assault or rape if they appreciate you taking this overbearing position on their behalf. Before you do, though, I should warn you: you should be prepared to be less-than-politely asked to go to hell. It's really difficult to move on and have a healthy sexual relationship when there's always someone like you standing around, just waiting to tell us how raped we just got.
DISCLAIMER: The first three paragraph of the above post take on several contradictory points of view, in an attempt to illustrate how ridiculous those individual points of view actually are. If you want to know how we really feel about people like you, see the last two paragraphs.
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You are the only one making that argument because every one else...
Everyone else being you, because nobody else is involved in this thread at this point and I highly doubt anyone is bothering to read this far down. Bravo.
Doesn't change that it's a strawman. Apple doesn't claim that Macs are invulnerable, I don't claim that they are.
I never claimed that you or Apple made that claim; I pointed out that many Mac users believe their Mac to be invulnerable.
_You_ are and then saying subsequently that they aren't. Strawman arguments prove nothing.
I am what? The only strawman here is your claim that I ever made any of the above claims.
That most malware has been developed to target Windows is a fact, not an opinion.
It's also one I've not argued against. What's your point?
You're conflating personal experience and sample size. I work in the domain of IT security and thus have a larger sample size than just family. Slashdot is irrelevant in any case.
You've asked all of those people if they believe Macs are invulnerable? You see, I encounter Mac users who mistakenly believe that all the time, so I know they're out there. How many people you've personally interviewed about this is your sample size, that might be why I'm conflating the two.
Well then I question your experience as most of the malware risks are clearly Windows targeted and thus Macs will generally pass through unscathed.
Maybe I instilled the common sense in them before I agreed to touch their computers and that's what kept me from having to restore their systems so often? I mean, really, not everyone has a you or a me they can call on to fix their shit; if Windows systems really needed to be restored every 2-3 months, and there are 1.25 billion of them in use today, there would be almost 28 million Windows PCs being restored every day. There's not, so I really and truly must question your experience. Likewise, you're welcome to question whatever you want, that doesn't make my words any less true.
Again, I'm not claiming that Macs are invulnerable, just less targeted, so less exploited.
Again, I'm not claiming you're claiming that. You tore down that argument I wasn't even making so easily, it's almost as though it were made of straw.
Using 15 year old data doesn't help your case as it is hopelessly out of date and immaterial to almost everyone anyway.
What 15 year old data did I use? I think we're both making the same point, here, though: what was the case 15 years ago is not relevant today. Windows hasn't been the insecure, infected within a minute of going online, mess that you make it out to be for wince 2002; yes, that's 15 years ago, but I'm referring to all of the time that has passed since then, up to and including today, which is certainly not 15 year old data.
Put another way, your point was valid 15 years ago, based on 15 year old data which, as you've said, is "immaterial to almost everyone anyway."
As most modern malware uses the Internet, supervision of what exactly is being accessed is a useful proxy. Backtracking to the malware agent once the traffic has been identified again shows that the vast majority is Windows based (exceptions made for the IP Camera & Firewall botnets that aren't Macs or Windows anyway).
For someone who supposedly works in security, you sure are and ignorant shit. And I mean that as a statement of fact based on my own observations, not as an insult.
When you say "supervision of what exactly is being accessed is a useful proxy", you clearly imply that you are monitoring for known threats. Since most known threats affect Windows (and for the good reasons on which we both agree), surely you see how confirmation bias might play a role in your perception, no? Just in case, I'll explain: if you're monitoring an IP address belonging to a C
My advice for the Windows malware refugees (like most of my family) is to practice some common sense.
That would have been good advice for them when they were on Windows, as well.
Do Mac owners believe in general that they are invulnerable? No, that's just another straw man you're setting up to knock down.
Of course, after meeting me, most Mac users no longer believe that; and those who still do deserve whatever they get. But I do get in arguments over whether Macs have malware issues at least half the time someone tries to tell me how much more safe and secure macOS is than Windows.
Your sample size appears to be your family and Slashdot. My sampling of Mac users is different, so we 're going to have to agree to disagree on this point.
Using a mac an iron clad gives no guarantee of malware invulnerability but renders much _fewer_ problems. I haven't been called to reinstall my relative's Macs every 2-3 months the way I was with windows, so there's that.
My experience shows that, had you instilled that computing common sense into them while they were still on Windows, you wouldn't have been reinstalling their Windows machines every 2-3 months, either. As someone who uses both platforms daily (I'm typing this on the aforementioned MacBook, which I use when I'm not at my desk -- and later, after a massive plate of turkey, I'll probably sit at the powerful Windows workstation in my office and work for an hour or two), I can tell you that the same common sense keeps both of them safe.
