Matthew Hughes

It appears that my previous post caused a shitstorm on a forum I regularly go on, especially since I used harsh language to describe a fellow member of the forum, which was mostly uncalled for.

I take this opportunity to apologise for calling David Eastwick ‘ignorant’.

Anyway, I would like to respond to some comments made by my good friend David Gilson, who’s blog is in my blogroll. I recommend that you check it out if you get the chance.

Anyway, he made some good points which I want to respond to.

None of these points address me core criticism of Apple in that they have distasteful urge to control their users. I think there is something very rotten at the core of Apple.

But certainly Microsoft is more controlling with things such as WGA, which is totally alien to OS X.

1) OSX might be more intrinsically secure (I’m not sure), but it has certainly yet to be “battle hardened” because it hasn’t had the full attention of black hats yet.

Perhaps, but for an operating system that has been released for over 9 years, and has had only two viruses which were dealt with swiftly and are no longer an issue, you could argue that it is certainly a safer option to Microsoft Windows.

2) Actually, OSX will run Half Life, you can run games under CrossOver .

Indeed, it will run Half Life, but only the Source version. I own the pre-source version, and it does not run in crossover.

3) Meh, I don’t think the amount of people using it is anything to do with anything.

Valid point.

4) And I’ve been using the same install of XP on this laptop for 30 months without having to reinstall and without any major failiures. So to borrow the over used Apple slogan, XP Just works Sure you can say that that’s only my experience, but conversely what you’ve said is only your experience. Also, the Apple userbase has a disproportionate amount of sycophants who will likely exaggerate the reliability of the platform.

Hmm, perhaps you have been lucky to have used windows without many major issues. I, on the other hand, will often have to reboot my main windows PC over 5 times to get it to run. As a result, I have to use a copy of Windows FLE in emulation. Interestingly, this got infected with Smitfraud spyware in less than 10 minutes.

However, I do admit, the Apple fanboys are tiresome.

If it works, use it. That is my motto.

5) I haven’t heard that criticism for a very long time.

Fair enough. I admit it is rare for me to hear it.

6) Apple stuff IS over priced. You don’t have to spend anything on security software for Windows systems. The best anti-virus I’ve come across is AVG Free, I use it myself. There are very few applications I’m using on my XP laptop which are not free and open source. Depending where you shop, let’s just say that it costs approximately the same to buy a copy of Leopard as it does Vista, then you are down to a one to one hardware cost comparison. For less money, you can get a better specified Windows or unformatted machine than a Mac.

Yes, but suppose you do not use AVG. Norton costs a lot of money. Both the initial cost and the subsequent updates are very expensive. Most people are not enthusiastic about open source, and will download expensive applications like CS3 illegally. As a result, people get infected with spyware.