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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Wall Street Journal On The Switch 91

Posted by Hemos from the good-press dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's personal technology columnist, has long appreciated Macintosh, in a very unbiased, but still probably slightly business-oriented way. Today, in honor of tomorrow's "Panther" release, he has a very positive article in favor of "consumers and small businesses" switching for peace of mind. "If you're tired of the virus wars, the Mac can be an island of serenity.""
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Wall Street Journal On The Switch More

Wall Street Journal On The Switch

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  • Macs are great for many reasons - so are pc's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geneshifter ( 411883 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @09:59PM (#7297223)
    I own 2 macs and a pc. I prefer my mac for my research mainly because of the GUI and Unix underpinnings. Since I do a lot of coding for my biological modeling work, the built in compilers come in handy. Plus, I like the fact that I do not have to worry about viri. I'll always keep a pc around for certain things, especially gaming, but my mac goes with me for work. It is a simple matter of personal choice. I personally would hate to have to give up my 12" powerbook.

  • Yay (Score:4, Insightful)

    by StarmanDeluxe ( 648985 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:08PM (#7297264) Homepage Journal
    Considering there are no known viruses that run in Mac OS X, he's absolutely right. And Panther is going to rule :D

    • Re:Yay (Score:5, Informative)

      by Huge Pi Removal ( 188591 ) * <oliver+slashdot@watershed.co.uk> on Friday October 24, 2003 @12:00PM (#7301730) Homepage
      There are no known viruses *until you install Office X*.

      Got infected by Walker-E the other day. A Word macro virus that was written in 1999 actually infected Word on OS X. And all documents that passed through it.

      Now, to be fair, this isn't a virus that runs on OS X, it's a virus that runs under VBS emulation. However, that's not a distinction most users will make...

      Fecking Microsoft.

  • Could there be a *BSD Pulse? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by noctrnl9 ( 601918 ) <smithcNO@SPAMeng.morgan.edu> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:09PM (#7297273) Homepage
    I think the Mossberg Article makes the point when it is contrasted with the article he wrote last week about which pc one should purchase. In that article he advises about the feature-set one should look for and how to best make use of the digital life apple has been attempting to push for years. I remember a Steve Jobs MacWorld Keynote where he introduced iLife and another where he makes it clear that apple will innovate its way out of the bad times. I guess everyone else in the industry is ready to follow the leader. I think the fact that this week's article is selling the point that, "Hey, as you are downloading this week's M$ critical update, you should know there is a platform where people are not targeted nor is this platform flawed in the foundation of its design." I have always thought life would be better if we worked on a *nix platform at work and when home to a Mac. One could make the argument that it is now in print.

  • Mossberg, that shill? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:10PM (#7297278)
    Please, "unbiased", my ass. This guy will gush with praise about any product that's easy to use and free of bugs. Every time he reviews something with flaws, he feels like pointing them out.

    Sometimes I read his column and all he talks about is "oh, this program was fun to use", or "I didn't like this music player because it was hard to operate and the battery cover broke off". Like any of that matters.

    His constant annoying praise for Apple products is clearly due to the quality of the product and it's usefulness to the average consumer, and not due to any objective standard like how big Apple's cash position is or how man deals they've cut with other computer companies.

    This kind of yellow journalism must be put to an end.

    • Re:Mossberg, that shill? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think the "moderator," and I use the term loosely, who moderated this post as "flamebait" didn't bother to read the whole thing. Guys, I know three paragraphs plus a closing sentence is a lot to swallow all in one go, but how about some of these highlights, huh?

      This guy will gush with praise about any product that's easy to use and free of bugs.

      His constant annoying praise for Apple products is clearly due to the quality of the product and it's usefulness to the average consumer.

      Reading is fundamen
    • Someone modded this down? WTF, read the post you ninnies!

  • It is for me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arcadum ( 528303 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:11PM (#7297287)
    For games I have my ps2, and my fastest box is this laptop a P4-2000m so I have been I thinking about what I should do for a workstation.

    Assuming neither KDE, GNOME, or someother desktop become as freindly as OS X, my next computer will be an apple.

    • Re:It is for me (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If I had a nickel for every time a Linux freak promised 'my next computer will be an Apple', I'd long ago have saved up enough to buy VA Tech's G5 cluster.
      • then you would no longer have to imagine a beowulf cluster of these
      • Yeah... but some of us actually do it (iBook 800 G3 a little while ago).
      • If I had a nickel for every time a Linux freak promised 'my next computer will be an Apple', I'd long ago have saved up enough to buy VA Tech's G5 cluster.

        That could be true, but in general, many Linux freaks really purchased powerbooks and iBooks after the MacOS X. Just compare the Apple section on slashdot in 1999 and today... oh wait, there was NO apple section on slashdot in 1999. But that's exactly my point ;-)

    • Console + Mac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @09:38AM (#7300122)
      For games I have my ps2, and my fastest box is this laptop a P4-2000m so I have been I thinking about what I should do for a workstation.

