I'd like to know who this person is that seems to have some vendetta against the writer. I'm pretty sure he pops up at tother sites when Dilger is quoted. The attacks are always the same: personal, defensive of Microsoft, and totally devoid of any decent contribution to the topic at hand. The commenter should be embarrassed enough to keep his views to himself.
I hold the view that Dilger is one of the few people willing to speak knowledgely and bluntly about Microsoft. It seems to me that Hans Christian Anderson made his fable ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGDr69VOv6g ) of the Emperor's New Clothes for just this situation - 'Microsoft is too prevalent and too powerful for anyone to say how bad it really is'.
I'm not this NonVendorFan person, but I also hate Dilger's writing on this site as well. He is the biggest Mac fanboy and Microsoft hater I have ever encountered (more so that brucep on this site). If you can't see that, then you have your "Emperor's New Clothes" issue to deal with. He ignores facts to paint an image of the "evil Microsoft empire" and recolors standard business tactics as nefarious acts of evil. He can't stay on the real topic for more than a few paragraphs before he has to launch into anti-Microsoft garbage. Take this article for example. Here is all that stays on topic:
Quote:
Malware Protection?
Safari, like other modern browsers, already flags certain websites that are known to be used to distribute malicious software (below). The previous release of Leopard also already flags Internet downloads with metadata that alerts users that what they are opening was downloaded from the web, citing where and when.
What's new in Snow Leopard is an additional warning when disk images are opened containing known malware installers. However, there is no real malware problem on the Mac, in part because it's hard to write viral code that infects Mac OS X and very easy for Apple to roll out a patch that closes any discovered holes.
Everything beyond the first 2 paragraphs is Microsoft hatred. It's gotten old. This used to be a good, balanced Mac site before Dilger was allowed to infest it. He has his own Microsoft-hating, Apple-praising website; AppleInsider should let him stay there and not drag down the quality of this site like he has.
I will continue to call out Dilger's Mac-fanboy BS on every article that AI decides to publish where he descends into his typical pro-Apple, anti-MS propaganda. If that's all I wanted to hear, I'd stick with just Apple.com's "news."
Don't like it? Skip my comments or maybe if you ask nicely one of the mods will ban me for not towing the party line.
This article was very disappointing. I had expected to read about technical details of security in Snow Leopard and instead I read 20 different restatements of "malware isn't a threat on the mac because marketshare is low". That's a fine point to make, but it only takes maybe a paragraph, not an entire article, and it has nothing to do with malware protection in SL.
My wife's Macbook popped up with a Malware warning yesterday, and it only has Leopard. Are you sure this is a Snow Leopard feature, and not a Safari update?
Anyway, the malware warning she got was a pop artist web-site where she wanted to download some desktop wallpaper... odd... that's all the Mac needs is false warnings of doom...
Your confusion is an indicator of how poorly written the article is. Based on the title it claims to be about malware protection in Snow Leopard. But the only Mac protections it talked about where the warning your wife saw in Safari (which as you guessed is a feature of Safari, not the OS itself, and is available to previous OS versions) and single, vague sentence mentioning, almost in passing, Snow Leopard's new malware warning system.
The article spent more time talking about the iPhone's app store approvals than it did about Snow Leopard's malware protections. And it spent vastly more time slamming MS, than it did about Apple. I'm not disagreeing with anything the author said (outside of the overused hyperbole), but the article was NOT about Snow Leopard's malware protections as the title claimed. It was more about Microsoft's failures than Apple's successes, and should have been titled as such.
The articles on AI several years ago when Leopard was released are the gold standard for informative journalism on this site. These new articles are very, very poor by comparison.
I am enjoying the series, but don't get too drawn into dinging Windows. Keep the series informative about the changes for Snow Leopard.
