Name:
Location: Oregon, United States

Here is why I put my long(er) ramblings, well, at least the stuff I pretend the think about BEFORE posting. Here is my primary site.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Buy a Mac

Supposedly, in less than a year, you will be able to buy the many versions of Windows Vista. Now everybody and their mother is getting into the reasons why Vista is going to be the next “big thing” or why it seriously blows.

The requirements for Vista is an 800MHz machine with 512MB of memory, and 15GB of free Hard Drive space. Since this is the minimum, let's say you will need a 1.5GHz machine, with 1GB of memory and 20GB of free Hard Drive space. If you want the cool Aero features, then you will need a video card that has 128MB of memory. So, the machine you have right now can run the Vista in a basic config, but will need a little upgrading to be fully ready, or you can buy a brand-new machine with Vista on it.

Now we get into the more complicated stuff. First, the firewall in Vista is supposed to be disabled, as per this story at ZDNet Australia. So you are going to need to do some setup work to enable the firewall, and then setup your programs to work with it. Then Microsoft has decided to dump the old login and security system for User Account Protection (UAP), but there are problems with it. One site, details some problems, including how many times UAP pops up, just to accomplish basic tasks, also gone over at this article at Computer World.

The ZDNet article also discusses the problems with Media Center to be included in Vista. It seems Microsoft took something that worked, and broke it. Well, the didn't really “break” it, as much as they mucked about in it and screwed up parts of it's interface. The Computer World article also discusses the problems with not enough Windows Sidebar Gadgets, and how they are not compatible with existing Windows Live Gadgets.

Will there be security problems? Well, since they seem to still be using WMF code, since they had to release a Vista patch for it. Mix that with the firewall being disabled by default, we have issues already. Now add in the number o UAP pop ups to do the most basic things, then people with start clicking OK just out of habit. Part of the problem there is that Vista does not use a complete Hardware Abstraction Layer, which means that it doesn't know the difference between you double-clicking an icon with your mouse, and some spyware that says you double-clicked an icon with your mouse. Therefore, Vista can not make distinctions in what to do based on how a program was called. This if from looking at this blog from the Microsoft Developer's Network site.

So, with all of this, what do I think, I think you should buy a Mac.

Now, I am not an Apple fan-boy, but I believe that OS X is really well done.

First, being built on top of NetBSD, a Unix-like Operating System, allows OS X to completely turn off some applications, instead of just firewalling them. Adding in Personal Firewall to control access to non-Apple software, allows your box to be virtually invisible to the outside world.

Next, Apple's security model, called Keychain, is a good implementation of security concerns and access control. Not only does this allow a prompt for administrative tasks, it can keep track of other passwords. This gives you a single place to keep your passwords, that is tied to a Hardware Abstraction Layer, that keeps you from having to re-enter passwords all the time, while still keeping suspicious programs from running automatically, or changing system settings when you run what is supposed to be a simple program.

With iPhoto, IDVD, GarageBand, iWeb, and the rest of iLife, along with Quicktime, you have a good media center, which has been around for a few years now. Then you have Dashboard, which provides all of what Vista's Sidebar Gadgets want to do.

Now, I am not going to say that OS X is immune to Virus programs. Although, since it is based on a Unix-like OS, has well designed security controls, and has a built-in firewall, it is harder for virus programs to infect it. But don't worry, you can get anti-virus software from Symantec (AKA: Norton), Intego, McAfee, and Computer Associates (eTrust). For now, these anti-virus programs mostly scan for Window's virus, so you don't send them on.

So instead of waiting another year, then having to either seriously upgrade your machine, or buy a new one, then choose which of the six versions of Vista you are going to buy, go get a Mac, now.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually NetBSD is not the base for OSX. There is code from NetBSD and other sources, but it's mainly Mach/FreeBSD for the kernel and FreeBSD/OpenStep for the userland.

Still a nice article with a strong point.

3:57 PM, June 03, 2006  
Blogger subnetmask255x4 said...

Sorry, getting stuff turned around.

4.3 BSD (Tahoe) was the core for Nextstep, which eventually led to OS X. 4.3 BSD (Reno), the 4.3 BSD Lite version, became BSD Net/2, which later was NetBSD.

Getting some of my ancestry wrong here.

3:48 PM, July 06, 2006  

Post a Comment

<< Home