In case you missed it
 
As alluded to at the end of Friday’s blog entry, Bill Gates’ Vista interview Friday with Stephen Levy of Newsweek, subtitled “Bill Gates explains why you should buy his new operating system, what he’s doing next and why John Hodgman bugs him” has roused up a storm among Mac fans. There’s not much more to say here, other than to note that the interview was published on the MSNBC Web site, where the “MS” part stands for, yup, Microsoft. Here are the parts of the interview specific to Macintosh Internet security (the phrases in brackets and the italics were seemingly added by the Newsweek editor):
 
  1. We made it way harder for guys to do exploits. The number [of violations] will be way less because we’ve done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn’t done any of those things... Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.
 
Now that’s asking for trouble, isn’t it! In addition to being completely inaccurate. Gates also made a number of other derogatory comments about the Mac, the “Get a Mac” ads and even Steve Jobs. In light of recent events, it’s particularly interesting that he would even allude to the just-concluded Month of Apple Bugs project. As we’ve said before, more to come...
Monday, February 5, 2007