This morning at work this article was passed around in email. It’s about a hacking contest and tells how the MacBook Air was hacked in under two minutes with a browser exploit.
We have Macs and Windows PCs (and advocates and zealots) at work so this started a thread about Macs are better/no they are not.
After a bit of back and forth, John Stephenson wrote what I consider to be an excellent screed that can be summed up as “All software sucks, all hardware sucks, the only secure computer is one that’s been melted down to slag.”
You can read John’s full commentary, and my “me too” response below the fold:John said:
Apple has a history of excellent industrial design. My Macbook Pro is absolutely the nicest laptop I have every worked with (though I really wish it had a second mouse button – the ctrl-click is just clumsy). Likewise, the iPod Touch / iPhone are quite nifty pieces of technology and, from what I have read, the Air appears to carry on the tradition.
But the OS is entirely different. It’s software and, as previously stated, all software sucks. Pointing out that people went after a particularly sexy piece of *hardware* doesn’t change the fact that a two minute exploit against the *software running on it* still represents a pretty serious flaw (and of far greater interest is that no machine was hacked without user input which carries some interesting ramifications).
Will Apple address it? Sure – same as every other vendor. And will there be other exploits? Yep – again, same as every other vendor.
To me, what this graphically demonstrates is that simply stating a system is secure (or faster, or better or whatever else) doesn’t make it so – a trait that I, unfortunately, have found to be depressingly common among computer users of all stripes.
Make no mistake, I do find this humorous if only because Apple has basically marketed their PC products as “we’re not Windows” with all that may or may not imply. The danger with this style of marketing is that you look particularly foolish when it boomerangs back on you (everyone remember Oracle’s Unbreakable campaign)? And when a company gets burned while engaging in this behavior, it really is okay to point and laugh a little bit! Hell, its practically your duty as a jaded sysadmin! 😉
But I don’t really see this as a slam – after all, I have *extensive* lists of things that piss me off about OS-X, Windows and the companies behind these products. To me, what this really represents is a cautionary tale against putting blind faith in a vendor. As sysadmins, we need to be vigilant about sussing out the truth about products, patches, etc. – if we end up with a pile of shit because we didn’t do our homework, then we’re the ones who end up looking foolish.
And never forget that the only secure system is one that has undergone fusion.
I also posted this article with some comments to a couple of email lists I run. This is what I said in reply to one of the comments:
Mac fanbois really irritate me when they tell me “get a Mac” because they think they are better.
Sure the hardware is neat. But a 1.5X cost delta worth of neat? Not to me.
Software? Sure, it’s Linix under the hood (sort of) and I like Linux. But what is the Killer App that only runs on a Mac so that I have to have one instead of a PC?
I haven’t found one yet. But there are plenty of apps that I have to run for my job (and at home) that don’t run on a Mac.
Sure, I could run Parallels or Boot Camp to run my Windows apps, but come on, who’s fooling who now? Running Windows under Parallels on your Mac is still running Windows. And at that point, tell me again, why have a Mac?
I borrowed a friends Mini-DV camcorder the other day and he more or less told me that I would need a Mac to edit the video.
Bullshit. Sure, Final Cut Pro (or whatever the video software for Macs is called) is neat. Easy too, I’m told.
But I loaded up Sony Vegas Video and had no problems figuring out how to edit the video. I also could have used Adobe Premier, I’m told.
And editing photos? Photoshop runs under Windows just as well (if not better) as it does on a Mac.
And what’s with the one-button mouse? That’s 1980’s tech. Still.
As for “they are just easier” well, maybe for my Mom. But not in a corporate environment. And not for someone who has been running Windows since 3.1.
Sure Windows sucks. All software sucks. You can’t tell me that MacOS is perfect, because you and I both know that’s not true.
