I disagree because to the layman that can easily listen to anything on a 25$ pair of earphones that's a lot. And here we are talking about at least 80% of the population.
Uber may be fighting against the law, but when the government does not respect the democratic will of the people, it is actually ok and in the long run will benefit all.
I'm based in Helsinki, Finland and Shanghai, China (50/50). Two very different countries in all aspects. In both countries government used to regulate taxis and today China does not anymore but Finland still does.
In Finland taxis are very new (BMW, Mercedes Benz, Audi, Tesla etc.) and expensive (supported with tax payers money) and they are REALLY expensive to take. Way too expensive. This may sound ridiculous, but in my home town (major Finnish city) during the weekends it was common for people to walk home 7-10km after the night out, because taxis are so expensive. They are not seen as normal transportation service but instead more as a luxury service that you have to carefully consider before taking. They are still very safe, clean, have their own Uber-like app etc. Finns have demanded many many years (long before Uber) for the taxi-monopoly to be destroyed, but the government has happily turned a blind eye to them. Ubers in Finland are usually Toyotas or Volkswagens, quite new and clean. Prices are only 50-60% of traditional taxis.
So what about China? Taxis are old/medium-level volkswagens, little dirty, driver may be smoking inside the car, quite safe but there are many people playing with the meter or overcharging in some other ways. Some drivers are also really greedy and arrogant: They may ask you where are you going before letting you into the car and if they don't like the route they'll not take you. Anyway they are relatively affordable for average people in China. When Uber and it's Chinese competitor DiDi came to the market, the government was confused at first but later legalized them when they realized that competition will benefit all in the long run.
Now? Uber and Didi are extremely popular, significantly cheaper than traditional taxis, clean, safe and no more people have to worry about getting bullshitted with the cab fare.
So once again Uber made things better for all. Sometimes breaking the law in not only acceptable, but required for a greater good and change to happen. In Finland however it might take a while since the government is still living in their 1950s mentality and currently hunting down Uber drivers and suing them.
Some might say it's wrong that Uber is putting all the responsibility on the driver. You know what? It's not.
They know what they are signing up for and besides if Uber as a company was responsible for every single incident all over the world in every country, the company wouldn't exist anymore. No investor money could cover all those fines. The current way is the only way Uber can exist and only way the change can happen.
As a game developer I'm pretty excited about this. There is really no reason to use DX12 backend anymore in the future game development, because of the ease of development, performance and multiplatform features of the Vulkan.
I think the pain point of DX12 is it's incompatibility with Windows 7 (and 8). However, Windows 10 is getting a lot of traction and has surpassed Windows 7 in gamers market share (see http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/).
With that in mind, if you are working on a AAA game that will come out in a couple of years, your target platforms will most likely be PS4, Xbox One and Windows 10. With those three, Vulkan doesn't make sense; DX12 will be used on Windows and Xbox One, and PS4 has its own proprietary API. Why complicate things with another API if you can use (almost) the same implementation for Xbox One and Windows 10?
If Windows 7 proves itself to be still somewhat popular amongs gamers, then Vulkan might be used to port games to this platform, since it's similar to DX12 so it will be way easier than a DX11 port.
However, right now, if game developers wants to use the latest API, Vulkan is a good choice since you will still be able to target Windows 7. If a lot of big games are released with Vulkan within 2 years, then it might slow down Windows 10's adoption and the market share of Vulkan systems (Windows Vista and up) will stay greater than the DX12 one (Windows 10) for longer. But for how many years? At one point, Windows 10 (or whatever's after) will dominate and the backward compatibility of Vulkan will stop being a useful marketing point.
So I'm not sure why you say there's no reason to use DX12. There's many. There's also a lot of good reasons to choose Vulkan that I didn't talk about here. I just don't see how Vulkan can dominates the Windows market, much like OpenGL.
Because all three are APIs which try to provide a lot more control over the GPU to game developers. And I wouldn't know of any other similarities that DX12 and Metal share...
Yes for the XBox ONE, although there are some small differences with the desktop version, at least until the upcoming Aniversary update.
But the point he was making was that there is no need for DX12 because Vulkan works everywhere else.
Right now Vulkan is only supported on custom Android 6 forks for Samsung S7 and NVidia Shield, Android 7, GNU/Linux and Windows on a restricted set of graphic cards.
Hardly a market to target for game developers that want to reach as much eyes as possible.
Windows 10 users are already 45%, with around 41% having DX 12 GPUs + plus around 20 million Xbox One units.