This line was a bit much for me out of the whole thing:
"updates are not as easy to install"
I'm pretty sure that with automatic updates turned on updates are fairly easy to install for Windows users. Oh what's that? I nice yellow shield in the lower-right telling me updates are available, click here to install. Sounds pretty tough. I don't recall the last time I had an issue installing updates on my Windows computer, but I can say the same for all my Macs.
Are you actually suggesting that installing Mac antivirus software makes users more vulnerable to attack? I can see how that could theoretically be possible if the antivirus software was poorly written security-wise. However, this is a very serious accusation that really needs to be backed up by proof. Certainly, in an article claiming people are spreading fear of OS X vulnerability, accusations like these shouldn't just be thrown out there.
I am sure most every user in here can tell a story of how Norton Antivirus has screwed up their computer at some point. Granted it was not from an "attack" from the outside. Instead it was an attack of poorly written software that had too much authority of the system.
My wife's Macbook popped up with a Malware warning yesterday, and it only has Leopard. Are you sure this is a Snow Leopard feature, and not a Safari update?
Anyway, the malware warning she got was a pop artist web-site where she wanted to download some desktop wallpaper... odd... that's all the Mac needs is false warnings of doom...
I'm disappointed that the comments to this series have, for the most part, degenerated into back and forth slanging with a very defensive tone from the Dilger defenders.
My view is that this has been a very weak series of articles. They bear no comparison to the excellent "Road to Leopard' series previously. I thought they were superb - comprehensive, detailed, with a lot of technical information explained in a way that a non-techy could understand and learn from. They were also, from a literary perspective, very well written as well.
However this series fails to meet those standards on every level. They are sketchy, lacking much real meat to them, and the syntax is often poorly composed and clumsy. Comparative references to Microsoft should in this instance be peripheral to the main subject matter, the workings and capabilities of SL, instead of which the subject matter at times seems almost peripheral to gratuitous Microsoft bashing. Now I like a good chortle at the Dark Empire's expense as much as the next man, but I regard these as the flagship articles of this site, and as such they should concentrate on quality material in my opinion.
I did plough my way right through the Arstechnica article, which was very informative but I was a bit out of my depth in a piece that was clearly aimed at developers. This is why AppleInsider is my primary Mac site, because it hits my sweet spot of intelligent analysis and explanation written in everyday non-technical language, with a bit of Microsoft bashing on the side (and why not!).
I sincerely hope this series just represents a bad week at the office, and AI gets back up to standard sooner rather than later.
It seems to me that the only line that really bothered with discussing malware protection in 10.6 was the title. That was unfortunate because an article that dives into the guts of this new feature would have been nice. As would an article that covers all new security features in 10.6.
As to the so called MS bashing, I don't see it that way at all and frankly reflects reality. Running XP on the Internet leads to all sorts of problems. Especially if the installation isn't updated. Unfortunately my XP experience comes from the machines at work where you are on your own maintaining the installation. There is no way to say this kindly but XP is a hell hole of magnificent proportions with so many holes you can't possibly plug them all. Most importantly MS is obviously asleep at the wheel here and in some cases giving the dark world the holes they need into the system. So the authors characterization here is extremely accurate but misplaced in the article.
As to the need for an economic driver that is a bit of BS also. Sure there are all sorts of Malware out there in Windows land that is there to enrich the writers but that is a small portion of the virus and malware load. Many virus and other troublesome software is writen simply because the author can and many more due to a community that really hates Microsoft. To put forth the idea that malware, viruses and the like require economic incentive invalidates the entire article.
So can we refocus articles on Snow Leopard tech to well new SL tech? It would be very interesting to those of us with a technical bent. As an aside a more indepth exposé on MS failure at security and complicity in keeping Windows the mess it is is in order. BUT please title the article properly and nix the bait and switch.
...all problems that have resulted in a platform riddled with serious security breeches.
Ha-ha. Is he referring to an artillery piece or short pants? I can see how you might get security out of owning a few cannons, but shorts always make me feel just a little more exposed.
(For the dictionary-challenged, the word he probably meant to use is "breaches.")
