randominternetperson

anantksundaram said:

Even by Congress's already low standards, this wins the Utter Stupidity Award.

What a clueless bunch. This will be thrown out on its a** by any reasonable judge in this country.

Strange comment.  Remember, there is a fundamental difference between someone alleging illegal anti-trust behavior and bringing that to court (on one hand) and Congress considering rewriting the laws (on the other).

As you can read on the Justice department website, there is nothing illegal about having a monopoly or having monopoly power.  What's illegal is obtaining that monopoly through illegal means or using that power illegally.  That's where judges (reasonable or otherwise) come in to apply the laws to determine what illegal.

What's happening in Congress is fundamentally different.  They are literally considering rewriting the laws and redefining what's legal and illegal.  If this committee report ever turns into legislation (which is probably quite unlikely), it wouldn't be a judges job to "throw it out."  It is already established that Congress has great leeway in how they regulate interstate commerce (it's right there in the Constitution, unlike most other hot topics).  If Congress passes a law saying that companies over a certain size and meeting certain criteria must behave certain ways, that'll be the new law that judges interpret and apply.  Having said that, good luck writing such legislation that comes close to achieving the objectives the committee wants and good luck getting such legislation through Congress.  

danvm said:

Quite often it's IT departments whose staff really only know Windows - they don't want to lose their jobs.


The Walmart/IBM reports of per-unit IT cost savings for Macs reinforce that belief.

True. But do they have no desire to learn something new? A new platform? Not even to give anything other than Windows a chance. So closed minded. 

I don't think that all, or event most, IT guys are as you describe.  What it's clear is that MS dominate the enterprise, and their ecosystem and management tools are miles ahead of what Apple, or any other company offers.  It's clear that macOS have some benefits for some customers as IBM (I haven't seen about Walmart).  But not every company have IBM needs, and maybe that's the reason you don't see macOS, macOS Server, FileMaker or the Apple suites of apps in most business / enterprises.  

Jamf and MS are doing their best with their Apple management tools, specially when you consider that Apple haven't done anything with theirs.  But Windows still better integrating in the MS ecosystem that most business / enterprises use.  I think Apple is the reason macOS is behind in business and enterprises, and not necessarily the IT guys.  

I agree with everything you said.  However, MS also has a huge incumbent advantage.  I work at a moderately sized organization (close to 1,000 staff).  The change-management exercise to migrate everyone from Windows to MacOS would be so disruptive, we'd never even consider it.  We in IT have a million things to worry about without taking on something like this.  Personally I've been a Mac guy since college and have never owned a Windows computer, but even I have a hard to seeing how my work life would be much better if I were using a MacBook Pro instead of my crappy company-assigned Dell laptop. As you said, Apple hasn't made is a priority to compete aggressively in this space, and it shows.  Our CIO, our president, and most IT staff all have Macs at home, but the "should the company switch from Windows" question is never raised. 

neilm said:

It’s long been a computer security axiom that any device to which someone can gain physical access must be considered insecure. It’s then simply a question of what level of resources have to be deployed to exploit it.

In practical terms this particular insecurity is very unlikely to affect most people. It may be real — but not real likely.

The interesting point that some here is missing is that this exploit cannot be used by someone who steals your laptop to access your encrypted hard drive (or your encrypted passwords--I think).  The article says that a bad guy could (theoretically) hack your systems to later capture your keystrokes and therefore learn your password, thereby compromising everything you've encrypted.  But that's not a "bad guy stealing your laptop and getting your secrets."  That's "a bad guy stealing your laptop, hacking it, giving it back to you, you using it as-is, him getting your password, etc."  And in this scenario if he wanted what was actually on your hard drive, he'd have to steal your laptop again.  So this isn't an issue for random thieves.  It's a problem for environment where bad guys have repeated access to your hardware.  It would likely be easier for them to steal passwords with a camera, frankly.

Having said all that, this is an alarming security flaw and Apple's alleged silence for weeks isn't a great look. Hopefully they are working hard on a solution for this "unfixable" problem and will speak to it soon.

Larryjw said

If you remember, states passed many laws to prevent Tesla from selling directly to consumers  -- legacy car manufacturers, suppliers, auto-repair shops, dealers hated the idea of having to compete with Tesla so they did what lots of money always does -- buy legislators to create barriers to competition. 

You have your history wrong.  Almost every state has had laws against automobile manufacturers from direct selling cars (bypassing franchised dealerships) for many decades before Tesla came along. These laws were intended to protect dealership owners (generally a powerful lobbying force) against competition from the "big three."

In fact, plenty of states are changing these laws specifically to allow Tesla to sell directly.  I don't see why Apple wouldn't be just as successful (or more) in getting exceptions or getting those law changed.  Or worst case, Apple simply sells their cars through franchised car dealerships.  That works find for premiere brands from Porsche to Lexus to BMW. 

viclauyyc said:

If I order the Nike edition.  Will I get 2 sets of band?

No.

Here's the short version of this article.  "With the Nike watch you get a Nike band instead of the default band, and you get an exclusive Nike watch face."