As for market size of Vulkan, some S7 and NVidia shield as part of 10% Android 6, 0% on Android 7 until it reaches stable and of course those other 55% users that might have a Vulkan compatible card.
You didn't answer the question. DX12 has less market than Vulkan, and will always be limited to MS systems. It's not available on PS or iOS and such. So bringing them as a reason to use DX12 instead of Vulkan was pointless.
> I very much doubt Microsoft will bother to support Vulkan if AAA studios don't ask for it.
They will eventually, when they'll get fed up with MS lock-in stupidity. In order for it to happen, competing market should put more pressure on MS. MS drops lock-in only from fear of competition. And it will eventually happen - there is no need for reinventing the wheel.
People in the industry call that support and productivity thanks to proper tooling instead of leaving each one alone to scatter around for half baked FOSS libraries, but I don't expect activists without experience in the big boys league to understand it.
> People in the industry call that support and productivity
People call that MS tax, since it makes their development more costly. Whether it's developers who work on their own engines, or engine developers who provide their engines for others, this cost is passed to the end user in the form of more bugs, slower development and so on. No sane developer appreciates lock-in. But currently they have no choice.
What people? Indies and FOSS activists that probably still write M$ to this day and believe that Sony and Nintendo or even Sega in its former days are any different.
I really bet none of those ever walked the floors of GDC.
Anyone who thinks and cares about progress and doesn't drink Koolaid served by MS and Co. Surely not lock-in freaks, who frame their tax on the industry as something positive.
> I really bet none of those ever walked the floors of GDC.
You sound like GDC is owned by MS, or it's ought to be. Are you paid by them? Either way, it's a very poor way to measure opinions or their value. Find something better.
No, I am someone that in a past life was allowed to spend some time in the backstage how big boys do games and still keep some of those ties, even though I just do IT enterprise consulting nowadays.
No one in GDC hallways speak of lock-in as activists believe they do.
You claimed no one talks about it on GDC. So which one is it? No one, or some do? Just admit your statement was false.
And surely you don't expect MS and its cahoots to talk about lock-in. They are pushing it to mess up everyone else, so they aren't going to bring this crooked practice into the spotlight.
Well, considering game industry experience with OpenGL on Windows (which is in short - it doesn't work on production scale) as a game developer I, unfortunately, really doubt that it will gain any traction on Windows based platforms.
To be fair I've seen many game developers complain about the version of OpenGL that is included in Windows. Perhaps this had changed but I used to work with a few folks that did game developer on the side and it seemed to be a constant headache.
Though I'm sure there are ways around it, etc. I'm not very knowledgable on the subject but I'd certainly love to know more :)
While there are a lots of good points in this post, good luck when applying to any big corporation such as Oracle, IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Ubisoft etc. without at least bachelor's degree.
Let's be honest here. Does this change make some developers actually even consider to change their OS X/Linux Desktops to Windows?
Yeah it is really cool thing that we can finally use windows cmd like the terminal on unix systems however:
- What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software?
- What about lack of all the UNIX OS features?
- What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware etc.
- What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows? (e.g. cannot block Microsoft spy server in the hosts-file, forced updates etc.)
- What about the fact that OS X and Linux have always been at least decent from developers point of view but Windows has always had problems and then things like Vista and Win8 happen.
- What about the advertisements served to you in the login screen?
- What about all the future shit MS will throw at you?
- Other stuff can't remember now
If and IF this will actually work out well, I would say this finally makes Windows usable for software development however I don't see any reason why anyone would change from UNIX based system to Windows unless they plan to make even bigger changes in the future...( like rewriting whole Windows to be UNIX based for example. :) )
While I prefer to develop today on OS X...your post is nothing but FUD.
> What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software?
Windows prolly has more GUI applications than both those OSes combined. That's not necessarily a good thing but it's not bad either. It just means there is a Win substitute for everything.
> What about lack of all the UNIX OS features?
Same answer as above.
> What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware etc.
I download a lot of crap on my home Win computer and haven't had a virus once in the past 6 or 7 years. There are likely more Android viruses active now than Windows.
> What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows?
If you don't give permission the action is not taken. Granted I am currently getting spammed to update my home computer from win 7 to 10 but it hasn't force installed on me. Likewise for automatic updates.
> What about the fact that OS X and Linux have always been at least decent from developers point of view but Windows has always had problems and then things like Vista and Win8 happen.
Which is what this new initiative is trying to fix.
