For a while now I have been feeling as if I was the only sane person on the planet. Ever since I moved to Portland, OR it was as if I have been living in the Twilight Zone. The reason for this is the almost zealot like attitude towards all things open source and non-Microsoft. At times I am amused with how everyone here can hate a company so much while barely knowing anything about the company.
On top of this ridiculous hatred that spewed out of the mouths of pretty much everyone you encounter here, there is an equally ridiculous amount of love for anything Apple related. It is as if Steve Jobs secretly snuck into Portland in the middle of the night and dumped thousands of gallons of MDMA in the water supply. In fact, it is not unusually for me to get harassed at least once a week due to the fact that I use a Windows Mobile Smartphone since it is running a Microsoft designed OS.
As unpleasant as dealing with a majority of these individuals can be, more often than not I am actually amused. As I mentioned before, Portland is a very odd duck and if you have an opinion that differs even slightly from what the rest of the collective believes than you will get roped into a conversation that involves you being lectured about why you are completely wrong and everyone else is right. When these conversations involve Apple I am constantly told that I am a horrible person for using Windows due to the fact of how insecure it is and how easy it is to be infected with spyware and viruses or how simple it would be for someone to take over my system.
No matter how much I try to explain to someone that Apple products are no more secure than Microsoft products, I am still verbally bashed in the most narrow-minded way possible for my blasphemes outbursts. Everyone is so quick to point out that you constantly hear about Microsoft products being attacked by hackers and since no one really uses Mac OS X, or any other Linux distribution for that matter, than that makes you a billion times more secure by default.
This logic has always seemed flawed by me. As an experienced computer user I have learned throughout the years that your computer, and operating system, is only as secure as the individual sitting in front of it. Now if everyone is moving over to more obscure operating systems due to the fact that there are not enough users to make hackers want to target them, does that really make you more secure? What happens when everyone moves over to that obscure operating system and it does become a prime target?
Unfortunately for Apple, they now have to deal with the unpleasant reality that pretending you’re an ostrich really doesn’t do much for security one bit. With the recent release of Apple’s Safari BETA 3 web browser for Windows operating systems, security experts have been having a field day finding one security flaw after another. Hopefully this recent eye opening event will show a majority of these zealots that just because you’re content with hiding your head in the sand, it won’t stop a crab from walking up and pinching you on the rump.
Most likely than not though, I’m sure Apple’s PR machine will spin this horrible event into something along the lines of all of these flaws being Microsoft’s fault for being such an evil no good corporation and they had nothing to do with it even though they coded the browser… and than with a slide of Steve Jobs left hand everyone will be in complete “aw” over the unveiling of a the new iPod which will look just like all of the old iPods that have walked the earth before it and the only real difference will be the fact that it comes in a nice tapioca color. While everyone is “oh” and “aw”ing, no one will notice or care that with a slide of Steve Jobs right hand he cups your groin, asks you to cough and then bends you over, smiles and tells you that you look very pretty today.