will live tiles ever update more frequently than every 30 minutes?

a5cent

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The point is i've had 3 extreme drainages in like 40 days with that bulletproof restriction.. Before someone else say it's a hardware issue, just don't, look closely on this forum, or the web..

That restriction actually is bullet proof. It is the exceptions to that restriction (like background location, etc) and hacks (like apps misusing the background audio API) that cause the biggest problems. Unfortunately, we also have an OS bug that seems to allow some processes to get stuck while sucking at the battery.

In a nutshell, it isn't the concepts that are bad. They are great. It is the OS' relative immaturity (and not restricting apps enough, for example by designing an audio API that can be misused) that are the main problems.
 
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Boris Lozac

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It seems there's still a serious misconception here, no one wants the apps that require internet access to display their info (weather and stuff) to update the tile every second. People don't use that on other systems neither, usually weather widgets are set to refresh every hour, i just want a damn big clock tile that doesn't fetch data through 'servers', what 'servers' does a battery app needs to fetch??
 

sueha

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ChMar, you gave me some really helpful insights! What a nice thread this turned out to be! Thank you!

P.S.: The easiest way to solve at least one problem would be if Microsoft (and not HTC) made a clock tile app for every WP user. Shouldn't be that much of an effort.
 

ChMar

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ChMar, you gave me some really helpful insights! What a nice thread this turned out to be! Thank you!

P.S.: The easiest way to solve at least one problem would be if Microsoft (and not HTC) made a clock tile app for every WP user. Shouldn't be that much of an effort.

That's exactly the solution. This way it is all controlled and 3rd party devs won't get a chance to mess things up.
 

Boris Lozac

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But what can they mess up mate? :) How don't they mess it up on Android with clock/battery widgets? I've never heard one case of one of those apps causing problems..

Everything is 'offline' for those two things, there's no servers involved.

Also i couldn't believe that there isn't an "API" yet for flashlight apps to change the brightness (cause i don't have a LED flash and use white screen as a flashlight), it just puts a white image while the brightness remains at low, like my phone is set up.. It's things like this that get me, these 'little' things.
 

a5cent

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a5cent make some very good points about where the system can be improved. But I don't see how this will work. Allowing apps to update fast when screen is turned on will mean that all apps will abuse this so it's no better than unrestricted background access. But I'm sure something suitable will come around those lines.

Okay, I'm quickly hijacking this thread (just for a post or two) ;-)

I admit I haven't spent any time trying to think this through, so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work. I imagine that the OS would stop running Periodic Agents every thirty minutes, instead opting to do so only when the device is activated. I imagine that the OS wouldn't allow apps to do anything more than what their Periodic Agents do now, and that all the same restrictions would still apply (25 second limit, don't run in battery saver mode, etc.). I also imagine that the OS would setup the sequence of Periodic Agents so as to maximize parallelism, and display "updating" animations on the live tiles while the operation is in progress.

Where do you see a problem? Not saying this is my preferred solution. Just curious as to what might be considered problematic.
 

ChMar

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As stated by my and a5cent it not like a legit clock widget will screw you in android. But if you give 3rd party the option to unrestricted run code when they want they will abuse it.

Example:
1. I'm running android and install a game with come relatively ok gameplay and a better than average graphics. It runs unrestricted it's fun to play. I paid for graphics 200$ on an indian guy on rentacoder or whatever. I don't care about that as I wont update the game ever. It's free and uses fermium model like you give mail and blah blah and it gives you coins. So you know it's free and does this and you accept the permisions about sending mails and receving mails as it's the way my game is monetizing.
2. My game is not stupid to brick your phone it learns when you sleep. After 1 week it knows you sleep between 1am and 7am your local time. It knows you are an us citizen .
3. At exactly 5 am my app will send email to amazon paypal whatever that you forgot your username and email. I will use the default email in the phone hopping that you are one of the 90% users that uses their primary mail in the phone to keep all things together.
4. I read the email with the link for password resetting from your email and create a new password. I now know your username(from the email received) and I also changed your pass.
5. I delete the email with the link so you won't know what happened.
6. I go spend your money and you will never know what happened. And users will blame Microsoft because they are sure they got a virus on their computer so someone stole their data:).

This is what happens when you have options. This is a story about an app that exists it is not invented by me.

Widget offline exploit:
1. Once every 5 minutes I get your gps position. And send it along with your email to a server.
2. I make a deal with the most desperate restaurants to send you emails everytime to pass near them with a 10% happy hour reduction.
So you loose battery because I go for your gps position you get spam because I give your data to some sellers.
There are already apps that do that :)

There are too many ways unrestricted access can cause problems for you. Those I stated are intentional and malevolent. I excluded the cases where a bug will force and app to misbehave and you get a poor performing system. How about the apps that let you change the screen brightness and they have a bug and forget to change it back to your settings when closing? Will you notice it? Will you be pissed of that this happened?
 

ChMar

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Okay, I'm quickly hijacking this thread (just for a post or two) ;-)

I admit I haven't spent any time trying to think this through, so I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work. I imagine that the OS would stop running Periodic Agents every thirty minutes, instead opting to do so only when the device is activated. I imagine that the OS wouldn't allow apps to do anything more than what their Periodic Agents do now, and that all the same restrictions would still apply (25 second limit, don't run in battery saver mode, etc.). I also imagine that the OS would setup the sequence of Periodic Agents so as to maximize parallelism, and display "updating" animations on the live tiles while the operation is in progress.

Where do you see a problem? Not saying this is my preferred solution. Just curious as to what might be considered problematic.

People will have 10-20 live tiles on home screen. Those 25s are CPU time meaning the time your app(process for the OS) is running. Most network code is not run on the process but on the OS stack so it does not time for the background process CPU time. You get a penalty of 0.2-0.5s per http connection on every connection assuming a good backend server. Since the OS counts your data transfer time as CPU time it will not count those 0.2-0.5s per http connections. So 1 background agent makes 3 http connections(since by definition those are stateless you make a new one each time so you pay the price each time). One for getting users friends, one for getting new pictures from friends, one for getting new likes from friends(this is just an example the real world may work differently). Now also requesting data from a busy server takes time and it's not counted as CPU time for the process. So assuming a response time before you can read data of additional 0.2-0.5s(actually more like at least 0.6s in real life on a moderated accessed server) you will come to the conclusion that the background agent has run additional 0.8s-2s time outside of the 25seconds limit. This is for updating a live tile is not something complicated that will actually double your agent real time usage.