Don't get me wrong. I love my osx for dev and my *nix boxes for servers. But if I can get one machine/OS for desktop development of nix and windows without having to run silly emulators or switch between VMs then I'm sold.
> Windows prolly has more GUI applications than both those OSes combined.
Some perspective is needed here. Windows has more GUI applications than both those OSes combined and multiplied by some large number. A windows PC can run every Windows application made in the last twenty years, with some exceptions, and it's an infinitely larger market for commercial software.
> > What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows?
> If you don't give permission the action is not taken. Granted I am currently getting spammed to update my home computer from win 7 to 10 but it hasn't force installed on me. Likewise for automatic updates.
Except for the actions that the operating system doesn't tell you about, and you can't be sure about becuase it's proprietary (Windows has at least 3 backdoors and spy features that we know of, and none of them ask for permission). And all of the DRM and related malicious functionality that stops you from doing things you'd obviously want to do with your computer.
I absolutely love the fact that windows download and install critical updates automatically for me. I would feel like a slave if I had to do it manually.
After all you can only auto update microsoft and store apps. Other apps will either handle updates themselves probably with an annoying UAC prompt and possibly at inconvenient times when you actually want to use the apps. Some have processes that constantly sit in the background sucking up your resources to pop up annoying prompts to update application foo during which you must watch for them changing your browser preferences and installing adware. Others you will simply have to go to their website and download an exe or msi.
Meanwhile you are missing the fact that people don't want to avoid automatic updates to fix security holes. They want to avoid updating to the next undesirable update foisted on the users before its ready and much to peoples annoyance. Example the windows 8 UI change.
Unbelievably staying on an older still supported platform until you are ready to update is a feature you have to pay money for!
Lest you misunderstand I'm not talking about clinging to windows xp till they claw it from your cold dead hands 3 years after end of life I'm talking about the future equivalent of staying with windows 7 and upgrading to windows 10 because 8 sucks.
> "Meanwhile you are missing the fact that people don't want to avoid automatic updates to fix security holes."
You are right. My english is not very good and I did not read what OP wrote carefully about this. Maybe it was the silliness of the word "slave" being used like this that threw me off ;)
Those third apps updates can be annoying but I honestly cannot complain about all those problems you talk about, like processes sucking up resources, popups, and adware automatic installation on updates. I do not even see this happening with (very) non tech people around me. So I think it is a very suspicious argument. Even worst would be to suggest that those are problems are Microsofts blame. Maybe you get those adwares exactly because you think UAC is annoying. Can we blame Google when a user get a virus ridden app from a place other than the official store and ignore the OS warnings?
But if this is the reality, it is another good argument for the push for windows 10 update and the adoption of UWP. In fact, I think microsoft should push even harder for windows 10 updates, it is the right move.
Also, I think that the idea of maintaining a Windows machine updated with only the parts the user wants is hilarious. And I do not know who are those people you talk about. I love to test OS previews and I have never heard a person who already do not liked Microsoft for whatever reason make a big deal about a UI update (windows 8 "metro" mode was shit but easily ignored, windows 10 UI is better and amazing).
The more updates and innovation, the better. I am not afraid :)
> Unbelievably staying on an older still supported platform until you are ready to update is a feature you have to pay money for!
You are making it sound like they are forcing, or even automatically upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 8, or Windows 8 to Windows 10. They aren't. You have to specifically choose the 8->10 update, even if you are getting updates automatically installed.
> I'm talking about the future equivalent of staying with windows 7 and upgrading to windows 10 because 8 sucks.
Which you can do. I'm not sure what exactly your complaint is here. What am I missing?
(Note: I found Windows 8 to be superior to Windows 7 in every way except the start menu. I find Windows 10 superior to Windows 8 in every way except for Privacy :/ )
"You are making it sound like they are forcing, or even automatically upgrading Windows 7 to Windows 8, or Windows 8 to Windows 10. They aren't."
That's not true. They're automatically upgrading computers. Read some of the thousands of below comments to hear the stories. My Windows 8.1 laptop automatically scheduled itself to upgrade, and I was fortunate enough to be paying close attention to cancel it.
That was a mistake. I find it beyond belief that they would intentionally upgrade people without confirmation or notification. As much as they would like people to upgrade, they know this would be PR suicide. At a minimum they would have had notifications that it was going to happen, and made it opt out. To my mind, that it was automatically checked but in the optional updates section points towards it being a weird bug in which an unforeseen interaction of attributes caused the problem. For example, it's possible that selecting that you did want to upgrade to Windows 10 through the popups they showed was supposed to put it in that weird state, where it was optional but checked by default, which would be a non-normal situation for an update. Weird exceptions like that are very prone to bugs.
