Or how to save the internet in 2 easy steps.
I know that you’re all a bunch of Apple fanboys. (I may or may not be, depending on who you ask, and you all know that Gattaca has sold his soul to Steve Jobs.)
Two pieces of news relating to Apple that are interesting:
Apple’s marketshare in US jumps to 6.1%
So now for a little pontificating and commentary:
Apple’s come under fire for using contract manufacturing (see recent living conditions at iPod factory articles) in the past and this seems to be yet another (or shockingly only another) case of a contract manufacturer with sloppy process control. This sort of thing does happen. It’s part of the “doing things vs. doing things well” arguement. Should the QA machine have been wiped and reloaded more frequently? Maybe. Should the employee who put the virus there be checked out for industrial espionage? Definitely. Should we all be running around saying that Apple has shit quality control? Probably not. Are Apple products overall less useful or secure because of this failure? Nope.
I’m well aware that Apple users are living under a bit of a golden cloud – it seems that they remain untouchable relative to the large number of viruses and other malware which are a serious plague on the average home user, and they seem to do it despite having a very open, accessible, and powerful system.
Many commentators have stated that the primary reason for this lack of focus by the bad guys is because Apple’s had historically low marketshare. With this changing, will that focus change? I’m not sure. At this point, I’m inclined to think not.
Most information security has to do with information hygiene. Apple users tend to be people who have relatively scrupulous informational hygiene. If you were going to trust anyone to be careful where they put their data and be careful who they let put data in their systems, it would be an Apple user. And this has nothing to do with the platform, but more to do with the kinds of people who buy Apple products.
That’s a bit of an inflammatory statement, but let me assure you, I’m willing to take counter cases.
The average Dell or HPaq purchaser is… well… putting it indelicately, average. And as you are all aware, on the bell curve, there are a heck of a lot of average people. Average people aren’t going to be nerdy enough to keep their Windows machines safe (if they even know that they need to) and the average manufacturer (along with Microsoft) has no interest in doing more than an average job – as they are not held responsible for the crap they sell.
Software as a licensed product comes with no warranty at all. This would be unacceptable in any other product line. If Microsoft were held liable for the shit-storm that is the effect of millions of broadband connected insecure home machines, the problem would be solved quite literally overnight.
And I think that might be the key difference. This artifical division of hardware and software. Apple has always tried to control both aspects (apart from a brief flirtation in the 90s), and overall, has greater success because in the minds of Apple and Apple’s users, failure in the software portion of the purchased product is exactly the same as failure in the hardware portion of the product.
This is the eco-system concept which IBM pioneered (in the info-tech space at least) where the single company provides soup-to-nuts everything, integrated and with a single throat to choke. No current “home pc” company supports this concept except Apple. (I know about IBM, Sun, and a dozen others – I’m not completely looped).
It’s interesting that Microsoft knows this. And is really trying to get there. Proof? Look at the XBox. It’s a controlled experience (largely) and there aren’t security problems related to millions (well, hundreds of thousands at least) of XBoxes with broadband connections out there. Microsoft is taking a lot of heat for leaving Zune out of the “Plays for Sure” program – effectively irritating lots of customers fast – but I think they’re doing the right thing. They’re creating a controlled experience and most importantly, taking responsibility for the product that they are shipping. Microsoft is doing things well.
What should the rest of the PC industry do? I’m not sure. I don’t think anything short of government regulation will work, and I’m not sure that any government (least of all the one in the USA) is prepared to stand up to the PC industry.
Step One:
Do I think that it’s time for Microsoft to pull back from raging featuritis (Vista) and produce something that will work on the existing installed base of Win95/98/ME/XPHome machines, provide equivalent to XPSP2 security, look like a million dollars on the cheapest hardware, run fast – really fast, and sell it for $15 – or less? ABSOLUTELY. I know they could do it. They already produce something very much like it in the Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs product (not generally available) and the Windows Live capability for putting the horsepower on the server side.
Step Two:
With the Gates Foundation doing so much good work around the world, why not start at home? Solve the security problems of the Internet. Put the disk in a Happy Meal. Make it worthwhile to do things well.
Bill, please change the world – you can do it. Leave behind a legacy that says “Don’t just do the job, It’s worth doing the job well.”
[tags]Bill Gates, Microsoft, Apple, Save The Internet, Steve Jobs[/tags]
Amen. Testify!