Heil Apple

Got several thousand dollars you want to throw away? Give it to Apple.

If there were ever a time to balk at purchasing an Apple computer, it is now. And if there were ever a time to wonder at the mentality of Apple when dealing with their customer feedback, it is now too.

Digg have uncovered three nasty tales about recent issues with the Apple PowerBooks that are anything but trivial. And almost worse: the Apple Nazis are out in full force again, attempting to silence all word of these issues on their own discussion forums.

The three issues are the following.

• A sound defect.
• A screen rendering defect.
• A SuperDrive defect.

The sound defect creates an echo loop that's literally destructive: it can deafen a listener using headphones and crack loudspeakers. The screen rendering defect creates ugly raster lines which make professional editing impossible. The SuperDrive defect makes recording speeds above 2x impossible.

The URL for more information on the sound defect is here. The URL for more information on the screen rendering defect is here. And the URL for more information on the SuperDrive defect is here.

But it gets worse: in two of the above cases reports of these defects were posted to the Apple discussion forums; when Apple got word of the defects, they scrambled the Apple Nazis to weed out all mention of them - to remove the posts.

It's time people stood up and asked seriously what kind of company Apple have become.

The defects are not in Apple engineering but they're Apple's responsibility still the same. Apple boast of their quality control, yet it seems to be sorely lacking.

Worst of all is the fact that Apple not only begrudge complaints but work actively to isolate and silence them so no one else finds out about the issues.

Suffice it to say that right now is not the best time to buy an Apple computer, and considering the company's way of dealing with reports of manufacturing flaws, that time might be never.

And They Still Don't Audit Their Code Either

Adding insult to injury is a report by Suresec, a company who have helped Apple repeatedly in the past to find and fix vulnerabilities. Suresec are not happy with the quality of code emanating from the beige box bastion and they back their claims up with proof.

Their website offers numerous PDF documents detailing vulnerabilities they've found in OS X that Apple have fixed.

But the bottom line, say Suresec, is that Apple are not yet professional enough to audit their code - something even Microsoft do today. Many of the flaws found are the kind other Unix distros isolated and fixed years ago.

Suresec's contention - that Apple's OS X appears secure not because it's built on the 'rock solid foundation that is Unix' but because the platform is still not widespread enough - now rings true.

And when Suresec warn that Apple's security situation could devolve to worse than Microsoft's own, you have to take it seriously.