That might not have been the case in the first year after XP came out (longer, if you insisted on doing fresh installs from a pre-SP1 CD) and I seem to recall somewhat severe issues if you used IE or went online without at least closed NAT between you and the internet before that, but Windows hasn't been the swiss cheese you imply since the end of 2002. Of course, it's not like macOS was so clean in 2002, either.
If you only consider the types of malware listed in that list, there aren't alarmingly more for Windows than there are for macOS (pre-OSX). When you adjust for target size, the Mac took a disproportionate number of hits; I mean, Apple only held 5.8% of the market in 2006, and that was after OSX had been released and they had been had been blowing up for a while. I can't find market share numbers for OS 9, but
I'd say we should compare infection rates but, again, since most people just don't run any sort of antimalware on their Macs, well... we can't.
Contracting for a company that primarily writes Mac software, we do gather those statistics and I have a large enough sample size (over 300k) to say that no, most people do not run any sort of security software on their Macs. Call it a strawman all you want, but reality disagrees with you.
Re taking it on the chin: You used the expression in referring to Apple. That kind of makes people thing that you thought that when writing it.
I had to search through posts as I did not remember having said that. Yes, I'll fully stand behind my words; it's difficult to take it on the chin if you don't stick your chin out there. When you start getting all smug (which you have to admit Apple has been since OSX came out) and keep looking up, your chin just sticks out there, ready to catch a fist or a load of -- something -- whenever someone wants to throw one your way. Microsoft used to have the same attitude, also unwarranted, and took just as much crap for it.
Re Jobs the Angel/Cook the Devil: You do remember the Lisa, the Newton & the Mac Cube right? Jobs had his share of missteps.
So 3 failures you can quote over his entire career and he's as bad as Cook, who's been destroying product lines for 6 years solid? Cook has made more missteps in 6 years than Jobs did in his entire career; yes, Jobs
You also don't appear to have done any testing on a clean OS install without installing anything else.
Again, how much cleaner of an install do you get than a brand new machine?
No Dtrace logs showing what Spotlight is indexing?
No time when I have actual work to be doing. By the time I had time for that, I had money to replace the machine and put it in a secondary role where I just wouldn't care anymore.
SSD or HD?
2014 rMBP. You tell me.
My experience & that of the vast majority of former Windows & now Mac users is that while the threat of malware isn't zero it's sufficiently small that Apple's marketing is justifiable.
If it leads to Mac users blindly clicking because they believe they're invulnerable (and it does), it's hardly justifiable. It' every bit as dangerous as I said it is.
That won't stop nitpickers from pointing out that there are a few example of infected macs, but the difference between reinstalling relatives PCs every three months and them being trouble free since moving to Macs is flagrant.
Huh, funny, I'm the tech guy in my family and I can count on one hand how many systems I've had to clean malware off of in the past 2 decades on one hand. Aside from my wife and I, my mother is the only other Mac user in my family -- and only since I gifted her a MacBook 4 years ago. Did you ever stop to think, though, that more infections are detected on Windows than Mac because actual installations of antimalware applications on Macs are virtually nonexistent? You can't take detection rates on a platform where nearly everyone uses antimalware tools and a platform where almost nobody does and pretend that's a valid comparison of infection rates. It's not.
The truth is, we have absolutely no idea how many Macs are infected with this, that, or the other thing. Because nobody is looking.
Further, it's hardly a nitpick to point out that, despite the vast majority of Mac users thinking their systems are invulnerable because that's how they interpret the marketing behind them, they're just as vulnerable to the user installing trojans, adware, and all sort of other nasties as any other platform. Anything that might make the user think they don't need to take care in what they click is inexcusable.
I think you overestimate your influence if you think that Apple is "taking it on the chin" from people trying to make mountains out of minor bug mole-hills.
What makes you think I think they're taking it on the chin, or that the even should be? It should also be worth noting that the difference between a mountain and a molehill is relative; when Apple insists that the land is flat, the tallest hill you can see is, indeed, a mountain.
Hopefully 2018 will bring changes.
We can hope, that's what most of us who are speaking out are doing, but we have 5 years of solid history under Cook indicating that we should, perhaps, not hold our breath. Yes, I realize we've had Cook for 6 years; most of what came out in that first year, though, was formulated under Jobs' lead.
The first change we need to see from Apple is a change in leadership.
I'm not out to wage war against the iPhone X so I haven't been compiling a comprehensive list. You can find the examples pretty easily on YouTube, though; if you truly care to be enlightened, you must put forth some of the effort yourself. If I do it for you, it just comes of as an attack on Apple and, well, that's just silly.