So it's more fair to say that hard working agents will run more like 40s. This means almost 1 min for a background agent. 15 agents max running you get 10 minutes :). Can't make them parallel this way because every time you open the screen you will have just made yourself spend 10 mins of work whether you like it or not. There will be calls to the kernel so the OS can't enter powersave mode and the network will most likely be on all this time. So you wont get the desired effect(near real-time update on tiles) and you sacrifice the resources. Remember the trigger is starting the screen.

If you remember a similar method was used in android for when user was having internet access. You could receive an event in code when internet connection was becoming available and you could run your custom code. 2 years ago when not everyone was having unlimited internet and when some firmware were closing Wi-Fi while phone was in standby every time you opened your phone it will lag completely as all your news apps and apps that worked with data over internet were simultaneously working at the same time.

Honestly I believe un-abused push notifications work bests. I mean the one that you allow the OS to optimize like for weather, news, shopping, etc. Those can be further optimized by OS if you allow for batching so the phone can stay longer in sleep mode and use less battery and resources.
 

a5cent

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^ Hmm... the individual live tiles on my start screen each update in well under five seconds (on average). I see no reason why that should change just because we choose a different event to trigger the live tile update process (turning on the screen vs. once every 30 minutes). Almost all of the updating time would be spent waiting for server responses, just as Periodic Agents do now. During that time the OS could easily start running the next live tile update. Like I said, I would also assume that all the same restrictions apply, so we'd also be limited to 15 automatically updating tiles. No different from today. But okay, I see that you are concerned with the time it would take to update live tiles. That answers my question. Thank you.
 

ChMar

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You are absolutely right :). A normal live tile that sucks only the live tile info from the webserver will be ready in about 5 seconds. Half the time like when accessing a web server(because of http connection penalty). Now I believe I somehow not provided the best explanation. If you have 10-20 tiles on homescreen(most will surely do). I assume the limit remains at 15 background agents but this limit is a bit misleading. 1 agent can update multiple tiles if secondary tiles are pinned. So lets count those 10-20 tiles on homescreen. Is you want to optimize the algorithm described by me in the previous post for the trigger being the activation of the device you encounter another problem. You must now preload all 10-20 assemblies for the background agent in the memory. So the OS scheduler can run another agent when the former agent thread gets blocked on a file/network operation. Agents are limited to 30mb as opposed to apps that usually are limited to about 150mb. Still this means you get 300-600mb by preloading all the background agents to improve the parallelism. This means at least twice as much as a maximum allowed foreground app. Which means your apps not get tombstoned and you preety much loose all support for fast app switching or anything. Also it means 5112mb devices won't be able to benefit from this optimization because they don't have the memory for it.

So mainly what I try to say is you don't have the resources for running all agents in parallel. And they will all respond to the trigger and will want to run at the same time. So to optimize the resources(CPU battery and data traffic) you will need to serialize them. Serializing them means that when the number of background agents chained is near maximum and the network connection is poor or agents do image operations(for live tile images for example) you get a peak of resource usage that lasting too long is counter productive.

You may activate the device and just want to look at bing news. But bing news is the last agent in queue and will actually get updated 3 minutes after you activate the device. This 3 minute delay will completely ruin the idea of real-time. So keeping the info fresh should be done only using push notifications and this way you get near real-time update. For upload cases well the normal usage of agents is enough I believe. For other usage like doing everything in the background I still believe that is enough how the system works right now. Sure if you want fancy live tiles you are stuck with the background agent. Also I believe never ever should an app process images in a background agent to display them on a tile. You have servers for that and they already serve you the image so use them to serve you the right resolution image.
 

manicottiK

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An argument for running the periodic tasks periodically rather than only when the screen is on is so that the background agent that has recently learned of something can notify users of it via a toast or so that the app can maintain a current set of data to facilitate a smoother/faster user experience when the app is started.

For the next version of our student/faculty/staff portal app (DrexelOne), we've re-engineered the back-end APIs to allow the app to get all relevant course data in one HTTP call and to do it as an incremental update so that the server doesn't retransmit data that the phone already has. When this version comes out next month, a student will always have the latest data, won't ever wait for data while using the app, and won't see substantial battery drain or data plan usage. Of course, most developers don't get to (or want to) re-write the back-end data service that their apps use and thus don't to perform such optimizations.
 
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ChMar

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a5cent was not against the way periodic task agents work now. He mainly came with ideas on how to improve the live tiles to near real-time by using an additional on device activation event to reschedule all agents at that point.
 

kriz225

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It never about the options. Having all the options in the world resulted in windows being number one target for viruses(users where lame and clinged to the "option" stuff and refused to make limited accounts, all of them were running rampant with admin privileges that windows was paradise for viruses). Users can't make choice without education and they don't care actually because they are lazy and don't really want security. You must push security by force as history showed(UAC from windows Vista that still a lot of users were disabling the features because the security limited their "option" to get infected).

I'm sorry but, huh? Microsoft has made a living out of marketing options. Businesses and power users alike have always shunned (and continue to shun) Mac OS precisely because it doesn't offer enough options. Also, saying that viruses are rampant in Windows because it provides lots of options is a rather narrow way of looking at it. Windows is rampant with viruses mostly for three reasons:

a) Microsoft didn't take built-in security seriously
b) The OS infrastructure allows for it to be tampered with easily (which admittedly is related to the customizeability of the OS)
c) Windows is by far and away the most common desktop OS (why target 10% of the user-base when you can get 9x the volume elsewhere?)

Additionally, I don't really see how this relates to the option of updating applications more frequently. Want options? Enable them. Users can access the WP OS settings and independently set update frequencies for applications. Worried about security? The OS is boss. It tells the app when it can update, the app can't do anything unless you want it to. Set the default value to something high (like the current 30 mins or even higher). There, now power users and average users are both pleased.

And before you tell me, "well then average users will hose their phones!?!" think of this:

a) If the "average user" knows enough to know how to change the frequency of notifications for an individual app they should know the consequences. If they don't, who's fault is it? Not Microsoft's, that's for sure.
b) Where would humanity be today if we limited our options so that we could keep from alienating the "average" person for fear of them getting a boo-boo?

