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Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Apr 26, 2008 11:22 PM
from the i-want-my-os-x dept.
from the i-want-my-os-x dept.
rev_media tips a short article up at InfoWorld giving some numbers on the increasing Mac presence in businesses. "We're seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs," notes the operations manager for a global advertising conglomerate. They "now [support] 2,500 Macs across the US — nearly a quarter of all... US PCs." Another straw in the wind: "Security firm Kapersky Labs has already created a Mac version of its anti-virus software for release should Mac growth continue (and the Mac thus [find] itself prey to more hackers)."
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Macs Gaining a Bigger Role in the Enterprise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Macs Gaining a Bigger Role in the Enterprise (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Macs Gaining a Bigger Role in the Enterprise (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Low starting point (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Low starting point (Score:5, Funny)
"Fire photon torpedoes!"
"I can't!"
"What's wrong, number one?"
"There's just a single mouse button! I can't right-click on the Klingon ship!"
"Dammit! Do a command-click!"
Parent
Fed up with MS (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if this means much but my department of 80-90 has gone from zero to about 20% mac in the last year. I don't see that adoption rate slowing down either. Now in the server room it is a mix - Windows, AIX and Linux. With Linux growing the fastest. But on the desktop I don't think anyone is full time Linux only. Even the Linux users all have a windows or apple machine.
Re:Fed up with MS (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if you've read it yet. Microsoft's Vista Problem at the New York Times is especially informative. Pay special attention to the comments.
FTA:
The comments are especially interesting. 90% anti-Vista, 50% anti-Microsoft, 30% pro Linux (or thereabouts).
There was a saying once: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". It became untrue overnight and people who didn't see the change happening lost everything. Who are you faithful to?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the philosophical difference between software released under a free license and proprietary software is massive. as for the technical difference, well that is something you can of course never know, seeing as you can only know what free software technically is.
Re:Fed up with MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Free is nice, but I'd rather have a system that works well, and is compatible with the hardware and software I most care about.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But still with so much software resembling something you could buy from Staples 20 years ago, it kinda takes the "righteousness" out of the whole free software movement. Shoplift something from Staples or Office Max and see if you still have the feeling you are a part of an important "movement".
I think you win the Stupidest Analogy of 2008 Award. How can you compare using free software with shoplifting (stealing)? In one case the "owners" are giving you permission to take what you want, in the other you're taking it against their will (and breaking the law).
Personally, as a programmer, I write stuff in my own time because a) it keeps me in practice in languages and application "genres" that I don't get to really work with in my professional career, b) the projects look good as professional samp
It's not Vista; it's W7 and beyond (Score:5, Insightful)
Like many others, I didn't like where it seemed Microsoft was headed with Product Activation and DRM and decided that long-term, I would attempt to migrate away from Windows. I might not have as quickly if I hadn't gone into "creative services," but that was my thinking at the time.
I can imagine IT departments are now experiencing a similar sensation: Even if Vista (like XP) isn't a terrible thing in itself, it points toward a rather unpalatable future for the platform.
There is a slow but undeniable exodus underway. To Ubuntu and Fedora go the more technically focused, to MacOS go the more user-focused. Windows' arbitrary relevance becomes ever slightly moreso every day.
Re:It's not Vista; it's W7 and beyond (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. I left Windows for Linux a decade ago, but switched from Linux to OS X a few years ago. I am not alone, I know many scientists and even whole science departments switching from Linux (or SunOS) to OS X. It has nothing to do with the presence or lack of technical skills, but IMHO it's just a better OS to get shit done on. And obviously many other technically-skilled scientists agree.
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The ghost of Vista (Score:5, Informative)
I was thinking of buying a laptop some weeks ago but I was reluctant to use Vista. That was the initial thought that led me to buy a MacBook.
I use Windows XP at home and OpenBSD at work as desktop OS. I can't stand Linux as a desktop OS. Mac OS X seems like a perfect merge of a great GUI and the power of UNIX, running on solid, proven Intel hardware. With a Mac I have the best of both worlds.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's basically the call I made as well. It's like Linux, but without the sucky parts of Linux.
OSX in 2008 (Score:5, Funny)
*cough*
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Could the year of desktop linux be the year of OSX + 1
Probably not, given that every year since at least 2002 (with the release of version 10.2) has been an actual "year of OS X on the desktop".
