Thoughts: Life Span of OS X Versions vs. Windows Versions

This is not a long analytical piece but just an observation I felt I had to write down. Please keep this in mind when you want to comment on these thoughts.

OS X updates may be much cheaper than Windows updates, but OS X versions have a much shorter lifespan than Windows versions. Add to that the costs for updates of other software you use on your Mac and suddenly you are paying way more than Windows users.

Take Windows XP for example. This version of Windows was launched in 2001. More than eleven years later it’s still used by many people and a lot of new software you can still run on XP. As a contrast, take OS X 10.5 Leopard. Launched in 2007. A lot of new apps and software don’t run on 10.5. The minimum OS X these days is often 10.6 Snow Leopard, but sometimes apps already need at least 10.7 Lion to be able to install them.

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Can Steve Jobs’ iPhone Walled Garden Model Stop Botnets?

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.

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TeamViewer: My Program of Choice for Remote Access

Ever needed to connect to a different PC in your network for a remote session or to transfer some files? Or wished you could control the computer of a family member over the Internet without too much fuss because they called you for the umpteenth time for your much needed support? There are numerous applications to choose from that can support you doing these kind of tasks. One of them is TeamViewer, and I like it very much. It runs on all the major platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and even on your iPhone or iPad.

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