Finger Pointing Over iPod Windows Virus 293
rs232 writes sent us some choice quotes in the finger pointing over the iPod's that recently shipped with a virus on them. "It's not a matter of which platform the virus originated [on]. The fact that it's found on the portable player means that there's an issue with how the quality checks, specifically the content check, was done," Poon wrote in a blog entry. and "Steve, if you need someone to advise on how to improve your quality checks, feel free to contact me 8)."
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, this is old news. And the size of the problem (the number of units affected) was so small, I would put good money down that we would not even know about the existence of this Windows virus problem if Apple had not disclosed it.
ill-advised comment, but not Apple's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
And everybody's blaming them for not noticing. But if you think about it, it was a pretty absurd thing for them to have had to "notice". As I understand it, the virus was implanted by one infected machine among a number of machines at a Chinese manufacturing shop they'd contracted iPod manufacture to. Apple said, "here's a thing that looks like an external disk: please put these bits on it for us". A simple and straightforward enough task, one would think -- but in a world where autorun exists and is or has been enabled by default, perhaps not so straightforward.
It's as if I had a letter to mail to 1000 of my customers, and I took one original down to my friendly print shop and asked them to make 1000 copies, and I or the print shop used an automated machine to fold the 1000 copies and stuff them in envelopes and mail them, and only after they were mailed out and opened by my customers did we start discovering that for some strange reason 1% of them had "FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE" overprinted on page 2. And then found out that the "strange reason" was that one of the copy machines at the print shop, among the several that the print shop divided my job among, was "infected" by a "virus".
If that happened to me, I'd be annoyed, too. (It'd be even more annoying if I were accused of ignorance for not having protected myself against this "obvious" threat, that evidently everybody else knows about and makes allowances for.) And I know my response would not be to ask the print shop to be more careful next time, or to run an "antivirus" soluton, or something. I'd take my business elsewhere, and more importantly insist that my future printing contractors use a different brand of copier, one that's not susceptible to preposterous failure modes like that, because even if there is some alleged way of papering over that particular flaw, who knows how many other equivalently egregious bizarre flaws it's got that haven't been discovered and papered over yet?
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've never had a virus on any personal machine, and the only ones I've ever had happen were 0-day expolits that were impossible to prepare for in a permissive network environment (i.e., where the ones transmitting viruses were folks I *HAD* to give permission to, or shut down the program in its entirety...and we have killed areas of our business where we couldn't provide the service AND securely provide for our clients).
At the same time, I now use entirely a Mac outside of work for personal use, and my side business runs on a few Linux servers. None of them have ever been compromised, and I do very little to secure them. At least in comparison to what I have to do with my Windows boxes. No tweaking the Firewall every few weeks, no having to fiddle with the virus checker -- especially when I find out the commercial product my employer uses site wide could easily be compromised to send viruses in the form of updates to every computer in the company -- no having to shut down vital services because even the OS Manufacturer can't figure out how to make them safe.
No, I don't have to deal with this fucking bullshit at home, and my T1 at home connected to my servers are open wide and I have logs showing thousands of attempts a day. The only reason I picked up a hardware firewall is because its much faster at discarding phoney requests than the other servers.
As such, many of us who don't have to deal with viruses on a daily basis laugh at those that do. I gotta say, the gain in productivity in not having to tweak shit made up for the price disadvantage of the Mac. I bring in my personal laptop to my day job and get far more...most of the time, my PC is shut off except when I need to offload a compile. And all the other developers laugh at me, except when the company is down to wipe everything and I'm still working. I've been known to throw out childish retorts as well and feel justified for them. You pick an inferior platform to base your life and business around, simply to save a few bucks and I'm going to laugh at you and make fun of you when you are inconvienced by something that can't effect me because I did my research and adjusted.
I'm sorry, but the more I think about it, Apple might have been shooting themselves in the foot with the comment, but they are absolutely right to say so and have no need to apologize to the sheep that goes with 'good enough'.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
For those that do not think Windows viruses are a big problem, consider my experience as a tech. I re-install Windows on clients computers due to viral infections at least once or twice a week. Generally these are older computers they have not had me work on and have failed to heed my advice w.r.t. needing anti-virus software on a Windows computer (same does not apply to the Mac OS X computers I work on). You know what really sucks, once the anti-viral software is installed and made effective (auto-scanning of every file that is touched) the whole system slows down. What could have been a relatively fast Windows computer is made slower just by having to have commercial anti-virus software (don't talk to me about OSS solutions, these installs have to be idiot proof with auto-scheduling, active scanning, and so on). Argh.
Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote from article [digitalmusicnews.com]:
Earlier, McDonald's and Coca-Cola faced a similar problem in Japan during an MP3 player giveaway, though the events are unconnected. The iPod virus only affects Windows machines, and does not alter the behavior of the portable device itself or Mac operating systems.
It's Microsoft's problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Who created the Operating System which will execute arbitrary code -- for that matter, arbitrary code which ought to require administrator privileges -- without the say-so of the user? Microsoft did.
That is the problem. For sure, they had a reason to do that -- they wanted to hide "difficult" decisions from the user in order to make their operating system beginner-friendly. Their model seems to be "Programmers know what they are doing, users don't." Unfortunately for everyone concerned, that has well and truly bitten them in the arse.
If Vista is more secure than Windows XP, then it will necessarily be harder to use. The only way it could be more secure than XP while remaining as easy to use, is if only certain trusted parties are allowed to write software for it. (Which is effectively what you've almost got with some OSes; anyone is allowed to write software, but software distributors -- who may well be independent of the software creators -- maintain a catalogue of what is "safe", based on their own judgement after reading the Source Code. Tech-savvy users can check the Source Code for themselves. Non-tech-savvy users know they can rely on the software distributor's judgement. Any distributor who does a bad job by distributing dangerous software loses custom.) But that would create a monopoly, or at best a cartel.
What's so bad about that quote? (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that Windows should be far more resilient to malicious software, regardless of whether the vector is a network, an email attachment, or a piece of Apple hardware.
Don't forget that there's nothing Apple can do but make such facts public knowledge. Considering how Microsoft limits access to the Windows source code and development process, there's basically nothing Apple could do to help improve the situation. If Microsoft's software is so readily vulnerable to exploits, then the only party to blame is Microsoft.
Re:For the same reason it's always happened... (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a "hardware manufacturing" problem. The iPods got hooked to a Windows machine, probably during some QA process, and got infected. The hardware is fine.
Re:ill-advised comment, totally Apple's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OK, I have to ask (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's truthful, but classless. Apple screws up big time, and they have no better idea than to insult Microsoft? Common, that's so cheap...
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
"...and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it." which should take care of the rest of your points.
Re:OK, I have to ask (Score:5, Insightful)
It happens because Apple doesn't make their products. Subcontracters do. Apple doesn't have any factories.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ill-advised comment, totally Apple's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely agree. So the remaining question is: aside from the ill-advised potshot, has Apple done right or wrong by those customers? Have they (a) disavowed all responsibility, told customers it's their problem, told them to go talk to the "podunk assembly plant in Hunan Province" if they need help, or (b) done everything they can to mitigate and prevent future recurrences of the problem?
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:3, Insightful)
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf ~
Considering that you can generally reinstall the OS in an hour or two, for most of us this would be just as devastating as a format c: (the exception being if you share your PC with like your omg daughter who just had to click on that link becuse the picture of the pony was sooo cute, or with your l33t hax0r err son who thought he was getting the latest warez); likewise trojans etc. installed as your user will do just as much damage as if installed as root.
Re:But how is it an insult? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ill-advised comment, totally Apple's fault (Score:1, Insightful)
What people do have problems with is how Apple explained the incident. To me that's a bit unreasonable. Was Dell wrong when their laptops burst to fire and specifically attributed the problem to Sony's batteries or Ford to GoodYear tires? No. Both Sony's batteries and GoodYear tires were defective. Similarly, Microsoft Windows is defective. Companies do have the right to explain how a blunder happened when assuring the customers the steps being taken to prevent the same thing from happending again.
What's so different in those cases? Sony's batteries and GoodYear tires have no fanboys. I was tempted to say it's because both Apple and MS make OSes, but both Sony and Dell make laptops too.
Bad analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple are *not* blaming the users of the ipod (the "drivers"), they are expressing some anger at the ultimate cause of how it happened ("the tire manufacturers"), and you better believe that if tires started randomly blowing out on cars, and there was an avenue of blame available, then Ford damn well would lay that blame firmly at the tire-manufacturers feet.
