Why you will live in an iOS world

Five years ago, just before Microsoft Vista was released, our household CIO made a strategic decision. We would move to OS X.

It wasn't a hard decision. The cost of supporting both XP and OS X was too high, XP's security, debugging and maintenance issues were intractable, and OS X had a much more interesting software marketplace. Moving to OS X would dramatically reduce our cost of ownership, which was primarily the CIO's opportunity cost. Time spent managing XP meant less time spent on my health and on family joys and obligations. [6]

It worked beautifully. One of my best strategic decisions. Yes, I curse Apple with the best of them, but I know the alternatives. I'm not going anywhere.

Except I am going somewhere. I will fade. So will you, though there's a bit more hope for the under-30 crowd. We might be able to slow the natural deterioration of the human brain (aka "Alzheimer's" and its relatives [4]) by 2030. It's too late for the boomers though, and probably too late for Gen X.

Sure, I'm still the silverback of the geek tribe. I may have lost a step, but between experience and Google I still crush the tough ones with a single blow.

Not for long though. I give myself ten years at most. I won't be able to manage something like OS X version 20, and I don't want to be reliant on my geek inheritor - son #2.

We will need to simplify. In particular, we'll need to simplify our tech infrastructure (and our finances [1] and online identities [7] too).

So our next migration will be to iOS - a closed, curated, hard target, simpler world.

You'll be going there too -- even if you're not fading (yet). The weight of the Boomers [2] will shift the market to Apple's iOS and its emerging equivalents. Equivalents like ChromeOS, now turning into iOS for desktop device with its own App Store [5].

I still have a few years of OS X left, including, if all goes well, the 11" MacBook Air I've been studying. The household CIO's job, however, is to think strategically. Our future household acquisitions will shift more and more to iOS devices, possibly starting with iPad 2.0 (2011) [3].

I expect by 2018 we'll be living in largely iOS-equivalent world, and so will you.

-- footnotes

[1] I miss Quicken 1996 -- before Intuit went to the DarkSeid.
[2] The 2016 remake of Logan's Run will be a smash hit. 
[3] I bought iPad 1.0 for my 80yo mother -- same reasons.
[4] 1989 was when the National Institutes of Health needed to launch a "Manhattan Project" style dementia-management program. I wasn't the only person to say this at the time. 
[5] If their first netbook device doesn't come in under $150 with batteries Google is in deep trouble. Android is not an iOS-equivalent, it's a lot more like XP. 
[6] Pogue's 10 year tech retrospective is a beautiful summary of the costs of making the wrong household tech decisions. He misses the key point though. The real costs are not the purchase costs, or the immense amount of failed invention, or the landfill costs -- it's the opportunity costs of all the time lost to tech churn. I've a hunch this opportunity cost is important to understanding what happened to the world economy between 1994 and 2010. That's another post though!
[7] Digital identities proliferate like weeds. Do you know where all your identities are?

After the hack: Why you REALLY shouldn't do personal business on a corporate machine

Corporations hate employees doing personal business on office machines.

I, of course, have never done this. I've certainly not checked my family calendar, or managed personal email, or browsed my Google Reader feeds on my corporate laptop, either at home or at the office.

Corporations hate this because employees should be working. Besides, it's an obvious security risk. Employees visiting off-color web sites are sure to bring viruses to work.

I agree. Sort of. Specifically I agree employees shouldn't use their Google credentials on corporate machines, and I agree there's a security risk -- for someone.

Mostly, though, the security risk is for the employee, not the corporation.

Let me explain why.

As best I can tell the average large publicly traded company admits to at least one major XP malware attack every 4-12 months. I expect the real number is twice that. That's a pretty high attack rate. A lot this of this malware, like Lemir.VA, incorporates a keylogger function. This malware captures usernames and passwords and sends them on.

If you check your family calendar at work, that would include your Google credentials. Your robust password is now meaningless; you will be hacked like I was.

That's at work. How about at home? Well, in our OS X/iOS household we haven't had a malware attack for over five ten years. My home is far more secure than my workplace.

It's safe to access Google from home. It's not safe to access Google from my office.

So you shouldn't use the office computer for personal work after all. It's in a very bad neighborhood, you really don't want to take your Google credentials there.

Cloud data: Should I trust (Simplenote) Simperium?

My memory prostheses got a nice upgrade when I integrated my Outlook and Palm/Toodledo "notes" into a single Cloud based repository with powerful OS X (Notational Velocity), Win (ResophNotes), and iOS (Simplenote.app) Clients.

