Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: RE: being an infomercial

I've worked with Good's MDM. It's still just "using software to try to get other software to behave in a mostly useable fashion. It doesn't come close to "tamperproof;" it is still as vulnerable as the operating system, bootloader, etc underneath. This isn't a hardware + software solution, it's just a series of band-aids, one on top of the other trying to contain the bleeding. What's needed is to open the patient up and repair the artery itself.

This means – as I said in the article – security in silicon that works in conjunction with a well coded OS. Sealed storage, curtained memory, signed bootloaders/OSes/apps/patches, centrally monitored communications, secured heuristics (anti-malware in silicon/firmware) and remote bricking at a bare minimum. You just can't do that all in software. You need that security silicon to pull this stuff off.

This comments thread is full of folks saying "but you can just use MDM, or use an off-the-shelf OS!" Yes, you can. For corporate level security. For classified security – or to meet "tamper proof" requirements for critical appliances – this simply isn't good enough. The contents of your executive's e-mail might lose a corporation a few million dollars. Maybe it even knocks the share price down a few cents. It doesn't cost lives.

A malfunctioning or captured UAV, the contents of certain classified documents, minehunters or self-driving automobiles gone mad…these can most certainly cost lives.

Every other day I'm reading about some new "secure" industrial control system compromised. iOS and Android compromised before the units even hit general availability. The top of the top of browsers, operating systems, etc cracked within hours when there is real money on the line…

…and you want to tell me you are going to solve this problem entirely in software?

I'll cheerily call up Good and see if they feel they can do "tamper proof" entirely in software. Anyone else who feels they can too. I'll need to see it to believe it.

Re: politically damaging = classified

I don't know that this is true. Far more than "classified smartphones," the tech is useful for "smart appliances." Think of "smart radios" in an ambulance. Converging your GPS, communications, various flavours of application that require them to run a PC inside the vehicle today, etc. This is a perfect example of a situation where you need the power and flexibility of a "general purpose computer" (or a smartphone), but you absolutely don't need the end user loading apps, changing data, or sucking off patient records.

A centrally provisioned/verified/etc OS/application stack on a completely locked down device would be a good fit.

What about automated buoys for scientific research? Minehunting subs or landmine hunting automated ground vehicles? Autonomous cars are becoming "a thing," what if we start building automated snow plows, street sanders/sweepers or other such robots to pick up the drudge work. These should be run on general purpose PCs that are rootable, or on which we can reasonably easily change applications/move around data?

None of these applications are "science fiction" any more. I have seen the Google self-driving car with my own eyes, I have built UAVs with my own two hands. I have loaded software on to automated buoys and worked with a team to design automated landmine hunters.

Every one of these devices will need the same tech we would use to build a secure smartphone. Some – like the "smart radio" ambulanceputer – are designed for human interaction with the device. Others are automated. The point is that they are appliances. Appliances that need to do very complicated things which we still need "general purpose computers" for. Unlike a proper consumer-level general purpose computer, however, these appliances absolutely must be tamper-proof.

Today – and for the foreseeable future – that means Intel. For all those irked by this, call up AMD, your favourite ARM manufacturer, and anyone else good at putting things into silicon. Scream at them and get them put some competing products into the field. I think it's a terrible thing that what promises to be the next wave of computing – billions of devices with "tamper proof" requirements – looks set to be dominated by one company.

I don't want that. You don't want that. Probably even Intel doesn't want that. (The critical antitrust eye of ultimate scrutiny is not your friend.) Unfortunately, nobody except Intel has the right mix of stuff to pull it off. So yes, it does mean "Intel Inside" our automated and tamper-proof robotic overlords. For several product cycles worth of "kick the tires and working the bugs out" on behalf of Intel's competitors, at the bare minimum.

The reason it is so bad is that this doesn't just apply to the military death machine. The potential addressable market here is far, far bigger than that.

Re: Mandatory add-on

Auto off, two factor to turn on? Biometric + passcode? So many ways to deal with a lost device, is the device is secure enough...

Re: While the article is technically accurate...

I seriously doubt the classified phone's target market is "the common man." It likely won't be as thin-and-light as the iPhone, nor quite as fast, as energy efficient, etc. It will be close enough for jazz, but a notable amount more pricy. Proles don't need classified smartphones....but the gov't, military, emergency services, etc markets for mobile comns are booming worldwide.