However, your overall point isn't far off. Once people switch to the Mac en masse (if you consider US consumer market, which is where "the desktop" is most important, this has already begun), they will no longer look at Windows as being a necessity.
The thing that is keeping Linux from being the "year of OS X + 1" is that there's no compelling reason for most people to
I've been programming on a mac for years (Score:3, Interesting)
EVERY employee uses a mac. From graphics designers (of course) to the IT department to accounts receivable and billing. From an IT standpoint being able to have a native terminal to ssh to remote servers is very handy. Yes I know of cygwin but terminal on mac is just there. We literally only have two windows machines only because of some software that only works on windows.
Mac support in the Enterprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mac support in the Enterprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
I cleaned up forty Macs that were all infected with dozens of worms and viruses.
You're a flat out bald faced liar. "Dozens of worms and viruses" simply don't exist on OS X, and especially not in the wild. Maaybe you're cleaning up old OS 9 installs, but even then it's pretty hard to imagine--and by now that's a 10 year old OS. More likely is that you're a Microsoft shill desperately trying to prop up Vista, and aren't even aware that a whole other world of possibility exists. In this case your ignorance of reality makes you easily identifiable, and your employer should get their money back.
OS X is theoretically susceptible to a virus and worm--no doubt. However, the fact is that none have yet been written. Someday OS X may be targeted and your story will be more believable--but until then your post isn't worth reading past the first line.
Liar liar pants on fire.
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Here too... (Score:3, Interesting)
Small company, newly formed IT/development department. Turned out all four of us preferred OS X as our desktop environment, and it didn't take long for the boss guy to convince himself he needed one to (and very happy with it he is). Just found out one of the sales people has come over to the dark^H^H^H^H Jobs side, and the external consultant guy has a MacBook Air (which is a subject of constant ridicule as we are Ethernet-only for reasons of paranoia).
(Personally I need a laptop which runs an internationalized UNIXy environment and plays well with the hardware without me having to spend time fiddling about with the OS , and OS X has saved me a great deal of time in this respect).
What comes around, goes around (Score:4, Insightful)
The story begins with IBM doing a piss-poor job of protecting their hardware. It seems everyone forgets that IBM had every intention of locking up its hardware just like Apple did with the Mac. But they blew it. Some guys cloned the hardware and the commodity PC was born.
Corporate IT departments, believing that having multiple hardware sources was key keeping down capital expenditures, rejected the Mac because it was sole-sourced. They opted for the commoditized IBM-PC hardware platform. But, as they preached the importance of having a diversity of hardware suppliers, the same IT departments insisted that it was imperative to "standardize" on a single operating system and a single office suite. "Standardize", in this context, is just a different way of saying sole-source.
In other words, the dogma was (and still is, for the most part) that computer hardware must be multi-sourced and software must be single-sourced.
That strategy has bit them in the ass. It turns out sole-sourcing your software platform is just as probamatic and expensive as sole-sourcing your hardware platform. Having put all their eggs in Microsoft's basket in the persuit of minimizing hardware cost, IT departments are now stuck in an ever-deepening hole of increasing and recurring licencing fees to a single vendor. And they are completely powerless because they single-sourced their software platform lost all leverage with their supplier.
Perhaps some IT departments are finally questioning the wisdom of that strategy and are bringing some Macs into the mix.
Apple finally has a viable alternative, mostly because OS X is mature now and they've to x86-compatible hardware. Combine that development with the continuing creep of web-based alternatives to embedded applications and you've finally have an escape route from sole-sourced software platform hell.
A wise CIO, in my view, would take advantage of this opportunity by moving to a more heterogeneous computing environment. Re-introducing platform competition in the corporate computing space is the only way for IT departments to regain pricing leverage with Microsoft. It will cost a little more up front. Mac hardware is more expensive. But, that extra upfront cost will be more than offset by the gains from being able to exert price pressure on Microsoft.
Biggest Apple problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Just try leasing them, on a 3 year lease, and find out at the end of the lease theirs no replacement machines because apple has run down the channel due to a new product announcement, that is yet to happen.
Happens on a regular basis to us, and then the new machines doesn't support the current release of OS X, so we cant deploy until we fully test in any case, as it only runs 10.5.2 or later, not earlier or some such rubbish.
Apple is light weight and no where near enterprise ready.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I honestly donâ(TM)t want more market shar (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In reality, though, Apple could never keep a dominant position for long, at least not with their current practices. The word "antitrust" comes to mind...
Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly, and it doesn't have anything to do with elitism. This will be a long post, so please bare with me.
First, a Disclaimer: I am a sysadmin in a shop that uses mostly Macs, and a few Windows Machines, and I've been using Macs since 1990 and OSX since the first public beta in 2000.
Second, Apple, like anything or anyone else, is as vulnerable to the abuse of a powerful position as, say IBM was in the 70s and 80s, and Microsoft has been up until now. Apple has already started showing signs of that abuse, which I'll now point out.
Third, Apple originally touted OS X as a very open Unix like variant. They had all sorts of technologies that were there to draw developers and Windows users to the platform. Built in Java and C/C++ APIs as first class development language along with Objective-C. As Apple became more comfortable with their position and had less fear of Developers being unwilling to move to the platform, the first dropped Java as a first class language (no more Java-Objective-C API bindings) two years ago, and last year dropped the C/C++ API's further development.
The net result of this is that if you want to develop a native 64 bit GUI application on OS X, you must use Objective-C. ObjC is a fine language, and now has Garbage collection, amongst other things, but it is very very difficult to port ObjC applications to other platforms. In a way, it's like Microsoft's
This means huge costs of major software developers who have, for the most part, been developing in C/C++. Microsoft Office, Adobe CS3, Maxon Cinema 4D? They're all C/C++. There will be no 64 bit version of Adobe CS4, the next CS iteration, for OS X, Adobe has said. It will literally take them years to port their code base to ObjC. Personally, I wonder why they bother. Given that the Ubuntu Linux desktop is now very smooth, is getting fantastic reviews all around the net on mainstream publications, It would be a perfect time for Adobe and others to port their apps to Linux (with far less effort and far lower cost than porting to ObjC). Putting some of the money saved into a major marketing push for Linux would help the uptake.
It would also scare the living hell out of Steve Jobs (apart from making him go off on one of his major Ballmer-esque tirades again) and, it would force competition on Apple, which Apple seems to think is now unnecessary due to the major fuck up that is Windows Vista.
Fourth. Apple is almost wholly dependent on the final opinion of Steve Jobs. That is often very good, as the man has a sense of taste, unlike Steve Ballmer, who doesn't, but, because Steve Jobs is only human, that sometimes results in extremely poor decisions like the OSX 10.5 Leopard Desktop and GUI design. The default galactic image background is very bad for designers who need a neutral background to work on. The fact that Apple made the default Dock in 10.5 a weird faux 3D thing that is very difficult to use due to the changes, making it often very hard to see what applications are running. The new pop-up folders in the Dock are next to useless for most things, and the translucent Menu-bar could have only been a Steve Jobs decision, driven, like the 3D Dock by the perceived need to compete visually with Vista. Apple only offered changes to this when users rebelled in outrage.
Fifth. Apple's server offerings are to a large extent just wrappers around open source technologies. Their Open Directory is just a wrapper around OpenLDAP, SLAP, and a Berkley Database as data store. Their Email server is just Postfix for SMTP and Cyrus for IMAP. The problem is that due to the Apple GUI management bindings, it is next to impossible to customise these software packages. This is somewhat symptomatic of Apple's approach. They make some things very easy, but others very, very hard.
Apple needs competition. Without competition, Apple tends to lose their solid grounding and become a bit more like Microsoft, given to market lock-in and arbitrary decisions that make no sense.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fourth. Apple is almost wholly dependent on the final opinion of Steve Jobs. [...] The fact that Apple made the default Dock in 10.5 a weird faux 3D thing that is very difficult to use due to the changes, making it often very hard to see what applications are running.
The Dock is, as always, the most obvious interface fuckup Apple has made, and boy did they ever.
The NeXTStep Dock was brilliant. It's probably been imitated more than anything else but the Windows taskbar (let's face it, everyone wants a start menu now. Apple put more stuff into the Apple menu in OSX, probably due to just that.) Then they totally hosed it for OSX. If your desktop is somewhat full then icons appear behind the dock. You have to either hide it or lasso that icon with some other icons before
Re:Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people I talk to love the Dock.
I fall into the latter category. I agree with the GP on the Leopard dock being annoying; hell I developed an app t change it from the default 3D to a more sedate and retina-pleasing 2D one.