I dare say the jerk who insists on talking (loudly, to be heard over the high noise floor) to their computer in an open office environment while people are trying to concentrate on their work is arrogant and self righteous, maybe even hostile. I mean, how self-important and holier-than-thou must one be to refuse to touch a damn keyboard? Unless you don't have use of your hands, in which case you probably didn't get hired for a position that requires lots of typing, so... point still stands.
An arm for the ARM and a leg for the logo?
You're describing a level of financial life planning that would be remarkable if found among the intellectually challenged.
If it worked out, perhaps; but the reality is much different. While the check might get bigger with each kid, so do the expenses, and those grow faster than the checks.
There are people who won't pay off their payday loans because it would cost them more in the short term.
Indeed, the same kind of people who would pop out another kid for $42/mo in WIC benefits for 5 years and maybe another $100/mo in TANF benefits for 6 months, without stopping to consider that the kid is gonna cost them an average of $1135/mo over the next 18 years.
Because you can only get sterilized once, but the checks grow with each kid.
Oh wow, nice catch. That was actually unintentional.
If you're going to exclude Apple's own statements then how could I possibly have a citation?
Of course I'm going to exclude statements which have been categorically proven false. You could cite someone having actually tested it. Thus far, every time I've seen it tested, failed unlock, enter PIN, next unlock is successful, regardless of how similar or dissimilar the two people happen to be.
So instead apply some logic.
Yes. Let's.
If it weren't true then the cases of false positives would be rampant.
Only among users who happen to enter the correct PIN after a failed face unlock, thereby triggering the learning process.
And, well, guess what: it's pretty damn rampant among those users.
Sadly, I was 14 at the time and my dad made the ultimate decision to trash it. :(
WinSTon is good enough if I just want to relive old memories; which, honestly, is mostly what I'm interested in. If it's ever not, I can pick one up on eBay, anyway. My money's not as tight as it was 21 years ago LOL
What kills me is that Apple allows you to respond to a text on the lock screen. No security needed. By default.
Not that I did not know! I don't sift through my wife's messages, nor do I text from my iPad, so I'd likely never have learned that had you not just said it. That's... scary. I mean, I have the option with Android, as well, but it's certainly not the default, at least on any device I've ever owned.
I really want to like iOS, but...
there's a host of other interesting choices they made under the guise of idiot usability.
Well, you know why I don't.
I recognize that Android isn't a whole hell of a lot better, but if I have to choose between an insecure system that appears to work the way I want it to (Android) and an insecure system that tries to alter my behavior (iOS), I'm choosing the one that at least pretends to do what I want. My wife's the same way; it's just that iOS happens to work more like what she wants, so that's what she uses. Even she sees what's wrong with the last 3 generations of iPhone, though, and I haven't even been able to get her to look at an iPhone X.
I get what you're saying, that the old CPU design with today's fabs could probably make a CPU that requires even less than 15W.
Then you don't get what I'm saying. My point was more about software constantly bloating to the point that it needs all available CPU resources just to, in the user's eyes, sit idle. That 15 watt CPU is never going to sit at less than 10% utilization in Windows or macOS and you'll see a massive boost in OS responsiveness going from that CPU to its non-gimped 65-or-higher watt big brother. Your OS should not be CPU-intensive enough for that to ever be the case; and every other piece of mainstream software out there is just as guilty.
The reality is, in the comparison between say a 15 watt Ryzen mobile chip and its 65 watt desktop counterpart, at idle you can expect them both to consume next to nothing; but they're never truly at idle. Performance per watt, matching a Ryzen desktop chip to its mobile counterpart, is nearly identical -- close enough to make my point. The 65 watt desktop CPU will have roughly 4x the performance of its mobile counterpart; that is, when the mobile chip is pegged and drawing a full 15 watts, the desktop chip will be chilling at 25% an drawing just a hair more than that. And there's no reason what the user sees as an idle system should be using 10% of CPU (2.5% in the case of the desktop chip), but there it is. You've got 2 watts of idle power consumption and 1.3 watts (10% of the remaining 13 of 15 watts) of power consumption due to mostly unnecessary cruft running in the background of a clean install of macOS or Windows, even after letting indexing services and such settle down. Why?
Why does my OS need to perform 1.5 billion calculations per second when I'm giving it no input and asking it for no output? This isn't a "make CPUs faster while using less power" problem. And when my phone can go from 100% to 80% in 20 minutes with the screen off, it's not a display panel efficiency problem, either. It's a "make software more efficient" problem. Period.