So what, EXACTLY, do I want from Microsoft?

If Microsoft had a desire to shut me up, my "demands" are thus:

1) A switch in the operating system to restore the classic start menu and remove the hot corners. Simply licensing Classic Shell would do fine. Alternately, a legally binding commitment from Microsoft not to block Classic Shell from working at any point in the future (and ensuring the relevant libraries that Classic Shell relies upon are always present) is acceptable.

2) Either context-aware file extensions, or a simple setting that you can toggle which prevents any Metro application from binding associations without explicit permission. The goal is to have a "nothing jumps to Metro without my express permission" setting.

3) A legally binding commitment from Microsoft to maintain the Desktop in all future versions of Windows for a minimum of the next 15 years.

4) A legally binding commitment from Microsoft to produce a Desktop version of any primary software they produce for Metro. (Nobody cares about $widgety application. I mean things like Office, Lync, RSAT, etc.)

5) RDP support for Metro to be taken into consideration. Using Metro from RDP, Teamviewer, or any other remote-access or support application is horrific. Metro is a burden on support desk staff.

6) Revisiting touch queues to make them more obvious, or incorporating a "how to use Windows Touch" tour. "How to use Metro with a keyboard and mouse without going mad" would be great too.

7) Revisit how you "throw away" Metro applications with a mouse. It is counter intuitive and difficult for some people. (Older folks, those using trackpads who have motor control issues, etc.)

8) Fix Stylus support for Metro; it's pants. Specifically, I have an issue with the fact that you cannot drag the Metro screen around. Instead, you have to drag the magic, disappearing slider, and that doesn’t work well.

9) Provide a setting to make the Charms Bar a textual overlay with a transparent background. Big Black Bar causes context switching.

10) Let me "Pop Out" tiles and affix them permanently on the desktop, like widgets or active desktop items. Alternately, I would love the ability to assign Metro to a monitor as a FULL TIME application. Metro is a great launcher in a multi-monitor scenario, but Metro should be a desktop application, the desktop should not be a metro application.

11) Allow me to "Window" Metro applications. I don't care if they aren't resizable, but if I am eschewing Microsoft's "only 33/66 two things at a time" philosophy, I need a way to get at the soon-to-be-mandatory Metro applications in a manner that suits my workflow, not Microsoft's desire to sell more Smartphones through forced acclimation to a new UI.

12) Allow anyone willing to pay the fee to sign their application (because, frankly, if you are forcing a new walled garden UI on everyone, Metro apps should damned well all be signed!) to create a Metro app. That includes browsers and "applications which replicate core functionality." I don't care if you are Microsoft, Apple or Bob the Baker. Shut up and stop trying to restrict competition by turning away people who make a better mousetrap.

13) Alter downgrade rights to include downgrade all the way to XP. Application compatibility is still an issue for some of us. Many are dependant on applications from companies that have gone out of business, or don't have the wonga to re-purchase some $50,000 application that nearly broke the bank the first time. Alternately, take advantage of Windows 8's hyper-v to offer both "XP-mode" and "Windows 7 mode."

14) As per 13, if you don't want to offer downgrade rights all the way to XP, then allow the operating system to be booted directly into either the "XP-mode" or "Windows 7-mode" VMs that should be shipping as options with Windows 8.

15) Let me log on in a manner that bypasses Metro. Just dump me directly to the desktop if that is what I choose. I shouldn't have to see Metro if I don't want to. It should be something I choose to use. Frankly, if you do the things I've said above – like allow me to "pin" metro to a monitor, just as if it were a Desktop application – then I will use Metro. And I will use the start menu. Each has different uses for me.

There's more, but these are the big asks. You can now begin crapping on all of the above with your nose high in the air.

Commentards, attack!

@Mark

You detail how you use a PC, and champion your ability to adapt while simultainiously writing off anyone who might want to use a PC in a different fashion. I will direct my criticisms at who I damned well please; and frequently do. It's interesting to me that you claim such breadth of experience, and yet conflate "Linux" with Ubuntu.

Your argument is entirely anecdotal, based of your experiences and your experiences alone while simultainiously discarding the experiences and preferences of others. Does Windows' launching of an app full screen serve as a context switch? For me, it does. For others I know, it does.

