Bill Gates: Microsoft would backdoor its products in a heartbeat

They haven’t had backwards compatibility issues under OS X. It came out in 1999. They maintained backwards-compatibility emulators and when they switched to Intel chips in the mid-00s, they again issued emulators (Rosetta) to let older applications run on new machines more or less seamlessly.

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That’s not my argument though.

I’m accepting it was poorly designed to begin with, in terms of network security.

On an unrelated note, they were very good at retaining backwards compatibility with software that ran on previous versions (amazingly this includes DOS software up until 64-bit Windows). This had nothing to do with security.

Then between XP SP3 and Vista they fixed the security problems, and in a way that had minimal effects on backwards compatibility.

Not sure what ‘continue to drag along today’ is supposed to mean, Windows 10 is the best OS around AFAIC, certainly as secure in principle as any other OS these days, and in terms of the guts of the kernel and things like that it really is quite advanced, and the application programming model is second to none.

Spoiler alert, this has already happened. It’s not hypothetical. Before Microsoft bought Skype it was considered one of the more secure and common ways of communicating over the internet, after the acquisition they changed the backbone of the program this making it easier to snoop on. God knows what other programs or even the OS has built into it to facilitate snooping

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What a terrible headline. Not even Buzzfeed would invent something that bad.

Microsoft is supporting Apple in this fight in that companies should never be required to build back doors into their technology. Gates might hold a different opinion, but he no longer speaks for Microsoft.

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Yeah, that’s not at all true from my recollection of events, especially with regard to music software (Logic and the likes would always break with every new version, constant complaints on the music forums and the mailing lists back then).

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At least they’re not getting fucked in the back door.

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By your own admission, you haven’t used an Apple product in 15 years or more.

I can’t comment on Logic, but their other software was always kept up to date and didn’t “break” with new OS versions. Your recollection of events is uninformed.

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It’s not uninformed, and I wasn’t talking about their own software (emagic was bought by Apple after the release of OSX).

Edit: looks like the problems in audio software compatibility persists to this day. https://ask.audio/articles/5-reasons-musicians-producers-and-djs-should-avoid-updating-to-os-x-1011-el-capitan-today

Seriously?

Suppose you bought a PC running Windows XP and an iMac G3 running OS X back in 2001.

While you’d need to upgrade the RAM on the XP machine, it would run Windows 10 today. Even sticking with XP you could run most apps on the market today. It was fully supported for 13 years.

With the iMac the last supported OS version was just two years later, and by 2007 apps that supported it had all but disappeared.

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There was NSAKEY back in the NT 4 days. From there things just got worse.

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Yep!

That’d be pretty funny to watch. I have a PC from 2009 that barely runs Windows 10, even after RAM upgrades. But I suppose it’d be technically possible, yes.

They switched to the Intel chipset and maintained backwards compatibility with Rosetta until Lion was released in 2011. That was indeed a major shift for all apps and hardware. But that’s not what caze was talking about; he was referencing applications crashing as new OS versions were released.

But that’s all just platform issues; the issue here is security, and I’m unclear why caze decided to shift the argument to “OS9 sucked and therefore Apple fucks its users”.

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Switched back to Unix.

(I remember using Xenix on the Apple Lisa, from this little company called Microsoft that was calling Unix “The OS of the future.”)

I didn’t shift the argument, I was correcting a post by @WhyBother (because Microsoft’s code comments re app compatibility had little to do with security).

My first thought is, what do you mean “would”?

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Yeah. Upon reading the headline I immediately wondered how Microsoft feels about Bill Gates speaking for them on this matter. He’s barely even associated with them anymore.

This article is pure BS. That’s not what Bill Gates has said. He is talking to help the FBI hack the phone since this is a particular case, not advocating for a generic back door solution. The writer is either stupid, ill-intentioned, or both.

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That was 16 years ago. So the multiple instances of your Apple criticism in this thread are based on your Apple experiences from at least 16 years ago, and hearsay?

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I am not sure if its bragging or just a weak admission that pretty much the entire world already gets around Microsoft security measures on a regular basis.

How much malware is written for windows?

Can anyone even use IE anymore without being hit with pop-ups and malware as a matter of course?

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I have a PC from 2006 - with a RAM upgrade - that runs Windows 10 just fine.

Heck, I have a $150 tablet that runs Windows 10 just fine, and the 2006 has far more processing power.

[quote=“nungesser, post:31, topic:74131”]
They switched to the Intel chipset and maintained backwards compatibility with Rosetta until Lion was released in 2011.[/quote]

I had three iMacs that were effectively obsolete by 2008. And they had been entirely unsupported by Apple for years - not so much as a browser update.

It wasn’t about the chipset. As near as I can tell it’s Apple’s programming tools tending to force programmers to abandon older hardware as they write for newer.

The Republicans will bay at the moon about liberty and freedom, but the Federales need merely dangle two mooslim terrists [sic] in front of them and they completely flop over onto their backs and bear their necks, in a submission display.

Hell, dangle a couple more terrists in front of them, and Republicans might even arch their backs and go into lordosis, in a sexually responsive display.