Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless
June 8th, 2005Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless
Here’s the rage of the internet right now. The blog of a company that switched from Wintel to Macs, including a Wintel bigot that now “sees the light”.
I find the posts interesting, and worth reading. The posts are not really biased in any way, other than the guy being pissed at Windows, causing the switch.
Oh, and, man, it feels good when a previous Win-bigot begins to see that he was wrong. 
June 11th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
I learned today that most business voicemail systems run on systems requiring a serial port interface for configuraiton. Windows has programs like Procomm to interface with telecommunications equipment. PCs often don’t have legacy serial ports (neither do Macs), which means the capability is not built-in. However, PCs are very flexible. In fact, they are far more flexible than Macs are. You can easily get an older computer with a serial port and load Windows XP on it. You could also get a PCI/ISA expansion card for the serial ports. You could even get a USB to serial adapter. From there, it’s a simple matter to find drivers for this legacy equipment because it’s made all over the world by hobbyists and small businesses in China, Taiwan, India, and even the U.S. Not so with Apple. Their platform is proprietary and the hardware is completely closed off. With Windows, you can write drivers to work with voicemail systems. And it is compatible with any hardware you need to get.
Macs are good for very specialized uses: they’re good for Ma and Pa, and people who just want to do a little web design, graphics design, and Xcode. But beyond that, it’s in its own little world.
June 15th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
A few corrections:
First of all, it’s possible to have a serial port interface on any USB-capable macs. It’s called Keyspan USB-to-serial adapters.
Secondly, Macs aren’t bad for going USB. They were on of the frontiers in that technology, along with Bluetooth and Firewire. I remember the days where hotplugging first became popular around the time the iMacs making their appearance. Besides, why look back into the old days? Everyone knows that technology is supposed to move forward, not backward.
Also, “windows” and “device driver standards” don’t mix.
For voicemail systems, an excellent one is Phlink (http://www.ovolab.com/phlink/) is considered world-class. Hey, guess what, it’s written for mac as well!
Macs specialize in multimedia (famous artists use macs because of award-winning tools), scientifical research (yes, very famous scientists discover great things on macs), “regulars” (the GUI is great for regulars, but if you’re experienced, you can use X11 to navigate your way around)
And xcode - It is the world’s greatest IDE, and developers get it free.
And most importantly, macs breed innovation. I doubt that’s “its own little world”, just because we’re a little crazy and different.
—
Here’s to the crazy ones:
“You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.”
- Think Different
June 19th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
hello hello how are you