Comments for Patrick Klug

Comment on Windows 8 and the (disappointing) new App Store by sylwester

sylwester — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:28:42 +0000

Hey there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your article seem to be running off the screen in Opera. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I figured I’d post to let you know. The style and design look great though! Hope you get the issue solved soon. Thanks

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Jedeco

Jedeco — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:19:02 +0000

Windows, for those interested, offers complete keyboard control. Most power users prefer it as they can get more done, more quickly. Just Google “Windows Keyboard shortcuts” and you’ll find more documents than you’ll ever need to keep handy until you learn to use the keyboard only. I’m sure the Mac is also the same way, I really don’t know.
But your hackneyed, junior high debating technique has not gone unnoticed. Your ad hominem attack based on one small piece of the other poster’s entry, aimed at bringing his objectivity and intelligence into question, is without question disingenuous.
He made some great points, all of which are arguable, but nevertheless, solid points on the differences between the volume of software available, and they level of configuration available for that software, between OS X and Windows. I happen to agree with him and his reasoning is the main reason I’m also a Windows user.
I like the freedom to install what I want and make the decision on the software’s validity, and especially have the ability to configure the software to my liking instead of what Apple has decided is best for you. Apple has never been famous for software, but their hardware. Even today, Quicktime and iTunes remain 2 of the biggest security risks one can install on their OS.
But one thing that I find amusing is the sheer volume of security fixes that Apple puts out yearly for all current versions of OS X, and has been something they’ve done all along. The ABM crowd and the media to a large degree has made security problems and fixes synomynous with Windows. And while it’s true that Windows has been the main target of hackers, both terroist and criminal minded, it obscures the fact that OS X has historically been far less secure.
Since 2007 Apple has put out so many MEGA and MONSTER patches and I invite you to peruse these downloads for the number of security fixes to the OS. There was just another Massive security patch sent out the other day for OS X and all iOS versions.
The fact that an OS is open to remote takeover via a security hole is not erased because nobody took advantage of it. It existed and OS X has somewhere near a 20:1 ratio or security fixes over NT 6x versions. Pwn2Own has proven year after year OS X goes down easily.
People should know that 99% of all hacks today are based on social engineering. This is a Windows problem because of it’s sheer marketshare volume. I know the Apple faithful believe the “marketshare” idea is a “myth” but considering 99% of attacks originate from emails, and Apple is far less secure than Windows based on the hundreds of security patches every time a MEGA patch is released, usually several times per year, it’s obvious that terrorists and criminals are going to go for volume. If the technique for hacking involves fooling the user into doing something that will give the hacker’s code the necessary permissions to run and a hacker knows when they send out thousands of emails that 97% of them are going to be received by Windows users, why, oh why, would they ever bother writing code to attack OS X and get a handful of hits per mailing? It’s ridiculous that would ever be the case, given the hacking requirements today. Windows 7 has layered defenses with IE running in protected mode. It’s is very difficult, moreso than OS X, be directly hacked with social engineering, so it’s obvious in this age of fooling users to visit a rigged site, or download and run malicious code, those who perpetrate such deeds are going for volume.
Even with all of the past security issues with Windows, it’s funny that events of major consequences have rarely occurred and most have happened on *x systems, which OS X is based on. The super secret military plane in the works for 20 years and many other unfortunate occurances of highly classified information being stolen have occurred mainly on *ix systems.

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Jason

Jason — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:56:17 +0000

One could say WTF is an .exe file? WTF is an .msi file? Why is it any easier to know what these are than a .dmg file? It is just what you are used to and you simply show your bias. Anyway if you really can’t be bothered knowing what .dmg is then use Safari (with the defaults) and you won’t have to know, Safari will open it for you.
And you never use a mouse in Windows? You only have a keyboard? The solely Windows users I know, tend to rely more heavily on the mouse than Mac users I know (who typically also use Windows at some point).

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Patrick Klug

Patrick Klug — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:43:01 +0000

of course the installation process has something to do with Windows. Whether you like it or not there is a defacto standard installation experience on any OS and Windows uses Windows Installer (MSI) which causes exactly the experience I described. Of course you can just ignore the standard and create your own installer but that is a bad idea. What we need is a fundamental change of the system and only MS can do that.

finally, if you think I like iTunes you have the wrong guy. worst piece of crap ever.

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Patrick Klug

Patrick Klug — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:39:04 +0000

MS doesn’t cater any more to developers than Apple. On the contrary MS seems to largely ignore issues that developers face. The whole Silverlight/WPF debacle is a good example of that.

I agree about MSI. terrible.

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Patrick Klug

Patrick Klug — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:36:14 +0000

Your point being?

