I don't care how much money MS puts into ZUne, I'll never buy one because I don't trust MS at all! Apple is way ahead of the game in the trust that their customers have in them.
Court rooms use the syaing "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" for a reason. While this report is technically stating the truth about the average length of time between security fixes it fails to state the whole truth. Microsoft has nearly constant holes of a critical nature to plug up so it needs to fixes these at a much faster rate. Apple's bugs are of much less importance. Even many of the Month of Apple Bugs were nothing more than the possibility of making an app crash. With many being 3rd-party programs. Big F-ing deal.
Tell me about it, my company had the external internet completely blocked off yesterday because they found a flaw in windows that they wanted to protect against. They were working with MS to develop a patch and we have it back today, but from what I hear, some sites are *still* blocked. At least they let me back to AI
first of all, the business model of companies like norton antivirus etc. depend on malware. no malware meas they are out of business. now, while they seem do be doing an acceptable job at intercepting destructive viruses, they seem to have totally failed with trojans and the like used to create and control the millions of compromised machines out there. most experts think that at least 25% of all machines running windows are zombies. this is actually of national security concern, and i am suprised that the government does not step in to root this problem out before the russian or chinese mafia (and/or the respective governments) can extort us when push comes to shove. our country is probably the most vulnerable to any serious disruption of the net. maybe congress is just plain stupid when i comes to these matters. remember how a couple years ago they came up with 'legislation' to control spam? thats when spam was maybe 30 to 40 percent of all email. well now we are closer to 80%. well done, boneheads.
Seriously, these two guys did little more than bait Mac users and dig up some obscure nonsense that was largely crashes and wildly speculative as far as pwnage goes. And then berate those who provide the fixes and falsify their attempts to test their exploits in the wild Read KF's posts from last summer, where he praises and thanks Apple for their prompt and efffective bug squashing. Something happened, and it wasn't just a statistic. Too bad we'll likely never get the truth.
Using "average" - if they used a simple mean - to compare things like this is statistical nonsense. You can have ten 37 day lags and your mean is 37. Switch two of those to 180 days, and you're at 66 days.
Windows, it turns out has a security flaw in the implementation of animated cursors. Yikes.
first of all, the business model of companies like norton antivirus etc. depend on malware. no malware meas they are out of business. now, while they seem do be doing an acceptable job at intercepting destructive viruses, they seem to have totally failed with trojans and the like used to create and control the millions of compromised machines out there. most experts think that at least 25% of all machines running windows are zombies. this is actually of national security concern, and i am suprised that the government does not step in to root this problem out before the russian or chinese mafia (and/or the respective governments) can extort us when push comes to shove. our country is probably the most vulnerable to any serious disruption of the net. maybe congress is just plain stupid when i comes to these matters. remember how a couple years ago they came up with 'legislation' to control spam? thats when spam was maybe 30 to 40 percent of all email. well now we are closer to 80%. well done, boneheads.
If they failed so miserably at spam, what makes you think they'll be able to do anything about MS security problems? The only effective thing they could do would be to buy macs for everybody
New colors for the same old product. (I will guess: Taupe, Camel, Ecru, Sandstone and Hazel.)
Great suggestions, but those color names are far too complex for MS.
How about ... Home Brown, Office Brown, Professional Brown and Sever Brown? Home Brown can be upgraded (as can all Browns) for a fee, paid online. Once paid you get a license to call it Office Brown or whatever you upgraded to. You will have to go online every few hours to link to MS Music Store so they can check you paid the fee or it will stop working.
Why do these "experts" always get it backwards, MS gains more points here because it has more shit to fix? And how exactly do these security flaws compare with each other in the first place? We have proof of concept on the Mac side with no actual real exploits, on the other side we have actual damage taking place daily. Er...
Too right!
Maybe Steve should take a page out of his iTunes strategy, i.e. offering 'with and without' copy protection, only this time OS with and without major flaws. OS X 10 and OS X 13!