But I still like it, and consider it one of OS X's nicest GUI features. Hidden, with the icons on "zoom" mean I can have a tiny dock that I never see unless I need it, and then I can see exactly the icons I want, not the other ones that stay tiny and out-of-the-way.
As for the BeOS thing, yeah, you're probably right. If they had bought BeOS, the same gui people would have worked on it to make it more "Apple-ey", which would mean you'd still have Aqua. Maybe they'd even of put a Dock in there, which I think would be awesome (an Aqua-like BeOS).
But it would have been faster for multimedia which is a BIG thing nowadays (iLife anyone?), and the multi-user thing isn't.
But, that ship has passed, and we've got what we've got: Unix.
It's a good OS. Sure, maybe an enhanced version of BeOS would be better, but we can't say that now.
Maybe, in some dark black-ops like basement in Cupertino, Apple are playing with BeOS still, planning to make it in the "next big thing" when (if) Unix starts to show it's age. Who knows...
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Re:Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:5, Informative)
The "C/C++" apis you were referring to, more commonly known as the Carbon api, is a slightly sanitized version of the Classic Mac OS programming interface. They were old and ugly, and Carbon had to retrofit them with support for things like preemptive multitasking and memory protection. Anybody who considered Carbon as anything but a legacy api was a fool. (Yes, that includes Adobe.)
You don't seem to be aware of CoreFoundation and Objective-C++, which provide C and C++ respectively with access to most of the Cocoa apis. But I get the feeling that you're deliberately ignoring the fact that Apple has added Cocoa bindings for Python and Ruby.
And you definitely should have mentioned GNUStep, a portable environment that is compatible with OpenStep (from which Cocoa is derived) and has included many of the improvements from Cocoa. If you actually want your app to be portable, it is very easy to write it using GNUStep as the lowest common denominator. The resulting app can then be compiled and run on Windows, Linux, and OS X.
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Re:Make that two of us, Apple needs competition (Score:5, Informative)
They had built in the bridge at great cost in the early years, and it was a major part of their developer push. You can imagine their frustration when no one used it; this is the Cocoa bridge, mind you, not the Java platform. People code in Java so they can write once and run anywhere, not so they can code platform-dependent GUI code. Apple thought having a Java bridge might drive people to write software that favored their platform, but Java devs just kept on using Swing and AWT, and generally ignoring the bridge, since it was platform-dependent.
I think the nail in the Java bridge's coffin was that you couldn't do key-value coding in Java, the way Apple implemented it, because you sorta need duck typing to make it work. Objective-C can do this, Java cannot (though the Java people hold this is a good thing.)
This is a tricky statement, as CoreAudio, the File Management APIs, OpenGL, QuickTime, Core Foundation, Core Services, and, hell, the Kernel API and BSD subsystem are all "C APIs" and a part of the OS X platform [apple.com], and they are all continuously being refined and extended; though not all of them are 64 bit yet, this doesn't pose much of a limitation on OS X since you can call from 64 bit code into 32 and back "for free." The Carbon API, particularly the UI code, has not been rebuilt for 64 bit and may not ever, but it is not "unsupported" or "deprecated."
Your statement makes it appear that coding in C on OS X is somehow unsupported, or that ObjC is the only Kool-Aid in town, and this is a flagrant canard.
They're probably in the same spot MS is, in that even they don't know how their code works any more, with the number of people they've had working on it over the years.
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Re:More IT Jobs require Mac skills (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, as Publicis' Plavin notes, Macs -- which cost the same as equivalently configured business-class PCs -- are cheaper to support because they are easier to support.
To which I might add, "Citation Needed".
I'm a recent Mac switcher with years of Windows experience. It's not all that easy to get OS X to work and play well with Active Directory and Windows networking (or maybe it's the other way around). IT lets me play with the Mac because I'm pretty self sufficient. Most enterprise OS X users aren't going to be particularly savvy - they'll need lots of help (like always).
And finally, the cynic in me wonders how many of those Macs are really running XP / Vista under boot camp while at work... Not that there is anything wrong with that. You'll look cool and all, even if you're running the same dorky programs as everyone else.
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Re:More IT Jobs require Mac skills (Score:5, Interesting)
You can cite me: our company has moved 80% mac since 2004. That resulted in 50% cut of IT support personnel, because there simply isn't that much to do. And 80% of the work for the remaining IT support personnel is dealing with the remaining 20% of Windows installations (most of which are a few experts' desk/laptop machines).
