Why I hate Macs and coffee shops

[angry_geek]

So here I am, enjoying a nice iced tea and a tuna sandwich in my buddy's coffee shop. Working on a quote and in my own little world. Tap, tap on my shoulder, and my reverie is gone. It's a kid I see in the coffee shop nearly every time I go in there. He usually has some crack about my netbook and how his macbook pro is just far superior. Surprisingly, he is a 23-year-old art major who has never had to work a day in his life. He is easily ignored. I turn to him and say "I know, I know: mac rules, widows blows." "No", he says, "can you help me?". Hmmm, interesting turn of events. After asking him what was up, he tells me his mouse won't move. I look at the machine and see the beach ball, only it's not turning. I tell him it's locked up, reboot it. He tells me macs don't lock up, they don't have errors. I explain to him that in fact they do; they just don't give you any idea of what may be wrong. So he finally forces a reboot. Then I get another tap; now it won't start. Just sitting on "post" screen. I take a look. "tick, tick, scratch, scratch". Oh goody. I tell him his hdd may be failing, and I would need to remove it to test and see if I can recover anything. "But the guy at the apple store said that kind of stuff doesn't happen to macs." After convincing him that in fact it just happened, I tell him that I can work on it at the shop at my normal rate. He pulls out a wad of daddy's cash and asks if I can work on it now. So much for my lunch. I yank the hdd, and immediately hear the tell tale sound of broken pieces rattling around. Of course UBCD said "yeah right" when I tried to plug it in to my netbook with the usb adapter. I then ask him if the machine had been dropped. Well yeah actually just before I came in he says.

It took a while to convince him that the salesman at the apple store either lied to him or is an idiot. Macs do have problems just like anything else, and just because it has an aluminum shell doesn't mean it's drop proof. After explaining to him that apple won't cover drops under the standard warranty, he asked me to order him a new drive, but he didn't want an apple drive this time. No problem, I told him. I'll order a western digital instead.

What a lunch. I hate macs and coffee shops sometimes.

 

[14049752]

Doesn't sound like you should be hating either right now....you're getting paid because of both of them.

 

[angry_geek]

Doesn't sound like you should be hating either right now....you're getting paid because of both of them.

Point taken But I still like to enjoy a nice quiet lunch without having to explain to someone that macs aren't perfect. Plus it was a funny event in my life today. Wonder what tomorrow may bring.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

"But the guy at the apple store said that kind of stuff doesn't happen to macs."

It took a while to convince him that the salesman at the apple store either lied to him or is an idiot. Macs do have problems just like anything else, and just because it has an aluminum shell doesn't mean it's drop proof. After explaining to him that apple won't cover drops under the standard warranty, he asked me to order him a new drive, but he didn't want an apple drive this time. No problem, I told him. I'll order a western digital instead.

What a lunch. I hate macs and coffee shops sometimes.

Yeah, stuff happens to Macs. They keep me pretty busy. I'm not sitting around like the May-Tag repair man.

 

[Blues]

Here is a nice STFU verbal bitch slap to someone who believes mac's never have issues. "If they don't have issues why would Apple sell a service plan to cover problems?"

 

[ProTech Support]

Yeah, stuff happens to Macs. They keep me pretty busy. I'm not sitting around like the May-Tag repair man.

Last time I saw him he was fixing slots at a casino...big change from fixing the photocopier that was run by goats...those commercials crack me up

 

[gunslinger]

Macs are not perfect, Just more so than most PCs.

Honestly No one likes a snob no matter what the issue. Having owned a Mac for over a year now I can say I have never had a single issue. No spyware, viruses, Malware, freeze ups or any other error. I have Over 90 apps installed and they all work every time.

Its always good for the Honda guy to see the Mercedes guy broke down on the road side.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Macs are not perfect, Just more so than most PCs.

Honestly No one likes a snob no matter what the issue. Having owned a Mac for over a year now I can say I have never had a single issue. No spyware, viruses, Malware, freeze ups or any other error. I have Over 90 apps installed and they all work every time.

