Greg In The Desert

What more is there to say? “HP and Apple today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPod.” So HP is going to rebrand the iPod and bundle iTunes on their PCs. I can see Microsoft holding their breath and jumping up and down.

[Update:] From Apple Turns, “[Microsoft said] “Windows is all about choice… we believe you should have the same choice when it comes to music services.” Translation: “Use any service you want as long as it sells Windows Media, buy any player out there as long as it plays Windows Media– but for heaven’s sake, don’t buy one of those wretched iPod thingies or we’ll be completely boned with our whole plan to monopolize digital media commerce and then we might actually have to start innovating for our paychecks for a change.” Or, to put it a little more succinctly, “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black.” 

“The truth is that the Mac OS is just as vulnerable as Microsoft Windows.” No it’s not. Yes MacOS is vulnerable to a lot of things but it’s not as vulnerable as Windows. And that is the issue that the writer of this article doesn’t get. In fact it’s such a non-article about anything that it doesn’t deserve the “press” that the Mac websites are going to give it.

The article is mostly a bunch of ego fluff about how the author was a Mac user until we went to work for the real world where they made him switch to windows. Blah blah blah, why don’t you just give us beauty tips instead.

The author refers to this security advisory as an example (the only example he gives) of how insecure MacOS is. What he fails to do is research. This exploit requires a “malicious DHCP” server. Meaning someone has to hook up to your network and be the DHCP server for your network. That counts out most home users, since they are likely going to know about any servers in their home. Even with the wireless scenario that the Carrel.org claims could happen, It’s no easy exploit, your in much more trouble then you think if it happens to you and not just because of this exploit.

The register has an excellent article on Linux vs Windows security. To quote “To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it”. This applies to MacOS X as well. This article has been out since July.

[Update:] See, I’m not the only one that thinks this guy was “incorrect” in his “article”.