As you mention, it seems like straight out PR suicide.
Personally, it would be useful to know what their end game is justifying all of this bad karma. It'd have to be fantastic. Either that, or someone inside MS is seriously out of control. :(
While that's a wild situation, and MS is not behaving well, it's not quite forcing a Windows 10 upgrade. It's forcing people to be nagged about it, and causing problems in corporate IT departments where they do not want to upgrade and it keeps subverting their control.
It's not good, but it's not forcing upgrades either (which is liable to get them sued).
Whoa, I missed that. I was thinking of the prior case where it "accidentally" became recommended, but this casts that prior episode in new light. I can't imagine what they are thinking.
Unless... There's some fundamental core security problem in earlier Windows versions that isn't in Windows 10 and they don't want to tip off anyone to what it is, because it's so large and egregious it opens them up to a lot of liability and lawsuits. Okay, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now...
I switched to Mac for my personal development in 2001 but still used Windows at work. I have found over the last couple years that I have been migrating back to Windows for quite a few things. For me personally, I find the UI in Windows to be more productive and faster. The features Apple has been adding are not things I'm very interested in and I haven't been using my 2009 MBP for much anymore except syncing with my iPhone. A number of Linux VM's are always around for development work and if I can do it all now in Windows, I'm all in.
I've been holding off buying a new laptop and, if this new feature works as advertised I will not be buying Apple.
Haven't had malware in years. Vista and Windows 8? Advertisements? Future shit and other awfulness you can't remember? Yeah those really sound like valid points.
Data point: On Windows when you run 'npm install' on a react boilerplate/starter project chances are 50/50 that it will work out of the box. A year ago it was way worse. I thought heavily on switching to Mac for no other reason but 'npm install' success rate on Windows.
Honestly it's not much better on OS X. The solution to failed npm installs is to keep running npm install until it works. If that doesn't work after about 6 times, wipe out node_modules dir and try again. Npm got lots of laughs at EmberConf this week. Everyone hates it but we all use it because it's what everyone uses.
I have been running Windows, Mac OS, Linux (Minix at one point and other variants), for over 20 years. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. Linux is the go to language for servers right now. I have made most of my machines dual-boot, Linux/Windows. I have given up on OS X's walled garden, and it is not as nimble as it once was. For me, the dependency hell, and trying to build an app I want to use that breaks another on Linux can eat a lot of time, and takes a lot of Googling to maybe get it working. Granted this is for possibly the type of programs I am targeting: livecoding environments like Extempore, Tidal; machine learning and CUDA/OpenCL versions and dependencies, etc... Being a problem solver, sometimes this is fun, but when trying to produce work, it can be a big time waster. I think most Linux users are tinkerers whereas there are some technically naive people who are very productive on Windows. Personally, I use programs like Clip Studio Paint on my Windows Sony tablet PC, and it is only available on Windows and Mac. For programs like these there are no acceptable Linux variations. I tried to work with GIMP for years, even writing my own scripts in it. For the present I will stick with my dual-boot machines, probably welcome this new edition to Windows, and keep hoping a new OS or variant comes along that is truly innovative. To me Linux won the contest years ago, but is not a big ball of mud. Here's to a Lisp Machine, or Forth OS, or Urbit-like system coming online. More time to waste and have fun; Linux is so 2000s!
Although I've been a primarily C# dev for years, I gradually moved to Ubuntu, and then to OSX, all because of the better terminal/s. I like Macs, but OSX, its window management system, finder, is really bad. Having bash environment available on Windows is an incredible feat and a reason alone to reconsider Windows again. Hopefully, it won't be limited to W10.
"Finder sucks" seems to be a meme perpetuated by commenters everywhere, but I have never read a convincing list of issues. When pressed, commenters have replied things like "it is well known that Finder is a big pile of crap."
I honestly have never found a problem with the Finder and miss a lot of its features (column view, drag file to file dialog, high-resolution previews for most file types, Quick View, and much more) when I'm in Windows or Linux.
First right-click for a session totally hangs the Finder for ~10 seconds, followed by the beachball, followed by a brief flash of the contextual menu. The next right-click works as expected.
I think this move by MS is wonderful and I support it completely - but there is one concern that you've left out that makes me more worried than anything.