Don't say the OS will get a bad rep because of this, either, because these things come and go. Windows started to get a bad reputation due to its bad security. People started to fall into the MAC OS fad. What came of it? Windows 8 is the safest version of Windows yet. Somehow, though, it still manages to have all (if not more) the same options it used to offer, something which Apple would never be able to pull out of their tight undies.

Still, Microsoft gets a terrible reputation for innovating things simply because, well... haters gone hate.

As someone who has used Windows since 95 I simply find it difficult to understand why MS would change the formula so much with their phone OS. Granted, I understand the greater desire for stability and security on a phone (heck that's what's bringing me to WP from Android) but it's not really as if it isn't just as important for your business PC or server to be secure and stable.
 

a5cent

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Agents are limited to 30mb as opposed to apps that usually are limited to about 150mb. Still this means you get 300-600mb by preloading all the background agents to improve the parallelism.

Okay, now I understand. I have no idea what the average memory usage is for a Periodic Agent that updates a live tile. I assume it is far below the 30 MB limit, closer to 2 MB on average, but that is just a guess. I would also expect the OS to calculate the most optimal sequence in which to run agents, aimed at maximizing parallelism (based on data points collected during previous runs, such as RAM and network usage), but yes, the approach certainly isn't perfect either.

Unfortunately, no approach seems perfect in all situations. For example, I'm not sure how carriers would feel about millions of people having their stock apps updated every two seconds via a push notification, as to reflect changes in stock prices. Due to LTE's large signalling overhead, that would probably also kill battery life for people on LTE networks.

Anyway, after clearing that up, I'll let everyone get back to the topic at hand. Thanks again.
 

ChMar

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I'm sorry but, huh? Microsoft has made a living out of marketing options. Businesses and power users alike have always shunned (and continue to shun) Mac OS precisely because it doesn't offer enough options. Also, saying that viruses are rampant in Windows because it provides lots of options is a rather narrow way of looking at it. Windows is rampant with viruses mostly for three reasons:

People can do with Mac OS what they do with Windows. Problem is there is a larger pool of professional programmers versed on windows than on Mac OS. Also the hw costs are far better on windows ecosystem. So power users and businesses choose windows for this reason not because Mac OS does not offer options.

a) Microsoft didn't take built-in security seriously
b) The OS infrastructure allows for it to be tampered with easily (which admittedly is related to the customizeability of the OS)
c) Windows is by far and away the most common desktop OS (why target 10% of the user-base when you can get 9x the volume elsewhere?)

a) they took it just it was harder for them then that it is now. Also the problem with user wanting to run as admin. The lack of driver certifications imposed by force.
b) Unix, meaning Linux and Mac OS, MacOSX they are in the same boat. Once you install an app that app has the same power as the user that installed it. Install it as admin and you just gave your admin rights to that app. It's not about customization is about basic OS design common for all OS.
c) Linux and Unix are harder to target. Period. Because they go to great length to force users to use regular accounts and not administrator accounts. It's not about percentage it's about the difficulty. You don't need to have an unpatched exploit undiscovered. You just make a malware a simple piece of software that says it does stuff but in reality it abuses the "options" to do harm.

Additionally, I don't really see how this relates to the option of updating applications more frequently. Want options? Enable them. Users can access the WP OS settings and independently set update frequencies for applications. Worried about security? The OS is boss. It tells the app when it can update, the app can't do anything unless you want it to. Set the default value to something high (like the current 30 mins or even higher). There, now power users and average users are both pleased.

The entire point here is in relation to the update time is how allowing this options impacts all aspects of the phone system. You get less battery and more lag just because you provide that option.

About knowing the consequences a lot of people think they know but they truly have no clue about it. No one can predict with any accuracy(in numbers) what will happened when you play with those options. MS, Nokia and everyone invested in the WP8 can't survive bad publicity from users calling their product crap because they lag or calling for support every 5 minutes because they made a settings because they know better. Please remember that Apple does provide support for their phones. Google provides zero support for their phone. Microsoft also provides support so they must be able to know what the performance envelope will be. They can only know if they do more like apple rather than google. They already had a platform with "options" it was called windows mobile. And we all know how that ended. It's not like it was a bad OS or anything it is the options range that made the phone not be able to compete against more simpler devices like iphone or blackberry which provided less options but a more stable performance envelope.

Humanity :). I need to quote Einstein on this right? "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former". Options allows for people like the emperor Nero to make his horse a senator. Having options does not always mean you get progress.

Security is user fault almost every time. Apple proved that they were right and people care more about stability and security rather than having an option hidden somewhere. Windows 8 is not the safest windows because it has the desktop mode. So everything from the past is there. But look at what windows 8 truly is. A modern operating system that tries to change how multitasking is done. It's the same thing apple meaning: no more windows just apps.

As about changing the formula with the phone os. Remember they did not change the formula they had windows mobile. Because of the options the manufacturers and carrier were having it completely failed. In many regards it allows more options than even android. It's really windows like on desktop. That proved to be wrong and not work for phones. Apple demonstrated that users prefer their smartphones because they can provide a more mobile experience. Constraint to increase resource availability. iphone with it's slower CPU can outperform a htc diamond running windows mobile even when overclocked just because it does not allows true multitasking and unrestricted access.

I talked so much about the security in the context of live tiles because people want options and like you say that securing a smartphone is less critical than a business pc or a server. Wrong. Its more critical. A smartphone is more personal than a computer those days and it has gone to great length to know everything about you. You may consider your personal data non-critical but you will not think this if I would datamine your photos and covertly create a psychological profile of you and resell this info to employers. You will forever wonder why X company refused to hire you because they believe you are a drunk person because you had 20% pictures with alcohol in them in your personal phone. I know it may sound extreme but it's not that extreme. And don't take it personal it was just a dramatic example :). Also the phone has your financial information. And you may thing that the OS will protect those. But it can't. Using the email permissions example I told you about the app that stole money from people because in the end everything is tied to an email address. I know you have your credit card assured at the bank. But that assurance will only work as long as the risk is low.

Live tile faster update can be achieved for application that use external data to stay up-to-date. The other kind of options for "dumb" application that rely on 30/40 mins background agents should not be resolved with options from the OS. Give the app bad review when appropriate. Choose paid apps that provide better live tile support.
 

kriz225

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People can do with Mac OS what they do with Windows. [...] So power users and businesses choose windows for this reason not because Mac OS does not offer options.

