170,000 would be a low number in the world of computers. What is saving Mac users is that nobody uses them for business on any real scale. As that changes, the number of viruses will go up accordingly.
Keep thinking that, we’ll keep doin what we’re doing.
I have multiple programming degrees and eat computers for breakfast. I buy Apple products. Life is too short to spend it worrying about whether you can bend your cell phone to your will.
OS X is Unix based. You know what Unix is? It’s the best programming environment anyone has ever created. If you’re doing any kind of serious software development work (except for Windows desktop software), Mac OS X is the best tool for the job.
Not to question your expertise here but I always thought programmers leaned towards a unix environment? I know when I was programming at university we always used the Fedora machines even though Macs and Windows PCs were available. Perhaps it was just a cost issue and they decided to leave the Macs to be used in cases where they were actually required.
Interestingly, I’ve never thought about the issue raised in the OP, because I never thought of the iPad as something I’d share. Nobody complains about cellphones or MP3 players not having multiple user profiles. I just considered my iPad a personal device from the start.
It appears that this happens sometimes at some Apple stores, but I’ve made a number of purchases at Apple stores and this thread is the first time I’ve ever heard of this.
With any luck, the lack of support will catch on. I think Adobe’s PDF viewer is the only thing that has crashed more browsers in more operating systems for me than Flash has. It wreaks havoc with website navigation, the noises and mouseover animations people feel obligated to include drive me nuts, and it rarely offers anything that couldn’t be done with HTML/XHTML/CSS.
And you base this statement on an article that lists one case of one Mac being broken into at a show before the Windows and Linux machines?
I know this is MPSIMS, but would you happen to have a cite for that? And while we’re at it, would you care to define “real scale”?
The Macintosh OS is built on Unix. If you have a Mac, you have a Unix environment.
When were you programming at University? What fields were you involved in?
I’m in IT security and Macs have been VERY popular here, mostly because they’re largely immune to the things that would take down an enterprise, can compile all of the open source utilities, can run windows at near native speeds in a VMware/Sun Virtual Box on under Bootcamp
my MBP can go ALL DAY without a charge under fairly heavy use. That aluminum body makes it VERY robust. (those two features appear to extend to the iPad as well.)
Mac OS X is a Unix environment. http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/technology/unix.html (that page is for OS X server, but only because it has more detail than the page on desktop OS X).
OS X comes with bash, python, perl, gcc, sed, awk, grep, etc. all pre-installed, and it is compatible with all existing Unix software (including software that primarily targets Linux, like KDE).
That’s exactly why many programmers prefer OS X. It gives you all the benefits of running Unix without all the hassles involved in fucking around with a Linux installation.
Well good for you. You can instruct Mac users on how to get around Flash issues on the Ipad. Considering it’s a portal device and not a full function computer you could explain why you’re explaining it.
But we both agree that life is too short to spend trying to bend a computer to do what you want it to do. As a PC user I don’t have that problem.
People who use Apple equipment have to live by Apple’s rules. It’s their way or the highway because they control the flow of software and hardware.
OS X is a mish-mash of a CMU Mach kernel, userland based on FreeBSD with a bunch of GNU and other free software stuffed in there. It’s not “genetically” a Unix, but it’s enough of a workalike that they are allowed to use the UNIX trademark.
no, it’s based on Apple’s tendency to leave security flaws unfixed for a long time. They repeatedly lag way behind in pushing out fixes for the free/open source programs they include by default, they do dumb shit like Safari’s “open safe files after downloading” that Microsoft learned not to do years beforehand. Even the fact that iOS is so easy to jailbreak is evidence of this.
This was probably around 2000-2003 or something like that. In the first degree I started (Masters in Software Engineering) we programmed mostly in C, I transferred to another university as I hated the city I was in and at the second university we primarily programmed in C++. Both universities had a mix of PC/Mac/Linux available in the school of computing and both only ever used the Linux machines for programming. Probably down to cost concerns more than anything else but reliability may also have played a part. You would actually get your account suspended for 2 weeks if you rebooted one of the Linux machines so they had some pretty insane uptimes.
Have you ever actually used Windows? Hardly a day goes by that I’m not frustrated by trying to bend it to my will and not live by Microsoft’s rules. That said, I much prefer to buy equipment that does what I want instead of trying to force square pegs into round holes. Unfortunately, I don’t always have that option in business.
However, Twixter has already said that this thread is not to be used for the OS Wars debate, so it’s probably best we stick to discussing iPads and not operating systems. If the iPad doesn’t do what you want and you’d have to struggle with “bending it to do what you want it to do,” it’s probably not the right purchase decision for you.
And yet an iPhone worm that takes out the whole world population of identically vulnerable iOS machines hasn’t happened. (ed: except the ssh vulnerability that came out for jailbroken phones) I wonder why that is? Further, when there’s an occasional tether-less Jailbreak (like happened late this year with the PDF vulnerability), Apple DOES close those holes pretty quickly.
FWIW, I don’t think Apple particularly CARES that their devices are jailbroken, their OS upgrade cycle is quick enough that they’ll re-establish a basepoint within 6 months, and the jailbreaks are generally something that requires another computer and physical access to accomplish.
With macports, I can build, from source, tcpdump, nmap, wireshark, etc…BIG popular opensource applications. I use Splunk, grep, and awk to do a lot of log analysis. It’s Unix enough.
Honestly, I don’t see why a certain segment of PC users feel the need to trot out the same overplayed things every time an Apple thread comes up. It’s an issue of having constrained funds. The same thing happens with Game consoles, the zealotry is rife, but goes away among the folks that have enough money to own all of the consoles.
Use you money to buy what you like, just remember that other people have other values and needs than you, and telling them they’re stupid reflects more on you then them.
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.
You’re funny.
Yes I have. Flash works fine, everything I plug into the computer is recognized. 4 USB ports and no waiting. Life is good.
Well duh. I may get one as a backup moving map GPS for flying. If someone can tie XM satellite to it for weather than all the better. But right now it fails as a surfing portal and certainly it isn’t meant to be a full function computer so the weight savings isn’t worth the extra cost.
All this goes back to the philosophy of Apple’s way or the highway. They managed to turn a great idea into a good idea.
I remember how Apple fans used to tell me that Intel CPU chips were worthless garbage. And then all of a sudden they stopped saying that. Anybody know why?
I don’t keep statistics about how often home computers are compromised, but I do know that of all the threads I’ve read at the SDMB where people complain about getting a computer virus, none of them were using Macintosh OS. YMMV etc. I don’t mean to get into an argument as to why this is, because to me the reason why is not as important as the fact that I’ve used Apple computers at home for more than 20 years now, never been particularly careful about viruses, and I’ve never had a problem.
It’s really a one way thing isn’t it. I suppose it has to be though. With all the “I have a problem with my PC threads” the boards would be saturated with Mac vs PC fights. At least now, these battles only start the rare moments a Mac user has a problem.
OS flamewars are not started by just one side. I’ve seen countless snide comments such as “Winblows” over the years, for example. It’s very much a two-way (or three-way, or four-way) thing.
Find one then. All I have to do is loom for the last Apple thread.