There may well be a very clear divide coming between how Windows PCs and Apple Macs treat their users reports John Markoff for The Ledger.
Your next personal computer may well come with its own digital chaperon (if it’s a Windows machine, not an Apple Macintosh, that is).
As PC makers prepare a new generation of desktop computers with built-in hardware controls to protect data and digital entertainment from illegal copying, the industry is also promising to keep information safe from tampering and help users avoid troublemakers in cyberspace.
Silicon Valley led by Microsoft and Intel calls the concept “trusted computing.” The companies, joined by I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices and others, argue that the new systems are necessary to protect entertainment content as well as safeguard corporate data and personal privacy against identity theft. Without such built-in controls, they say, Hollywood and the music business will refuse to make their products available online.
But by entwining PC software and data in an impenetrable layer of encryption, critics argue, the companies may be destroying the very openness that has been at the heart of computing in the three decades since the PC was introduced. There are simpler, less intrusive ways to prevent illicit file swapping over the Internet, they say, than girding software in so much armor that new types of programs from upstart companies may have trouble working with it.
“This will kill innovation,” said Ross Anderson, a computer security expert at Cambridge University, who is organizing opposition to the industry plans. “They’re doing this to increase customer lock-in. It will mean that fewer software businesses succeed and those who do succeed will be large companies.”
Critics complain that the mainstream computer hardware and software designers, under pressure from Hollywood, are turning the PC into something that would resemble video game players, cable TV and cellphones, with manufacturers or service providers in control of which applications run on their systems.
In the new encrypted computing world, even the most mundane word-processing document or e-mail message would be accompanied by a software security guard controlling who can view it, where it can be sent and even when it will be erased. Also, the secure PC is specifically intended to protect digital movies and music from online piracy.
But while beneficial to the entertainment industry and corporate operations, the new systems will not necessarily be immune to computer viruses or unwanted spam e-mail messages, the two most severe irritants to [Windows] PC users.
“Microsoft’s use of the term `trusted computing’ is a great piece of doublespeak,” said Dan Sokol, a computer engineer based in San Jose, Calif., who was one of the original members of the Homebrew Computing Club, the pioneering PC group. “What they’re really saying is, `We don’t trust you, the user of this computer.'”
The first computers based on the hardware design have just begun to appear from I.B.M. and Hewlett-Packard for corporate customers. Consumer-oriented computer makers like Dell Computer and Gateway are being urged to go along but have not yet endorsed the new approach.
How consumers will react to the new technology is a thorny question for PC makers because the new industry design stands in striking contrast to the approach being taken by Apple Computer.
Apple has developed the popular iTunes digital music store relying exclusively on software to restrict the sharing of digital songs over the Internet. Apple’s system, which has drawn the support of the recording industry, permits consumers to share songs freely among up to three Macintoshes and an iPod portable music player.
Apple only has a tiny share of the personal computer market. But it continues to tweak the industry leaders with its innovations; last week, Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, demonstrated a feature of the company’s newest version of its OS X operating system called FileVault, designed to protect a user’s documents without the need for modifying computer hardware.
Mr. Jobs argued that elaborate hardware-software schemes like the one being pursued by the Trusted Computing Group will not achieve their purpose.
“It’s a falsehood,” he said. “You can prove to yourself that that hardware doesn’t make it more secure.”
Full article here.