I'm someone who doggedly persisted trying to dev on my windows box because the stability, speed, app support, GUI niceness of windows is just far superior to Ubuntu (I won't speak to OS X since I've only done minimal dev on it). I won't go into a lengthy defense of this claim - but will if pressed.
I put up with all the failed python module installations - the hunting around for the right VisualStudio compiler... the 64bit python install issues... on and on... I put up with it all... only to be defeated in the end by various node modules failing to install because they use ridiculous depth in their directory file structure that the windows filesystem can't handle. Our projected needed those dependencies. Something had to give.
So I tried vagrant VM with virtualbox - and shared folders... so I could keep my windows GUIs without needing to sshing everything to the VM. Somehow - even though the shared folders thing means the VM is ultimately using the windows filesystem - the node modules would install okay. BUt then I had problems with symlinks (which was solveable with effort)... But the worst thing was that various files, and sometimes whole directories would randomly have their permissions changed inextricably such that NO ONE - not even an admin user could touch them. The VM would get locked out, I would get locked out... it was horrid. It happened in the middle of a rebase once. Sad times... Sad... sad times.
So - I ditched vagrant and shared folders and use a totally contained VM with the ubuntu GUI... it's slow and horrid and it makes me cry... but at least I can alt-tab and waste time in a browser in the windows GUI if I want to.
So anyhoo - my concern. This approach by MS is going to mean everything plays with the same windows file-structure yeah? Or does the ubuntu thing get it's own self contained filey-bits to play with?
Cause if the former... then I will have the fear... THE FEAR... when I try to use it.
NTFS supports 32k file names; the Win32 & Win64 layers, by default, only support PATH_MAX (260) characters for backward compatibility (compatibility with Win16, ironically enough). You can opt in to longer paths by prepending paths with '\\?\' to disable path length checking, but the check itself exists in the Win* layers. I would expect the Linux layer doesn't apply this check.
> So I tried vagrant VM with virtualbox - and shared folders... so I could keep my windows GUIs without needing to sshing everything to the VM. Somehow - even though the shared folders thing means the VM is ultimately using the windows filesystem
Maybe the other way would be easier, use the VM for all dev file storage as well, and export a SMB share that you can connect to from windows. Same sharing capability (as long as the VM is running), but you don't have to worry about different underlying file system semantics.
> So - I ditched vagrant and shared folders and use a totally contained VM with the ubuntu GUI... it's slow and horrid and it makes me cry... but at least I can alt-tab and waste time in a browser in the windows GUI if I want to.
Personally, I would just SSH for access to the VM though, as I find PuTTY superior to having a desktop as a window on a desktop (I would prefer to RDP to a local Windows VM as well). But I use Vim as my IDE, so it's extremely easy for me to do so.
That said, Visual Studio announced support for targeting Linux today (I assume either through SSH to a local VM or remote box and/or the local Linux support they announced here, so that might be an acceptable route in the future.
> So - I ditched vagrant and shared folders and use a totally contained VM with the ubuntu GUI... it's slow and horrid and it makes me cry...
Is it really that bad? At one former job I ran Ubuntu under VirtualBox with guest additions installed (new Linux team in an old MS shop).
Performance was OK, at least for the things I used - terminals, vim, Firefox. The only thing that really annoyed me in this setup was the need to switch between the VM and Outlook every now and then. Fortunately, Outlook's notifications worked even in VM running fullscreen (IIRC).
I was going to agree with you and admit I was being melodramatic...(well - I mean, saying that it makes me cry was certainly melodramatic - I don't really), but y'know what... it's definitely not ideal.
e.g. Scrolling in my ide.. sometimes lines of code don't refresh properly until I scroll back and forward a few times.
And with dev server, webpack watchers, test watchers open plus browser with a few tabs... yeah - it can get pretty sluggish. Maybe I'll try throwing a few more gig ram at the VM.
In a totally non scientific survey 2/5 developers here plan to switch from our top of the line MacBooks to Windows 10 if this really works as promised.
Every environment I've walked into like this (unless it's Windows app development) this was only because no one tried. I joined a large web shop that was Windows Dev, but Linux deploy.
Never made sense to me. It was driven by IT because of control issues. I introduced Linux (this was 10 years ago) and then slowly ever Dev switched to develop on Linux because it was a better development experience. Unix is by hackers for hackers. IT was forced to incorporate these systems, which wasn't hard.
