On an iPhone, every app lives in its own “walled garden”. An app can only read and write files in its own document folder and cannot access the document folders of other apps or files of the core system.
Mathew J. Schwartz of InformationWeek has the opinion that this approach should be introduced in Windows as well to “gain an edge in the botnet war of attrition” as he says. And you know what? I think he is right.
If you have read the reports of Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event, you may have noticed that Apple is already heading in that direction. During the keynote, Steve Jobs introduced an app store for the Mac. I am curious if Microsoft will do the same in the future for their Windows OS.
Below the jump you will find a quote and a link to Mathew J. Schwartz complete story.
Schwartz On Security: Can Apple Minimalism Stop Botnets?
“What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do — but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist.” So said John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple, in a recent interview with the Cult of Mac’s Leander Kahney about what makes Steve Jobs tick.
Could this minimalism — making PCs not do things, as opposed to letting them do everything by default — be applied to PC security, perhaps in the form of a Windows 7 App Store? Because the walled-garden approach seems to be working well for millions of iPhone and iPad users, and the 300,000 related applications they can download and install? To gain an edge in the botnet war of attrition, perhaps it’s time to rally around making PC applications do less, not more.
Nee, bedankt. Dat zou ik echt niet willen. En daarnaast bestaan er al lang oplossingen voor windows om documentbeheer op pc’s en netwerken goed te regelen.
Ik denk dat dit in de komende jaren langzaam de realiteit gaat worden. Apple is straks de eerste met een app store voor de desktop. Het zal mij niet verbazen als Microsoft dit voorbeeld in de toekomst gaat volgen. Misschien niet volgend jaar al, maar ze zullen deze ontwikkeling in ieder geval goed in de gaten houden.
Virussen en malware worden steeds ingenieuzer, steeds groter in aantallen en steeds moeilijker te detecteren. Het sandbox of walled-garden principe voor applicaties kan hier heel goed bij helpen, maar ik denk ook dat het niet de heilige graal is die het volledig zal tegenhouden.