Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Interviews
Bill Gates: "security guys break the Mac every single day"
I'm all for competition in the marketplace. I'm even for friendly puns between rival competitors and the camps that follow them, especially since you have to have a sense of humor about them in the first place. But don't we also need a sense of reality?In a Vista-pimping interview with Newsweek yesterday, Bill Gates appears to be taking off the gloves with an all-out attack on the Mac. When questioned about accusations of copying Mac OS X features, Bill began accusing Apple of the exact opposite, and he also postulated that "maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing." While he is of course referring to the 2003 demonstration of Longhorn, this isn't even the half of it. Bill also tried to turn their reputation for swiss-cheese security around on Apple, claiming:
"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."
I'm sorry: "Total exploit?" Did anyone else see something from the rear end of a bull just fly over their shoulder? I'm no security fanboy for the Mac, but perhaps Bill got the wrong impression of how (not so) widespread the exploits from MOAB - the Month of Apple Bugs - actually became. Or perhaps he forgot that it's Microsoft who has had to set up regular patch release schedules to help throttle the damage. All things considered, however, I can understand if Bill lost track; regularity can sometimes numb the pain, breeding forgetfulness in the process.
Check out the rest of the, uh... 'interesting' interview for some other great zingers from the big G-man. If you ask me, he sure is shaping up to retire with a bang in 2008.
I'm sorry: "Total exploit?" Did anyone else see something from the rear end of a bull just fly over their shoulder? I'm no security fanboy for the Mac, but perhaps Bill got the wrong impression of how (not so) widespread the exploits from MOAB - the Month of Apple Bugs - actually became. Or perhaps he forgot that it's Microsoft who has had to set up regular patch release schedules to help throttle the damage. All things considered, however, I can understand if Bill lost track; regularity can sometimes numb the pain, breeding forgetfulness in the process.
Check out the rest of the, uh... 'interesting' interview for some other great zingers from the big G-man. If you ask me, he sure is shaping up to retire with a bang in 2008.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Victor Agreda Jr said 2:14PM on 2-02-2007
I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't what Bill said about Mac security be actionable? I mean, he's LYING. Heard by some moron considering a Mac vs. PC, someone with no tech knowledge at all, and under the presumption that "Bill is so rich, he must always be right" wouldn't this cause damages to Apple Inc?
It's one thing to be flip. It's quite another to spread FUD in such a heavy-handed manner.
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Gandhi said 2:13PM on 2-02-2007
So what's new? Every one who saw that [url=http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/31/found-footage-cnn-asks-bill-gates-about-copying-mac-os-x/]CNN interview[/url] knows very well that Billy Boy does not know what he is talking about when it comes to Macs (and more likely) is lying through his teeth while ignoring the facts.
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Matthew said 2:27PM on 2-02-2007
Apple actually copied Longhorn circa 2003. Macs get hacked to the point of being taken over totally on a daily basis.
PC-loving, Mac-fearing user love this shi*. Eat it up. Live by it. They'll echo BG's comments for years.
Looking back at Ballmer's comments about the iPhone where, instead of referencing Apple, Ballmer uses the pronoun "he" (Steve Jobs), I really get the feeling that it's getting personal with MS. The shi* is starting to hit the fan in Redmond.
MS isn't going away, but perhaps we're seeing for the first time Gates and Ballmer a bit nervous given the swing in sentiment towards their ability to "innovate." They did a better job of pretending that it was all their idea in the past, but now, under more pressure (read longhorn delays), they're getting sloppy, copying in a more blatant manner and even PC users are starting to catch on.
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Nicolas Dore said 2:40PM on 2-02-2007
Love this one:
Q. Are you bugged by the Apple commercial where John Hodgman is the PC, and he has to undergo surgery to get Vista?
A. I've never seen it. I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are.
A) He does not answer the question, Steven Levy has to ask it again.
B) He has never seen it yet comments on an aspect of the ads which is not mentioned in the question! :)
Nicolas
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JT said 2:48PM on 2-02-2007
To Victor - no, comments like that are not actionable. If Gates thinks that OSX gets 'totally hacked every day', then he's entitled to that opinion, albeit deluded.
Comments like his can actually play directly to the benefit of Apple. Most Windows users are experienced enough to know that their OS is, if not guarded heavily, utterly corruptible.
When they see Gates' comments that Windows is the holiest of holies, the most impenetrable of operating systems, they'll see it as baseless hyperbole (which roughly means 'huge exaggeration').
Rest easy - Gates just helped the spread of OSX.
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Lee said 3:10PM on 2-02-2007
I've never considered myself as 'anti-microsoft' at all, just someone that considers OSX as a better system. I run OSX, XP and Linux here at home.
After reading that interview, the XP machine (which I was planning to upgrade to Vista this weekend) is going. Some of the comments made by Gates were just sickening in their inaccuracy. What's more, he made several jibes at Apple without even being prompted - thats the sign of a man that knows he's been beaten.
I can't support (by way of purchasing) a company with two morons (Gates and Ballmer) at the helm, spouting the kind of stuff they have been recently.
Funny how he's already talking about how the next version of Windows will be better.