Drum Roll: Now available for switchers who want regular bug fixes; a new special version of the Mac OS that needs them! Introducing 'Mac OS X 13.0'. Comes with enough bugs to eat your hard drive, corrupt your data and freeze every few hours. It has to be updated ten times a day to get the latest patches. No need to miss the excitement of living on the edge.
If they failed so miserably at spam, what makes you think they'll be able to do anything about MS security problems? The only effective thing they could do would be to buy macs for everybody
i would assume that if the government was serious about the zombie army threat they could come up with some kind of anti-bot to kill off the zombies..... in the end MS should have to pay in one form or the other for enabling this kind of nonsense through their crappy software.
The two sources in the security article are employed by McAfree and Symantic. They are paid to create demand for their products and everything they say with regards to the matter is 100% irrelavent. They are paid to sell their products. This posting is equvilant to an advertisement, not a news article.
Apple's troubles were compounded on Monday when the European Commission officially accused Apple and the four major music labels of anti-competitive practices in the deals that form the backbone of today's iTunes Store.
Apple's "troubles were compounded?" What nonsense! What's next, beleagured?
No trouble to speak of with security and the EU gnawing at iTunes is a minor annoyance. As with DRM, the fragmentation of the iTunes stores was dictated by the labels. Go after them, not Apple.
Apple has repeatedly taunted Microsoft with the self-proclaimed superiority of its security through its advertising, said McAfee researcher Craig Schmugar. (SNIP)
"Recently, the Mac ads may be playing a role in making people go looking for flaws. They seem to be bragging a little more than they should," he said.
Apple has never said that their security is perfect. They've only said that their security is better than Microsoft's, which is true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Microsoft has typically taken much less time to patch issues and rolls out fixes in an average of 21 days -- far outpacing Apple's ever-slowing pace, which now averages 66 days between fixes.
Maybe for "regular" fixes, but Apple seems to beat Microsoft handily at releasing emergency fixes. Apple will release a fix seemingly seconds after a bug's been found while Microsoft tends to simply wait until their next scheduled update.
Remember those cars mirrors with the text: "objects appear closer that then they are"; well in business the equivalent mirrors should be labelled: "object may appear further than they are".
Actually the mirrors already say that, or close to that. It's "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" in my experience. In cars (at least here in the U.S.) sideview mirrors make objects appear further away than they actually are.
Please! It's obviously cheaper and easier for Apple to maintain one centralized store intead one for every country. The EU apparently has too much time on their hands, yet nt enough to think things through. From this point forward I'm boycotting Europe!
The EU has laws on competition and the single market. They think the differential in pricing breaches those laws - whats your problem?
I am not defending them, mind you, just pointing out that upholding the law is their duty.
You are going to boycott us? On behalf of all Europeans I would just like to say we are all absolutely terrified and are all going to start running around in circles in abject terror and panic.
What ever you believe about Microsoft and the Zune, it would not be wise to ignore the presence. Most people laughed when Microsoft entered the game console market and now they are provding very serious competition, and are currently top in the next generation consoles.
Yes, but Microsoft has also failed in a LOT of markets it has tried to enter. And they stupidly didn't leverage the XBox brand name for their music player
In any case, Apple's competing in the BEST way--not trying to dodge competitors' moves, but simply innovating in user experience and features. Witness: the iPhone (a hint of future iPods I'm sure).
The security article is a joke as everybody here realises.
The Zune will dominate the non-iPod market by simple weight of MS $Marketing but the thing is so eye-wateringly uncool in design and execution that it doesn't pose any kind of threat at the moment. The thing about the XBox was the games. Zune can hold no similar 'killer-app' advantage and the EMI deal has just thrown MS's music business model down the crapper.
Don't worry about the EU investigation. Apple are on the charge sheet because of a technicality. The EU are going after the regional restrictions of the music companies in a wider context and quite rightly so. As to having too much time on their hands? Its their job you nutter.