P.S. -- I loved my ST 1040 and miss it dearly. It suffered a catastrophic failure of the floppy drive and I couldn't source a replacement part.
The FaceID debacle (if one wishes to call it that -- it may be a bit extreme of a term) might be what pushes them to finally implement a guest passcode; and Apple implementing it might be what triggers Android to do it. If that happens, an absolutely huge number of people will be thankful for FaceID, whether they know it or not, even if they don't have an iPhone X.
We can hope and dream, right?
I do not, however, believe that it is indicative of anything other than engineering ROI calculations.
They could use the logic board from the 13" or 15" model, fill the remaining space with batteries, and hell, they run the CNC lathes that churn out the cases, they can produce 1 or 1,000,000 of those with the same exact unit cost. They might lose volume pricing on the retina displays, but they're well positioned to sell 17" laptops as a custom-order option and charge considerably higher prices for them. We'd still have a 17" option, ti would have insanely better battery life, and they could still make them profitable in any quantity; those of us who fit the niche that wants them would pay the premium for them and be willing to wait 2 weeks or longer for them to source the display and tool out the case.
I do believe you are correct, though. Someone did engineering ROI calculations and didn't take into account marketing. It may well turn out that Apple could sell a lot of Mac Pros to someone who wants a single-platform solution and a 17" laptop and that may well make it worthwhile to write off losses on 17" models as a marketing expense.
Of course, without the numbers to back up that assertion, that's just a wild-ass guess, but I have to believe there's some way they could have made it work.
They axed the XServe and 17" MBP just as OS X was becoming stable enough for the kind of work people would do on the XServe and 17" MBP. In other words, they killed them both just as they were set to blow up. A missed opportunity, IMO, but I'm fairly sure I'm preaching to the choir.
Android does have the concept of multiple users, and has for a couple major versions at least (I don't recall when I first saw it -- and I've never used it beyond testing it once to see how it functioned) but it really wouldn't help in this instance, anyway. Each user has their own set of accounts and their own storage, so I couldn't ask my wife to, for example, sign in to my phone with her PIN or passcode and check my gmail, as my gmail would be assigned to my user; she'd still need my PIN or passcode for that.
IMO, that make the feature nearly useless (thus why most people don't even seem to know it exists) on a phone, as very few people share a single smartphone, and those who do probably also share accounts. The only legitimate use case I see for this is a half-assed implementation of Kid Mode, and we already have Kid Mode, so... why implement this the way it was implemented?
I mean, I suppose I could give my wife a user account on my phone and set up my gmail and messages and whatnot on it that I might want her to have access to at times, but then I'm storing two copies of everything in already-limited storage and she still can't unlock the phone to change playlists in Pandora without triggering a logout due to multiple logins, as the app would be running under my user.
At least Android gives me that option, though. Where's Apple's implementation? I expect someone to posit that they don't have one because they havne't figured out how to do it right and I expect to agree with whoever says that, if only because I don't believe there is a "right" way to implement multiple user accounts on a phone.
A guest PIN/passcode which allows restricted access to only a subset of apps, features, data, and settings would be ideal on both platforms. Let's wait and see who implements it first. My bet? Neither of them, it would simply be too useful (and cut down on purchases made by kids who no longer have mommy's passcode).
This is true only if you are a close match to begin with.
Got a cation for this, other than the same marketing wank that incorrectly claimed this would only be a problem for twins and kids under 13?
Wake me up when we have that idealistic system. Until then, well, I'm just not the kind of person who'd choose to subject a child to the output of the system we currently have. It's bad enough that I have to deal with these people, why would I put someone else through that?
As a business owner, I'll do my part, but I'm but one drop in a bucket of millions.
I predicted this would be cracked with relative ease, but I had no idea it would crack itself. My prediction was based on FaceID using the exact same tech as Microsoft Hello, which was cracked within days of its release. I was more than a little surprised that FaceID was able to be cracked with only a partial mask, when Hello required a full mask. It could very well be that nobody tried the partial mask against Hello but, either way, this is truly disheartening as many people will rely on the feature as though it is actually secure.
The common defense, of course, is that "they trained it by entering the passcode." On its face, this seems a valid defense, but...
My wife asks me to do things on her phone all the time while she's driving, so she can keep her eyes on the road. I know her passcode so I can do these things, and FaceID tries to scan every time the screen is turned on. That means, intentional or not, if she had an iPhone X with FaceID enabled, I'd be training it to recognize my face every single time I unlocked it using the passcode. Eventually, we'd both be able to unlock it.