This is completely wrong. Go manage an Enterprise that relies on Mac OS for their server and workstation infrastructure. No, seriously, give it a try and then come back and tell me you can still honestly say the same.

a) they took it just it was harder for them then that it is now. Also the problem with user wanting to run as admin. The lack of driver certifications imposed by force.
b) Unix, meaning Linux and Mac OS, MacOSX they are in the same boat. Once you install an app that app has the same power as the user that installed it. Install it as admin and you just gave your admin rights to that app. It's not about customization is about basic OS design common for all OS.
c) Linux and Unix are harder to target. Period. Because they go to great length to force users to use regular accounts and not administrator accounts. It's not about percentage it's about the difficulty. You don't need to have an unpatched exploit undiscovered. You just make a malware a simple piece of software that says it does stuff but in reality it abuses the "options" to do harm.

a) How can you honestly say this? Before Vista, Microsoft had made 0 attempts to provide active security in an OS which was riddled with viruses, worms and all other sorts of malware. Recent attempts aren't even all that impressive, but they're moving in the right direction.
b) First of, Unix =/= Linux and Mac OS X. That's like saying the Model T == the Bugatti Veyron. Secondly, I don't know where you're getting your information about account rights. Viruses and other malware have the ability to "install" themselves. They obtain rights by exploiting faults in the system and can easily target Windows mainly because of how reliant the OS is in its registry.
c) This is just nonsense. The very logic you're applying to try to prove your point proves the point I made. Hackers / spammers / information thieves are in it for the numbers. They need to target as much volume as possible. Coding a virus for Windows is totally different than making one for Linux. When MS has such a greater market share (and is easier to exploit) then why bother making malware for the other operating systems? That was my point.

The entire point here is in relation to the update time is how allowing this options impacts all aspects of the phone system. You get less battery and more lag just because you provide that option.

No, you don't. You get less battery and more life if you choose to enable the option.

About knowing the consequences a lot of people think they know but they truly have no clue about it. No one can predict with any accuracy(in numbers) what will happened when you play with those options. MS, Nokia and everyone invested in the WP8 can't survive bad publicity from users calling their product crap because they lag or calling for support every 5 minutes because they made a settings because they know better. Please remember that Apple does provide support for their phones. Google provides zero support for their phone. Microsoft also provides support so they must be able to know what the performance envelope will be. They can only know if they do more like apple rather than google. They already had a platform with "options" it was called windows mobile. And we all know how that ended. It's not like it was a bad OS or anything it is the options range that made the phone not be able to compete against more simpler devices like iphone or blackberry which provided less options but a more stable performance envelope.

Microsoft provides support for desktop Windows also. How does that fit in your theory? Also, BlackBerry provides less options??? Have you seen the settings menus on the older BB OS phones? Businesses adopted it precisely because they could accommodate the phone to fit their needs, where as they could not do so with iOS.

Humanity :). I need to quote Einstein on this right? "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former". Options allows for people like the emperor Nero to make his horse a senator. Having options does not always mean you get progress.

I didn't say that having options = progress. I said restricting options restricts progress. It's a long way from live tiles that update when a user wants to a crazed emperor who most likely suffered from severe psychological issues. As far as the stupidity comment, see what I said earlier.

Security is user fault almost every time. Apple proved that they were right and people care more about stability and security rather than having an option hidden somewhere. Windows 8 is not the safest windows because it has the desktop mode. So everything from the past is there. But look at what windows 8 truly is. A modern operating system that tries to change how multitasking is done. It's the same thing apple meaning: no more windows just apps.

Security is often due to user error, this is true, but not always so. Also, as far as I know, Apple has proved nothing more than if you make something pretty and pump tons of green into your marketing division you'll get sales, regardless of whether you offer a superior product or not. That, and that people who prefer Starbucks for breakfast pay more $$ for shinies than those who like Dunkin' Donuts.

Windows 8 is the safest Windows to date because it provides the most comprehensive set of built-in security measures of any Windows to date. Your comments regarding the desktop and what "windows 8 truly is" seem to be based on nothing more than your misguided opinion. If Windows 8 is centered around any one single theme it's interoperability, something which Apple - to the contrary of the illusion they'd like you to believe - hardly offers at all.

As about changing the formula with the phone os. Remember they did not change the formula they had windows mobile. Because of the options the manufacturers and carrier were having it completely failed. In many regards it allows more options than even android. It's really windows like on desktop. That proved to be wrong and not work for phones. Apple demonstrated that users prefer their smartphones because they can provide a more mobile experience. Constraint to increase resource availability. iphone with it's slower CPU can outperform a htc diamond running windows mobile even when overclocked just because it does not allows true multitasking and unrestricted access.

Your simplistic views on why an OS failed to capture a market in the real world are hardly substantial enough to prove anything. Microsoft didn't do a good job with Windows Mobile insofar as following the trends that the average consumer found attractive in a cellular phone. Apple did this job better.

I talked so much about the security in the context of live tiles because people want options and like you say that securing a smartphone is less critical than a business pc or a server. Wrong. Its more critical. A smartphone is more personal than a computer those days and it has gone to great length to know everything about you. You may consider your personal data non-critical but you will not think this if I would datamine your photos and covertly create a psychological profile of you and resell this info to employers. You will forever wonder why X company refused to hire you because they believe you are a drunk person because you had 20% pictures with alcohol in them in your personal phone. I know it may sound extreme but it's not that extreme. And don't take it personal it was just a dramatic example :). Also the phone has your financial information. And you may thing that the OS will protect those. But it can't. Using the email permissions example I told you about the app that stole money from people because in the end everything is tied to an email address. I know you have your credit card assured at the bank. But that assurance will only work as long as the risk is low.

I don't often repeat myself but... huh?!? Let's take your logic about the motivations behind modern-day data exploitation and assume it is 100% correct. How on Earth could you then say that it is more important to protect a single smartphone, which admittedly holds large amounts of data from a single individual, than to protect the server of an enterprise, which holds large amounts of data about said enterprise?

You're making zero sense here. I'm not saying it isn't important to protect one's own personal information. I'm saying that the hacking of PlayStation Network has a larger impact on the world than someone who installs a bogus app and gets their credit card information stolen.

