General

[Kindred]

Originally Posted by craltal

it's not apple's fault it got spread, they sub-contract to have things made and the sub was trying to cheap out their manufacturing by going bare bones on the workstation. Most of these are made in Taiwan/ China anyway so...

Good point, I used to work for a large financial company that sub'ed out a lot of services. Part of that process is making sure that your sub-contractors follow basic best-practices. To use a sub-contractor who can't afford $30 per-seat for antivirus software is just as bad as not using it yourself. We once dropped a pending agreement with a potential sub-contractor because they answered a very simple, very important question.......VERY INCORRECTLY. The question was "what do you do with your old hard drives when you retire a system?"

Originally Posted by craltal

Apple can't keep a thumb on all of it's manufacturing partners and still keep their prices competitive. Some problems are to be expected. 25 reported issues considerign how many of these things they sell is a pretty darn good record if you ask me.

I agree whole-heartedly here. More iPods fail for general defects, as do most consumer electronics. That's the difference between a $300 device and a $800 device. For a $300 iPod (or Palm, or iPaq, or iRiver, ....etc) we as consumers take that as a acceptable risk

Originally Posted by craltal

it's a known virus that any descent anti-virus should be able to handle. They let the public know about it, what more are they expected do do? It not like it's a hardware issue, it's software.

...agreed again, and it was a REALLY SIMPLE virus. One that didnt even peak the headlines amongst us network admin type geeks. They had a manufacturing issue, and they made the consumers aware of it. Outstanding business practices really.

Originally Posted by craltal

Apple does understand security better than Microsoft. If you doubt that, why is it that over 90% of the viruses written are for a microsoft product (windows or some office component)? No system is bulletproof without being totally isolated but they do an admirable job.

Agreed that no system is bullet-proof.
But Macs are less suseptable to viruses simply because there aren't enough of them to bother with. That's just the way it is.

[Wycke]

Originally Posted by craltal

Apple does understand security better than Microsoft. If you doubt that, why is it that over 90% of the viruses written are for a microsoft product (windows or some office component)? No system is bulletproof without being totally isolated but they do an admirable job.

Actually, more like 95-99% of the viruses or worms out there are strictly Windows-based. Why? Because 95-99% of the world is using Windows. When someone writes a virus, they want to affect as many people as possible. Why bother with an OS that less than 10% of the world is using? Is the Mac OS inherently more secure than Windows? No. It's just not as targeted. That's the one downside with more people buying Macs...as their market share increases, so does the interest of the hacker & script-kiddie demographic. After all, OS X is just BSD with a really slick & smooth GUI on top. It's got all the same faults & foibles of any other *nix variant, just waiting to be exploited.

Back to topic, though, yes, Apple should have caught this, and yes, their press releases should have been more "professionally" worded so as to not take a stab at their competitor. But, if the shoes were on the other feet, so to speak, I'd expect exactly the same response out of Redmond. Realistically, Windows has been the #1 target of the malicious code authors out there since...oh...it was first released? You'd think that somewhere in the multitude of revisions and rewritings it's gone through that they'd have been able to do something to make it a bit more virus-resistant. Any time they could have (or tried), they backed down due to user complaints or to make Windows easier to use. And yet, I still don't see how anyone could say that it's easy to use...it's just that most people haven't used anything else.

[everex5]

I dont think the issues is that Apple isnt doing a perfect job on Quality Control... I think the point.. the real issue, is the way Apples PR department handled the situation.

A) I have a shuffle. It works perfect for when I am running. Its the ONLY Apple product I own.

B) I dislike Apple. Always have and always will. They made a comeback by offering low end computers to our poor education system and the kids are trained to only use MAC's because they are the only option. Brainwashing is another term for it. (My school had both PC and MACs and I used PC all the time... and even the Apple "geeks" that went on to try and do software couldnt argue that the stuff I made was just as good as theirs)

C) Considering the amount of IPOD's sold.. 25 is a VERY small amount to worry about... but it doesnt make the problem any better or any worse.

D) I have never been in a real.. legitimate business that has run exclusively on MAC's or Apple products. And, I have never been in a business that used MACs at all, as a mainstream resource. (Digital media design is different, PR used them for making videos and what not... but that was IT)


E) Imagine if SmartParts and WGP were bought by Apple....

[mike31c]

Brainwashing is another term for it.

No more then the brainwashing from Bill Gates stating windozs is a good product simply because a lot of people bought it.

C) Considering the amount of IPOD's sold.. 25 is a VERY small amount to worry about... but it doesnt make the problem any better or any worse.

one small point --> that 25 is what is to be KNOWN to have a problem with. I can imagine the thousands upon thousands of ipods sold to windoz users that don't know there was/IS an issue with their ipod because they don't have an anti-virus software installed.

[Kindred]

Originally Posted by mike31c

one small point --> that 25 is what is to be KNOWN to have a problem with. I can imagine the thousands upon thousands of ipods sold to windoz users that don't know there was/IS an issue with their ipod because they don't have an anti-virus software installed.

Good point. In one article I read, it seemed to imply tha the current version of iTunes will also detect the virus on the device. Personally I DO run anti-virus, and DO NOT use iTunes for my iPod....so i can't confirm.

[craltal]

if they wrote an algorithm into iTunes that detects the virus, can't that be considered trying to remedy the situation?

[Wycke]

Originally Posted by craltal

if they wrote an algorithm into iTunes that detects the virus, can't that be considered trying to remedy the situation?

Not necessarily. Viruses are quick little bastards; it's likely that irreversible damage is done before this algorithm recognizes it. Like all those nasty IM worms that were floating around for a while (and I'm sure still are) - they pretty much fly under the radar of most AV software. By the time they were detected, it was more like "yeah, you're owned, reformat now" than "hey, you're about to get infected".

[Kindred]

The biggest issue with trusing iTunes to detect it, is that most people will have their device plugged-in and attached to the OS before iTunes is up and running.

I'd be more inclined to trust true AV software, which is designed to scan files as their actually accessed, and is more able to 'quarentine' a file even when in use.

No AV software is 100% though, since by nature even the best software is 1-step behind the newest virus.