What's all this about crow, then?

Richard Forno’s response to last week’s latest Mac-bashing tripe. Who’s Richard Forno, you ask? Just a security technologist, author, and the former Chief Security Officer at Network Solutions.

Lance also fails to recognize that Windows and Mac OS are different not just by vendor and market share, but by the fundamental way that they’re designed, developed, tested, and supported. By integrating Internet Explorer, Media Player, and any number of other ‘extras’ (such as VB Script and ActiveX) into the operating system to lock out competitors, Microsoft knowingly inflicts many of its security vulnerabilities onto itself.  As a result, its desire to achieve marketplace dominance over all facets of a user’s system has created a situation that’s anything but trustworthy or conducive to stable, secure computing.  Mac users are free to use whatever browser, e-mail client, or media player they want, and the system accepts (and more importantly, remembers!) their choice.

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If Lance is sleeping well believing that he’s on an equal level with the Mac regarding system security, he can crow about not being overly embarrassed while working on the only mainstream operating system that, among other high-profile incidents over the years, facilitated remote system exploitation through a word processor’s clip art function

One thing I noticed while reading the original “article” was this pervasive idea:

I was tired of the “We use Macs because they don’t get attacked by viruses and hackers” refrain from Mac nuts. I generally counter with what is apparently a secret carefully hidden from Mac zealots: “That’s because only a fraction of the world uses Macs. What’s the point of attacking a niche market? No one will notice!”

What’s the problem with this? He seems to think that because the entire mediocre business world relies on Windows and is ritualistically attacked by teenage hackers and worm-writers, that Windows is better to run. Like I care about the reason why no one writes virii for my OS. They don’t exist, it hardly matters that (he thinks) it’s because there are relatively few of us.

• Category: Design, Macintosh, Microsoft