Maybe we are the only ones on the planet for whom this is true; even if this is in fact so, by what right do you chastise us for seeking an alternative? By what right do you demean and belittle us for seeking to have Microsoft incorporate into their operating system options that accommodate how we work, how our minds have been trained to function?

If you like Metro, fine. Good on you. Go frolic and be merry. I don't; despite having given it several honest tries, and working with it for months.

Beyond that: get off your fucking high horse and look at the complaints being levelled and by whom. I resent the implication that I am singling Microsoft out for criticism. I loathe Unity and Gnome 3 and I could go on for quite some time about the "little things" in OSX that detract from usability. (Though, frankly, Mountain Lion cleaned up a lot of the mess Lion made.)

Apple isn't "trying to kill the mouse and keyboard." Quite the opposite, they are committed to keeping them as first-class devices, expanding their usability with the new interfaces whilst adding touch as an equal partner. Touch is non-requisite, but the keyboard/mouse are not either. In my opinion, Apple have managed the transition better than Microsoft has. The Linux teams aren't even close.

Does that mean that I rush out to embrace Apple? No. I may love OSX, but…I can't stand their keyboards. I just can't use them. My brain has used a PC-standard keyboard for nearly 30 years, and as a writer and programmer I require both a delete and a backspace button as separate keys. That "little thing," a design choice by Apple, is why I can't use their notebooks for prolonged periods.

I don't use Windows Phone or iOS; I eschew both for Android. Why? Because for me, the smartphone isn't just an appliance. It's a pocket computer that I use for many things. It is a USB drive, a mobile hotspot, a full-featured browser, an RDP client and a penetration testing tool. Things I simply can't accomplish without access to the file system, a promiscuous-mode networking stack and root on the file system.

The same goes for my PCs. I choose Windows XP SP3, Windows 7 SP1 (with classic shell) and RHEL/CentOS 6.2 (with the Cinnamon GUI) because they meet my needs. Nothing else does. I need to multitask heavily; it's how I get paid. I also need a comfortable and familiar environment where everything that I need to use is easy to get at and doesn't require me to context-switch in order to get there.

Maybe I'll be the last person on earth using a desktop-metaphor GUI for my computing needs. Maybe I'll be the last person on earth to use a computer where I can install any application I want, get complete control of the operating system, and live outside the walled garden of a vendor-provided store. I'm okay with that. I don't need to defend my choices to you or anyone else.

More importantly, I don't need to attack those who choose differently. That is the behaviour of one who has backed the wrong horse, or who is unsure of their faith. I don't believe in faith. I don't have faith in a god, I find it silly to have faith in a corporation.

What I will do is conduct business. Business in this case means using whatever means I have at my disposal to attempt to convince Microsoft to support my use cases. As my previous comments stated, I don't believe for a second that Microsoft will acquiesce. That isn't the point; the point is to join the chorus of the disenfranchised and make our voices heard: not by Microsoft, but by those who would compete with them. It is the corporation that provides me a computing experience that I want which will ultimately receive my investment, not a corporation that tells me I must adapt to them.

@AC

It has been ever so slightly modified for pesudo-article status on my personal website here. It's the best I can do in that regard.

Re: Its a new paradigm

The new version is objectively "worse" for some people's work patterns. Don't give me any of that insipid bullshit about "it's just a replacement for the start menu." It's a hell of a lot more than that. File associations are another great example: many files open in Metro-only, even when launched from the desktop. This means context switching from your multi-tasking environment to a mono (or at best a dual)-tasking environment.

Maybe for you, this isn't a problem. Maybe for you it is even superior. If so, congratulations...and I even envy you! I'd love to be the kind of person who simply "didn't have a problem" with the shit being shoved down my throat. I, however, am not you.

Myself and many others do have a problem with Windows 8. It disrupts our workflow and makes us less productive. It provides jarring context switches when we really need to focus and doesn't allow us to properly multitask when we need to be keeping an eye on 10,000 things. This isn't just a start menu, this is the first broken step on the path towards a New Way Of Doing Things. One which goes against a lifetime of education and burned-in habits.

You can proclaim from on high that "the new way is better" all you want, but I have yet to see proof of this claim. I have seen some evidence that for some people in some circumstances the New Way might be better. I have seen zero evidence that it is ideal for all people under all circumstances.