Its always good for the Honda guy to see the Mercedes guy broke down on the road side.

Macs do have hardware issues like any machine, and software wise as stable and solid as OSX is, people still find ways to screw that up to. But at least when a Mac is fixed it usually stays fixed, unlike the PC that is getting all the crap cleaned out of it once a month or more because its became a multi-billion dollar a year blackmarket business cranking out the exploits in Windows. People can say Macs could be exploited too if they had a bigger market share. Possibly they could, but Unix has been around since 1969-71. The source code is open source and available to anyone yet still no exploits.

 

[14049752]

Here is a nice STFU verbal bitch slap to someone who believes mac's never have issues. "If they don't have issues why would Apple sell a service plan to cover problems?"

Its always good for the Honda guy to see the Mercedes guy broke down on the road side.

Not really relevant to the thread....(well, in a round-about-way, I guess)... but I was car shopping a while ago. I was at a BMW dealership, and the salesman told me that "they don't ever break down" as a way to ease my concerns over warranty and such. I told him "Well, if they never break down, you shouldn't have a problem with giving me an extended warranty, right?"

It always amazes me when people say anything similar to that... I get people in the shop that always say things like "I thought (Dell, HP, Sony, Apple..whatever) was a good brand?" and seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they treat their computer like crap. One lady not too long ago THREW her laptop onto my counter, from the door (6ft away) then proceeded to blame Sony for making a junk system.

 

[abe]

. The source code is open source and available to anyone yet still no exploits.

Can you clarify what you mean by no exploits. we've all heard of macs being hacked in 5min's so i'm assuming you mean the unix OS or something.

Abe

 

[MrUnknown]

Linux applications and the kernel have exploits written for them constantly. Where do you think the term "rootkit" came from? Granting access to the root user on Linux/Unix, not Administrator on Windows. They are just patched really quickly and don't have press releases when they release one. The difference is that most linux exploits are used to gain access to data, not show popups.

Market share is a big deciding factor when someone wants to write malware. Many people can already program for Windows, run Windows, and most other people have Windows. Programmers are lazy and do not want to learn to program for OSX when the payback is much less. As Firefox grows in popularity, I am seeing an increase of malware putting plugins into it that redirect pages and such. I fixed a computer yesterday that would show their "warning bar" that IE has when I went to malwarebytes' site saying it was infected and that access was blocked.

Considering that a lot of malware is installed by simply misleading the user and not via an exploit, I would believe that a similar application could be made for OSX so long as you get the user to enter a password or something to allow the install to happen. I could be very wrong, I do not know how OSX operates.

As a side note, OSX is based on FreeBSD, while on the low-level side is very different from Linux, many applications share the same programming code. There is also an active exploit for Java on OSX. Sun released a patch for it a while back but Apple has yet to apply it to their release, so the guy who found it released a proof of concept and that got decompiled so others can use it.

 

[purple_minion]

Linux applications and the kernel have exploits written for them constantly. Where do you think the term "rootkit" came from? Granting access to the root user on Linux/Unix, not Administrator on Windows. They are just patched really quickly and don't have press releases when they release one. The difference is that most linux exploits are used to gain access to data, not show popups.

Market share is a big deciding factor when someone wants to write malware. Many people can already program for Windows, run Windows, and most other people have Windows. Programmers are lazy and do not want to learn to program for OSX when the payback is much less. As Firefox grows in popularity, I am seeing an increase of malware putting plugins into it that redirect pages and such. I fixed a computer yesterday that would show their "warning bar" that IE has when I went to malwarebytes' site saying it was infected and that access was blocked.

Considering that a lot of malware is installed by simply misleading the user and not via an exploit, I would believe that a similar application could be made for OSX so long as you get the user to enter a password or something to allow the install to happen. I could be very wrong, I do not know how OSX operates.

As a side note, OSX is based on FreeBSD, while on the low-level side is very different from Linux, many applications share the same programming code. There is also an active exploit for Java on OSX. Sun released a patch for it a while back but Apple has yet to apply it to their release, so the guy who found it released a proof of concept and that got decompiled so others can use it.

