Symantec back in the 90s made software development tools (although I think they purchased the IP). Nowadays, they are known as a security firm (although, again, I think they purchased the IP). Was this transition a matter of buying up expertise in one field and giving out pink slips to the other, or is expertise in compiler development naturally translate into security development?
Thanks,
Rob
Peter Norton left computer development. He was the genius behind Norton Utilities. Peter wrote that fantastic book Inside the PC and wrote some great software.
I think he’s a philanthropist now. Sits on his ass counting his money just like Bill Gates.
IIRC they were getting clobbered by MS.
Many of us remember when Norton tools and antivirus were unparalleled and essential tools. Those 5-1/4" disks introduced the world to things such as undelete. Back then, when a typical user lost data they lost data. No recycle bin in DOS.
I’m pretty sure Symantec’s purchase of Norton brought them to the attention of most home users. From what I gather, they’ve been coasting on Norton’s reputation as a must-have for years (and installing themselves via bloatware on PCs).
I know why they got out of the tools business, but I don’t know if it was a natural fit to move into security. I had some of the tools (which sucked) back in about '93. I was curious to know why they didn’t just die.
Rob
Symantec’s antivirus is a cure worse than the disease!
Amen. I’m working in IT, and every time I’ve privately supported friends and noticed this piece of bloatware on their PCs, I removed it and installed a free AV tool. It’s telling that there are special removal tools for Norton security to make sure there’s nothing left of this crap, which you can’t be sure of by simply uninstalling.
OTOH, Norton software in the nineties was great. Norton Commander beat the Windows 3.1 file manager (I don’t quite remember it’s name) by length, and Norton Utilities was a valuable extension to DOS and Win 3.1.
It was not always so - it’s just that the modern offering is a completely different product, from a completely different organisation. The brand name is the only thing that survives.
The reason Norton/Symantec fall behind on the system tools side is that MS just started building in the same features as standard - undelete, defrag, deltree, etc. And the transition to GUI-focused operating systems was quite abrupt - at which point, demand for command-line widgetry dropped off a bit.
I’ve done the exact same thing!
Telling, indeed!
I too pull Symantec’s products from friends machines (when they’re okay with doing so), and have long lamented its downfall from great products to major annoyance, but I was under the impression that the difficulty with uninstalling it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing programming-wise.
It’s my understanding (posted here not so much to correct anyone but to check my assumptions) that its tenacity in burrowing deep into the OS is to make it harder for malicious software to bypass or disable it (or if it does manage to do so, to make recovery easier).
Is that true? If so, has the strategy been made somewhat obsolete by advances in OS/malware design? Why do other products (e.g. MSE) not take similar steps?
A long long time ago there was a company called Central Point. They made MacTools and PCTools. They never had quite the following that Norton did but their software was pretty freaking fantastic.
Norton Utilities bought them out. It was a decent merger. I liked that version of the relevant products. I had my first PowerPC Mac and bought Norton Utilities for Macintosh (NUM).
Symantec bought up Norton. They only seemed to care about antivirus. The cool tools like editing your disk at the block or sector level, scavenging the catalog and rebuilding it, recovering deleted files, etc, fell by the wayside. Yeesh, I’m using a Mac, what the fuck do I care about antivirus? The Symantec version rapidly got a bad reputation. I heard it wasn’t so well-regarded on the PC platform either.
Within a few years it was practically regarded as a species of malware itself. It ties up processor cycles and gives you damn little in return.
Sounds like anti-Symantecism to me.
As I remember it, their development tools sucked too.
What kind of development tools did they offer back then? I only remember Norton Commander and Utilities, but I think I’ve never seen any Norton compiler or other development software by Norton. Maybe they were popular before I started working in IT, which was in the mid nineties.
It looks like I’m misremembering: I had it in my head that they were responsible for Powerbuilder.