Why does Windows still suck and why isn’t everyone on a Mac?
Friday, February 04, 2005 - 11:35 AM EST"Are you using a PC? You probably have spyware. The McAfee site claims a whopping 91 percent of PCs are infected. As every Windows user knows, PCs are ever waging a losing battle with a stunningly vicious array of malware and worms and viruses, all aimed at exploiting one of about ten thousand security flaws and holes in Microsoft Windows,' Mark Morford writes for The San Francisco Gate.
Morford writes, "Here, then, is my big obvious question: Why the hell do people put up with this? Why is there not some massive revolt, some huge insurrection against Microsoft? Why is there not a huge contingent of furious users stomping up to Seattle with torches and scythes and crowbars, demanding the Windows Frankenstein monster be sacrificed at the altar of decent functionality and an elegant user interface?
"There is nothing else like this phenomenon in the entire consumer culture. If anything else performed as horribly as Windows, and on such a global scale, consumers would scream bloody murder and demand their money back and there would be some sort of investigation, class-action litigation, a demand for Bill Gates' cute little geeky head on a platter," Morford writes. "And with very few exceptions, every Mac owner everywhere on the planet simply looks at all this viral chaos and spyware noise and Microsoft apologia and shrugs. And smiles. And pretty much ignores it all outright, and gets back to work."
Morford writes, "It's very simple. The Mac really has few, if any, known viruses or major debilitating anything, no spyware and no Trojans and no worms, and sure I've been affected by a couple e-mail bugs over the years, but those were mostly related to my mail server and ISP. For the most part and for all intents and purposes, Macs are immune. Period."
"I know of what I speak. I am not a novice. I've been using Macs almost daily for 15 years. I am online upward of 10-12 hours a day. I run multiple Net-connected programs at all times. I receive upward of 500 e-mails a day, much of it nasty spam that often comes with weird indecipherable attachments that try, in vain, to infiltrate my machine. My Mac just shrugs them off and keeps working perfectly. I dump them all in the trash and never look back," Morford writes. "Perhaps there is something I'm missing. Maybe there's something I don't understand as to why there is not a massive rush of consumers and IT managers to dump PCs in favor of Macs (or even Linux OS). Surely thousands (millions?) of work-hours have been lost nationwide as tech departments spend untold months debugging and installing PC virus protections and keeping abreast of the latest and greatest worm to come down the pike, all due to Microsoft's lousy software."
"Am I being unfair? Maybe. Hell, I'm sure Windows has its gnarled and wary defenders, war-torn and battle-tested folk who still insist that, because there's more software available for the Windows OS, it's somehow superior -- though I challenge them to name one significant, common activity the Mac can't do as well as, if not better than, PCs," Morford writes. "For 97 percent of users in the world, Macs would be a more elegant and intuitive and appealing solution. Period."
There's much, much more bounty in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Know a Windows user who's frustrated and thinking about their options? Send them the link to Morford's beautiful article!
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And for the nth time, whenever there will be a virus for OS X it will have to be one that overcomes the user. That is, all the proof of concepts that came around OS X last year are way silly in that they are just that: proof of concept. If a virus NEEDS the user to click few times and type the password in order to a) get installed, b) start operations, c) spread it is a JOKE, not a virus.
To be harmful it has to work in an automatic way, fully unconstrained by the fact that there is a user at the keyboard. To do that it HAS to be fully a BSDUnix virus. BSDUnix has since long shut down - because of the contributions from OpenSource - all easy and evident way to do that. The easy and evident way that Windows abounds with, to understand each other.
Finding a new undiscovered hidden flaw to take full control of a BSDUnix platform is difficult: do not fool yourself that it has anything to do with market share. It has to do with the difficulty of the task and the script kiddies breaking havoc on Windows daily hands down and blind folded are pure and simply NOT UP TO THE TASK. Period.
Peace.