So not including a way to say "fuck off Metro," bringing back a start menu, banishing the hot corners and re-mapping all the file associations to desktop applications as an easy, integrated option? That is Microsoft urinating on anyone who isn't the middle of the bell curve on the world they are trying to create. For that matter, there's no guarantee that Microsoft are going to keep the desktop around for much longer, anyways.

So why should those of us who find the new regime suboptimal gamble that Microsoft will even still leave us the option of doing things the more optimal way? Right now Microsoft make it a pain in the ass. Soon, it may well not be available at all.

Even if you believed that only "the majority" matters. Even if you believed that Microsoft is good and pure, and those who can't adapt (or are different) simply shouldn't be allowed to use computers…Microsoft's handling of the entire situation has been piss poor. Their engagement with the community on these issues has been rife with arrogance and dismissal.

But hey, if that's the company you want to worship, that's entirely up to you. Me, I will continue to exercise my options to find and use alternatives until they pry sourceforge from the grip of my mouse and keyboard.

Re: Its a new paradigm

How is anything I said predicated on me "being right"? I said only that even if we all spoke out as one, it wouldn't matter. Obviously, we haven't done so; some people like Metro, some don't. Equally obviously, there are quite a few people who don't like Metro one bit.

So it doesn't matter if you like it, or don't. I don't even understand how liking or not liking a user interface can be turned into "right" or "wrong." It's personal preference. Since when is a personal preference right or wrong?

Do you have an island in your kitchen? Do you want one? If the majority of people don't have one, are you wrong? Are you right? What if the majority of people want an island in their kitchen? What if the majority want one, but don't have it? And heaven help you if you choose the wrong colour for your vehicle!

You make a lot of statements backed up by absolutely nothing. Who are you to say Windows is priced correctly? Or designed correctly? Or anything correctly? Who are you to poke at OSX, Linux or anything else? Who are you to tell people what they should believe, desire, or require?

Everyone is part of a minority at some point; everyone's needs are niche eventually. But hey, you know what? I'm okay being "wrong."

And I'm okay with using the microwave, house design, paint colour, cell phone, shoe style, computer operating system and custom-moulded salt shaker that suit my needs. The majority, the minority, the whatever-ority…

…I just don't care about any of them any more.

Sent from my who-gives-a-flaming-monkey-fuck.

--Trevor Pott

Re: "flaming monkey fuck"

You know, vodka is a very nasty thing in bulk. I have been repressing that rant for about three months. O_o

Re: Its a new paradigm

I can't change Microsoft's mind. I can put my time and effort into helping people get what they want to out of computers. I don't have the programming skills to write a Classic Shell. I do have the schmoozing skills to put those sorts of people in rooms with others, the research skills to hunt that stuff down, and a couple internet soapboxes to publish the info. I hope it helps a few folks; getting the odd attaboy makes up for the effort.

I'd like to say "if enough of us spoke up, it might make a difference." The truth is: it won't. Voting with our wallets won't matter either. If every prole on Earth decided they were going to fight the power on this one, it wouldn't even tickle Microsoft's income. Microsoft gets where they get because they have the ability to take decision makers at large corporations and government institutions out for fancy meals, shower them with perks, discounts and whatever political or personal clout is required to shift SKUs.

They shift those SKUs in the billions. Because these SKUs are forced on the hoi polloi by the powers that be, we all need to be "compatible." If you are a small business, you need to speak the lingua franca of business: Microsoft formats. Choose not to and you don't get a chance to interact with or bid on contracts from the larger entities. If you are an individual, you need to do follow the pack because we have evolved our society into one that is "always on:" the work-life balance is disrupted and we require the ability to work from home.

Couple this with a tame press (tech and otherwise) that daren't speak out for fear of losing ad revenue and anyone who expresses a dissenting opinion is a marked man. To dislike the digital food shovelled onto your plate is to bear the stigma of being "afraid of change." You are a Luddite; someone unwilling to "give X a chance" and unable to comprehend the obvious majesty and importance of the vision which created the product you malign.