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Re:More IT Jobs require Mac skills (Score:5, Interesting)
Somewhere the Maytag man is yawning.
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Re:More IT Jobs require Mac skills (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:More IT Jobs require Mac skills (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, as Publicis' Plavin notes, Macs -- which cost the same as equivalently configured business-class PCs -- are cheaper to support because they are easier to support.
To which I might add, "Citation Needed".
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Re:More IT Jobs require Mac skills (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a few people that have made the switch, and end up just not wanting to change the way they've always done things (despite the fact that they'd called me in to totally reformat and reinstall Windows 3 times in the last few months) and who pitch a fit about it, but there just isn't much you can do about them.
Plenty of the switchers I've dealt with run Parallels to run the one or two Windows apps that they just can't be without for whatever reason, but I haven't ever (depsite offering several times) had to install Boot Camp on anyone's machine to effectively switch them back. I have had a couple customers that who exchanged some quite old Macs for cheapass, low-end Windows machines, but that's was for cost reasons primarily, rather than preferring the Windows platform (and they're spending more money on my time as a result).
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Where's the love?
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"We're seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs," notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. IT division of Publicis Groupe, a global advertising conglomerate. There are so many requests that Plavin now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. -- nearly a quarter of all Publicis' U.S. PCs.
There that sorts it out, 2500 is no where near 1/4 of all US pc's... damn
You're just reading too fast and getting offended at what you perceive as Mac fanboism... they are stating that 2,500 Macs are 1/4 of Publicis' US computer systems. So it's an anecdotal report of one particular companies growing Mac trend. Read what you want from it, but it's not talking about Macs being 25% of the US PC sales or anything like that. Slow down and as a Technocarpenter might say "Read twice, reply once."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I can't tell what you're up to, how do you expect the moderators to figure it out?
You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you being sarcastic? Nowadays it's difficult to say. I have just finished to watch Steve Jobs' keynote [apple.com] about the brand new iPhone SDK, which is a heck of a platform for development, either proprietary or open source, and the App Store that will let you distribute your application to every iPhone on Earth.
I'm not sure what's wrong with those Mac bashers around. You know, just stating to not want to be a "Mac fan" because you like tactile response is stupid for itself. Intel based Macs running UNIX plus open source software and a great set of development tools is anything a geek that respects him/herself wants to get his/her hands on.
And before anybody mods me down, I'm not a Mac fanboy. I've been programming for Windows, Unix and Unix-likes (Linux, OpenBSD) on Intel and SPARC for years and never owned a Mac until recently (two weeks ago aprox.) and I'm amazed. I'm currently writing this message from Safari while whatching my terminals (cloning repositories, building software, the usual stuff.)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Happened to my MacBook. Was completely my turning point from 'this is kind of nice' to 'from my cold, dead hands'.
Re:"free software" (Score:4, Interesting)
My MacBook's HDD died about a month ago (there may have been a bit of abuse that triggered it--I don't put my backpack on the passenger seat anymore) and after troubleshooting it, called it in. The tech didn't waste my time with stupid crap; he just asked a couple questions and sent me a box. It got there Friday evening after work.
Sunday morning, before I had even made coffee, it was back with an upgraded HDD, no questions asked.
I missed one day of work with it. I was back at work on Monday, ready to go.
I was an Apple fanboy back in tha day, then I was a mean vilifier of the Mac, and now I have sold all my PCs and have a 100% Mac house.
You don't notice how bad the user experience on Windows (or even worse: Linux) is until you notice that your computer hasn't done anything remotely annoying for a week--and that you never turn it off, just put it to sleep.
Granted, naysayers will point out that it's a proprietary system that you can't just get any old hardware for, but that's actually its strength. MS can't keep up with the driver issue, and Linux developers most certainly can't. But I still can throw any SATA HDD or PATA DVD drive in my Mac Pro, and I just put a fanless cooler on my video card today. I run all my Windows-only stats stuff under Fusion with no noticeable performance hit, and the thing works like a UNIX machine on a network (i.e. correctly and easily).
I am not a fanboy, I don't think. I made an educated decision to buy a Mac, and it has been really nice. Not perfect. Far from it. I can't stand Apple Stores (pretentious, my god, pretentious). But I am really glad I switched.