      I do a PS2 + Mac myself. The way I figure it, the overlap on those two particular machines, game-wise, is a fantastic match.

      Consider: we have watched the consoles eat a significant portion of the once-dominant PC game market. Consoles are custom game machines, that enjoy even better mass market economics than PCs, that have no compatibility problems or patches to speak of, and are usually the same approximate cost as the video card alone would be for the PC.

      Most kinds of games work better on a console, especially with the console controller. There are two exceptions to this: 3rd-person shooters, which anyone half-serious knows you must use a mouse for; and Real Time Strategy games like WarCraft 3, which need the mouse and the keyboard... usually a multibutton mouse too.

      The Mac gets almost all the big 3rd-person shooters ported (Quake3, Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor, etc), as well as many of the RTS games (WC3, Age of Whatevers, etc).

      So a Mac + PS2 provides a pretty vast array of gaming. Not quite as vast as a PC of course, but if you want OS X the rest of the time...

  • no viruses on the mac (Score:5, Interesting)

    by viniosity ( 592905 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @10:32PM (#7297369) Homepage Journal
    I read that article and I wonder whether it's time to be more specific when it comes to calling something a virus. Yes, often times the behavior can be annoying either way, but the viruses that most Windows machines are exposed to today are dramatically different than the few macro-viruses that macs are succeptible to.

    A trojan horse or something that can slowly kill your hard disk is much more severe than something that adds characters to your Excel spreadsheets.

    It makes me feel that the Symantec quote is more FUD than anything else. Aside from that, I enjoyed the read.

  • A good article for non-technical readers. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alex Thorpe ( 575736 ) <alphax@@@mac...com> on Thursday October 23, 2003 @11:01PM (#7297498) Homepage
    As a long time Mac user, I personally learned nothing new in the article, but it's good to get that info into wider circulation. Particularly the sort of people who read the WSJ, influential but not tech savvy.

  • Do we need to keep painting a target on our backs? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the argonaut ( 676260 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @11:02PM (#7297503) Homepage Journal
    So if one of the main arguments about why Macs are so virus free is their small market share, should we really keep telling people to switch, since a growing market share will make Macs a bigger target?

    Also, is it wise to keep pointing out so loudly that its so hard to write a virus for OS X and that none currently exist? I mean, it sounds kind of pompous and arrogant...like an invitation to try write one?

    • Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @11:25PM (#7297571) Homepage
      >So if one of the main arguments about why Macs are so
      >virus free is their small market share, should we really
      >keep telling people to switch, since a growing market
      >share will make Macs a bigger target?

      How much would it have to grow before it becomes a likely target? A factor of 10? 20?

      That said, there are two main reasons why viruses on the mac are less common:

      1) Mail.app makes it more difficult to launch an application sent to you directly and warns you. It doesn't keep you from doing so, but its not as easy (or defaulted, like it used to be on Outlook).

      2) Better security model. The damage one app can cause, even in an admin account, is limited unless it's given extra permissions, which requires giving it a password.

      >Also, is it wise to keep pointing out so loudly that its so
      >hard to write a virus for OS X and that none currently
      >exist? I mean, it sounds kind of pompous and
      >arrogant...like an invitation to try write one?

      The question would then be, providing you (or whoever) could actually write it, "how long would it stay in the wild."

      The low marketshare means that even if you could get it to be as infectious as a virus on windows (same infectious characteristics) it wouldn't have a large pool of systems that it could infect, this means that it is more likely to fizzle than become an issue.

      Even providing you could get it work and people to run it.

      • Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac (Score:4, Informative)

        by azav ( 469988 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @12:11AM (#7297742) Homepage Journal
        But the point is that even if it is a target, it is much harder to write a virus for OS X at this point in time.

      • Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        How much would it have to grow before it becomes a likely target? A factor of 10? 20?

        Probably about 20, since that would bring the sub 3%ish market share up to parity with MS. If the goal is to infect as many people as possible, 49.9% market share doesn't really need patching. Computer A gets infected, what are the odds it will find another to infect? You have the market share raised to a very high exponent, and 0.93^n is a much fatter target than 0.03^n.

        Macs more secure by design? Maybe. We'll nev

      • Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac (Score:4, Informative)

        by gsdali ( 707124 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @04:05AM (#7298386)
        I think the key feature of the OS X security model is that the root account is disabled by default. Doing admin by sudo instead of su seems much safer. I agree wholeheartedly with the above post and would like to add that I find the continual challenging for admin passwords very reassuring. Fair enough, passwords are only as secure as you keep them but I am fairly confident, using OSX, that no one can get my password without me specifically telling them (which isn't going to happen).
        • So what you're saying is that a good exploit only needs to be a trojan that runs at user-level (no manipulation of anything critical) and asks the admin password (which everybody is so used to handing out all the time). Getting regular users used to using sudo a lot isn't necessarily a good thing.
          • Actually, users quickly become accustomed to thinking, "asking for my password means it's about to either install software, or edit my operating system," which will hopefully lead to thoughts like, "hmmm... why would a jpeg of Anna Kournakova need to do that? I should ask one of my computer geek friends before doing this."
            • And don't forget the other minor detail. When the dialog pops up that asks for your password it also displays the details of what is going to happen when you give it the password.