Since they're also volunteering this information, announcing a way for users to completely recover ("new body cloning device" ?), and expressing even more anger at themselves for not catching it, I don't really see the big deal.
Simon
Not the full quote (Score:5, Insightful)
If the "more upset with ourselves" phrase was in the original quote and people left it out to make Apple look [more] arrogant [than they actually are], shame on them.
No, it's a cheap shot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but as a developer myself I see this as extremely irresponsible. Admiting your faults is a core fundamental of software, you acknowledge and adjust. You don't finger point or make excuses for your own blunder, that's what amateurs do.
lame (Score:4, Insightful)
If Jobs doesn't like it, then stop making the iPod work on Windows. How would he like it if all of a sudden the iPod would be "disabled" by MS? He'd sue the living hell out of them (and for good reason).
Take the responsability for the screw up and fix it.
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:1, Insightful)
I would find someone at fault for getting shot if they ran in front of a firing range over and over, and then expected the people shooting to pay their medical bills every time they fixed the bullet holes.
maybe if microsoft wasn't just piling more wood onto the fire, their operating system wouldn't suck so much. sure, apple is being kind of smug with their choice of wording, but it really isn't their fault that windows is succeptable to a 5 year old virus.
the fact that so few (estimated about 25 units) were infected goes to show that it was probably ONE person who screwed up at the factory. its even possible that the person purposely implanted the virus on ipods in an attempt to get bad press for apple (its happened before -- remember the supposed macbook wireless security flaw, which actually turned out to be nothing related to the macbook or apple at all?)
apple took care of it immediately, and even went out of their way to post removal instructions. sure, they also snuck in a marketing quote "if you were on a mac, this wouldnt happen, wink winkn" -- but apple handled this 100 times better than microsoft, or even other top PC manufacturers (HP, sony, toshiba) handle their security flaws.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ill-advised comment, totally Apple's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
I repeat, for those fanboys who are hard of hearing: it's the job of the professional media trolls to place the blame. Apple coulda scored tons by just profusely apologizing for the Windows virus getting into their distribution system. There are plenty of press hacks who will "go the extra mile" and explain why Windows sucks. This has nothing to do with fanboys and everything to do with business sense. Sorry, Apple screwed up. Don't cry too much, or your tears might crack your G4 cube.
Re:It's a subtle bug, not obvious to solve (Score:4, Insightful)
According to some quotes in TFA, the Windows machines are used to check for compatibility, as iPods can connect to Windows as well as Macs, not for the manufacturing process itself. Perhaps the low number of infections (said to be 5%) means only a few iPods were given that check (normal QC wouldn't require every one to be checked for a consumer item).
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they had better QC in place, this wouldn't have happened. *Nix (including OSX) aren't 100% secure and never will be.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like saying, "Only a tiny percentage of criminals use guns. But one hundred percent of the cops they shoot will be injured or killed unless they have third-party protection (in the form of a bullet-proof vest). Therefore the fault lies with cops for not wearing bullet-proof vests."
It doesn't matter that Windows is vulnerable. Its still Apple's fault that they shipped a product that will damage the data on my PC. The responsibility lies on Apple's poor QA process that allowed this kind of damaging infection to get on their product.
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:1, Insightful)
Nothing? Nothing at all? The fact that they invented a fundamentally insecure mechanism called autorun, and then made it enabled by default, played no part whatsoever in this scenario?
Let me guess, the "fb" stands for fanboy, right?
Re:Not the full quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Biff: "I can't believe you'd loan me your car without telling me it had a blind spot."
Re:OK, I have to ask (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely different beast.
Re:What's so bad about that quote? (Score:2, Insightful)
Even better, a Ghost Image? You make it sound so difficult.
Re:Not the full quote (Score:3, Insightful)
As in (e. g.) "we have only ourselves to blame." Apple simply cannot pretend they did not know the risks (they advertise their knowledge of the risk in 30 s televsion spots all the time), so it's way beyond too late to try to shift blame (even in part) back to Microsoft.
Consider. [sluggy.com]
Two words about brand responsibility recognition : (Score:3, Insightful)
Who got the blame ? Was it only Dell, Fujitsu and their friends ?