Hahaha this is great. Reminds me of my first suspension from school when I used MS Word hyperlinks to get to all the drives "hidden" by the network admins. This included the homework mailbox drives, so naturally I found my least favourite teacher's inbox, hid the folder with the work in it and then created a pair of links pointing to one another. Good times. I wouldn't have been found out if I hadn't removed the graphic for the login screen and replaced it with the Christmas version in May... and then bragged about it when everyone in my class noticed.
Bragging, a very similar thing was my downfall back when I was much younger.
In middle school I had this weird idea to collect everyone's ID number. It, coupled with your name, would log you into everything on the computers. To this day I don't know why I wanted this info other than to have it. I never once used it for any purpose, I think I tested 1 or 2 but never touched any files. I had a HyperStudio stack (saved to my network drive) that had hidden buttons and a certain sequence you had to press them to get to the "database" (just text entry field that I saved 1 name and 1 ID number per line). It was painfully easy to collect the numbers as most kids had their class schedule on the outside or inside of their binder they carried around. The ID number was only 6 or 8 digits so it was easy to memorize, write down, and store in HyperStudio later.
But alas, stupid younger me thought it would be a good comeback to rattle off someone's ID number when they were picking on me one time which led to a 3 day in-school suspension and loss of computer privileges till the end of the year. They made me show the IT guy where I had stored the numbers (how to navigate my HyperStudio project) and phrases like "hacking" and "hacker" were thrown around even though this was literally equivalent to writing the numbers in a notebook but since I had used a computer to store the data it became a way bigger thing in their minds. Even "funnier" (not to me at the time) I had a friend that helped me collect the numbers (again, this was stupid easy, felt like a fun game to figure out how to get it, and who could collect more the fastest) who got a lighter punishment and didn't lose computer access.
Fast forward to high school and I ended up writing 2 different PHP-based apps for the school. A library attendance program that teachers used to mark that they were sending kids to the library that the library could see (so they didn't just skip school I guess? Or goof off in the halls) and to keep track of who was in the library and how long they had been there. I also wrote an online voting platform for the school that they could re-use for things like Homecoming court/Prom court/Senior superlatives/etc. The reason I bring up both of these? The high school gave me a massive CSV of all the students in the school.... and their ID number to be used for login to the platforms. I still get a good chuckle out of that.
It's funny how changing grades is a pretty common trope but surprisingly not that hard to do back in the old days. I remember reporting an issue where the school district had their reporting tool just open to the internet.
I don't know how I didn't get in trouble for all the snooping around I did.
You did use the word serious enough to make it compelling. But the author’s biography doesn’t mean that his comment wasn’t flippant.
He’s proved that an well-behaved, codesigned app can list file metadata about files in restricted directories. He hasn’t proven the sandbox compromised.
You claim he has so much serious evidence, link us there. Don’t just string adjectives together.
I have great respect for Jeff, but he is one of the more outspoken complainant Apple devs. At least he has a better basis for his commentary than DHH.
I would like Apple to not roll out BS prompts that make my life more difficult until those prompts are actually capable of protecting some of the most sensitive data on my machine.
Did I? The only other interaction I had with you recently that I can find is a discussion about Apple's security policies, which seemed fairly reasonable to me.
This is amusing, but mostly because it’s the Netherlands. I love the country and the people but they don’t even have a level playing field for retail payments. The big stores accept most card networks (Visa is a little underrepresented even in this group) but most only support one major acquirer, which tends to be Mastercard.
Sure. They just developed a new chip, with a new 5nm process, at to drop all the devs off a cliff and hang them out to dry. That will sell units. If they don't work the issues out they'll have to partially shelve the design and go grovelling back to Intel for CPUs because things will continue not to work until it affects the profits. I would be incredibly surprised to see "near zero engagement" with major vendors on this, have (e.g. Adobe) devs written about big issues, or just FOSS wranglers who feel their Free project is undervalued?
I agree there's been a big shift in focus. I'm seriously unhappy about the Amazon/Google level of ad-down-throat-ramming I have to put up with on my Apple TV. But I don't think they're throwing the towel in on hardware and software innovation.
I think Google may have lost some of the ferocity in their loyalists around May 2018, when they removed the "Do no evil" clause from their code of conduct. That was an easy hook on which to hang an uncritical defence.
The vendor lock-in aspect of the super-vertical integration is definitely one of the more abundant points of complaint I see. I get that it's a controversial choice, and it goes hand in hand with their proprietary standard model, which I think is what feeds my suspicion that there is actual bias at play, as opposed to strong opinions being voiced without the bias.
There seems to be as much shared experience in ragging on Apple as there is in using their products and maybe in supporting their positions in the face of naysayers. Other providers offer similar integrated experience. Google has entries in most hardware markets, and Amazon certainly exercises a ubiquity across more than just the IT industry.
I wondered about 'bias' being the right thing to talk about, of course I was influenced by the complainants characterisation. I imagine I have a pro-Apple bias to some degree. Certainly I know I like the products, infrastructure, and integration, and I'm largely supportive of their technical direction. Is it bias, or are these conversations purely opinion based?
I don't fully understand what you mean by "a reflection of people actually knowing what the company is doing." There might be some misinformation floating around, but I would expect that to balance over time and subject matter. If you mean that some people chime in to these conversations without enough information I suppose my lesson here is not to feed the trolls :)
If you follow Apple stuff, ask a random non nerd about something that recently happened in the Apple universe and they’ll typically know at least half of the story. They may not understand, but awareness exists. Ask people about any other company except maybe Facebook. They have no clue. Nobody knows what version of Windows they have, etc.
Apple rarely has more than a half dozen SKUs in any category. Everyone knows what they are. Even people who complain about Apple know about the products.
It's a good question. I don't really have the data science chops to come up with the methodology. I was always a weak statistician...
I'm not looking to prove that there is no bias, I'm devilishly interested in whether actual bias is stronger around Apple, don't mind if it's favourable or not.
I agree. My position is that is a company is big enough people will have an opinion, and if there's an opinion to be had there's probably an opposition in there somewhere. I like the "reverse PR" theory, kinda the "no press is bad press" argument. Mac vs. PC ads are a great point! Definitely a polarisation at the time, I think Linux can be found in a lot of the most outspoken commentary around here.