DED almost always combines two stories into one post: what's Apple doing - usually right - and what is wrong with what Microsoft did/is doing - almost always wrong - about the same general topic.
any good editor would force him to split a story like this - headlined to be details about SL - into two separate ones (or separate parts of one much longer piece). one with a lot more details about SL security and how it works (which i would have liked to read), and another contrasting it with Windows. trying to jam the two together in such a short piece instead results in a sketchy job of both, at best.
too bad. DED writes a lot of great stuff (and i mostly agree with his MS critique, sans the emotion). but he is going to have to take lumps for his approach.
When there is SO much to discuss about OSX and the future of application security, it's a shame this article was so poor. Now that I've switched to a Mac, Windows' insecurity is not that relevent.
Constantly comparing OSX with a system that is uniquely unfit-for-purpose says nothing about Apple or OSX. ( It's like the Democrats or Republicans saying "Our party is not as bad as North Korea's". Well, yes, I know that, but what's your point? )
Constantly comparing OSX with a system that is uniquely unfit-for-purpose says nothing about Apple or OSX. ( It's like the Democrats or Republicans saying "Our party is not as bad as North Korea's". Well, yes, I know that, but what's your point? )
I'm not this NonVendorFan person, but I also hate Dilger's writing on this site as well. He is the biggest Mac fanboy and Microsoft hater I have ever encountered (more so that brucep on this site). If you can't see that, then you have your "Emperor's New Clothes" issue to deal with. He ignores facts to paint an image of the "evil Microsoft empire" and recolors standard business tactics as nefarious acts of evil. He can't stay on the real topic for more than a few paragraphs before he has to launch into anti-Microsoft garbage.
Everything beyond the first 2 paragraphs is Microsoft hatred. It's gotten old. This used to be a good, balanced Mac site before Dilger was allowed to infest it. He has his own Microsoft-hating, Apple-praising website; AppleInsider should let him stay there and not drag down the quality of this site like he has.
I will continue to call out Dilger's Mac-fanboy BS on every article that AI decides to publish where he descends into his typical pro-Apple, anti-MS propaganda. If that's all I wanted to hear, I'd stick with just Apple.com's "news."
Don't like it? Skip my comments or maybe if you ask nicely one of the mods will ban me for not towing the party line.
Maybe you could point out the factual errors in his statements about Microsoft?
I remember when MS changed their malware recommendations about Claria. Dilger has the facts exactly right about that, and he gives his interpretation of MS's motivbes. If you have a different interpretation of why MS suddenly took Claria software off the malware list, I'd be happy to hear it.
You're welcome to criticize Dilger all you want - it would be helpful to the rest of us if you pointed out specific factual errors, or gave your interpretation of the facts when it's different from his interpretation.
My wife's Macbook popped up with a Malware warning yesterday, and it only has Leopard. Are you sure this is a Snow Leopard feature, and not a Safari update?
Anyway, the malware warning she got was a pop artist web-site where she wanted to download some desktop wallpaper... odd... that's all the Mac needs is false warnings of doom...
That was Google telling her to not continue on that site. Google is not Safari.
Everything beyond the first 2 paragraphs is Microsoft hatred. It's gotten old. This used to be a good, balanced Mac site before Dilger was allowed to infest it. He has his own Microsoft-hating, Apple-praising website; AppleInsider should let him stay there and not drag down the quality of this site like he has.
I will continue to call out Dilger's Mac-fanboy BS on every article that AI decides to publish where he descends into his typical pro-Apple, anti-MS propaganda. If that's all I wanted to hear, I'd stick with just Apple.com's "news."
Don't like it? Skip my comments or maybe if you ask nicely one of the mods will ban me for not towing the party line.
Im with you. From some of these articles and their comparisons to XP you could be mistaken for thinking it was a recent MS product and not an old one they recommend people to upgrade.