You're conceptually right about many things. Microsoft clearly did opt for a more secure route with WP8 than they did with say, Windows 8. Whether this is truly due to security or more so due to the large market of individuals who want a dumbed down user experience, I don't know. I'd wager it's probably a mix of the two, and I think it's probably leaning more so on the latter. You're also right that the more options are allowed in an operating system the more difficult it is to maintain security.

However, to go on to draw the conclusion that allowing the end user to decide when they want their live tiles to update will mean a battery-chugging, virus-ridden, spam-producing OS is simply an outrageous exaggeration.
 

ChMar

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I'm not an IT manager. I'm a programmer. But I have friends that work in IT and work for one of the largest print media corporations in my country. They have no problems managing Mac computer. When they buy computers they mostly buy because they need to run software A or software B. And software is made by programmers. So where you have the largest and better prepared pool you have cheaper and better resources to make software. Enterprises buy a lot of custom software so it's normal that they find better cheaper enterprise solutions on windows who has a larger pool of professional than on Apple side. It's the same reason why apps are made first for iphone then for android and maybe for other platforms. The largest pool of trained professionals is found for iphone then for android and so on. This is why autodesk products for modeling (maya and 3dmax) are most used and not open source blender or Houdini or whatever. Because in college people learn autodesk tools. So even if you will considerably save money by using open source alternatives or other cheaper alternatives you won't have who to employ to use them. The pool of professional is the decisive factor in enterprise selection of software and platform.

Microsoft always cared for security. But users were disabling auto-updates to conserve bandwidth or I don't know why. True viruses work by exploiting bugs in order to run with the same permission as the kernel and in so doing gaining admin privileges. Compare modern day kernel exploits on windows with other platforms and you will see Microsoft is doing very well. It's the mentality of the user that he wants options and wants to run with admin accounts that makes security a problem. And while my attempt at explaining that the problem with the security is mostly because of user privilege and explaining it in layman terms was twisted by you. I don't care to make an undetectable virus just to steal facebook accounts so I can sell likes. I don't have time / resources to find a zero day vulnerability to exploit for 1 week only. I will make a malware and trick the user to install it. This is how the black hat world was worked for well over 10 years now. So there are no more viruses like in the old day. They are browser plugins or stuff you accept to install. Its more about social engineering than ever before.

Unix / Linux / MacOSX are the same from a kernel point of view. The differences in architecture are minor. The cosmetic look does not matter much when we talk about inner works of an OS. Let the designer and final users care about user interfaces.

If you don't know your stuff don't express it in words. Windows registry has nothing to do with viruses and the fact that windows has a registry has nothing to do with security :). Look at how Linux is migrating toward a registry approach. Security problems in modern windows days are from the user wanting to run as an admin just to install all plugins and stuff easily. That's the reason they also disable the UAC which is nothing more than a warning that a potential dangerous operation will occur and you are giving admin rights to piece of software.

More frequent live tile updates means you will create bottlenecks in network traffic, User mode / kernel mode switches, internal memory write / read. Bottlenecks creates lag. Test it by starting a larger download from market place and try to see how well all apps work then when there is something in background that creates bottlenecks on network / file access and your foreground app it's not the only one with total access.

Restricting options in the name of security will create progress. See current browser dilemma about cross scripting and iframes communications and how those restriction in options due to security created room for the design of new secure ways of dealing with it. Giving options in spite of security problems will create a Nero paradox which was just an example of what happens when no limits are imposed.

Security is because of the user but not always so just means not that we must ignore the user. But that we foremost deal with the user since it's the biggest surface area for attacks. So it's not that there are other area with problems because that is a known fact but that the user situation must be dealt with and not hide under the carpet.

Apple proved exactly that, given a pretty looking package and good marketing you can make money. Meaning everyone must take a step back and redesign their strategy. Since apple proved that visually appealing stuff with marketing sell then this means the large mass of consumers don't care about options, functions, complexities. They mostly care about design and support. In order to remain competitive one must adapt to what apple discovered. Having a minor base of power user wanting something else than apple strategy and targeting them only means you have to sell them expensive packages with options in order to break even. Follow what apple discovered consumers want and go with the trend.

I don't believe you know much about windows 8 security and what makes it so great. Remember windows 8 is a hybrid. It's the classic win32 nt kernel and on top of that you get an app silo type of system. Sure having apps isolated with some ways of communicating is more secure but you still have access to the nt kernel so the problem is by no mean solved. So basically taking in account the weakest link windows 8 security truly is right there where windows 7 left it with some improvements but insignificant.

Blackberry was popular in a time when phones with keyboard were popular and because of the blackberry data plan. It's not like that settings menu full of "options" will do anything for the consumers. And their inability to understand what made them popular in the enterprise world also was there downfall.

My "simplistic" view about windows mobile may be seen simplistic for one paragraph on a post in a forum. But it is right and represents the main problem with that platform. Too customizable for performance in mobile world scenarios. Too complex. Too open to modifications by manufacturers meaning a lack of identity a missing app store ecosystem and too much desire by the manufacturers to differentiate themselves loading the phones with shells that were not ideal from performance point of view and you can see why it flopped. Killing it was the right decision. Windows phone at leas comes with a "Metro" user experience design to give identity and to appeal to average customers by ease of use and content before chrome.

Now my biggest grievances with your post is that you still consider than an enterprise server is more critical than a smartphone from a security point of view. This is so wrong. It's not about 1(single, singular, only) smartphone. It's about all smartphones. There are more mobile phones in the world per people than there are toilet. If 1 smartphone is inherently unsecure they all are. Meaning billion of financial accounts and personal data to be used. An enterprise server has also a team o professionals behind whose jobs is to mitigate security while smartphones don't. Hacking PSN as in your example will give me maybe 1 billion names and in the time needed for me to decrypt the credit card information's all that data will have become useless. All I get in the end are a bunch of names. Now hack 1 billion smartphones and you get the ability to profile 800 millions people and to steal 500 millions credit cards. Without raising a red flag. You have unencrypted data which you can use before someone closes that options for you. But humanity needs to learn from cataclysms like it always needed. If by enterprise security you mean stealing other data like corporations documents. Well as a hacker you can't sell them. Remember the Pepsi - Coca cola case when a server was breached and coca cola gave back the files to pepsi(or was the other way around I don't remember). You risk more in court by using data from hacking than by just doing your work.