Since her and I look nothing alike, the phone would ostensibly unlock for anyone with facial features similar to hers or mine, in varied combinations; possibly even within a range between her facial features and mine. Since we look so different form each other, I would be less than surprised if the odds of a random match were way greater than 1:1,000,000, or even the 1:50,000 odds Apple claims for a random fingerprint match, on a device used in such a manner.
And I wouldn't think that usage pattern is too uncommon; most couples I know who are in healthy relationships ask each other to check messages and whatnot from time to time, which necessitates the sharing of passcodes.
The "learning" aspect of FaceID is its primary weakness. There are solutions, of course, and a proper implementation would apply them.
One possible solution would be a "guest" passcode, which does not trigger the learning mechanism. This could also lock out purchases and changes to certain settings. It would just be a good security measure, in general, regardless of FaceID. But, in the context of FaceID, it would all but solve the PIN/passcode "learning" weakness.
Doesn't do anything for kids or people with siblings, of course. Nor does it do anything for the fact that the 1:1,000,000 claim is explicitly limited to "random matching"; that is, if you pointed the phone at 1,000,000 random people, one of them would unlock it. If you point the phone at 5 people who look a lot like you, one of them will unlock it, as well, and we've seen that borne out in reality. I can take a picture of you as I'm stealing your phone and use it to find 5 people who look enough like you to likely be able to unlock it.
What I can't to is take a picture of you as I steal your phone and use it to find 5 people with similar fingerprints. The 1:50,000 odds are actually stringer than the 1:1,000,000 in this case, because there's no way around the randomness, other than a direct attack on the scanner itself. Of course, that's entirely possible and not all that difficult; but we've also seen that it's entirely possible and not all that difficult to attack FaceID, so the point is relatively moot, anyway.
I'd venture that it's easier to, say, walk down a busy city street with your victim's phone and photo and approach someone who looks similar enough to them and ask "have you seen the new iPhone yet?" as you hold it up to their face... than it is to find a clean enough print and reproduce it accurately enough to fool the fingerprint scanner. That's sad, here, is that the bar for fooling the fingerprint scanner was already too low. Apple must be trying to win a limbo competition with FaceID.
My attempts at humor get modded troll, my attempts at trolling get modded funny... I swear, some of the moderators on this site are on drugs.
And I wish they'd share.
DERP. I jumped the gun on that reply. You were replying to serviscope_minor, not the AC above you. Damn /.'s broken nesting at this level and carry on. My apologies.
Something tells me your actual problem with me is that you do not want anyone who has a different opinion in the workplace.
Considering that the AC you're replying to just stood up to defend someone's right to voice their differing opinion in the workplace... I'd guess you probably couldn't be more off-base if you tried.
It's more like saying that when a caterpillar in Uganda farts, Bill Cosby rapes someone. That's a really dangerous path to go down, because it results in the caterpillar being punished and Cosby being allowed to keep racking up victims.
And you have no idea if it was consensual. As the AC above you pointed out, your coworker is presumably an adult and capable of reporting it herself if it was not. At the very least, you could, you know, ask her if it was consensual before reporting it; if it was, you'd be the one in the wrong for speaking up.
At least, that's one perspective. Another is that both her and the other coworker involved would be in trouble, given that it was consensual. Most companies have policies against sexual acts on premises, including at company-sponsored events and, unless you've made verified with the alleged victim that she was, in fact, being victimized, well... By reporting it, you're making her your victim, when she has to find another job over what may well have been a consensual act.
Of course, if your whole point it to ensure that company policy is enforced, you can drop the white knight facade and just admit that. Then, of course, you report what you saw with no regard for whether it may have been consensual: rules were broken and those who broke them must be punished, after all.
People who think and act like you have the (I'd like to believe unintended) effect of watering down real issues like rape and molestation in the workplace by pointing to anything even the slightest bit off-color and screaming that you see these major offenses in their place. By pointing at something as minor as a coworker putting their hand on another coworker's shoulder (a sign of trust) and screaming "rape" over it, you begin to give the impression that rape is nothing more than a touch on the shoulder and should be ignored as harmless, when the reality is anything but that.
Ask a victim of an actual sexual assault or rape if they appreciate you taking this overbearing position on their behalf. Before you do, though, I should warn you: you should be prepared to be less-than-politely asked to go to hell. It's really difficult to move on and have a healthy sexual relationship when there's always someone like you standing around, just waiting to tell us how raped we just got.
DISCLAIMER: The first three paragraph of the above post take on several contradictory points of view, in an attempt to illustrate how ridiculous those individual points of view actually are. If you want to know how we really feel about people like you, see the last two paragraphs.