It's also a bit annoying that none of these articles ever mention anything negative on Apples side. It always things like "Windows 7 has security features that OS X has, but their not needed" or just completely ignore things like the Exchange support article not even mentioning that it isn't compatible with Exchange 2003 and misses half the features. Doesn't help the image at all of the average MacFan, that if Steve Jobs wrapped up a dog shit in a titanium case a decent percentage of them would go out and buy it.
Comments
I'd like to know who this person is that seems to have some vendetta against the writer. I'm pretty sure he pops up at tother sites when Dilger is quoted. The attacks are always the same: personal, defensive of Microsoft, and totally devoid of any decent contribution to the topic at hand. The commenter should be embarrassed enough to keep his views to himself.
I hold the view that Dilger is one of the few people willing to speak knowledgely and bluntly about Microsoft. It seems to me that Hans Christian Anderson made his fable ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGDr69VOv6g ) of the Emperor's New Clothes for just this situation - 'Microsoft is too prevalent and too powerful for anyone to say how bad it really is'.
I'm not this NonVendorFan person, but I also hate Dilger's writing on this site as well. He is the biggest Mac fanboy and Microsoft hater I have ever encountered (more so that brucep on this site). If you can't see that, then you have your "Emperor's New Clothes" issue to deal with. He ignores facts to paint an image of the "evil Microsoft empire" and recolors standard business tactics as nefarious acts of evil. He can't stay on the real topic for more than a few paragraphs before he has to launch into anti-Microsoft garbage. Take this article for example. Here is all that stays on topic:
Malware Protection?
Safari, like other modern browsers, already flags certain websites that are known to be used to distribute malicious software (below). The previous release of Leopard also already flags Internet downloads with metadata that alerts users that what they are opening was downloaded from the web, citing where and when.
What's new in Snow Leopard is an additional warning when disk images are opened containing known malware installers. However, there is no real malware problem on the Mac, in part because it's hard to write viral code that infects Mac OS X and very easy for Apple to roll out a patch that closes any discovered holes.
Everything beyond the first 2 paragraphs is Microsoft hatred. It's gotten old. This used to be a good, balanced Mac site before Dilger was allowed to infest it. He has his own Microsoft-hating, Apple-praising website; AppleInsider should let him stay there and not drag down the quality of this site like he has.
I will continue to call out Dilger's Mac-fanboy BS on every article that AI decides to publish where he descends into his typical pro-Apple, anti-MS propaganda. If that's all I wanted to hear, I'd stick with just Apple.com's "news."
Don't like it? Skip my comments or maybe if you ask nicely one of the mods will ban me for not towing the party line.
My wife's Macbook popped up with a Malware warning yesterday, and it only has Leopard. Are you sure this is a Snow Leopard feature, and not a Safari update?
Anyway, the malware warning she got was a pop artist web-site where she wanted to download some desktop wallpaper... odd... that's all the Mac needs is false warnings of doom...
Your confusion is an indicator of how poorly written the article is. Based on the title it claims to be about malware protection in Snow Leopard. But the only Mac protections it talked about where the warning your wife saw in Safari (which as you guessed is a feature of Safari, not the OS itself, and is available to previous OS versions) and single, vague sentence mentioning, almost in passing, Snow Leopard's new malware warning system.
The article spent more time talking about the iPhone's app store approvals than it did about Snow Leopard's malware protections. And it spent vastly more time slamming MS, than it did about Apple. I'm not disagreeing with anything the author said (outside of the overused hyperbole), but the article was NOT about Snow Leopard's malware protections as the title claimed. It was more about Microsoft's failures than Apple's successes, and should have been titled as such.
The articles on AI several years ago when Leopard was released are the gold standard for informative journalism on this site. These new articles are very, very poor by comparison.
This line was a bit much for me out of the whole thing:
"updates are not as easy to install"
I'm pretty sure that with automatic updates turned on updates are fairly easy to install for Windows users. Oh what's that? I nice yellow shield in the lower-right telling me updates are available, click here to install. Sounds pretty tough. I don't recall the last time I had an issue installing updates on my Windows computer, but I can say the same for all my Macs.
