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March 20, 2007

rivals

Who really loves Ou?

Posted Mar. 20, ’07, 5:26 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Apple » Rivals

Josef Gerbils I don’t know what it is about George Ou, but he’s so desperate for attention that he’ll write the most moronic things just to irritate Mac users. The latest in this long series is rich with amOUsement.

His knee jerk reaction to criticism of UAC in Apple’s highly lauded Get a Mac ads is to say that it’s overblown and that Mac OS X is worse. He does this through a video illustration of installing software with OS X authentication and Windows UAC. He first offhandedly suggests that Vista is no quite so obnoxious as Apple’s ads suggest (welcome to advertising George) and then proceeds to show an example in which Vista has two “Mother may I?” dialog boxes while OS X has a single box. One of the Windows confirmations is really warning about an unverified software publisher, but that’s still two security related dialog boxes. Want to try this again George? Let’s dig deeper.

Ignoring that fact, he then picks on the fact that you have to enter your administrator password rather than simply clicking a button.

As you can see, Mac OS X actually requires you to do MORE work by having you type in the administrator password whereas Vista (for the primary user running as a limited admin) only prompts you to click “allow”.

We’re talking about a security feature. We’re talking about permitting a program perform a possibly dangerous operation. Ou is going to now suggest that entering your password again to verify the user is a bad thing? He can’t really be this short-sighted, especially since he presents himself as some kind of security expert.

Now, the video. Ah, the video. People have been making screencasts, or movies of the Mac’s interface for a long time now. It’s nothing new and nothing hard. It’s anything a 5 year old armed with access to Google can figure out and find a piece of software to do. Clearly, that’s much too hard for George and his colleague Jason Hiner.

The Mac video was shot by our own Jason Hiner with a camcorder which is why you see the moiré patterns over the video.

What the heck? Huh? I can’t figure out if George really thought Jason did a good job or wanted to throw him under the bus for being utterly inept. Here’s a couple clues ZDNet: Snapz Pro X, iShowU, and Copernicus. Here’s a tip for Jason: if you’re using a camcorder to capture video of something already in a computer to bring back into one, you’re probably overthinking it.

Finally, George presents us with the ultimate cherry on this absurd sundae.

And you get your IT security information from commercials now? Yes they conveyed the idea pretty well, but then again so did Joseph Gerbils. If you tell a lie often enough, people begin to believe it.

Two things. One, calling Goebbels a rodent is very funny and idiotic. Two, Ou has thrown himself, full force, like car going 100 MPH into a brick wall full force, into Godwin’s Law. Congratulations George, you’ve just shown that your position is so weak that you need to compare Apple to Nazis. Kudos. How you’ve convinced ZDNet to continue employing you is truly masterful.


7 Comments

RattyUK said:

Attention Seeking Idiot - He spends 90% of his time moronically responding to his own message board - You shouldn't have done this article on him - it only serves to feed the embers of his ego.

He still hasn't responded to the criticisms of his Apple can be hacked in less than 60 seconds!

He knows what he's doing - which is to play the Dvorak / Enderle line. IGNORE him he'll go away.

March 20, 2007 7:11 AM
Jim said:

Ou is coming unhinged. Today, he is waving around proof of Apple's evil in the case of the unexplained MacBook exploit. He just can't let it go. He is starting to sound like Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny (youngsters, wiki-check the ref).

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=451

March 20, 2007 8:57 AM
Rob said:

Please don't feed the trolls.

Just ignore the moron. Linking to his site only gives him page hits, which ultimately is all he wants anyway.

Nothing to see here move along.

March 20, 2007 9:11 AM
rob said:

I just read the comments from Macalope's take on Ou and realized from the picture of Adolph Hamster that I should have read your entire post instead of ignoring it.

Must remember: Ignore Ou, pay attention to Derik.

Ok. But my comment above still stands.

March 20, 2007 9:29 AM
Nick said:

"... the case of the unexplained MacBook exploit. He just can't let it go."

Maybe not, and Ou is a clown, and a clown with a pretty obvious agenda.

Nevertheless, I'm not convinced David Maynor wasn't treated a little roughly by Apple. Moreover, many of us *are* interested to hear more about the WiFi episode. Much is still unexplained. As John Gruber recently remarked, it now appears that the third-party wireless card may have been a McGuffin.

So, yeah, I, and I suspect many others, would be interested to hear more on the story from David Maynor. But I'm not at all interested in what Ou has to say about it.

March 20, 2007 1:17 PM
Dan Frakes said:

Nice post/critique, Derik.

(And it should also be noted that Ou focused on one of the few situations where both OS X and Vista require approval. People complaining about Vista's intrusiveness aren't really talking about these particular situations.)

March 20, 2007 3:19 PM
Thomas GvL Author Profile Page said:

The only reason he stays at ZDNet is because increases their traffic with his wacky stuff.

March 20, 2007 4:28 PM

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