I'm loving this ecosystem. There's speed, simplicity, data freedom, multi-platform and integration with Spotlight and Windows search (both ResophNotes and Notational Velocity can create local stores with each note a simple text file available for indexing and editing).

Did I mention Speed and Data Freedom? Just wanted to check. I'm copying a pasting notes from various scattered sources, building a single searchable repository of my memory extensions. It's a good complement to the memory stores distributed in my blogs and google reader shares and integrated via my Google Custom Search Page.

It's all good fun - until someone gets hurt. Tonight Simperium, the creators of Simplenote, had a single ominous blog post:

Simplenote will be unavailable on the App Store for (hopefully) a short period of time. We apologize to our potential new users. You're welcome to create an account in the meantime and we'll let you know when we're back.

Right. Simplenote, you see, owns that Cloud repository I mentioned. They've evidently been booted from the App Store. Their too-brief posting lends itself to grim interpretations.

I do so love the Cloud.

We must hope that Simperium "simply" violated an API rule with a new release, and that they'll be back soon -- hopefully with a longer news post. For now, however, a comment on my tech blog is especially relevant ...

Blogger:Migrating Notes comment: Martin: "... how can I trust the 'Simperium' entity without any further information available?"

Cough. Good question. How do we know, for example, that Simperium isn't a KGB front mining data to be used by Russian crime syndicates paying for Putin's personal submarine? Maybe "sImperium" is a clue.

The short answer is I don't trust them. I don't trust Google or Apple either Simperium, so it's nothing personal. Or, more correctly, I trust these companies to do what's best for the people who control them within the limits of what they think they can get away with.

So I don't put anything in my Simplenotes that I wouldn't put in my blog. I keep my passwords in 1Password, not in my Simplenotes. I also don't put anything in Simplenotes that I can't afford to lose. All my notes are synchronized by Notational Velocity (open source, the superb ResophNotes does the same thing for Windows) to a local store on my personal hard drive, where the UTF-8 plain text files are also backed up hourly.

I also know that Simplenote is used by some serious geeks, including the notorious John Gruber and the authors of ResophNotes and Notational Velocity. It it should vanish something like it would be recreated.

So I don't trust Simperium, but I'm not worried about them either.

Or at least, not panicky.

PS. All of this stuff is basically free. Simplenote.app is very cheap, and ResophNotes and Notational Velocity are free (donations accepted and encouraged - I gave!). The Simplenotes cloud service is normally free, I paid for premium service. This, by the way, is a bit worrisome. I'd rather Simperium had a clearer revenue stream.

Update 8/13/10: Simplenote responds in comments. They took themselves offline to fix an error in how they configured their update. I expect next time something like this happens their blog post will be more informative.

Update 8/23/10: Simplenote update just appeared in the App Store. So they're back at last.

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

The Clampi Trojan says …. Get a Mac

A Windows 2003 server machine I use may, or may not, have been infected with the Clampi trojan (ilomi.b or ilomo.c, which depending on your font, may look a lot like llomi or IIlomi or ILomi).

I say “may not”, because the combination of “Windows 2003” and "antivirus” has a high rate of false positive claims that can wreak as much destruction as the antiviral software.

In researching the Clampi trojan Google suggested I read this summary (emphases mine) …

Clampi/Ligats/Ilomo Trojan - Research - SecureWorks

… Clampi’s recent success in infecting victims is accomplished by using domain administrator credentials (either stolen by the Trojan or re-used, or by virtue of the fact that a domain administrator has logged into an already infected system). Once domain administrator privileges are granted, the Trojan uses the SysInternals tool "psexec" to copy itself to all computers on the domain.

Clampi also serves as a proxy server used by criminals to anonymize their activity when logging into stolen accounts…

… Clampi is operated by a serious and sophisticated organized crime group from Eastern Europe and has been implicated in numerous high-dollar thefts from banking institutions. Any user whose system has been infected by Clampi should immediately change any and all passwords used on that system for any websites, but especially financial credentials.

… Most major anti-virus engines should be able to detect Clampi variants; however there is always a delay between a new Trojan release and the detection time.  Given the prevalence and seriousness of the Clampi Trojan, it is recommended that businesses that carry out online banking/financial transactions adopt a strategy to isolate workstations where these activities are carried out from possible Clampi or other data-stealing Trojan infections.