Are you actually suggesting that installing Mac antivirus software makes users more vulnerable to attack? I can see how that could theoretically be possible if the antivirus software was poorly written security-wise. However, this is a very serious accusation that really needs to be backed up by proof. Certainly, in an article claiming people are spreading fear of OS X vulnerability, accusations like these shouldn't just be thrown out there.
I am sure most every user in here can tell a story of how Norton Antivirus has screwed up their computer at some point. Granted it was not from an "attack" from the outside. Instead it was an attack of poorly written software that had too much authority of the system.
My wife's Macbook popped up with a Malware warning yesterday, and it only has Leopard. Are you sure this is a Snow Leopard feature, and not a Safari update?
Anyway, the malware warning she got was a pop artist web-site where she wanted to download some desktop wallpaper... odd... that's all the Mac needs is false warnings of doom...
a lot of viruses are spread like this
My view is that this has been a very weak series of articles. They bear no comparison to the excellent "Road to Leopard' series previously. I thought they were superb - comprehensive, detailed, with a lot of technical information explained in a way that a non-techy could understand and learn from. They were also, from a literary perspective, very well written as well.
However this series fails to meet those standards on every level. They are sketchy, lacking much real meat to them, and the syntax is often poorly composed and clumsy. Comparative references to Microsoft should in this instance be peripheral to the main subject matter, the workings and capabilities of SL, instead of which the subject matter at times seems almost peripheral to gratuitous Microsoft bashing. Now I like a good chortle at the Dark Empire's expense as much as the next man, but I regard these as the flagship articles of this site, and as such they should concentrate on quality material in my opinion.
I did plough my way right through the Arstechnica article, which was very informative but I was a bit out of my depth in a piece that was clearly aimed at developers. This is why AppleInsider is my primary Mac site, because it hits my sweet spot of intelligent analysis and explanation written in everyday non-technical language, with a bit of Microsoft bashing on the side (and why not!).
I sincerely hope this series just represents a bad week at the office, and AI gets back up to standard sooner rather than later.
As to the so called MS bashing, I don't see it that way at all and frankly reflects reality. Running XP on the Internet leads to all sorts of problems. Especially if the installation isn't updated. Unfortunately my XP experience comes from the machines at work where you are on your own maintaining the installation. There is no way to say this kindly but XP is a hell hole of magnificent proportions with so many holes you can't possibly plug them all. Most importantly MS is obviously asleep at the wheel here and in some cases giving the dark world the holes they need into the system. So the authors characterization here is extremely accurate but misplaced in the article.
As to the need for an economic driver that is a bit of BS also. Sure there are all sorts of Malware out there in Windows land that is there to enrich the writers but that is a small portion of the virus and malware load. Many virus and other troublesome software is writen simply because the author can and many more due to a community that really hates Microsoft. To put forth the idea that malware, viruses and the like require economic incentive invalidates the entire article.
So can we refocus articles on Snow Leopard tech to well new SL tech? It would be very interesting to those of us with a technical bent. As an aside a more indepth exposé on MS failure at security and complicity in keeping Windows the mess it is is in order. BUT please title the article properly and nix the bait and switch.
Thank you from a disapointed reader.
Dave
Seriously though, try surfing the web from an old OS - I surf pr0n sites all the time on my NeXTCube
...all problems that have resulted in a platform riddled with serious security breeches.
Ha-ha. Is he referring to an artillery piece or short pants? I can see how you might get security out of owning a few cannons, but shorts always make me feel just a little more exposed.