Yes, but Microsoft has also failed in a LOT of markets it has tried to enter. And they stupidly didn't leverage the XBox brand name for their music player
In any case, Apple's competing in the BEST way--not trying to dodge competitors' moves, but simply innovating in user experience and features. Witness: the iPhone (a hint of future iPods I'm sure).
Also I wouldn't call Xbox 360 a success just yet. PS3 has only been on the market a few months but it has totally negated an technical advantages of Xbox. Not to mention as PS3's price falls it will just become more appealing, especially to those in the growing HD TV market because of the Blu Ray player. I own both and the difference between Xbox and PS3 is very apparent on an HD TV. Give it a year or two and Xbox will look positively obsolete as the devs start getting better with the PS3 dev kits.
Comments
Court rooms use the syaing "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" for a reason. While this report is technically stating the truth about the average length of time between security fixes it fails to state the whole truth. Microsoft has nearly constant holes of a critical nature to plug up so it needs to fixes these at a much faster rate. Apple's bugs are of much less importance. Even many of the Month of Apple Bugs were nothing more than the possibility of making an app crash. With many being 3rd-party programs. Big F-ing deal.
Tell me about it, my company had the external internet completely blocked off yesterday because they found a flaw in windows that they wanted to protect against. They were working with MS to develop a patch and we have it back today, but from what I hear, some sites are *still* blocked. At least they let me back to AI
Using "average" - if they used a simple mean - to compare things like this is statistical nonsense. You can have ten 37 day lags and your mean is 37. Switch two of those to 180 days, and you're at 66 days.
Windows, it turns out has a security flaw in the implementation of animated cursors. Yikes.
first of all, the business model of companies like norton antivirus etc. depend on malware. no malware meas they are out of business. now, while they seem do be doing an acceptable job at intercepting destructive viruses, they seem to have totally failed with trojans and the like used to create and control the millions of compromised machines out there. most experts think that at least 25% of all machines running windows are zombies. this is actually of national security concern, and i am suprised that the government does not step in to root this problem out before the russian or chinese mafia (and/or the respective governments) can extort us when push comes to shove. our country is probably the most vulnerable to any serious disruption of the net. maybe congress is just plain stupid when i comes to these matters. remember how a couple years ago they came up with 'legislation' to control spam? thats when spam was maybe 30 to 40 percent of all email. well now we are closer to 80%. well done, boneheads.
If they failed so miserably at spam, what makes you think they'll be able to do anything about MS security problems? The only effective thing they could do would be to buy macs for everybody
New colors for the same old product. (I will guess: Taupe, Camel, Ecru, Sandstone and Hazel.)
Great suggestions, but those color names are far too complex for MS.
How about ... Home Brown, Office Brown, Professional Brown and Sever Brown? Home Brown can be upgraded (as can all Browns) for a fee, paid online. Once paid you get a license to call it Office Brown or whatever you upgraded to. You will have to go online every few hours to link to MS Music Store so they can check you paid the fee or it will stop working.
Why do these "experts" always get it backwards, MS gains more points here because it has more shit to fix?
Too right!
Maybe Steve should take a page out of his iTunes strategy, i.e. offering 'with and without' copy protection, only this time OS with and without major flaws. OS X 10 and OS X 13!
Drum Roll: Now available for switchers who want regular bug fixes; a new special version of the Mac OS that needs them! Introducing 'Mac OS X 13.0'. Comes with enough bugs to eat your hard drive, corrupt your data and freeze every few hours. It has to be updated ten times a day to get the latest patches. No need to miss the excitement of living on the edge.
If they failed so miserably at spam, what makes you think they'll be able to do anything about MS security problems? The only effective thing they could do would be to buy macs for everybody
i would assume that if the government was serious about the zombie army threat they could come up with some kind of anti-bot to kill off the zombies..... in the end MS should have to pay in one form or the other for enabling this kind of nonsense through their crappy software.
Apple's troubles were compounded on Monday when the European Commission officially accused Apple and the four major music labels of anti-competitive practices in the deals that form the backbone of today's iTunes Store.