This may include using a dedicated workstation for accessing financial accounts which is isolated from the rest of the local network and the Internet except for the specific financial sites required to be accessed. Since Trojans can also be spread using removable drives, systems should be hardened against auto run-type threats. Businesses may even consider using an alternative operating system for workstations accessing sensitive or financial accounts.

Home Computer User Protection
SecureWorks CTU recommends that home computer users use a computer dedicated only to doing their online banking and bill pay.  They should not use that computer to surf the web and send and receive email, since web exploits and malicious email are two of the key malware infection vectors. 

As an alternative to operating a secure home PC for all important work, home users could, you know, buy a Mac. They would then have one machine to use for everything.[1]

Maybe Apple is funding Clampi development?

--

[1] The Mac’s vast security advantage comes from the “faster friend” security philosophy. When you and a friend are being chased by a bear, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you have be faster than your friend. OS X 10.6 is, in practical terms, fundamentally more secure than XP, but not necessarily theoretically more secure than Microsoft’s very latest foul demon. The big Mac advantage is that the world’s criminals don’t own Apple machines, and have very little interest in targeting Macs as long as the vast majority of banks and corporations run some flavor of Windows. I’ve often wondered, incidentally, if Windows 98 isn’t now a very secure environment. I doubt many Trojans would infect it any more.

Lessons from my external drive purchase

I needed a SATA drive enclosure in a hurry for a work machine, and a 1TB external drive wouldn't be a bad thing either.

So I ran out to Best Buy and bought an Iomega Prestige 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive for only $10 + taxes more than Amazon.

It's only after I make my purchase that a friend asks "are you sure it's not soldered in"? WTF? Soldered?

Turns out these low end drive/enclosure bundles save pennies on connectors by soldering drives in.

No, this one isn't soldered in. And it's easier to open than the LaCie enclosure I have at home, though it's a bit of tight fit. It's also, of course, an IDE drive (the drive is Samsung, the case fanless, with a metal case that hopefully radiates nicely).

Sigh. Makes sense. Why use a SATA drive when there are still lots of cheap IDE drives around? The USB connection is much slower than the drive anyway. It just didn't occur to me that IDE drives were still sold. I thought they were extinct!.

So now I have my backup drive, but I still need my SATA connector.

I learned two lessons.

The first lesson is that there are no quick purchases in tech. Unless it's something you have direct knowledge of, you can't duck the research chore.

The second lesson is that life with Macs has made me unsuited for the intricacies of PC hardware management. I just don't get the practice I used to get!

When OS X truly sucks: screen sharing

I tried OS X screen sharing again today.

I do this every few months, to remind myself how badly OS X screen sharing sucks.

Yeah, I'm on Leopard, but from all I read Snow Leopard takes OS X remote control from extremely lousy to really lousy.

It's painful for a Mac user to remember that Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (similar to Citrix remote desktop) is about ten years old.

Microsoft (Citrix?) used to have some serious skills.

Update: Speaking of Apple senescence, I remember when the OS could 'remember' the location of files stored on a server and mount the server on demand. Now if I click a shortcut to a network folder I get "A volume failed to mount". Once upon a time I'd get a login.

That capability was lost in the last few years of OS X development, one of several dumbing-down changes to the OS.

Why Win 7 will work - XP is toast

Windows 7 is Vista 2.5. Not enormously different, but clearly improved. Sure it's a resource hog by the standards of 2004, but today's machines will manage it (especially with 3+ GB of RAM).

That will help Windows 7 succeed, but Tom Reestman pegs the real driver ...

Mac Love - GigaOM - Salon.com

... The biggest thing Windows 7 has going for it, by far, is that while after six years XP was showing it’s age, after nine it’s almost comical....

XP is going the way of Windows 98.

When Win 98 first came out, it was pretty good by the standards of the day. After years of patches and virus attacks and disinterest it was a broken wreck.

XP's not quite there, but it's close. Most of all, it's a security nightmare. Antiviral software bogs down most any machine.

Windows 7, aka Vista 2.5, will be a great success -- because XP is finished.

Microsoft's holds Netbook ground - at a cost

I've been predicting that the Netbook would be very bad news for Microsoft. So what should one make of this story ...

Microsoft: 96% Of Netbooks Run Windows -- InformationWeek:

'It's hard to believe it's been a year since we first started to see netbook PCs running Windows come to market,' said Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger, in a post Friday.