Allowing users to change the interval of the live tile update is a risk. Not a security risk in the sense of malware(that is a discussion about to much openness and options). It's a risk in how a product will perform outside of it's measured performance envelope. How a product will be perceived if by lack of knowledge you make your phone drain your battery faster or having lag, or how such an options will allow for apps to track gps position from 5 minutes to 5 minutes and to start spamming geo advertisements.

Ranting or not just please keep this in mind. In a maximum of 2 years a new type of spam(adds if you want) will emerge. The geo adds. The one that will be related to your GPS position. And then you tell me how happy you will be that google and Microsoft and apple bowed to the "people" and gave them unreasonable options so that others can abuse of those options.
 

kriz225

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I'm not an IT manager. I'm a programmer. But I have friends that work in IT and work for one of the largest print media corporations in my country. They have no problems managing Mac computer. When they buy computers they mostly buy because they need to run software A or software B. And software is made by programmers. So where you have the largest and better prepared pool you have cheaper and better resources to make software. Enterprises buy a lot of custom software so it's normal that they find better cheaper enterprise solutions on windows who has a larger pool of professional than on Apple side. It's the same reason why apps are made first for iphone then for android and maybe for other platforms. The largest pool of trained professionals is found for iphone then for android and so on. This is why autodesk products for modeling (maya and 3dmax) are most used and not open source blender or Houdini or whatever. Because in college people learn autodesk tools. So even if you will considerably save money by using open source alternatives or other cheaper alternatives you won't have who to employ to use them. The pool of professional is the decisive factor in enterprise selection of software and platform.

That's great for your IT buddies. I'm guessing, since they work for a media company, that the only reason they use Mac is because they bought into the thought that (somehow) Mac provides a better experience when working with media. I'm also guessing that by "managing Mac computer" you mean that they make use of Mac OS workstations for the individuals involved in various parts of the media process, but that the company's true infrastructure (if they have one) is not run on Mac. This is true of most companies, partially for the reasons you mentioned. It is true that there's a lack of 3rd party enterprise-level software for Mac OS. However, to say that this is the sole reason Mac isn't popular in the corporate environment is very close-minded.

I'm not looking to get into a "chicken and the egg" argument with you. Simply look at your logic. You say that businesses go with Windows because that's where the technical talent lies. You say enterprises use Autodesk products because that's what's taught in schools. Why is Autodesk taught in schools? Because that's what enterprises use. Why do enterprises use Autodesk? Because that's what's taught in schools. So which came first?

In the case of Windows, there is no such question. Microsoft had a firm hold on the enterprise market from the get-go and this has resulted in much higher 3rd party support for their platform. The comparison that you made to iOS and Android is quite apt. However, on the same token let's take a look at Windows Phone 8. Microsoft is looking to offer something different, which a lot of us believe is better, and using this to gain market share. In gaining market share they gain influence. In gaining influence they are gaining 3rd party support. Apple hasn't done the same with the enterprise market simply because their OS does not fit there. It doesn't allow large enterprises to do what they want to do.

Microsoft always cared for security. But users were disabling auto-updates to conserve bandwidth or I don't know why. True viruses work by exploiting bugs in order to run with the same permission as the kernel and in so doing gaining admin privileges. Compare modern day kernel exploits on windows with other platforms and you will see Microsoft is doing very well. It's the mentality of the user that he wants options and wants to run with admin accounts that makes security a problem. And while my attempt at explaining that the problem with the security is mostly because of user privilege and explaining it in layman terms was twisted by you. I don't care to make an undetectable virus just to steal facebook accounts so I can sell likes. I don't have time / resources to find a zero day vulnerability to exploit for 1 week only. I will make a malware and trick the user to install it. This is how the black hat world was worked for well over 10 years now. So there are no more viruses like in the old day. They are browser plugins or stuff you accept to install. Its more about social engineering than ever before.

Microsoft didn't make an effort to offer active security measures until Windows Defender was introduced with Vista. Sure, they offered patches for their existing OS' holes, but that's hardly proactive. Granted, neither did anyone else, but with the amount of security issues experienced by Microsoft's OS the user perception (one that's still held) became that Windows is an insecure OS. They're taking great strides to try to amend this, but it will take time and is unlikely that it will ever change completely. This is all besides the point, anyway.

I agree with you that the easiest (and, thus, most profitable) way of exploiting security in our modern world is by means of phishing and social exploits. What I'm arguing here is that a simple GUI change shouldn't sacrifice security to the point of ruining an OS, which is what you're stating. In the real world, there's always a trade off between usability and security. After all, the only system that's 100% secure is one that doesn't exist. The issue, then, is providing functionality while still maintaining the desired level of security. Empowering the user to modify the ability of background tasks to run does introduce security risks. If done well, though, there is no reason why it should introduce enough of a threat that it would ruin the OS' security. As a programmer, I would expect you to appreciate this more than I.

Unix / Linux / MacOSX are the same from a kernel point of view. The differences in architecture are minor. The cosmetic look does not matter much when we talk about inner works of an OS. Let the designer and final users care about user interfaces.

You're saying that every single system that's been ever made with a Unix base is the same thing with a different GUI. That's just silly.

If you don't know your stuff don't express it in words. Windows registry has nothing to do with viruses and the fact that windows has a registry has nothing to do with security :).

And you say you make software? Hmm... Anyway, the Windows registry offers the ability to control nearly every aspect of the system with simple commands. Some of the biggest malware attacks on the OS (including many based in social exploitation tactics) are able to do what they do by making unauthorized changes to the system via the registry.

Before you go personally attacking someone about the correctness of their statements, you may want to research the topic.

Look at how Linux is migrating toward a registry approach. Security problems in modern windows days are from the user wanting to run as an admin just to install all plugins and stuff easily. That's the reason they also disable the UAC which is nothing more than a warning that a potential dangerous operation will occur and you are giving admin rights to piece of software.

That's, again, a very simplistic blanket statement. It's partially true, I'll grant you that. Also, AFAIK UAC gets disabled because it's annoying and ineffective. People who shouldn't be allowing changes don't bother to read what they're clicking "yes" to. People who know enough to know what they're doing are just bothered by the extra step.

More frequent live tile updates means you will create bottlenecks in network traffic, User mode / kernel mode switches, internal memory write / read. Bottlenecks creates lag. Test it by starting a larger download from market place and try to see how well all apps work then when there is something in background that creates bottlenecks on network / file access and your foreground app it's not the only one with total access.