Have you ever tried to compile something? There are a ton of variables involved. Also anything you download isn't executable by default, so the user needs to go out of their way to make it happen. Finally, unless it really is a rootkit the most anything could do is affect the users data, not the OS. You might lose all your pictures with grandma and your account could be hosed, but the OS should be fine. Granted your data IS the most important for an end user, it seems more malware simply wants to either use your computer, trick you into buying something, or stealing your info to buy something.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Can you clarify what you mean by no exploits. we've all heard of macs being hacked in 5min's so i'm assuming you mean the unix OS or something.

Abe

I thought that comment was going to bring speculation. I do mean mostly Unix. I've heard the stories OSX hacked in under a minute going through Safari. The pirated iLife software being full of nasties and rightfully so. I'm just saying as a technician who has looked at and services tons and tons of Macs, I can honestly say I never have to deal with malware unless its on the Windows side of course. And if I never see malware with all the Macs I look at, its going to be even less chance any given user is going to see malware.

 

[abe]

there probably is malware but you havn't seen it due to market share,

(i think I'm gonna write a few viruses for macs )

 

[MrUnknown]

purple, is your response only talking about OSX? I have not compiled anything on OSX, my experience with it is about 30 minutes, thats why I said I don't know how OSX operates.

As for linux, I have compiled lots of things, from scratch? not completely. I used to have to do it under Gentoo with some programs, but the libraries were already downloaded and installed properly with the compiler. I mainly use Ubuntu now so I don't compile anything.

As for "going out of their way to make it happen," I don't think it is far fetched that a Mac user could install something that has some sort of malware along with it telling them to purchase something and in general annoying the hell out of them. Not all Windows malware is installed by exploits. It is by websites confusing users into thinking their computer is infected and it pops up a download window for a program. The user stupidly runs and installs it and gets malware. Is there any reason that, while installing a program on OSX that it couldn't automatically add a plugin to Safari? Can a OSX program not encrypt random files on its own and hold them hostage?

Excuse my ignorance, as I said, I am inexperienced with OSX and its whole security model.

 

[MrUnknown]

I agree with Abe, it is all about market share. As Macs get more and more popular, more exploits will actually be exploited against it to do various things to it. To believe that if Macs get to 50% market share and that they will not have any malware at all because they are made more secure would be silly. All the security in the world will never protect you from the actual user.

 

[abe]

intresting read

www.macforensicslab.com/ProductsAnd...ocument_general_info&cPath=11&products_id=174

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Excuse my ignorance, as I said, I am inexperienced with OSX and its whole security model.

The security model for OSX is the security model for Unix. Its that simple. Thats actually whats nice about OSX. There is still one hell of a command line structure using terminal where you can be in a bash/bourne/c schell and really get creative. If you know your way around the Unix command line pretty good, you can still really get under the hood to solve some issues with a script that may take hours going through the GUI. The ability to enable and log in as root which is pretty damn scary with all the possiblities and the POWER... Boohahahaha!

 

[MrUnknown]

lol.

What I meant by security model is how much access applications have to the rest of the system. As the example I gave, can it install plugins to Safari without any sort of dialog box, etc.

I understand how the Unix security works and file permissions, but if OSX has a folder with rwx as its permissions then it doesn't matter. Also if you own your Safari plugins folder, unless you are setting it to read only, then any sort of application can put files into it, correct?

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

lol.

What I meant by security model is how much access applications have to the rest of the system. As the example I gave, can it install plugins to Safari without any sort of dialog box, etc.

I understand how the Unix security works and file permissions, but if OSX has a folder with rwx as its permissions then it doesn't matter. Also if you own your Safari plugins folder, unless you are setting it to read only, then any sort of application can put files into it, correct?

The 2 plugins folders are under the main library of OSX and in the user library under Internet plugins not necessarily belonging only to Safari. Safari out of the box can handle just about any web-site but sometimes plugins may be necessary. Any application that tries to install in OSX must have be authenticated by the admin user when its trying to install. As far as low level plugins go I'm not so sure thats the case.