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Richard Stallman need not apply here. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are VASTLY overstating the importance of open source on a mobile platform such as the iPhone. Its a friggin $500 phone. You think the masses who are buying it are going to care if they can use open source software on it or not? The big draw of the device is its interface and ease of use. You can release zero cost programs via the AppStore if you want and to the user thats really all that matters. The vast majority of the computing using public can't program to begin with so whether its open source or proprietary is wholly irrelevant.
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You asked to be corrected... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:You asked to be corrected... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here you've made one of those foggy claims that sound authoritative but carry essentially zero meaning. Let's put the discussion on a more solid footing.
It's unlikely, under any meaningful measure, that Linux is exactly as vulnerable as any other operating system, and of course it's nonsense to suggest that its vulnerability would change with popularity. Not that you said that, but it happens that many people drag that red herring along right about now, so let's dispense with it too.
On an architectural basis, you could claim that the degree of vulnerability of a given Linux distro will be similar to other Linux distros or other Unix variants, and you could point to what set of design decisions contribute to the relative strength or weakness of these classes of systems in general. That's a very useful and clarifying basis for debate.
Or you could compare a specific point of design or implementation between two different systems. But it's meaningless to just wave your hands and claim that one entire system is or isn't "more secure" than the other, without establishing the terms of reference. For example, a system which allows "default permit" to operations such as software installation, or which fails to separate privilege, is less secure with respect to these design principles than one which enforces privilege separation and "default deny" on operations which might compromise security.
Another approach is to look at incident statistics. Normalized per unit of a given operating system in the field, how do systems rank in terms of actual compromise? To date, Linux ranks below OpenBSD but vastly above Microsoft Windows.
I agree with your point that you can't just sit on your hands and expect any given system to be invulnerable. You have to be vigilant. It doesn't follow that all systems are therefore created equal.
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I didn't say any OS came perfectly safe (Score:5, Informative)
You saying that Windows can be secured does not diminish the fact that over a million Windows boxes are compromised right now. No useful system that's connected to the network can be made perfectly secure, but that doesn't mean that some are not better than others.
Again, Linux and osX don't have any viruses in the wild. Zero. None. Not one. Zip. Nada. On these operating systems antivirus is to protect you, the feeble Windows client of the mail server. The Linux malware ecosystem is almost the exclusive purview of nation-states and their clandestine operatives, megacorporations and their industrial spies. Securing your linux box is important, but these people aren't generally interested in common folk.
Windows has hundreds of thousands of viruses in the wild. These viruses support the financial interests of spammers, identity thieves, Nigerian scam artists, mail order fraudsters. Their ecosystem includes money launderers, extortionists, blackmailers thugs and hit men. There are incredible toolchains that take a found vulnerability and turn it into an exploit plugin for distribution by their botnets and compromised websites in mere hours. There are marketplaces where the proceeds of spying on your Windows box and the tools to compromise your windows are bought and sold. The ecosystem also consists of various members on the white hat side including antivirus vendors, penetration experts, firewall vendors, malware blockers and anti-phishing toolbars. Then there's the grey area group who sell with irritating popups products that do absolutely nothing, but give users a false sense of security -- opening them up to exploitation. These industries generates several billions of dollars a year in profits.
No antivirus catches 100%. The virus infrastructure in a thriving stew that's updated minute by minute to stay ahead of the AV companies. For the most part the latest and most successful viruses are used. Once your PC is infected they pretty much can do anything with it they want to including:
They can do all of that without your knowledge or consent of course. They are actively doing this to over a million Windows users right now. Are you one of them?
People can choose. The operating systems with no viruses or the ones with hundreds of thousands. It's their choice.
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Re:Just goes to show ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Not impressed with Macs (Score:4, Informative)
First - check out Quicksilver [blacktree.com]. It's kind of a dynamic shortcut to your useful applications, files, music, webpages, etc. Many techie OS X gurus can't live without it. There are even youtube tutorials for it.
Second - if you want something akin to Windows-style start menu try this. Open the Applications window in Finder. At the top of the window there's a small icon next to the Applications window title. Drag that icon into the dock, to the right of the separator. With one click you now have instant access to your Applications directory.
However, if that's not good enough, by right-clicking this icon instead it will show you all your Applications in a textual menu form, much like the Windows start button.
If that still isn't good enough, you can make another Useful folder with links to all your commonly-used Applications, then put this Useful folder in the dock.
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