There you go again, making huge leaps. Network traffic is a wildly varying beast, don't try to tell me the feature won't be feasible because of this. The other "bottlenecks" you mention are subject to hardware and software optimization and won't necessarily occur.

Look, if Microsoft allowed the option to do this and someone went and loaded 100 live tiles that updated in real time and downloaded tons of information then yeah, I'm sure the OS would run like crap. This, however, isn't a failure of the OS. It is a failure of the user for being an *****. Enable the option, make it obscure, have it disabled (i.e. work the same as now) by default. Users who enable this feature will then be divided in two classes:

1. Those who know what they're doing and won't have the issues you describe.
2. Those who know just enough to think they know what they're doing. They'll probably run into issues and honestly, if they're unable to realize it's their fault then they can go to iOS for all I care.

Restricting options in the name of security will create progress. See current browser dilemma about cross scripting and iframes communications and how those restriction in options due to security created room for the design of new secure ways of dealing with it. Giving options in spite of security problems will create a Nero paradox which was just an example of what happens when no limits are imposed.

Security is because of the user but not always so just means not that we must ignore the user. But that we foremost deal with the user since it's the biggest surface area for attacks. So it's not that there are other area with problems because that is a known fact but that the user situation must be dealt with and not hide under the carpet.

Restricting options in the name of security creates progress.... I don't think so. Since you're taking my thoughts on options to an extreme (back to Nero...) why don't we do the same with yours?

In an extremely simplified platform, the creator dictates exactly how the system is to be used. This is likely going to be far more secure than the opposite, sure, but means that a single entity controls the progress and scope of the platform. Progress can still be achieved, certainly, but will be extremely limited in comparison to a system on the other end.

Progress comes from change. The potential from change is increased when more venues are opened to effect it. In the real world, where we hardly run into extremes, a system that leans more so on the open end is likely to show more progress than those who are not. Whether that's inherently better or not is another debate.

My point was simply that having a mentality that empowering the end user always results in platform-threatening issues is likely to limit the progress of said platform.

Apple proved exactly that, given a pretty looking package and good marketing you can make money. Meaning everyone must take a step back and redesign their strategy. Since apple proved that visually appealing stuff with marketing sell then this means the large mass of consumers don't care about options, functions, complexities. They mostly care about design and support. In order to remain competitive one must adapt to what apple discovered. Having a minor base of power user wanting something else than apple strategy and targeting them only means you have to sell them expensive packages with options in order to break even. Follow what apple discovered consumers want and go with the trend.

While I partially agree with what you're saying I feel that you're over simplifying things again. Microsoft has offered more options and less-than-pretty packages because historically the core of their system came from the enterprise realm. It was then simply easier for them to port their existing system to the consumer market than to make a whole new one that forwent all the options.

I don't believe you know much about windows 8 security and what makes it so great. Remember windows 8 is a hybrid. It's the classic win32 nt kernel and on top of that you get an app silo type of system. Sure having apps isolated with some ways of communicating is more secure but you still have access to the nt kernel so the problem is by no mean solved. So basically taking in account the weakest link windows 8 security truly is right there where windows 7 left it with some improvements but insignificant.

Not sure what you're getting at here. Windows 8 has the most comprehensive built-in security suite of any Windows OS to date out of the box. That's all I ever really said about it.

Blackberry was popular in a time when phones with keyboard were popular and because of the blackberry data plan. It's not like that settings menu full of "options" will do anything for the consumers. And their inability to understand what made them popular in the enterprise world also was there downfall.

Where's your data on this, since you're so confident? Hardware keyboard and BlackBerry's data plan made the entire platform? Sounds unlikely. I feel you misinterpreted what I was getting at. BlackBerry was never terribly popular in the consumer market. It was popular in the enterprise market, though. This was largely due to the level of customization, integration and security that BlackBerry allowed - which was in part due to the host of options they offered.

My "simplistic" view about windows mobile may be seen simplistic for one paragraph on a post in a forum. But it is right and represents the main problem with that platform. Too customizable for performance in mobile world scenarios. Too complex. Too open to modifications by manufacturers meaning a lack of identity a missing app store ecosystem and too much desire by the manufacturers to differentiate themselves loading the phones with shells that were not ideal from performance point of view and you can see why it flopped. Killing it was the right decision. Windows phone at leas comes with a "Metro" user experience design to give identity and to appeal to average customers by ease of use and content before chrome.

We could sit and talk about why Windows Mobile was good or bad all day. It won't bring it back and it certainly won't bring relevance into this topic. All I'm saying is that you're providing your opinion as a fact. While some of your opinions could be right, some are bound to be wrong. Don't pass your opinion off as fact.

Now my biggest grievances with your post is that you still consider than an enterprise server is more critical than a smartphone from a security point of view. This is so wrong. It's not about 1(single, singular, only) smartphone. It's about all smartphones. There are more mobile phones in the world per people than there are toilet. If 1 smartphone is inherently unsecure they all are. Meaning billion of financial accounts and personal data to be used. An enterprise server has also a team o professionals behind whose jobs is to mitigate security while smartphones don't. Hacking PSN as in your example will give me maybe 1 billion names and in the time needed for me to decrypt the credit card information's all that data will have become useless. All I get in the end are a bunch of names. Now hack 1 billion smartphones and you get the ability to profile 800 millions people and to steal 500 millions credit cards. Without raising a red flag. You have unencrypted data which you can use before someone closes that options for you. But humanity needs to learn from cataclysms like it always needed. If by enterprise security you mean stealing other data like corporations documents. Well as a hacker you can't sell them. Remember the Pepsi - Coca cola case when a server was breached and coca cola gave back the files to pepsi(or was the other way around I don't remember). You risk more in court by using data from hacking than by just doing your work.

My point was that you're imposing stricter security constraints on an inherently end-user bound product than you are on an enterprise level system. You're very right about most of what you said here. The issue I have with what you're saying, though, is that while it's easier to target a few end-users and not raise a flag the moment that you start to affect millions red flags will pop up everywhere. While it will be inherently more difficult to access the data of a single, highly guarded system than many poorly guarded systems you also have many more vantage points to deal with on the latter approach. You have millions affected and only one of them realizing what occurred will raise a flag. If a single huge security exploit, as you propose, arose which affected Windows Phone Microsoft would dive head-first into resolving it before it ruined their platform.

Again, I'm not saying that the security of end-user systems isn't important. I'm just in a different realm of thought than you on where the importance lies.