For a press that exists only because of sensationalism and the magnanimity of vendors, the best way achieve these is to publicly evangelise The New whilst heaping scorn and derision upon the heathens clinging to The Old. Throw in some fanboys and most people who would even have thought to speak up are sick and tired of the bullshit before the product even hits shelves.

Consider a comment from the illustrious Ed Bott on Twitter: "if you write about Windows, and you take a screenshot using Windows XP, you're doing it wrong."

Really? How interesting. Just who the flaming monkey fuck is he to tell me – or anyone else – what they should or shouldn't be running on their systems? I am "doing it wrong" because I use XP on my personal VM? Really? Why? Detail this explicitly. Where is the incentive to use anything else? Describe the ROI and in moving away from something that has worked Just Fine for over a decade? Don't give me enterprise-level vague security hand waving bullshit: I'm talking about my personal VM here.

I'm not afraid of the new, but statements like Ed Bott's above both upset me and make me realise how futile resistance truly is. Here we have one of the most respected voices in Microsoft punditry telling everyone that if you write about Microsoft it is your job to evangelise Microsoft's latest. In this case the advocacy is subtle; you are to demonstrate that having the latest is "proper" by only showing the latest greatest as the operating system of choice in your screenshots. It is evangelising nonetheless.

It should come as no shock to my readers that I will take a screenshot off any operating system I damned well please. Maybe it'll even be an XP VM remoted into from a Windows XP VM which I am in turn remoting into from a Linux box. It has been known to happen.

If I am discussing something specifically blowing up on Windows 8, maybe I should demonstrate that on Windows 8. If it affects multiple versions of Windows, what does it matter which version has the screenshot?

But…aha! There's the subtle slant of it all. In the same vein as judicial capture (or regulatory capture,) I posit the concept of "press capture." If a pundit covers a topic or vendor for too long, they begin to sympathise, even empathise with them.

Considering the complexity of the topics at hand, how can any journalist rise to the top if they haven't been covering that vendor for ages? There is so much to know, it takes years to absorb it. So you, me…all of us…

…we'd best get used to Windows 8. Our voices are easily shouted down as heretical by the closed-minded echo chamber that has become the only thing vendors choose to listen to.

Use your "non-new" or "non-Microsoft" operating systems if you must. Just don't talk about it unless you are prepared for scorn, marginalisation and other potentially serious repercussions. Be careful to whom you admit not keeping the faith. It could more than your internet reputation on the line. It could be your job.

Freedom of choice my hex-encoded ASCII.

Re: Its a new paradigm

Start Menu get.

@Mark

Who - exactly - is claimin Windows XP "has always been good"? Hmm? I've never met such a madman.

HREF or GTFO

Re: I remember 10 or so years ago

Who died and made you derpmaster general? Windows XP was a piece of shit when it launched. In fact, it maintained a full-on craptasticness right up until Service Pack 2, which basically introduced an entirely new operating system. Funny how people who like to bang on the "everyone hated XP when it launched" drum tend to forget that opinion of XP changed overnight when the fixed most of the flaws in the operating system.

Vista was the same way. Absolute shit when it launched. Then the fixed all the flaws and called it "Windows 7," (well, except for giving me back my Up Arrow, but Classic Shell fixes that.) As soon as they unborked their craptasm, people loved it.

Windows 8 is a good operating system…under the hood. But there is so much about the OS that is completely fucking broken that we'll need either an XPSP2-esque service pack, or a whole new version to resolve the issues.

For the record, I still love Windows 2000. I refuse to touch XP unless it's SP2 or later, Vista an go [censored] itself, and Windows 7 only became usable on older hardware after SP1. Without Classic Shell, Windows 8 is unusable, and I don't trust Microsoft not to screw us all again a few more times before finding a version we can mostly live with.

Until they screw us again and we go around this loop one more time. But hey, don't let me stand in the way of your blinkered view of history…

To be, or not to be, an infomercial

I really did try not to turn this into an infomercial. That said: they have sexy boxen filled with many blinkenlights. I am not often impressed by hardware...actually, I'm normally cynical and resentful of just about anything involving computers. The theory goes that on the rare occasions when I encounter things that impress and delight me, there's a reasonable chance that at least some of the readers will be intrigued as well.

I can't be dour and snarling "get off my goddamned lawn" all the time. If I keep that up, my internets will stay that way.

Re: Bah!