Now with this change I can see why people might switch back, definitely makes it easier to have Windows IT shop, but still be able to target Linux. Personally, Docker has already started resolving this issue for me, but I can see it helping Windows devotees. MS lost my trust back in 1996, and I honestly don't know what they could do to regain it, but this isn't enough for me.
For a second machine (maybe a cheap laptop) then yes, I would consider it.
As a side note, Windows NT had a POSIX layer as one of its three main APIs (Along with Win32 and OS/2), so in theory, at least, it should have been easy to port true UNIX apps to it. I have no idea what state the POSIX layer is in now; probably in a similar state to the OS/2 layer.
The POSIX subsystem was removed some time around Server 2003. They replaced it with Unix Services for Windows, which was based on an acquired technology, but that's no longer available as of Windows 10. After laying fallow for so long, I really doubt they used the old multi-subsystem architecture to implement this new stuff. Could be wrong, though.
I still can't believe so many developers switched to Macs after that ad campaign they ran. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if eventually 'GNU/Linux/Windows' ultimately ended up with a majority share of developer desktops.
Out of curiosity, which ad campaign are you talking about?
As for which OS (Win/Mac/nix) controls the majority share of developer desktops, I feel like it's always going to depend on what you're developing, so talking about the overall "biggest slice of the pie" for developers is less meaningful than talking about who has the biggest slice in the consumer space.
For example, a backend web developer might look at this "Winbuntu" thing and suddenly be attracted to the idea that they could trade their Mac in for a PC that lets them do all the UNIXy stuff they need for their job, but at the end of the day lets them play the latest PC games...
...unless SteamOS continues to grow in popularity, in which case Microsoft loses share because a Linux-based laptop suddenly seems like the best choice for a gamer-developer.
On the other hand, if we're talking about a company handing work laptops out to employees, frontend developer-designers are likely to continue preferring (requiring, really) Macs for a long time to come, and that likely means that it makes more sense to keep a common platform and hand Macs out to everyone, since so many server devs are already well-accustomed to using Macs. And though Windows might eventually become attractive enough to professional designers, Linux is deeply neglected in the design-oriented space.
But that's all just web development, which has much more fluidity than other types of development. Game developers will continue to develop on the platforms that they intend to support (or Windows for consoles, at least for the time being). iOS developers will continue to develop on Macs. Mac developers will develop on Macs, Windows developers will develop on Windows, and Linux developers will develop on Linux. I'm barely an Android developer, but it seems to be slightly more natural to work on a Mac or Linux machine, and yet "Winbuntu" would likely remove that advantage.
I agree that with Windows embracing Linux so deeply like this, it certainly opens the door for a lot of people to make the switch-- personally, I bought a Surface Book because I was excited by the hardware, but quickly returned it once I realized how unhappy I was without native access to a terminal. If Ubuntu continues to flourish as a fully-fledged aspect of Windows, I might consider buying the Surface Book 2.
But my personal anecdote also illustrates the greater point-- this opens the door, but it doesn't push anyone through it. I was tempted away from Apple because they've stopped innovating on their laptops. In order for developers to switch to Windows, they'll have to be tempted for their own reasons. And old habits do die hard.
Out of curiosity, which ad campaign are you talking about?
Apple ran a fairly successful campaign in a number of highly technical publications shortly after OS X came out pushing the concept OS X was not only Real UNIX(tm) but also that a Mac was the best Unix workstation you could buy. I'm guessing that's the one, it certainly worked on me.
If I was still stuck using an OS X box, I would definitely switch. If I was using Linux, I wouldn't. I've been forced into developing using Windows for the last few years, and for my use case (SSH to remote server to develop there), it's not that bad. There are some annoyances, but from a usage perspective, Windows 10 is actually really nice. Getting native terminal and SSH[1] support actually handles a bug chunk of my annoyances.
> - What about lack of all the Linux/OS X GUI software?
What about the lack of windows software on those platforms? It goes both ways.
> - What about lack of all the UNIX OS features?
Which features? What about the Windows OS features you do't get on a UNIX OS? Again, it goes both ways.
> - What about all those billions and billions of Windows malware, viruses, adware etc.
There are plenty of windows Viruses and malware, but I will say the most problematic security problems I've had have all been on Linux boxes. I would still count Windows as more problematic overall due to the quantity, but I believe the focus on security from Microsoft in the recent years has paid off, and it's nowhere bad as it used to be. Also, to some degree, the prevalence of malware and viruses are because of the popularity, and the popularity comes with it's own advantages (more supported software). It's a trade-off using a platform where some software you like may not be available (e.g. games).
