Posted on 08/12/2008 6:01:43 AM PDT by BRK
Apple has taken the place of Microsoft for disclosing more vulnerabilities than any other vendor, according to an IBM security report. The company rose from second place in 2007 to take the top spot away from Microsoft, which had fallen into third place behind open source content management system Joomla.
(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...
Microsoft folks celebrate away and post your joy here. Apple fans flame away all you want, nothing can ruin this wonderful, long time coming day for me. I feel like I am walking on the Clouds portrayed on the Windows 95 Desktop. Apple will be busy over the next few weeks cutting all thier gloating about security from all thier marketing material. There won't be anything left after the trimming except Time Machine ( oooooooOOOooo ) and the admittedly coolest hardware in the world. How about replacing it with a new slogan like "When it comes to security, we are almost as good as Joomla." I can almost visualize that Apple TV ad guy saying that with his calm demeanor. O happy day!
There are just as many viruses attacking Mac as PC.
I have both. At home, I like my Mac, but like PC, it can be frustrating.
I don’t agree that Mac is better necessarily. It’s just a different tool. It has a lot of fun applications. But when you are going from one website to another, chances are pretty good that if you have PC, you won’t have as many issues with incompatibility with the site.
I’ll give you about 5 minutes before you’re overwhelmed by Linux guys...
(Yea, I hate those annoying Apple ads, too.)
One word in favor of PC: GAMES!
Tech PING!
I also have a super cool MacBook running Vista. Best, fastest laptop I have ever had. 2 years old and I have been to Afghanistan twice with it. Guess what? Not a scratch on it anywhere and only a couple of small “springs” in some of the thim metal around the corners and Superdrive openings. Apple has the hardware down cold. Didn’t mean to detract from that fact in my post of this glorious article. My target is droning obnoxious MAC/Steve Jobs groupies. Now they can all FINALLY just shut the heck up can’t they?
Glad this news sends a breeze up your skirt.
After 20+ years in the computing industry, and over a decade of having to put up with the fecal matter Microsoft ships as software, I decided to switch to the Mac.
I now waste much less time on security issues than I used to. I certainly waste none on rebuilding my system from scratch, as I used to. Apple’s hardware and OS offers me an environment where I can run both Windows and Linux/FreeBSD if I want (and I do) as guests under OS X. The net result is a more stable Windows environment.
And FWIW - I run Windows as a guest under OS X every single day the stock market is open. The reason I now run Windows as a guest OS under OS X is that I have money riding on the issue. Downtime used to cost me dearly to play rebuild-the-system games under Windows.
The Linux mob is perhaps one of the most annoying trends/fashions out there in the computing industry. They’re motivated more on most days by their hatred of Microsoft and less by technical excellence.
In Unix implementations, I highly prefer FreeBSD for this reason. You don’t see too many BSD fanatics spinning their wheels hating MSFT. They just roll code.
When I last worked in Silly Valley, there was an effort to use Linux as a basis for a product. I warned management that the Linux mob was motivated much more by left-wing anti-property ideals than technical excellence. I said (repeatedly) that the BSD licensing was far more in keeping with our goals as a company - to make money and NOT give our work away.
The young, unwashed and smelly Linux mob convinced management otherwise. Management always gets sucked in when they have a bunch of enthusiastic young twerps peddling something that is “free.” The old fart over in the corner gets dismissed as old and out of touch.
Management realized a couple years after I left that there were, indeed, trap doors in the Linux GPL. Turns out that the cranky old fart in the corner actually knew something about the favorite s/w of the twerps after all. Too late.
The marxist cant of the GPL crowd is what really annoys me about the Linux mob.
Isn’t switching to MAC right now a little like moving the San Francisco during an earthquake? Perhaps risky? After all, according to this report, it has the HIGHEST number of reported security vulnerabilities of ANY vendor. WooooHoooo!!!
The GPL requires payment. The BSD does not. The payment is in a non-monetary form, but it is still a form of payment. That's all it is.
ROFLMAO!!!
Wisdom and experience are no match for ignorance and exuberance !
Well, no.
Many of the bugs that Apple is fixing (and are being found on Macs) are inherited from the “free” software that Apple is using as the basis for much of the OS X environment. There is a huge body of “free” (as in beer) s/w that has been incorporated into OS X - just pull open a term window and start playing Unix hacker. All of that stuff isn’t really Apple s/w - it is a lot of open source/free s/w ported to OS X. As such, Apple inherits the problems of that s/w. Since there are more OS X system running out there than there are Linux/*BSD boxes, the long-standing bugs in much of this s/w are now being found and patched as a result of being “productized” by Apple.
The architecture of OS X (and the lack of something so easily corrupted as Windows’ Registry) means that security problems on the Mac are far less systemic than on Windows. The lack of “active content” reduces the means by which attacks can manipulate the system from any application.
Windows’ architecture means that even layered applications’ exploits become a big problem for the whole of the machine.
To me, the proof of the pudding is this:
I’ve not seen any zero-day exploit in the wild on OS X that didn’t require me to surf on over to a web site with the exploit. There have been no worms that have just punch in via a port. There have been no emailed viruses/sploits that could use active content to infect my machine.
I’m running OS X without any security s/w installed. I’m running around naked, with my naughty bits flopping in the breeze, so to speak... and loving it.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t find some of Apple’s ads annoying and snooty. I do. I used to work on Mac’s from ‘86 to ‘94. I hated the preening, smug attitude of Mac zealots. I was the “downer” in the group of Mac pro’s with whom I hung out - because I was focused on engineering excellence and in the old Mac OS, there were some moby freakin’ hacks that defied excuse.
OS X, however, has the goods. Sure, they’re still patching. But from an architectural standpoint, I think OS X is superior to Windows from NT through Vista. Windows 7 might change my mind, since from all reports I’ve seen, MSFT is going to be aping OS X in Win7.
Making money.
From the standpoint of a public-traded corporation, the GPL has nothing but liabilities.
The BSD license limits those liabilities.
What’s the name of the dude that shills for Apple on this forum? Swordmaker? Would love to hear from him or her.
You really should get out more.
But thanks for posting. This lets me know I shouldn’t bother buying an Apple.
As I said--it depends on the purpose of the software. If you're gonna sell your product and that product uses GPL software, then yes--it would be a liability. BSD would be a better choice.
If, however, you are using it in-house, and would like "free" development, and think the software would be useful to others, then the GPL would be good, because any development that others do would get back to you.
Again--it depends on the situation.
Quantity != Severity
Get back to me when a self-replicating virus actually exists for OS X.
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