Replacing Javascript with what, exactly?

Re: never seen a dead bird outside my windows

Nah, the issue is that Alberta has this thing called "nature." As you are from the center of the universe, there's no possible way you can understand. In this "nature" (just go with it, it's a thing, honest!) we have "plants." These "plants" can provide food for birds, and also for "insects." (Yes, both plants and insects other than cockroaches exist, honest!) These "insects" can also be food for birds.

Now, in cities that have what we like to call "green space," (places that are not the center of the universe,) both plants and insects occur in large city-owned property, as well as in and around peoples' homes. Insects get on windows; birds try to dive for the insect, and end up smacking into the window. Plants are positioned near windows, and birds miscalculate approaches and smack into windows.

You're going to have to take it on faith though, because even if the center of the universe had any of these things, they wouldn’t cause increased bird strikes, as the birds wouldn’t be able to see them through the smog!

Re: Imagine getting 'bonked' by a Canada Goose ...

Geese do not fly into windows much. Or bonk into cars, or even planes. Planes run geese over. Cars run geese over. As a general rule, geese simply don't tend to fly into things so much as things hit them.

That said, they will chase you across the ground like possessed demons. They have attacked me on numerous occasions when I take the garbage to the curb (several nest in the bushes right by the pick-up zone,) and more than once I have had some angry idiot goose chase my car down the street for some imagined slight.

They are mean, loud, miserable, insufferable little buggers that attack anything that moves on a regular basis. The instant they’re in the air, however, this behaviour ceases. They just aren’t manoeuvrable enough to up there to try it.

Re: Are any of them bats?

I maintain (in whole or in part) several bat boxes throughout the Edmonton area, and have for most of my life. I have never in nearly 30 years of living in this city heard of a bat impacting a window. Bird strikes have been a regular part of life forever; but it has been exceptionally bad this year and last.

I’ll go hunt Erin and have a chat with him, but I suspect the issue is directly related to the overwhelming insect bloom the city has seen in the past two years. Mosquitoes top the list, but there has been a massive growth in the Strawberry Beetle population as well…and those are just the two I know about!

Re: Oh Canada...

Several islands (such as Denman Island) exist in teh gulf between Vancouver Island and the City of Vancouver.

Re: Oh Canada...

Bloody robin broke my window just the other day. Didn't survive the impact, poor bugger.

Re: Cool man, real cool

Terraforming Mars isn't all that hard. Strap a set of great big engines to Ceres and crash the thing into the south pole. Ceres + polar deposits have enough volatiles that - combined - there should be a reasonable atmosphere. The impact - while it would leave an interesting crater - shouldn't shatter the planet, nor blow the flimsy extant atmosphere off. So yes, you'd have half the planet being molten for a few hundred years to deal with, but that's a relatively minor issue. (It should also help offset the cooling wrought by the dust kicked up, making the thicker atmosphere a net gain.)

This shouldn’t actually be all that big a deal to accomplish. You need a set of holy-shit nuclear power plants on Ceres, an automated mining facility that extracts non-volatile (rock/mineral) mass from the planet for use as propellant (don’t waste your volatiles!) and a set of big-ass ion engines.

You vaporise the mass, ionise it and huck it out the engine at a significant fraction of c. This is a simple impulse engine/hall thruster/VASMIR design. It doesn’t provide a huge amount of thrust – well, okay, with nukes powering the thing, the thrust will be insane, but so is the dwarf planet we’re trying to move – but it will be a constant thrust. That is how we get new horizons out to Pluto in short time frames, or move Dawn out to go check on the dwarf planet under discussion.

You’ll need some RCS thruster quads (probably chemical) for steering, but here you can probably afford to burn some volatiles in order to provide the moderate amount of reaction mass you need.

So, a trillion dollars or so, about 250 years to move the dwarf and another 250 before Mars is tectonically stable enough to think about colonising and *bam*, whole other planet to work with.

Converting the atmosphere into the right oxy/nitro mix, that’s a whole other issue. Still, the ability to walk around outside with no pressure suit, nor cold-weather gear would be a huge thing. Wearing a small oxygen mask is a minor inconvienience.

