Posted on 08/04/2016 5:03:21 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Windows 10 and the amount of data it collects via the Windows Store could prompt users to switch to Mac according to a new survey.
The study conducted by OnePoll on behalf of security and privacy advice and comparison website Comparitech.com finds that 61 percent of the US public who regularly use Windows would at least consider switching to Mac.
In the UK the figure is even higher at 67 percent, with 15 percent saying they would definitely consider swapping. Only 33 percent in the UK and 39 percent in the US say that they would not contemplate switching operating systems.
The poll results come in the wake of France ordering Microsoft to remedy multiple privacy failings in its latest operating system. The French National Data Protection Commission pointed to three specific cases where it found the operating system's collection of user information to be excessive.
The Windows Store collects data on the apps users download and the time spent on each one without permission; Windows 10 installs an advertising identifier by default, which allows Microsoft to monitor browsing and target users with ads; and Windows Store authentication, which allows users to set a 4-digit PIN instead of a password, doesn't restrict the number of attempts to enter the correct code.
"These issues are things that have set off alarm bells within the security community on release of Windows 10 a year ago. Now, with France taking the next step in ordering Microsoft to fix them, its a small win for privacy and the wider public who have expressed concerns," says Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate for Comparitech.com. "Companies tend to take these issues seriously when people start voting with their wallets, so hopefully the results from this survey should serve as a wake-up call that consumers are becoming more privacy conscious".
You can see more information on the survey results on the Comparitech blog. Would privacy concerns make you give up Windows for Mac? Tell us in the comments.
Photo Credit: Angela Waye/Shutterstock
Compare that to the commie thug Gates who spent millions pushing gun control on Oregonians and Washingtonians.
I’d take Cook’s politics any day over some thug who’s trying to steal my guns.
It’s a very real threat to us here in Oregon, they’re trying to force us to register or ban our semi-auto weapons, and Gates is involved with that effort.
Ed
You really don't know what you are talking about. Apple's EIGHT YEAR OLD iMacs from 2008 will run OS X El Capitan, just not as fast as later models. That is hardly being obsolete. We just replaced the 2008 models from my office and are currently selling those we replaced for between $350 to $400. Do you seriously think you could sell any Windows PC from 2008 for that kind of money?
We had only one go bad on us during that time. . . and it was not the computer itself that went bad but the backlight on the integral monitor. It would have cost us more to have that fixed than we cared to put into it. . . so we are selling it on eBay for a parts machine. Still works but the screen is dim. It will still sell for over $250. . . at eight years old, because some techy guy out there will put a screen in it from a truly dead iMac and have a great computer that will run the latest Apple OS.
The learning curve is about one to two weeks. . . and then you start wondering how you could have put up with Windows for so long.
Uh, dhs12345, a Mac can run every single piece of software that a Windows PC can run, and much more. My main Mac is running EIGHT OSes . . . oh, wait, that's 9 now, including two versions of Linux, four versions of Windows, UNIX, OS X, and iOS, all in sandboxes. I've run them all simultaneously. I posted an article last year where somebody was running 36 DIFFERENT operating systems on his Mac simultaneously.
I like the mac. it works.
Ooooooh “profitshare”. That made up phrase Apple users created to brag about how much money Apple makes from their mark up.
Congratulations! You do nothing special with those products, and Apple charges you more.
Gates isn’t the CEO of MS and hasnt been for almost a decade.
Same here .... multiple platforms for work and play makes perfect sense as it improves productivity, ability to use all the tools in business today. Internet security, in my opinion, is never putting information your not willing to share on any gadget at all.
Securing your sensitive data “better” should involve a mix of stacked VPN’s, Tor, Virtual OS’s, Tails, Silent Circle Blackphone, Signal and PGP based Email......
Nothing on the internet is “secure” ...... but using specific tools to prevent what you have to share makes that data less of a low hanging fruit to be picked by nefarious sorts.
Just my opinion.
Personal experience trumps all. You can bs all day long... Have fun.
So Apple has no problem with me installing Linux on my MAC as dual boot?