> - What about the fact that OS X and Linux have always been at least decent from developers point of view but Windows has always had problems and then things like Vista and Win8 happen.
Am I supposed to know what this means? People have been using Windows as a development platform for a long time. Those that want to use Visual Studio still do. Windows Vista was crap, but I didn't find Windows 8 bad at all. Around Windows 7 is when it started actually being viable for me to run, and I think it's gotten consistently better over time. The biggest problem I know of that people had with Windows 8 is the start menu change, which to be honest is a really small thing, people just didn't like it and it was front and center.
- What about the advertisements served to you in the login screen?
I haven't seen any.
> - What about all the future shit MS will throw at you?
I'm not sure how this puts Windows in any different light than OS X.
> - Other stuff can't remember now
Seriously?
> - What about all the spying and restrictions that Microsoft has integrated into the Windows? (e.g. cannot block Microsoft spy server in the hosts-file, forced updates etc.)
This is valid, and would be my number one reason for not running Windows at this point if other considerations didn't outweigh it for me.
I think the lack of linux gui software was a comment on why a linux user wouldn't find this a compelling reason to switch not a comparison of the software available on each platform.
Personally I think someone interested in graphics/cad/audio production might find something compelling even if alternatives exist on linux for the above. I don't see much in the way of gui softare that anyone would care for as a developer. You can bring up visual studio if you like but I don't find it compelling.
a lot of assumptions here. I thing the major point is that Windows will be less a pain in the ass if you have to deal and develop for Linux production systems. So IF I ever have to use Windows I don't need to deal with Cygwin anymore.
But for me the biggest reason not to switch is the hardware. Sorry @all Windows folks but Macbooks are playing in another higher league for me. I would never ever switch away from Macbooks because of the build quality.
Surface Book and things like the Razer Blade are looking to change that. Honestly your money goes further with Windows hardware, and you can get stuff like the Lenovo mobile workstation with a mobile Xeon CPU and ECC RAM. However, they can't run a blessed OS X. IMO, if Apple really wanted to mess with Microsoft, they could make OS X installable (without EFI hacking and overriding the CPU identifier etc -- yes I've had my fun with OSX86 since 10.5 days) on normal PC hardware. Their hardware would still sell because of the premium build, and they could probably charge $400 for the OS. The Dell XPS stuff is also pretty nice from what I hear.
> if Apple really wanted to mess with Microsoft, they could make OS X installable
Microsoft once offered to help Apple to make Mac OS a widely-used industry standard. Apple decided it would rather sell $2,500 PCs than $50 software ;-)
The San Bernadino phone was running iOS 9. (It's reasonable to assume that if there was a vulnerability in 8.x, Apple would want to have fixed it in 9.)
Cellebrite is a multinational with lots of resources.
I would expect they already had some solution for iOS 9 devices in the pipeline, which was not ready to be made into a public product yet. Nonetheless they were more than happy to field test it with the San Bernardino terrorist's phone.
DISCLAIMER: That's my speculation, based on my own coverage of the whole Apple-FBI thing.
But the San Bernardino phone did not have the secure enclave that new iOS 9 devices have. If the vulnerability is unworkable on devices with the secure enclave, well, they've already fixed it.
If that's the case (and we can only guess) I can't possibly imagine that Cellebrite would offer Apple a way to make their services less useful than they already are.
Cellebrite's full portfolio is not public what you see on their site are very basic turn-key solutions.
They have a bespoke service called CAIS as well as few other unlisted services which they do not advertise openly given their sensitive nature.
Their turn-key forensic solutions are tailored for general law enforcement and the public sector (private investigators, corporate security, law firms etc.), CAIS is usually offered to state security agencies and they have other services which are tailored towards intelligence and national security agencies.
Probably both, not necessarily "zero-days" at least not in the traditional sense but various attacks and services that they might not want to advertise publicly for various reasons (don't forget that as an Israeli company their exports are controlled by the Israeli Defense Ministry).
In some cases they might also offer a bring your own exploit type of service where they integrate client provided exploits with their existing platforms and solutions.
Some of their products are also hardware focused, their "Chinese SOC" attacks are mostly OS agnostic (Mediatek chipsets for example are attacked via some generic DMA exploit) and are designed specifically to assist LEA's to breaking into cheap disposable phone.
http://www.cellebrite.com/Media/Default/Files/Forensics/Data...