Allowing users to change the interval of the live tile update is a risk. Not a security risk in the sense of malware(that is a discussion about to much openness and options). It's a risk in how a product will perform outside of it's measured performance envelope. How a product will be perceived if by lack of knowledge you make your phone drain your battery faster or having lag, or how such an options will allow for apps to track gps position from 5 minutes to 5 minutes and to start spamming geo advertisements.

Ranting or not just please keep this in mind. In a maximum of 2 years a new type of spam(adds if you want) will emerge. The geo adds. The one that will be related to your GPS position. And then you tell me how happy you will be that google and Microsoft and apple bowed to the "people" and gave them unreasonable options so that others can abuse of those options.

I'm going to cease arguing with you on this subject simply because you are an extremist. At every turn, each of your arguments are based on snowball effects which you presume will occur in your presumed approach that a company would presumably take. What if, like I said, the option is allowed but it's use is obscured and not enabled by default? Then the majority of users, the ones you're mostly concerned about, will be completely unaffected. Power users are given the option and expected to understand the (potential) consequences. If they don't then that's their business. We're a minority anyway.

You're at least partially right. Introducing more options for customize-ability to a system does pose an increased security risk. To jump from that to conclude that it will destroy the system (or the user experience, or whatever) is to assume that many other things - such as implementation - have failed. After all, we're not talking about a major change here.
 

ChMar

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Well in media one that is hired to do nice looking stuff (images, print, whatever) will sure like to work on a beautiful mac air or something rather than a perceived ugly and using windows machine so the company pay the price and accommodate. But mac is not popular in corporate because of enterprise needs in it management and interoperability with the current enterprise infrastructure. Just wait for more stuff to migrate to the cloud by using http stack (private clouds or public clouds with VPN) and you will see many more adopting mac in to enterprise once the old way of using enterprise software is moving towards the cloud.
As for the stuff with the pool of professional this is not chicken and the egg this. I Autodesk pay universities money and give licenses and computers for their labs and in exchange they train the next wave of professional. This is what Autodesk does and this is what Microsoft does for exactly this reason. WP8 programming is used in universities curricula because MS pays for this. Because market share and installed base of devices does not warrant this to be used. So you can see what comes first.
Windows Phone 8 is and will be in the 3rd ecosystem. About what apple does in enterprise apple lacks the tools needed to appeal the enterprise software development and there is no pool of trained professionals there. Independent app developers are teenagers in principle and they give a false sense that a large pool of professionals is available for Linux development or mac osx development. Now look at MS choose path. They looked at their pool of people and they choose something to say this is the way to code for WP. They choose silverlight since is well entrenched in enterprise is similar to WPF for desktop and there are enough people knowing this stuff already. Now here comes the problem silverlight developers WPF developers are working professionals with day jobs in this area of software development. They are not hobbyists they are good people with jobs. They don’t care to invest time in making apps for wp rather than spending time with their families after their day at work. On the other platforms you have mostly teenagers and college students that are independent app developers. They have time and they choose apple and / or android platform because it’s cool. But the apps people use and care are not usually made by hobbyists and persons with an interest for making apps. One reason is because the app gold rush is over and it’s a known fact apps don’t make you money the other is that WP is not entrenched in US so less people are willing to step up with cash to outsource coding and making a pass for the app market. iOS sparked a wave of authors of books in US on how you can use 200$ and outsourcing the code from chinese and indians and launch apps and become rich. But it’s not the case here since US market share is small and most of the ground made by wp is in europe and asia. So about app this is what people want the big online services available as apps: Instagram, google maps, youtube their mobile banking not as web pages but as apps, etc. Basically on desktop we get to see a move towards web page and on mobile devices a move towards more friendly (as in touch friendly) native experience.
You get a rather insistent message in windows xp about not having an antivirus. Lots of OEMs embedded AV in their sold computers. They did not push Windows Defender to not be perceived as using their monopolistic advantage to gut AV companies. They were mostly forced in this regard. AV are not proactive since they know only what has been reported (the heuristic algorithms can be bypassed obviously). Ask any programmer and they will tell you that the first viruses to appear were disruptive viruses that did simply DOS attacks on the local resources (security is large topic not just about having your home page redirected in browsers). So running rampant (I say rampant as in unrestricted not that background code should be disallowed but rather be made conformant to a more restrictive API set) in background does allow any malevolent piece of code to starve legit processes of resources (CPU by running, disk, GPU, network bandwidth etc). Running in background also means user is not aware what that piece of code is doing so you can’t have true background stuff running unless you give them freedom to use resources as they see fit (meaning background code can download, upload and generally use resources without your knowledge).
About Unix / Linux / MacOSX stuff it’s not silly just because you want to believe so. Kernel has it’s API points directly mapped to POSIX standard so in essence they are all the same since they are POSIX conformant.
Let’s do this. You can bash me professionally only with solid arguments otherwise I will bash back telling you that you are not a programmer and you don’t know what you are talking about. So I will do this now since you do have no idea and you pretend to have even if you did not state any qualification in the area. Windows registry is just that a registry a dictionary of key value pairs not a simple command you control everything stuff. First the registry is made accessible based on security credentials. So a ordinary program has access only to it’s registry, a program run as a specific user has access to that user registry a program run with admin credentials has access to the machine registry. In registry you can register components for interoperation between apps and if you run as admin you can modify how many icons you have on desktop what shell will run etc. BUT AGAIN YOU ARE WRONG. Every OS has such a “configuration file” for such stuff. Otherwise it won’t allow you to customize stuff. The windows registry is nothing more than a configuration file metaphor. So you are wrong, you are bashing others with more knowledge just for the sake of argument. Please don’t do that since it’s just wrong. I did not attack you personally just your ability to comprehend the stuff and your knowledge and you again proved me that I was right.
UAC is inefficient but user won’t accept even this compromise. How could they accept running their computer with a limited user as it should be then? Again people usually think they know better but they don’t. A lot of people consider that since they read tech news and used a computer for years they know.
About the OS restrictions they are there for a more secure environment they are not there so MS can control you. Imagine the medicine progress if it will not be bound and enforce by law and doctors will be allowed to experiment on children in the name of progress of course. Security is a compromise not a limitation. So don’t tell me how unrestricted brings faster progress because then you will have unrestricted progress for everything (medicine, war, energy, etc) at any cost.
 

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