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Anon

Anon — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:26:10 +0000

Huh! Better not try writing the Part 2 – spend a couple of years away from that Mac and work on Windows – let’s see if it’ll help you see the light at the end of the tunnel you are in…

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Jedeco

Jedeco — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 03:15:12 +0000

Linux ‘apt-get’ is nice but it doesn’t solve anything since the marketshare of Linux desktops (servers is another story) is so small. And to me, “free” software just has too much of a socialist feel behind it. I like to pay for my goods because I charge for the software I labor to create. The Linux people say software is just “math” and can’t be “sold”. That is such a lame mantra to live by, there is as much work in programming and design and maintenance that it’s nothing like “math”. If the Linux crowd were true to their word, they’d be demanding that all products be reduced by the part of the price that covers the engineering of the product, that is just as much only “math”. But they don’t. They mostly hate capitalism, that thing that has driven innovation like no other country in the world. Linux folks want to see you install their “free” software they claim is open but the truth is 99.9% of users could not care less and could never use the source code period. It’s worthless to 99.9% and then they make their money by charging outrageous service fees for sites installing Linux or the few models that Dell and formerly HP used to sell with Linux have a huge price tag for support and people will have to get it because they’ll be lost otherwise. Most linux purchases are just people not realizing the machine doesn’t come with Windows.
It’s funny how they claim software is just math and the code should be free and open, but they want to charge you for their knowledge of that “math”. That is hilarious and a total contradiction to all they claim to stand for.
Apple devices are easy to install software, but you get not choice. It’s Job’s way or the highway. Ever try to download a FREE MP3 using an itouch or ipad? hmmmm? Suddenly you get vague error and it can’t perform the operation. Well how about that.
Capitalism made our country strong and even though there are slimeballs on the web, it’s no different than car salesmen or actual brick and mortar businesses or mail order. It’s always been buyer beware, but you have FULL CHOICE. YOu don’t have someone dictating to you which software you can and cannot use.
Users of today are far more intelligent about using Windows than this writer believes. Thanks for backing your fellow Americans there bud. I’m sure you are superior but in the meantime most people I know are creating networks at their homes and they are not IT people at all. Windows Home Server does make that easy but they need to be savvy enough to work through things and most people are today. It is 2011.
At my shop we shun Apple, the evil company who wants to control you and what software you use. Quicktime and itunes are such resource hogs and so poorly written they are nothing better than Apple approved trojans anyway, so how is that better?

Besides, where are all the Windows viruses and malware today? Are you living in the past. Windows 7 is far more hardened than XP and it’s acutally more secure than Leopard, it’s just something people don’t realize. Win7 has a layered defense model and was built using SDL. Apple puts no security into OS X. It is security by obscurity because if you notice, Apple releases several MEGA or MONSTER patches per year and they have hundreds of fixes, may of which are security fixes. And of those, a large number are fixing holes that allow remote code execution. Apple apologists are all over that and say “show me where OS X has been compromised (well if you pay attention OS X is the first OS to get hacked in major security contests each year) but the thing is, vulnerable code with proof of concept code means it was open to attack. The fact nobody in the criminal/terrorist world bothered does not remove the fact it was totally vulnerable. Again there are many security fixes for OS X coming in groups of hundreds in the MEGA patches Apple puts out.
Windows 7 users that I know are very happy and w/o malware.
Running IE in protected mode alone makes Windows vastly more secure, but it’s got many other layers of defense. It’s probably as secure as most Linux variants, if not moreso.
Google has screwed that up anyway and Android is a mess. There is so much fragmentation between the handset makers devs are running the other way. The Motorola handset purschase may help but they could alienate all other handset makers by making motorola devices more closed like an iphone.

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Andrew Koransky

Andrew Koransky — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:48:34 +0000

I think the crux here is that Microsoft caters to the developer, where as Apple caters to (and sometimes coddles) the user. Being that MS caters to the developer, they also highly value backward compatibility… hence their app-store behavior in Windows 8. But this is why there are tons more apps for Microsoft versus MacOS… there are simply more developers. I think the market has proven device users prefer Apple, and desktop users prefer Microsoft. It just depends on whether you want “just-works” simplicity, or tons of choice, flexibility, and potential confusion… and apparently people want different things for their desktop versus their portable devices.

PS Microsoft HAS an installation platform, but no store to support it… MSI. Frankly, I think it is confusing and hard to use, so you continue to have a menagerie of installation technologies out there now. I would definitely like to see Microsoft develop a new cohesive app installation technology, but good god, I hope they can do better than MSI. Maybe then, we could see the app store you are dreaming about.

Comment on What is wrong with Windows Software and why Windows 8 doesn’t solve a thing – Part 1: Finding, Downloading & Installing by Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:13:08 +0000

Does anyone work for Google here ^^