Mike’s Thoughts

So… I use Gmail as a catch-all account for all of my email and I use the web interface because Outlook doesn’t handle the IMAP so well. I also use Gmail Redesigned, which gives the web interface a cool face lift.  To complete my web ensemble, I use AdBlock Plus to keep my web experience focused on what I am working on and not the ads.

So I logged into my Gmail account a few minutes ago, and what do I find in the message page, but a bar full of ads. My natural instinct is to zap the div container with Ad Block, so I do. This confuses me, as this is the first time I have ever seen them since I initially zapped them after installing AdBlock. I laugh to myself over my victory and proceed to continue reading my messages. As I open the next message, I am shocked to find another column of ads plaguing my window. So again I adblock the area. For good measure, I reopen the message. Ads. Again!

It seems as if Gmail is randomly naming the div container to prevent AdBlock from blacklisting the ad’s container. This is a low blow, and while genius from a company and coding standpoint, is beyond irritating for me as a user. I will keep trying to de-crap the experience as best as possible, but this is really going to irritate me. Keep it up Google and you just might lose another user.

Ok, so if you’re here, then you are hear to read my thoughts. That’s the point of a blog. If you are a die hard Mac/Apple Fanboy (or Fangirl) who can’t stand to read something bad said about their idol, stop. Do not pass go. Do not continue reading.

Ok, so I’ve obviously peaked your interest if you’re reading this!

Let me start by saying that I do own a mac. I don’t deny that they are nice looking machines, and my 1 year old aluminum iMac is no exception. Ok, enough praising this sad excuse for a secure computing machine.

Let me paint you a picture. On my mac, I have several accounts. I am obviously an administrator on my machine. Now, sense I’m at college, my family borrows my computer, no problem, cool. My brother is an administrator on the machine, as is my dad. My dad, for whatever reason, does not have a password protecting his account. My machine doesn’t contain the answer to life or the formula to eternal youth, so I don’t really care. This point aside, I recently came to discover something that I would consider a huge security issue and a complete blunder on Apple’s part. For those of you who know Windows, you know that when User A locks their computer, only User A can truly unlock the system. If another administrator logs into the system, it will “unlock” the computer, which really means that the user is logged out, and the system returns to the logon screen. Now, on a mac, if User A locks their system… oh wait, I’m sorry, they can’t! The only way to “lock” the computer is to require a password when the system returns from sleep or a screen saver. Sorry, that’s not the same thing. But, whatever. Now, let’s say that User A locks their system, and an administrator comes to unlock the system. When they enter in their credentials, it does not log out the user, but instead returns them to User A’s session. Hello! Um…. yeah, I don’t care if you are an administrator, you should not be logged into my session where you now have free rein of my system to snoop through my files, change settings, send love letters to that girl in the cubical two rows over in my name, and change my background… don’t TOUCH my background!

Ok, so you’re prolly thinking in your head, HELLO, administrators have access to your files anyway. That’s why they’re administrators. Duh! Well, um, no. NTFS permissions on Windows, as well as the permission schema on the Mac allow users to explicitly deny a group of users access to your files. Without going into too much detail about file security (it can be a doosy), there are two ways to prevent a user or group from accessing a file or folder. You can either explicitly deny the user, or you can simply not define access for them, which will prevent them from accessing the resource. Oh, but wait, the administrator is now parading around my mac as ME, so it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have access to my files, my mac thinks it’s ME installing 50 GB of software onto the system. Good job!

Now, there might be a way to change the way this logon/unlocking protocol is handled, and I have just not changed it. However, if that is the case (which I don’t think is), the better question is what dim-witted programmer DIDN’T ENABLE IT BY DEFAULT!?!?

This is only the tip of the iceberg on the way I feel about Mac security. I have bashed Microsoft before and said things about Vista and other Microsoft products, but I can say one thing with certainty. That company is not afraid to admit vulnerabilities and flaws in its products and provide prompt updates for them. Every second Tuesday of the month comes the famed Patch Tuesday where Microsoft pushes out important and critical patches to its customers. It does not try to hide these flaws. I don’t care what you think about Microsoft, you CAN NOT deny that it is looking out for the best interest of its customers. Apple on the other hand… refuses to admit flaws in its supposedly “perfect” operating system. Critical flaws can take months at a time to patch, often met with denial from company personel about the alleged issues. Don’t believe me? Read this ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9110907

It’s crap like this from Apple that makes me want nothing to do with them. Once you get over the wow factor of their, admittently decent looking products, you will see that you are paying for overpriced crap. For the same price, you can get a PC with twice or three times the specs as the mac. I thought that it would be cool to work at Apple. After doing some digging on their business practices, and the horrible way that Steve Jobs treats his employees, I don’t want anything to do with them.

In a class a few weeks ago, we saw a video about the modernization of technology, including the first Apples and the first computers. I caught an early glimpse at how Steve Jobs views innovation, and it made me want to put my fist through a wall. I saw him talk about how he has not a care about how he and his company took specifications from Xerox all those years ago to create the first real GUI and the early macs. Yet, today, Apple whines and complains when Window starts to look “like a mac” <shutteres>. Or better yet, when a company proposes a way of organizing pictographic program depictions, we’ll call them icons, into a straight line, or container, and puts this container along one side of the screen, that’s copying the “Dock.” Hmm, I should probably remove the red box at the bottom of my desktop background into which I organize my icons, because, you know, that looks an awful lot like the Dock. >:/

I’m done watching keynotes where Jobs freaks out at the audience because the guy in the back row took more than 5 seconds to look at the “innovative”, “amazing” new Mac Pro casing that Jobs insisted everyone see. I always thought Apple products were cool, that they were imprevious to security breeches, and that they were made by a company that stood for innovative, original ideas; one that respeced its employees, and valued that interests and opinions of its consumers.

Althought I will probably continue to look out for what next product Apple tries to insist that everyone “can’t live without,” I know that once the potential wow factor wears off, I’ll be left with nothing.