Posted on 05/26/2005 7:24:21 AM PDT by N3WBI3
his is my first column written on a Mac - ever. Maybe I should have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart, just obstinate. I was a PC bigot.
But now, I've had it. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
Is Schwartau right? Add your thoughts in the forum. Shattered Mac illusions Columnist Mark Gibbs: "I have been Macified."
In the coming weeks I'm going to keep a diary of an experiment my company began at 6 p.m. April 29, 2005 - an experiment predicated on the hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft basher, either. I never criticize a company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence.
I have come to the belief that there is a much easier, more secure way to use computers. After having spent several years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, I also have come to the conclusion that if I'm having such security problems, heaven help the 98% of humanity who merely want a computer for e-mail and multimedia.
Even though I'm a security guy going on 22 years now, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else's. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My two day-to-day laptops (two, for 24/7 backup) are my business machines. I don't need them to do a whole lot - except work reliably, which is why I am fed up with WinTel. Advertisement:
I want my computer to function every time I turn it on. I want my computer to not corrupt data when it does crash. I use a handful of applications: Microsoft Office, e-mail, browser, FTP client and some multimedia toys. Regardless of format, they should work without crashing.
I live on the 'Net. I do not want my browser to eat up all of my memory. In the WinTel world I need an assortment of third-party tools to try to keep my PC alive. That's just crazy.
Why does WinTel have these problems? I have heard all sorts of explanations, and I don't subscribe to any of them. I've come up with my own (hopefully rational) reasons WinTel will fail - and has to fail:
Windows is complex, trying to be everything to everyone. This complexity comes at a terrible price: downtime, help desks, upgrades, patches and the inevitable failures.
When a new operating system or service pack is released, there are tons of changes to the functionality.
WinTel machines use different versions of BIOS. They are not all equal, nor do they all have the same level of compatibility.
Some Windows software applications are well written; others take shortcuts. Shortcuts may work in some environments, but not all, and ultimately the consumer pays in lost time, availability and productivity.
Hardware. There are hundreds of "WinTel-compatible" motherboards, each claiming to be better than the next. Whatever.
Memory. Not all RAM is equal. Some works well. Cheap stuff doesn't.
Hard disks. Same problem: cheap or reliable. Your call.
Here's my answer to the WinTel problem: We need an open Simple Operating System (SOS) that meets the needs of the majority of people who buy PCs for everyday home and enterprise tasks. Get rid of the complexity and simplify the interface between SOS, BIOS and hardware. In other words, KISS. You know what it means. KISS SOS.
Because SOS doesn't exist yet, my company has given up on WinTel. We have successfully moved to Mac in less than two days. Think about it: a security-friendly alternative that works and doesn't require gobs of third-party utilities to safely perform the most mundane tasks. Please follow the details of our experiment at securityawareness.blogspot.com. It's already way more interesting than I thought it would be.
In my view windows is the swiss army knife of software, it will do almost anything it just does few if any of them very well...
ping.
I've been using Windows most my life,
you just got to learn how to bend to your every whim.
The only apple i like is the one that grows on trees, the only other apple i have is an IMac i bought from someone as a favor, and it sits in my garage rusting in peace.
The reason Macs and Linux boxes are more secure is that there are less people using those operating systems, which means less programmers creating viruses for them.
It has nothing to do with the less-used O/S's being coded better.
I've used Macs, I'll stick with Windows. Yes, tweaking is required. But I like tweaking, and overdriving, and playing with my software and upgrading to play games with graphics running in high res at the speed of light. I keep a mean, clean computing machine. And I could put together 10 of these for the price of a Mac. To each his own.
It is not a matter of coding.
Linux and Unix are designed from the ground up not to allow users to change the machine configuration. Only administrators can, and it's very hard to get administrative rights.
I am convinced that 99% of the problems ppl have with windows based pc's are caused by (insert pre-fab pc manufacturer name here I.E Dell, compaq...) Useing sub-par hardware in their machines. I build all of mine using quality parts and have never had any problems with Windows.
You buy crap parts and you will have crap results.
Thanks for pointing that out Ill try to get this dupe pulled..
Mad as he$$ is on a Dell, I'll bet.
There's a different privilege model as well, which allows users to run as < admin in a useful manner, so viruses and such have a much harder time infecting the underlying OS.
Could we see userland viruses in the future? Sure, but it'd be a lot less useful for the virus writer, and probably easier to protect against.
is a neon as safe as a saab? no.. is that becauer there are more neons? no..
Macs are very big in Europe and Asia.
You buy crap parts and you will have crap results.
Good point...nice tag line
Via con queso amigo
One of our engineers made a very good point that was touched on briefly in this article: Microsoft seems to have a penchant for kicking users off the top of the learning curve. He pointed out that he, as an engineer, uses around 10-15 Windows applications regularly in order to do his job. If every one of those applications is updated an average of once a year, which is a pretty good guess, then he is forced to re-learn a program approximately every month! This is because software companies, Micro$oft being chief among them, can't leave the dang interface alone. All the menu items et al to which you have become accustomed get jacked around with each new version.
My current pet peeve is MS Outlook. Initially, with Office '97, I had nothing but praise for Micro$oft's flagship PIM/email application. The original interface was something of a wonder, keeping heaps of complexity mostly hidden from the user's view until needed. The "Outlook Bar" was a paradigm of simplicity; the user could simply drag and drop what ever items most frequently used onto the bar and arrange it in a way that made sense. It worked well, and I could train a complete newbie on Outlook in about five minutes.
Along comes Outlook 2003. Everything wonderful about Outlook has been flushed down the toilet. The "Outlook Bar" has been eliminated in favor of a very inflexible lookalike that is both maddeningly complicated and astonishingly counterintuitive. I have been an avid PC user since the advent of Windows 3.1. Never have I been forced -- it is my employer's corporate standard after all -- to wrangle with such an unwieldy pile of crap as Outlook has become. Just installing the application -- selecting only Outlook from the Micro$oft Office 2003 Professional advanced setup wizard -- puts a dent in your hard drive over 100 MB in size. OK, I do some Windows C++ application development as part of my job. 100 MB for what is largely an email client is just nuts.
Micro$oft is continuing to push the Swiss-Army-Knife school of software design. The problem is, most people only use the knife. The extra bulk of the fork, spoon, corkscrew, toothpick, miniature microwave, hot-air popcorn popper, George Foreman grill, Dolby-digital surround sound and handy storage closet are all beginning to make the product less appealing to those who only want the knife.
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