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August 28, 2003

Designer Bugs III

Hopefully this will be the last word on the matter :-)

There have been some *heated* comments and a few other blogs are getting on on the act. Patrick has this item and also this post about the lack of design sensibility. That is the key to the original comments. It was not a comparison of usability or platform preference - the point was the Microslosh did the wrong thing (and have been doing it for years, despite the hype and promise of "safe" computing).

I can remember a time (in the late 80's) when Sun was being hammered for shoddy security practice. They used to distribute an operating system with rsh access turned on and a '+' in /etc/.rhosts - guaranteed security hole. Due to pressure, they fixed the problem. Some time later there was an outcry about the sendmail version that shipped with Solaris 2.2 and again, Sun amended their evil ways and become a more model citizen of the internet. All vendors, even Microslosh, are entitled to an occasional error, the question is what they do when the error is discovered:

  • Admit it, fix it and move on
  • Try to cover it up and hope no-one finds out
  • Ignore it and spend money on marketing instead
  • Lie about it openly and rely on trolls to protect your reputation

    • The issue at hand is that the recent virus attacks would not have happened (or would have been less severe) if Microslosh had done the right thing. They have not done so, despite plenty of previous exposure to the problems and it is not outside the bounds of possibility that in a litigious environment, some trigger happy lawyer could make a reasonable case for damages.

    Now onto the comments from previous articles. First, some background - Pete happens to be my youngest brother and he is a PC/WinTel bigot (just as I am a Unix bigot). He has had little exposure to Macs and they way they function (hence he is unaware of what they can do). Also it is worth noting that we live in Australia and his comments about software for the Mac in Australia are completely valid.

    Pete started the ball rolling by complaining about the lack of Mac software (the biggest retailer of Macs in Sydney never has more than about 20 titles on display) and this is valid (but irrelevant to the points being discussed).

    Jivha added some comments about user attitudes to poor design and I think he is right which led to this post.

    Raena from Tasmania jumped in on the comment about the lack of Mac software. I think I had better go visit Tassie based on that comment alone :-) She is right, there are many packages for the Mac and given that there are limits to how many variations of a word processor can actually be useful, the Mac has it covered. You need practical software, it exists (including Microslosh Office or the alternate clones like ThinkFree Office and OpenOffice). The weak spot (and this bugs Pete) is games. Not all games appear on PC and Mac but this is in fact true of any two gaming platforms you pick. Personally, there are enough of the games I want to play and that will do me. More importantly, the current Macs have Unix under the hood (i.e. like Linux with a nice face) and that means a lot more than 'New Technology'. BTW, Raena also has a related post on her blog.

    Pete jumped back in and asked a series of questions about the Mac which Raena has answered in some detail. I would like to tackle them as well because I think it is important to clear away misconceptions about these things. I have an advantage over Pete in that I use both platforms and work with guys who have spent the last two weeks trying to roll out zillions of updates to some 3500 Wintel boxes in between recurrent attacks of viruses.

  • Midtown Madness 2 - this game is produced by Microsoft and is only available for Windows (funny that). What is more interesting is the Midtown Madness 3 is also available and it is only for Xbox. So I guess that means that not all games are available on the PC after all :-) Games Warehouse lists only three car games - Nascar 2002, Nascar 2003 and SpyHunter but I am fairly sure Carmagedden is also available.
  • Copy/Paste - works on Mac. In fact on the mac, anything you can see on the screen can be rendered in pdf (soon to include links as well). This make it trivial to produce an image, document, spreadsheet and covert to an non-editable document that can be send to users of ANY platform. Of course you can send the document/image/etc instead if you want to allow edits. In general Mac software is very good at coping with cross-platform issues.
  • Choose program to open files - that is what control-click is for (or left button for the dual button mice folks). Context menu includes 'Open With' which tells you which applications should be able to open this file (regardless of what application created it in the first place). There is also a 'let me choose something else' option as well. So yes, you can open your Microslosh Office (Macintosh Version) CSV file in anything else that supports it. In my case (Office not installed) I click on an XLS file created by Excel on a PC. It suggests the following applications: AppleWorks, ThinkFreeOffice, Virex (appropriate), MacLinkPlus or Other. Choosing other would let me select OpenOffice or TextEdit.
  • HTML design - the most popular program out there would be BBedit but the freeware SubEthaEdit (used to be Hydra) is pretty good. It is an LSE (language sensitive editor) and can be used for HTML, Perl of a handful of other languages.
  • Network - don't forget that Macs were networked via Ethernet in the days when PC's still relied on serial connections and null-modems. MacOS X is based on Unix and implements the full complement of RFC complient network standards (including IPv6). Out of the box, it can look like an NT file server (via Samba), a Unix box (via NFS) or an old style Mac (via AppleTalk). I routinely transfer files between PC's and Sun boxes and the easiest option is do put a Mac in the middle.

    • I guess Pete doesn't have to buy a Mac yet because the one thing missing is his driving game - but on the other hand, he will have to buy an xbox to play that anyway so maybe the best combination would be a Mac and an xbox to replace the PC :-)

    More seriously, the suggestion made in the second article was that offenders (computers infected with a virus), regardless of platform, be automatically disconnected from their ISP and then required to "show cause" before being allowed to reconnect. Effectively a form of licencing, easy to implement, easy to manage and platform agnostic.

    Mind you, we all know that in this case, 99.9% of the offenders will be PC users!

    Posted by Ozguru at August 28, 2003 10:08 PM

    Comments

    Okay already - we get the picture. Mac gooood. PC baaaad. As I said, you relentless campaign against Microslosh has resulted in me deciding that I'm gonna give Linus an option whenever I get my computer. That means there's still hope...

    Posted by: Jivha at August 28, 2003 10:08 PM

    I wasn't trying to do a Mac vs PC story. I was trying to say that Microslash were being slack with their design and rollout. I am happy to hammer any vendor that stuffs up something important like that. As a Unix admin I often get to hammer a certain software supplier (a big blue one) because of their shoddy application distribution mechanisms. I'm glad you're going to try Linux - it is worth it but it can require more expertise to make it run well. Let me know when you take the leap and I'll try and help with references and things... To some degree, your choice of operating system is like your choice of religion. As long as you don't insist that I adopt your religion (or operating system) then we can get on OK because although I am sure about my religion (and operating system) I would not dream of imposing either on you without your consent. If you want to know about either ask, but I won't shove it down your throat. Also, regular readers would remember that I bagged Apple out for the way they are handling the iTune Music store for non-American residents :-)

    Posted by: ozguru at August 28, 2003 10:08 PM

    Linus?BTW Ozg - Cant use the IMG tag in comments...

    Posted by: Peskie at August 28, 2003 10:08 PM

    More car games: Formula 1, Reckless Drivin', 4x4 Evolution and Carmageddon. Actually there is an official Apple games site that lists lots of these things at Apple - Games. Pete: Re IMG tags - that is a configured setting in MT but the default in TypePad. Basically url's and formatting work but not images.

    Posted by: ozguru at August 28, 2003 10:08 PM