adir1

It is that time again – time to decide how much credit we should allot to our users, versus how much we should “protect the user from him/her self”. Ah, the eternal dilemma – but wait, Apple to the rescue? Didn’t they pioneer the “we know what you want better than you do” model?

Actually, today’s post is a bit more technical than that simple discussion, but stick around and join the discussion, you’re sure to learn something (and contribute!)

The latest news from our (recently) beloved Apple is that (amazing) Sandbox technology is on the horizon, which will run App Store apps inside their own Sandboxes. Here are few words about sandboxing – it is basically a mechanism for computer to protect itself (and the user) from (potentially) malicious or misbehaving application that user wants to use. As security experts will tell you, there are plenty of supposedly useful applications which are just a (shameless) wrapper around virus delivery mechanism or an even simpler system that quietly looks at what you browsing to and captures user/pass you put into your (financial) website and silently sends it via the Internet to the perpetrator. After reading some interesting discussion on the subject, I decided to weigh in here.

Granted – I am as paranoid as the next guy, and you should ALWAYS know the source of Any Application you download and (even try to) run. And the issue is complex, as so far all I have seen is that users become mostly victims of increased security – how often did you call your bank because you forgot your password?! In fact, I once left a financial institution because their login procedure became 5 screens long, with pictures, symbols, pins, sentences, etc…

The punch line: if Apple Approves an App and grants it Sandbox Permissions, but later we discover that App still had Malicious Password stealer hidden deep inside? I say – We Sue Them! They performed a Paid service — developers Pay to get into App store and share cut of profit. Given that the aforementioned paid service had Primary purpose of Vetting an app for our (naive) users’ consumption, I see door wide open for Class Action. Seriously, given the size of Fiasco (millions of accounts stolen?), no 100 page License agreements we all carelessly click through will protect them.

So, Apple – for your own good – let the users free! Or better yet – Respect that they (sometimes) know what they’re doing!

Apologies to all my International blog readers. This is an official Simpsons episode, and I think it only is watchable inside the US right now. I am certain if you do a quick YouTube search, or Veoh, etc, you will find another openly available copy.

So, are you a PC? I am, though I own and enjoy iPhone also. I think for me the price premium is the deal breaker for Mac, plus I do like to tinker and upgrade my computers ALL THE TIME!

Yesterday Scobleizer reminded me about the whole Mac versus Vista debate, with his post about Vista on Dell’s Tablet. It seems not only Robert is having that issue, here is an Attorney with similar complaint:

… another reason why I prefer Apple computers. Mac laptops sleep when you close the lid and wake up instantly when you open the lid. You can do this over and over again, for months, and never have to reboot. Very few, if any, people have this experience with Windows computers.

First, directly to the point being discussed. There are excellent controls provided by Windows Vista to make this happen on PC laptop! In fact, this was one of the first things I adjusted when our new Dell laptop arrived. Yes, I had to dig deep inside myriad of Power Management settings in Control Panel. The question, of course, is what was Dell and Microsoft thinking!? Why isn’t this CONFIGURED PROPERLY out of the gate?

Mac has really come of age, and with Firefox running well on Mac, it finally is a leading second choice for desktop. But, here’s my message to Steve – we are not imbeciles! We can figure out how to use 2 Button Mouse! And it isn’t just me, I hear from a friend who otherwise loves his Mac Laptop, that his biggest complaint is that there is no second button on the mouse!

I have been running Vista on my primary PC for over half a year now. It is a monster machine, with 4gb ram and 4 cores processor, so I really don’t feel any sluggishness or anything. Quite the opposite, in fact, but would it be even faster with Windows XP? I never did run XP on this PC, so we may never know. And even if a single process would be faster on XP, I am not sure it would be as fast/efficient in utilizing 4 cores with as many processes as I run…

PS: If you want to know what exact settings I put on Vista on our Laptop, just ask in comments, and I’ll promptly put up a detailed write-up there.