Profit share is not something Apple users made up. . . it's something Economists created long before Apple even existed and you show you are a complete ignoramus trying to claim it was created as something special by "Apple users to brag about how much makes from the mark up," when it is what every company aspires to achieve.
“Profit share is not something Apple users made up. . . “
It absolutely was something they embraced, that’s for sure.
Before Apple fans bragged about it, they used the old fashioned “market share” metric back when iPhone were out-selling everyone else.
Once android started eating into that, and then passed them, all of a sudden they switched to talking about the amont of profit Apple makes off of each sale, because they needed something to “prove” Apple was better still.
Basically bragging that they get fleeced better. God only knows why they think that is something to brag about.
No, why would it? But why would you even bother? The Mac is a certified UNIX as shipped and can run any UNIX POSIX® software you throw at it. Linux is merely a clean room work alike copy of UNIX. If you want to install Linux on it in a VirtualMachine, or as a dual boot, Apple has provided the tools to do so. Apple has also provided to tools to Install Windows as well.
Two of the multiple Macs my front office run a Virtual Machine Windows 10 right now because we have to run a single Windows only application to access patient's employer's insurance plans unfortunately named Trojan. This program only works on Windows. So we use Parallels in Coherence mode where it is completely transparent and appears to work like an Apple Mac application. To the users, when they need to check if a patient is covered or not, the Trojan application comes up in a Window on the Mac screen the same as any other Mac application, and can be minimized to the Dock the same as a Mac App. It also has an Icon on the Dock to invoke it when needed. Total transparency. Windows is merely running in the background.
We had been running Trojan under Windows 7, but it had been getting pop ups for downloading and installing Windows 10 to frequently, and every time we got security updates, I'd have to reset the blocks to those reminders, so I just installed Windows 10. The users didn't have to learn a new system to use Trojan at all.
There is no reason in the world why Trojan could not run natively on a Mac except for the publisher deliberately making it Windows only by constructing it on Microsoft's tools, which have built in lock-outs for non-Microsoft platforms.
Incidentally, Trojan still looks like an old DOS program, which is where is where it originated. . . and it has changed very little since then. It still has the basic four color scheme.
Boy, do you LOVE to make up your facturds, don't you. Apple iPhones NEVER out-sold everyone else. The iPad and iPod may have had the lion share of market share in their markets, but you really confabulated that into what you want. Facts are fungible for you.
Once android started eating into that, and then passed them, all of a sudden they switched to talking about the amount of profit Apple makes off of each sale, because they needed something to prove Apple was better still.
Basically bragging that they get fleeced better. God only knows why they think that is something to brag about.
I don't believe you will find Apple itself claiming anything about the profit share, it is the independent pundits such as Horace Dediu who do the analysis who have pointed these data out, who talk about profit share, not Apple. Any company is trying to make the best profit they can. . . and when they do, it IS something to brag about. Obviously you are no capitalist, VanDeKoik.
“Boy, do you LOVE to make up your facturds, don’t you. Apple iPhones NEVER out-sold everyone else. “
Hey, you said it, not me.
I’ll bet your fellow fanatics will be amused to hear this revelation.
Why? Because I like linux and it my choice to install it. Some people develop in linux.
Probably best to buy yourself a cheap PC and install linux.
Considering the Windows Phone-Home Edition (Win 10), Microsoft is facing losing millions of customers including corporate accounts that cannot and will not tolerate Microsoft Windows 10 sending private information like file names to Microsoft, especially Microsoft in India.
You might find the below link interesting. Zoom in.
Also, I am not able download it reliably. Probably due to my version of Acrobat.
https://www.levenez.com/unix/unix.pdf
One of my computers is Windows 10 now... and I can’t turn the damn thing off.. it says ‘power off’ but it only goes ‘to sleep’. I have to take the battery out to turn it off.
That’s disgusting... I’ve always been a PC person but that might change in the future.
Thanks, dhs12345, it is quite interesting. As I said, Mac OS X, soon to be called AppleOS, is one of the few UNIX that is fully POSIX® certified UNIXes left.
i had no problem zooming in or downloading. The Macs use display PDF so it makes things much easier to handle PDFs. Again, thanks for that quite interesting overview of the UNIX development and family tree.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.