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Sam G. said 3:08PM on 2-02-2007
What strikes me in the interview is that Gates brings Apple up first, before Levy has a chance to. This means that a) they believe Apple is a serious competitor, and b) they are definitely worried.
Annoying Mac guy aside, Apple's ad campaign has done more to solidify the image of everything that is wrong with Windows - a stodgy, inflexible, virus-prone OS - than perhaps anything by anyone over the past decade. And Bill definitely knows it.
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stephen gray said 3:07PM on 2-02-2007
the only really important thing to take away from all of this is that the company with 95% of the market is worried about the company with only 5% of the market.
in the business world that means something...
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ziggybop said 3:09PM on 2-02-2007
Bill said "security guys break the Mac every single day"
Well, that's what Bill paid those MOAB guys to say. Just like the PC/Mac ads he never saw, Bill never bothered to read the MOAB's "total" takedown of the Mac.
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Lokheed said 3:10PM on 2-02-2007
No, no, no, no, no... no. You guys got the quote wrong. It was meant to read as such:
"Nowadays, security guys break Windows 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 a Mac machine."
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Stephen Lang said 3:11PM on 2-02-2007
I think I'm more pissed at the interviewer for not calling BS on it.
At least Wolf Blitzer called Cheney on his BS.
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Stephen Lang said 3:13PM on 2-02-2007
Sorry, just to add that I'm not comparing Iraq to MS vs. Apple. Just comparing the fact that in one case, the INTERVIEWER called BS on something that was obviously not true.
It would have been interesting to see BG's response if Levy had said something like "But there's no known reports of any Mac actually being exploited in the real world."
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Joe Stoner said 3:17PM on 2-02-2007
I particularly enjoyed the part where Bill said that those daily Mac exploits are all severe enough to let an attacker gain complete control of your machine. Now, I didn't keep close tabs on the month of exploits, but did any of those exploits result in total root access? For that matter, how many exploits total have been found that give attackers root?
I never had a viruses on my PC back before I went Mac (about a year ago), but that was only because I was diligent and spent a lot of effort keeping my system healthy. I'm sure a day will come when Macs are subject to a significant attack, but that day is nowhere near as close as Bill thinks.
Plus, everything about my system (hardware and software) looks so much nicer now.
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Bart Lee said 3:28PM on 2-02-2007
This is my favorite quote from the interview:
NEWSWEEK: If one of our readers confronted you in a CompUSA and said, “Bill, why upgrade to Vista?” what would be your elevator pitch?
BILL GATES: The most effective thing would be if I could sit down with them and just take them through the new look for a couple of minutes, show them the Sidebar, show them the way the search lets you go through lots of things, including lots of photos. Set up a parental control. And then I might edit a high-definition movie and make a little DVD that's got photos. As I went through, they'd think, “Wow, is that something I could use, would that make a difference for me?”
-----
Every single one of those things have been enjoyed by Mac users for almost two years now.
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Firas said 3:51PM on 2-02-2007
Apparently he doesn't keep track of what his own company is saying about PCs running Windows and what the difference is between "can be taken over" and "has been taken over":
"Of 4 million Windows PCs found to be infected with some kind of malicious software in the first half of this year, about 2 million were running malicious remote control software, Microsoft said."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6129235.html
"More than 60 percent of compromised Windows PCs scanned by Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool between January 2005 and March 2006 were found to be running malicious bot software, the company said."
"Over the 15-month period covered by the report, the tool found that 5.7 million of unique Windows systems were infected."
"Backdoor Trojans are the most prevalent threat, followed by e-mail worms, which were found on and removed from just over 1 million PCs, Microsoft said."
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6082615.html
I rest my case :)
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Billy K said 4:09PM on 2-02-2007
It's the return of FUD!
I thought the machine had been awfully quiet lately.
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stainboy said 3:58PM on 2-02-2007
BILL'S RIGHT! my Mac has been exploited and is part of a zombie network sending spam worldwide right now! it's been taken over totally! i'm not even typing this myself; someone else is doing it! oh the humanity!
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kevindineen said 3:57PM on 2-02-2007
BG is a rich DORK.
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icerabbit said 3:59PM on 2-02-2007
I didn't think Mr Gates would go as low as lying to promote Vista. Publicly saying that there is a Mac security exploit every day just tops it.
You can't objectively say that Macs are exploited nor that Windows machines are invulnerable.
And that for the most recognizable computer person in the world, ... tsssss
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Dave said 4:00PM on 2-02-2007
Uhh you guys are absolutely deluding yourselves. Yeah, Windows has security issues. OS X has bigger security issues. Fer chrissakes there are 0-day exploits for BSD from 1996 that still work on OS X. And Apple can't use existing patches because they've modified the source tree too heavily to simply merge them in. Nobody is really targeting any Mac machines at this point in time though; simply put, nobody is using them for servers. The security issues that Mac OS X has aren't apparent because noone's bothered to go after them. They still exist. For it, I think OS X is the more secure operating system AT THIS POINT IN TIME.
Bill Gates is completely correct in his statements. However, the exploits just aren't used, so it's really not as big a deal as he's making it out to be -- YET. Apple at this point has a.. what.. 2% market share? 3%? That's the reason why there aren't horror stories about people's Macs being compromised left and right.
But what do I know. I'm just a security analyst.
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