Citing figures from market research firm NPD, LeBlanc said Windows' share of the U.S. netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February. 'The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal,' wrote LeBlanc. NPD defines netbooks as devices that feature a screen that is 10.2 inches or smaller and sell for less than $500."

Should I admit defeat?

Hah! The key is the $500 pricepoint (BTW, the NYT claims the penetration is closer to 80% for XP). The NYTimes tells us that Microsoft is now charging $25 for XP, or about 5% of the unit cost (vs $73 for Vista). For that amount XP is a bargain, and it makes sense that Microsoft would take the market.

$500 is not the price point where things get interesting. That price point is $150 and below, at which point a $25 OS would be 16% of the unit cost.

Microsoft can still compete, by lowering the cost of XP or Windows 7 Lite to $15 a copy or less. The problem is they won't be making much money that far down, so they're going to have to build other companion businesses even as they pretty much give away their OS.

Not good news for revenues, but things could get nastier if the truly low end machines can't run XP or Windows 7 ...

Thin and Inexpensive Netbooks Affect PC Industry - NYTimes.com

The industry is buzzing this week about these devices at a telecommunications conference in Las Vegas, and consumers will see the first machines on shelves as early as June, probably from the netbook pioneers Acer and Asustek.

“The era of a perfect Internet computer for $99 is coming this year,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, a maker of PC graphics chips that is trying to adapt to the new technological order. “The primary computer that we know of today is the basic PC, and it’s dying to be reinvented.”...

... “A broad shift in the consumer market toward low-cost PCs would clearly put pressure on the revenues of nearly every player in the value chain, from component suppliers to retailers,” wrote A. M. Sacconaghi, a securities analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, in a report last month. “However, we believe the impact would be especially negative for Intel and Microsoft, who today enjoy near monopoly positions in their respective markets.”

... Some of the devices feel more like toys or overgrown phones than full-featured computers. Still, they are the big success story in the PC industry, with sales predicted to double this year, even as overall PC sales fall 12 percent, according to the research firm Gartner. By the end of 2009, netbooks could account for close to 10 percent of the PC market, an astonishing rise in a short span.

Netbooks have trouble running demanding software like games and photo-editing programs. They cater instead to people who spend most of their time dealing with online services and want a cheap, light device they can use on the go. Most of the netbooks sold today run on an Intel chip called Atom, which is a lower-cost, lower-power version of the company’s standard laptop chips. And about 80 percent of netbooks run Windows XP, the older version of Microsoft’s flagship software.

The new breed of netbooks, built on cellphone innards, threatens to disrupt that oligopoly.

Based on an architecture called ARM, from ARM Holdings in Britain, cellphone chips consume far less power than Atom chips, and they combine many functions onto a single piece of silicon. At around $20, they cost computer makers less than an Atom chip with its associated components.

But the ARM chips come with a severe trade-off — they cannot run the major versions of Windows or its popular complementary software.

Netbook makers have turned to Linux, an open-source operating system that costs $3 instead of the $25 that Microsoft typically charges for Windows XP. They are also exploring the possibility of using the Android operating system from Google, originally designed for cellphones....

... Mr. Burchers said a number of companies already making netbooks would show a new round of machines using cellphone chips at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, this June.

Qualcomm, the San Diego company that built an empire on chips for cellphones, recently introduced Snapdragon, a chip created for smartphones and ultralight computers. Already, the company has announced deals to sell the chip to 15 major device manufacturers, including LG, Acer, Samsung and Asustek. Qualcomm said some Snapdragon devices appearing this year would have screens of 10 to 12 inches.

.... In its last quarter, Microsoft posted the first sales decline in its history for the PC version of Windows. It blamed netbooks for the drop. On average, Microsoft charges computer makers $73 for Windows Vista, the version of Windows used in desktop and high-powered laptop PCs...

One caveat. When Mr. Huang talks about $99 Internet computers this year he's dissembling. He's referring to machines that cost $99 when purchases with a two year data services contract. In other words, they're real cost is $300 or so -- not yet revolutionary.

The revolution comes when the real price of the netbook hits $150. That will come when the GoogleBook powered by Android and pre-loaded with Google software is sold in a Target near you in 2010.

That's when Microsoft shareholders will really feel the Netbook pain.

Update 4/10/09: Interesting footnote - Microsoft protects their laptop market by restricting Netbooks using XP to only 1GB of memory.