Re: Apple's Success

Well, Mark65, we'll have to agree to disagree here. Design is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I buy Samsung, HTC and Asus because I prefer their design to that of Apple. I prefer the keyboard layouts on non-Apple PCs and a number of other design elements that prevent me from buying Apple. It is in fact Apple's design that means I only own products made by them which were given to me. I am not alone.

The thing is, there is lots of evidence to back up my position: design is a personal item, not a universal one. Apple have a different design. It is not universally liked…not even liked by the majority of consumers, according to most deep dives into the matter. In fact, a significant minority of individuals who own Apple products dislike the design quite a bit, but buy them for other reasons. (Simplicity being the largest factor.)

So I reject your idea that “design” is critical. It was a selling point to hipsters back when Macs were the 3% of desktop PCs and made nothing else. When they started hitting the consumer electronics market, other factors became far bigger reasons to buy. The hipsters still bang on about design aesthetic, but they are the minority of people who buy Apple products now.

The whole article I wrote; analysing as much data as possible to inform your decisions rather than relying on “gut feel,” “personal experience,” “what seems right” or “what you read in X” is pretty much cemented by this debate. My analysis of Apple and its success in the market comes from having read survey after survey, analysis after analysis and innumerable interviews with people from Apple and other companies involved in the process of selling into the CE market. I have poured over the evidence brought forth in the various trials and tried very hard to build an understanding of what shifts this stuff that is based on the real world, not simply who is loudest on the internet.

The hardcore fanbois have always been design hipsters. But they really, honestly and truly are a nearly irrelevant minority of Apple’s customer base. If you actually delve into the numbers, you’ll find the overwhelming majority of Apple’s customer base are 40 and 50 somethings with little-to-no understanding of technology, nor any desire to ever learn. They bought into the marketing hoopla of “just works” and “ease of use.” Ironic, given that many of the cited use cases they present would actually make RIM or WinPhone the better choice!

Marketing. Apple are good at it; quite possible the best at it. This whole debate – in which you wield arguments unsubstantiated by data, but which Apple’s marketing machine would dearly love everyone to believe – is aught but further proof.

Re: Apple's Success

The article discussed Apple's relevance as pertains to the enterprise. It's relevance regarding infiltration and disruption of business IT, from SMEs to large enterprises. I won't dispute that Apple's approach really shook up the CE market. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they levelled the CE market and started rebuilding it from scratch.

Again however, as I see it, their success relies on marketing. Now, in my definition of marketing I do lump in “quality assurance testing;” this is because almost nobody does any form of QA whatsoever in IT anymore. So engaging in QA (as opposed to selling your customers beta products as RTM) is a marketing thing. It’s a differentiator you’re actively choosing in order to make you different from the rest of the competition that cut all those corners.

Apple’s feature/functionality/SKU/etc restriction is also just marketing. As you pointed out, a certain segment of the population can handle choice. This is especially true in the consumer electronics market where people want appliances, not general purpose computers. Again; identify the market, create a mediocre product with limited choices, QA the shit out of those few functions, and then control the message so viciously that you convince an entire generation this is the greatest thing ever.

Knowing what to release and when is marketing. It is studies and focus groups. It’s testing and research, research, research It’s some intuition, but mostly the hard work of real brass tacks marketing which is – I’ll say this again so you get it - market research. Apple has the best of the best in this field working for them. They are the true innovators.

So your arguments don’t alter my stance any. Apple is a consumer electronics appliance provider that doesn’t actually innovate. Instead, they achieve success by limiting options – thus also limiting the potential for business penetration and disruption – and through excellent marketing.

Apple repackage other people’s ideas in a shiny package with a slick video and a clean store. Kudos to them. But it is still just marketing. Marketing par excellence, unmatched by anyone for nearly 100 years, but still marketing.

Re: Apple's Success

So your argument is exactly what I said? Apple excel at marketing: knowing when to introduce a product to the market and when the technology is not there yet?

You seem to be arguing that Apple do something "special" with their gear. I see zero evidence of that. They simply choose not to release products until the technology has advanced to the point that the product which can be released meets their standards of excellence.

The iPod, iPhone and iPad did not appear from a vacuum. There is a clear line of technological progression – in design, battery life, form factor, and UIs – from across the entire IT industry leading to the development of each device. These devices were not revolutionary, they were evolutionary.