Apple's "troubles were compounded?" What nonsense! What's next, beleagured?
No trouble to speak of with security and the EU gnawing at iTunes is a minor annoyance. As with DRM, the fragmentation of the iTunes stores was dictated by the labels. Go after them, not Apple.
2. New colors for the same old product. (I will guess: Taupe, Camel, Ecru, Sandstone and Hazel.)
You forgot Avocado and Harvest Gold.
Apple has repeatedly taunted Microsoft with the self-proclaimed superiority of its security through its advertising, said McAfee researcher Craig Schmugar. (SNIP)
"Recently, the Mac ads may be playing a role in making people go looking for flaws. They seem to be bragging a little more than they should," he said.
Apple has never said that their security is perfect. They've only said that their security is better than Microsoft's, which is true.
Microsoft has typically taken much less time to patch issues and rolls out fixes in an average of 21 days -- far outpacing Apple's ever-slowing pace, which now averages 66 days between fixes.
Maybe for "regular" fixes, but Apple seems to beat Microsoft handily at releasing emergency fixes. Apple will release a fix seemingly seconds after a bug's been found while Microsoft tends to simply wait until their next scheduled update.
Remember those cars mirrors with the text: "objects appear closer that then they are"; well in business the equivalent mirrors should be labelled: "object may appear further than they are".
Actually the mirrors already say that, or close to that. It's "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" in my experience. In cars (at least here in the U.S.) sideview mirrors make objects appear further away than they actually are.
Please! It's obviously cheaper and easier for Apple to maintain one centralized store intead one for every country. The EU apparently has too much time on their hands, yet nt enough to think things through. From this point forward I'm boycotting Europe!
The EU has laws on competition and the single market. They think the differential in pricing breaches those laws - whats your problem?
I am not defending them, mind you, just pointing out that upholding the law is their duty.
You are going to boycott us? On behalf of all Europeans I would just like to say we are all absolutely terrified and are all going to start running around in circles in abject terror and panic.
You forgot Avocado and Harvest Gold.
mauvish puce, baby vomit green
You forgot Avocado and Harvest Gold.
Oh, yes... Avocado Brown, Harvest Brown...
What ever you believe about Microsoft and the Zune, it would not be wise to ignore the presence. Most people laughed when Microsoft entered the game console market and now they are provding very serious competition, and are currently top in the next generation consoles.
Yes, but Microsoft has also failed in a LOT of markets it has tried to enter. And they stupidly didn't leverage the XBox brand name for their music player
In any case, Apple's competing in the BEST way--not trying to dodge competitors' moves, but simply innovating in user experience and features. Witness: the iPhone (a hint of future iPods I'm sure).
The Zune will dominate the non-iPod market by simple weight of MS $Marketing but the thing is so eye-wateringly uncool in design and execution that it doesn't pose any kind of threat at the moment. The thing about the XBox was the games. Zune can hold no similar 'killer-app' advantage and the EMI deal has just thrown MS's music business model down the crapper.
Don't worry about the EU investigation. Apple are on the charge sheet because of a technicality. The EU are going after the regional restrictions of the music companies in a wider context and quite rightly so. As to having too much time on their hands? Its their job you nutter.
Yes, but Microsoft has also failed in a LOT of markets it has tried to enter. And they stupidly didn't leverage the XBox brand name for their music player
In any case, Apple's competing in the BEST way--not trying to dodge competitors' moves, but simply innovating in user experience and features. Witness: the iPhone (a hint of future iPods I'm sure).
Also I wouldn't call Xbox 360 a success just yet. PS3 has only been on the market a few months but it has totally negated an technical advantages of Xbox. Not to mention as PS3's price falls it will just become more appealing, especially to those in the growing HD TV market because of the Blu Ray player. I own both and the difference between Xbox and PS3 is very apparent on an HD TV. Give it a year or two and Xbox will look positively obsolete as the devs start getting better with the PS3 dev kits.