(For the dictionary-challenged, the word he probably meant to use is "breaches.")
any good editor would force him to split a story like this - headlined to be details about SL - into two separate ones (or separate parts of one much longer piece). one with a lot more details about SL security and how it works (which i would have liked to read), and another contrasting it with Windows. trying to jam the two together in such a short piece instead results in a sketchy job of both, at best.
too bad. DED writes a lot of great stuff (and i mostly agree with his MS critique, sans the emotion). but he is going to have to take lumps for his approach.
Constantly comparing OSX with a system that is uniquely unfit-for-purpose says nothing about Apple or OSX. ( It's like the Democrats or Republicans saying "Our party is not as bad as North Korea's". Well, yes, I know that, but what's your point? )
Constantly comparing OSX with a system that is uniquely unfit-for-purpose says nothing about Apple or OSX. ( It's like the Democrats or Republicans saying "Our party is not as bad as North Korea's". Well, yes, I know that, but what's your point? )
You make a reasonable point in this case.
I'm not this NonVendorFan person, but I also hate Dilger's writing on this site as well. He is the biggest Mac fanboy and Microsoft hater I have ever encountered (more so that brucep on this site). If you can't see that, then you have your "Emperor's New Clothes" issue to deal with. He ignores facts to paint an image of the "evil Microsoft empire" and recolors standard business tactics as nefarious acts of evil. He can't stay on the real topic for more than a few paragraphs before he has to launch into anti-Microsoft garbage.
Everything beyond the first 2 paragraphs is Microsoft hatred. It's gotten old. This used to be a good, balanced Mac site before Dilger was allowed to infest it. He has his own Microsoft-hating, Apple-praising website; AppleInsider should let him stay there and not drag down the quality of this site like he has.
I will continue to call out Dilger's Mac-fanboy BS on every article that AI decides to publish where he descends into his typical pro-Apple, anti-MS propaganda. If that's all I wanted to hear, I'd stick with just Apple.com's "news."
Don't like it? Skip my comments or maybe if you ask nicely one of the mods will ban me for not towing the party line.
Maybe you could point out the factual errors in his statements about Microsoft?
I remember when MS changed their malware recommendations about Claria. Dilger has the facts exactly right about that, and he gives his interpretation of MS's motivbes. If you have a different interpretation of why MS suddenly took Claria software off the malware list, I'd be happy to hear it.
You're welcome to criticize Dilger all you want - it would be helpful to the rest of us if you pointed out specific factual errors, or gave your interpretation of the facts when it's different from his interpretation.
My wife's Macbook popped up with a Malware warning yesterday, and it only has Leopard. Are you sure this is a Snow Leopard feature, and not a Safari update?
Anyway, the malware warning she got was a pop artist web-site where she wanted to download some desktop wallpaper... odd... that's all the Mac needs is false warnings of doom...
That was Google telling her to not continue on that site. Google is not Safari.
Everything beyond the first 2 paragraphs is Microsoft hatred. It's gotten old. This used to be a good, balanced Mac site before Dilger was allowed to infest it. He has his own Microsoft-hating, Apple-praising website; AppleInsider should let him stay there and not drag down the quality of this site like he has.
I will continue to call out Dilger's Mac-fanboy BS on every article that AI decides to publish where he descends into his typical pro-Apple, anti-MS propaganda. If that's all I wanted to hear, I'd stick with just Apple.com's "news."
Don't like it? Skip my comments or maybe if you ask nicely one of the mods will ban me for not towing the party line.
Im with you. From some of these articles and their comparisons to XP you could be mistaken for thinking it was a recent MS product and not an old one they recommend people to upgrade.
It's also a bit annoying that none of these articles ever mention anything negative on Apples side. It always things like "Windows 7 has security features that OS X has, but their not needed" or just completely ignore things like the Exchange support article not even mentioning that it isn't compatible with Exchange 2003 and misses half the features. Doesn't help the image at all of the average MacFan, that if Steve Jobs wrapped up a dog shit in a titanium case a decent percentage of them would go out and buy it.
Looks like the article's (quite rightly) been called into question here.
They're antivirus software peddlers. Time to tune out.