The success of Apple is that they didn’t sit around and release version after version of not-quite-working crap. They certainly built them in the lab – the Samsung case showed us the real world evidence of that – but these products never saw the light of day in the market. Apple didn’t invent awesome with a pixie wand and Steve Jobs’ tears. They begged, borrowed and stole ideas from everyone else, mixed with a few evolutionary ideas of their own and then threw the design out because it wasn’t ready yet and came back and tried again a few years later. They repeated this process until Jobs was satisfied in the end user experience.

Funnily enough, everyone else (well, except RIM,) started coming out with similar stuff right around the same time. Again; there is lots of clear evidence of evolution towards current mobile tech inside various companies. They did exactly what Apple did: they begged, borrowed and stole ideas from everyone else, then mixed with a dash of homegrown evolution.

The difference is that these other companies took any prototype they could knock together and went to market with it. They released failure after failure. (Well, except Fujitsu. P1510D and subsequent devices rocked the socks off everyone who had them, but the cost of the tech was too high for a very long time.)

Remember that a lot of the very innovations you tout – such as the mere ability to have “applications” as opposed to HTML “apps” – on your iThing were initially verboten. Even with Apple’s magnificent execution and Jobs’ genius, they launched without native apps, cloud sync and most of the “services” which would eventually make the consumer electronics appliances that Apple sells so compelling.

But Apple still isn’t redefining the enterprise market here. Nothing they do is revolutionary. Their success is that of execution and marketing, not R&D. Indeed; they are quite happy with this arrangement. Everyone else in the world – in a desperate, but blind attempt to be Apple – spends billions on R&D. Apple then simply takes the ideas – licensing or buying out if they have to, stealing or “changing just enough” if they can – and grinds them like a WoW player until they’ve QAed all the userland bugs out.

I don’t believe you analysis of Apple is objective. You don’t seem to understand their business model at all. I wouldn’t feel bad about that; many people running multi-billion-dollar companies haven’t obtained clue either!

But the lack of revolutionary ideas is why Apple isn’t a disruptive force in the enterprise.

Yet.

Again, however, that’s a whole other article…

Re: Apple doesnt effect the landscape?

Oh, I'm aware of this. A lot of the "BYOD is inevitable" stuff? I wrote it. There's more in the hopper. But right now, today, Apple's real world effect on the business computing landscape is negligible. The provide "default untrusted endpoints" that you either treat as a thin client or a limited-functionality device to be targeted by mobile device management software. These devices are supplements to the primary enterprise computing environments; nice to haves, but not "make or break."

This can - and will - change. I've customers on the bleeding edge of this revolution. That said, even in the SME space, Apple as anything other than an expensive document viewer/rdp client is still nearly nil. Even when and where it is used by "creatives," this mostly occurs in a vacuum. Content produced locally on the Mac, pushed to a central repository. True enterprise integration on the levels you see with Microsoft is almost unheard of.

Right now, today, Apple makes CE equipment. Isolated, disposable, replaceable; interchangeable with any other device that does the same task. Apple devices are appliances, not ecosystems. Apple has gone to great pains to preserve that.

And the articles on how that will affect us all...well...that's for the future!

Re: Apple's Success

Apple's products are nothing particularly special. They never have been. Apple turns “compute” into “appliance,” but they are far from the only ones to do so. They are not even the best at doing so for most products they have offered over time.

What they are is fantastic at marketing. More to the point, they were led by a marketing genius who knew when a new product was ready for market, and when “it wasn’t quite there yet.” Remember that the iPad sat on the drawing board for ages before release; there were variants of it before the first iPhones protypes were born!

No, the genius was pure marketing. Knowing that releasing the iPad would do more harm than good if the tech couldn’t A, B, C or [one of D or E]. Controlling the message, spin, hype…it’s an important part of that. Reading the market, pre-seeding the market and then executing that market you so carefully prepared…that is the execution excellence that separates this particular appliance company from all others.

Apple has never succeeded on the strength of their technology; nothing about their technology was ever all that special to begin with. They succeeded because they know when and how to release their technology to achieve maximum effect. That’s the beauty of Apple, and it’s something that everyone else is having a miserable time reproducing.

Re: "have no idea what the initial vector was"

I feel pretty confident in my call that it's Java. See here: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1533763 . It isn't a 100% slam dunk, but it's damned close.