Steve Jobs - the smart way to sell proprietary hard and software

One of the things that really annoys anyone who has not fallen under Apple’s magic spell is that they lock down the market with proprietary hardware and software. For anyone who is concerned about open systems, freedom and democracy this is not a good thing. This opinion has some very influential people behind it.

Possibly the most important person to criticize Apple for their over reliance on proprietary software was Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web. He wrote in a famous article in Scientific American, Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality, that open standards foster creativity while closed standards ‘creates closed worlds’ He gives the example of using iTunes which doesn’t use http, but instead itunes: and this he believes takes you off the web and closes down innovation.

Anyone who is a keen player of games will probably be fed up with the small number of games that actually work on Macs. People who play partypoker PL will be slightly miffed that they have to use their Java-based ‘instant play’ system. Most PC Gamers will be really annoyed that you can play so few games on Macs - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is one particularly notable example.

The computer freedom guru Richard Stallman has said that he is glad that Steve Jobs (who The Economist magazine called The Minister of Magic) is gone. Now, before you get too outraged, he said he glad he and his influence is gone, not that he is glad that he died young-ish of cancer. Stallman believes that Jobs turned computers into prison and then made that prison seem ‘cool’ to the in-mates. All us Mac-o-Phobes, will probably agree with his opinion that we can only hope that Jobs’s successors will be less effective than the man himself.

Macs Look good . I am OK with it. Mac OS also looks sleek . But yes this shiny thing comes with a high price . But under the hood Macs are not so secure and they are broke into easily . Considering the fact that Macs share just less than 9% of the total Computer market these are so easy to break Into . Not only the OS but Apple softwares are also easily cracked. I am not a cracker or a hacker but i figured out how to register the trial version of my iWork 2009 Application. Its really simple . I didn’t believe Apple creates products which are so easy to break .

I modified a file named “com.apple.iWork09.Installer.plist” found under Library>Preferences. The content of the file should be changed to “bplist00Ñ
[InstallModeVRetail” and Bingo i had the full registered version of iWork09.

Below excerpt is from the interview of the Man who broke  into MacBook within 2 minutes in Pwn2Own contest. 

Alan: How much of your work today is focused on securing Macs vs. PC vs. Linux? Who is your typical customer?

Charlie: At work, I mostly look at application-level security. Most of this is really independent of operating system. For example, source code reviews or reverse engineering binaries doesn’t depend much on the operating system. I’ve spent a lot of my research time on Macs because I like them and they also happen to be pretty easy to break!

Most of ISE’s customers are small to medium size companies that care a lot about security and want to make sure their applications are secure.  The companies that only want a check box usually go somewhere else because we are pretty good at what we do and consequently charge more than many other consulting firms.

 

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STAFF IN THE London office of a marketing company were left shocked and reeling yesterday after an Apple PowerBook burst into flames.

The company asked not to be identified, as IT manager Steven told how he was called to the scene by reports of smoke billowing out of an employee’s computer.

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