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Re: Stupid users (was Re: Is there a term for this?)
Subject:Re: Stupid users (was Re: Is there a term for this?) From:Phil Snow Leopard <philstokes03 -at- googlemail -dot- com> To:Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> Date:Wed, 8 Feb 2012 17:42:31 +0700
On 8 Feb 2012, at 11:14, Tony Chung wrote:
> You had me until "Stupid users is where the money is".
Well of course "stupid" is a pejorative and I did pick the word partly tongue-in-cheek, but also partly because the same connotation is brought forth by other commonly used terms for this kind of thinking like "dumbing down" and "pandering to the lowest common denominator".
Pejoratives aside, the point is that Apple has changed its focus with OS X: it now seems almost exclusively interested in mass market entertainment media machines. And who can blame them? That's where the money is (a less pejorative way of stating the same point... :) ).
The problem is for anyone that bought into Apple because their machines were reliable, functional and versatile, is that things like Autosave, Versions and Resume are actually a pain in the ****.
If you're dealing with any kind of security sensitive data the last thing you want is Versions (which copies your data off to a hidden and locked directory that you can't get into without enabling the root user, and which cannot be turned off). If you work on anything confidential in an open space, the last thing you want is Resume (which you can't turn off without a hack), and if you are involved in multiple minor edits of docs or image files the last thing you want is Autosave, which you can't turn off at all, and which will eat both your processor time and HD space.
If you keep any personal information unencrypted on your Apple machine, the last thing you want is Lion. Because it is delivered as a download rather than on a DVD, Apple have made it possible for anyone with basic knowledge of how Lion works to reset all the Admin and account passwords in less than 5 minutes on any Lion machine. Setting a firmware password won't save you. That protects you for about as long as it takes for you to have a 15-minute coffee break (the maximum time it takes to reset a firmware password). Only Filevault 2 (one thing about Lion I do like) will keep your data safe, but be prepared to use up extra disk space and extra processing time (depending on what kind of — and how many — files you have).
The problem for me is that apart from Filevault 2, Lion offers no advantages and many disadvantages for 'power users' (and I use the term lightly, to mean anyone whose workflow or tasks do not fit into the simple ecology envisaged by Lion's developers...and trust me, that is pretty simple). Snow Leopard was both a more versatile and more powerful system. Unless you need the unbreakable data encryption of Filevault 2, I would not recommend updating to Lion.
On 8 Feb 2012, at 11:14, Tony Chung wrote:
> You had me until "Stupid users is where the money is".