              Granted no one can protect a computer from a dumb user but this comes pretty close.

              • And if you've gone to the trouble of creating an installer and asking for the password, then recording it, and affecting some part of the os with it, don't you think they would have thought of some bullsh*t to add to the info tab. I've had a PC for a while and there are plenty of spyware apps that put regestry entries in that have false and important sounding names. check out the parasite section of doxdesk.com
      • A big problem brewing in the wings is the continued use of .SIT Stuffit Archives on OSX. .SIT has no provisions for the x (01) bit on files, so Stuffit Expanders version 7 and 8.0.1 set the x bit on every file. This makes it much easier to launch the theoretical mac virus.

        Aladdin has created a .sitx format that handles this properly, and there's little that you can't do with an OSX .dmg image natively (just drag&drop onto Disc Copy). Panther will make a .zip for you from the Finder, although I'm not
        • i'm in favor of leaving the .sit behind, but not adopting the .zip format on macs. I use both mac and pc computers and knowing that i am downloading a mac file vs. a pc file is kind of important, and since the file extension is the easiest way to know for sure, losing a mac specific file format would be akin to removing the .tar.gz files from existence.

    • Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac (Score:5, Informative)

      by dbirchall ( 191839 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @03:57AM (#7298355) Journal
      Small market share is a common argument, but it's a red herring [reference.com].

      Compare [netcraft.com] Apache's webserver market share to that of Microsoft IIS. Compare the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in those products, and the severity of the results.

      Compare [cr.yp.to] Sendmail's SMTP server market share to that of Microsoft Exchange. Compare the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in those products, and the severity of the results.

      Compare [esj.com] Oracle's (or IBM's) SQL RDBMS market share to that of Microsoft SQL Server. Compare the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in those products, and the severity of the results.

      Deduction: Microsoft manages to lead in introducing exploitable vulnerabilities to market segments, with severe results, even in segments where they do not enjoy market share leadership.

      Now that's innovation! :)

      To be blunt and honest, Microsoft designed and maintained its operating system product(s) in ways that failed to take security (and multiple users, and networking, and...) into consideration for far too long, and now finds itself in the unenviable position of being the only operating system vendor most people have even heard of that doesn't have a properly secure operating system.

      -Dan (whose new "cheesegrater" G5 has fewer holes than Windows)

  • Who cares about how true it is (there have been 2 such updates) but still, I laughed.

    Like Microsoft, Apple issues periodic security patches, but they are less frequent than the Windows patches -- and some of them are needed to repair flaws in the software programs Microsoft writes for the Mac.

  • Old Joke (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cokelee ( 585232 ) on Thursday October 23, 2003 @11:34PM (#7297610)

    There's an old Microsoft joke of an error message that says:

    Microsoft Monopoly Error: Please wait while the Internet reboots.

    With that said: heterogeneous computing environments, whether within small networks or on the global network increase security.

    • heterogeneous computing environments, whether within small networks or on the global network increase security.
      This is true, and it's nice to see DARPA [darpa.mil] realizing this as well.

  • Combined with the positive word from ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06.email@com> on Friday October 24, 2003 @12:41AM (#7297833)
    the comparison [slashdot.org] of online music stores, does this mean that the WSJ might actually like us now? That perhaps they'll influence tech-ignorant business sorts to stop assuming that the Microsoft way is the only way. That would be helpful.
  • This is one of the most bias articles I've ever read and I love it. It's about time that apple started to get press like this.

  • The invasion of humanity.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by billn ( 5184 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @11:20AM (#7301261) Homepage Journal
    "If you're tired of the virus wars, the Mac can be an island of serenity." Until everyone else shows up, and you have to start voting them off the island.
  • Windows is riddled with security flaws, and new ones turn up regularly. It is increasingly susceptible to all kinds of viruses, malicious Trojan horse programs and spyware. As a result, Windows users have been forced to spend more of their time and money supporting their computers.

    ANY computer is susceptible to a virus written for it. Money? The last time I checked security patches were free.

    Almost every week, they are supposed to install patches to the already patchy operating system to plug these sec
    • You seem to suggest XP and OS X are equally vulnerable (or secure) but since XP is the OS du jour, there's viruses and worms for XP and since OS X is obscure, there are none (0) for OS X.

      eheheheheheh
      I'm actually not going to argue with that. It has been done before by quite knowledgeable people. Just following your logic here, which is more fun.

      OK, and with this huge crowd of mac-haters out there, there's none with just a smidgen of intelligence to write an OS X virus.

      Which should be just as easy to do a

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