But like any company these days it pretty much depends on what you want to buy for them they'll offer you a wide range of services from idiot proof turn key solutions to bespoke consulting like services, if they do have the ability to break into iOS9 or a more generic way to attack Apple SOC's they will not advertise it openly, at least not initially from previous experience with them it can take months and even years between them actually have an initial capability to it being integrated into their open commercial products.
This isn't only done for secrecy reasons this is also pragmatic some attacks might be very case dependent, expensive, or even potentially destructive and so wont be offered with their normal forensic services (that have to comply to very strict forensic standards, including being able to openly explain how access was achieved to ensure that the data has actually been extracted correctly and chain of custody maintained) so quite often what they are offered under their more bespoke services are capabilities that are not (yet) commercially viable for general forensic use.
In this case the FBI or any other agency is quite likely not to care about presenting the information as evidence in court, and their risk appetite might also be considerably greater.
Your local police/DA on the other hand must be able to present the evidence and defend how it was obtained in court so the tool has to be certified (NIST in case of US courts) and the extraction method has to be defensible in court.
However if we are talking about zero-days then those also cannot be offered as part of their commercial turn key solutions (court defensibility aside) because the solutions they provide have to be reliable and consistent.
Zero-days for the most part are likely to be fixed quicker than their products can be shipped yet alone certified so anything which is that volatile will only be offered via their "consulting service" and the clients will be quite aware that they are paying for something that might be a one off solution only.
"(And I'm not a fanboy of Google/Android, I wish we had a FOSS OS with an open ecosystem, but Android just works, unlike ios)"
:D
You most definitely are or you somehow managed to mix iPhone and Android in every single sentence. Most of the stuff are not even opinions, they are just simply wrong information/lies.
"The user interface (which it was supposed to shine at) is just bad. I can never find items I'm looking for. I had to read an article to find out how I'm supposed to turn on the Hotspot feature (And it actually seemed like editing xorg file!)"
If you are serious about this I gotta say I'm speecless. It's actually amazing you were able to turn on your computer and open the web browser since it take just as much as turning on that hotspot: Pressing a single button...
There have been tons of "graphical programming" languages and IDEs trying to pull it off for the last 15 years and pretty much all them have been total shit.
This doesn't look any different. Someone already said it, but the fundamental problem with these are that it's extremely hard to build big and complex software without making it look like a huge mess. In a normal programming you can always call any part of code and make any number of instances and put them almost anywhere you want with very simple, logical and linear code which is executed in a normal standard prodecure (= line after another). With this almost everytime you make some changes you'd have to rethink the whole program flow and move all the components/blocks to different places and there are millions of lines going all around the place.
...the fundamental problem with these are that it's extremely hard to build big and complex software without making it look like a huge mess...
In my view, text based languages could be this way too, except that the habits of making code at least marginally readable (e.g., indentation) and modular (subroutines, local variables, etc.) are drilled into everybody who learns programming, or learned through "the apprenticeship of observation."
Also, those habits require only a bare minimum of physical effort, such as reaching for the tab button or enclosing some code in a function definition.
I think a problem with graphical programming is the sheer physical effort that it requires, encouraging sloppy work. Maintaining readable code as it grows in complexity is a major chore, involving physical and not just mental, effort. In practice it doesn't happen.
That's a lot of snark for someone making such a broad generalization. Look at a program called Houdini and it's shading language. It is domain specific but includes branching and loops. The interface uses openGL and is extremely fluid. If that wasn't enough, it is live, so while you are working you can see your results in real time. You can use it to manipulate geometry, images, sound / animation, as well as the original purpose of writing shaders. That visual programming IDE has been enormously successful.
It probably has nothing to do with technical capabilities, but more like productivity. For people who have lots of time and don't mind fighting around with problems, nonworking settings, slow/varying FPS, corrupted official OS updates, malware etc. Android might be a better choice but other than that it's really hard to image any rational person taking Android over iOS. Especially considering that the security level of iOS is on a completely another level when compared to Android.
It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X. Because it's the only one that gets the job done without unnecessary and non billable issues and still has awesome software support.
> It's almost the same thing why these days almost all developers and companies prefer OS X.
Patent nonsense. Most companies prefer Windows, and the bigger the company, the more likely it is to be a Windows shop - because Windows offers plenty of business-friendly options. OSX is far from "getting the job done" at an enterprise level. And on the server side, OSX is nowhere to be seen; it's all other unixes and windows.
I'm not a fan of Windows, but it's absolutely ludicrous to say that companies prefer OSX. Small companies in certain fields do, but it's still a Windows market.
