Gates on Spyware and OS Competition 690
Ant writes "CNET's News.com has an article that says Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software." prostoalex writes "Both OsNews and InfoWorld talk about Bill Gates' speech at the Computer History Museum in California. Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market."
640K is enough.... (Score:1, Interesting)
I just lost faith in humanity...
Mac-Tel? (Score:1, Interesting)
OS X and FreeBSD (Score:4, Interesting)
Um...Mac OS X is only getting better and more switchers from Microsoft, and FreeBSD is still running a lot of servers around the world (and ones that don't go down).
I predict that in 10 years from now, Microsoft will be dead, linux and FreeBSD will feed off of each other making both extremely good choices (FreeBSD for server, linux for desktop). Then the competition will be between Mac OS X and linux for the desktop.
Re:640K is enough.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I hate to say it (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, Linux fills a niche that could otherwise have been filled almost as well by a free / open BSD. (I say "almost" because the license of BSD has lead to fragmentation that created an opening for Linux).
Just Linux and Windows???? Not likely (Score:5, Interesting)
There will be a number of OSS which will be around. In addition, ALL of the closed source will be sold to others. OS's make their real money (except for MS's) after it is put into maintence mode. Good example was hp-3000. Lost money at the OS level until it was put into mainence mode. Then it made big bucks for HP. Likewise, vms makes a lot of money for HP.
Apple, by being based on OSS, may be spared that death, but hard to tell.
All most certainly all the the closed Unixs will be in maintence mode or dead. What ever aspects of them that were interesting will be done in Linux.
While BSD will almost certainly be around, I doubt that it will capture a big market. Nobody can really take the chance of MS swooping in and killing them.
But Linux and Windows will probably be the 2 gorrillas.
Too much control? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear Reactor Market?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Who is the leader in the Nuclear Reactor Control market right now ?
Mainly human beings..
The "computers" are used for monitoring and for safety functions, they are embedded systems. I know the plant I worked at had a protection system that ran on a three channel redundant system built around the 8088. We actually did troubleshooting with a signature analyzer to compare to known good values. Of course I've been out of the field for 6 years so maybe computers have been retro-fitted into the systems but I doubt it.
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:3, Interesting)
Before I worked at Microsoft as an intern last summer (I'm a college student), I was under the same impression about the amount of brainpower they had.
I worked specifically for MSN Ads, and everywhere I looked (I also talked to my friends in other departments) I found sloppy coding practices, FUD, and general CYA-motivated B.S.
9/10 people I met didn't know what they were doing, but they were too good at political maneuvering for it to matter. The people that knew what they were doing were extremely cynical and didn't think things could change. Oh how I wish I could comment on specifics. Damn NDA.
I was really hoping Microsoft would be a cool place to work, but I was severely disappointed. Behind closed doors, I couldn't find a SINGLE person who would actually recommend taking a job there.
When they made me an offer to join after my senior year (this year), I turned it down. I just can't deal with companies that are too laden in management and politics to even attempt agility and quality of work. Maybe it's just the idealism of youth, and I'll learn my lesson the hard way some day.
I'm sure there are specific people and groups in Microsoft that do a bang-up job, but I think they are much fewer in numbers than they were 20 years ago (before I was born).
g
Re:OS X and FreeBSD (Score:3, Interesting)
In 2014, Linux will be the Unix of the 21st century. OpenVMS will run on every moderate sized box, and MS Windows 2012.L (linux version... AIX admins will get this one) will be an X client/server for remote control of all the other boxes.
-WS
Note that Bill Gates got hit by an adaware... (Score:3, Interesting)
"This malware thing is so bad," he said in a speech at the Computer History Museum here. "Now that's the one that has us really needing to jump in."
It's also a problem that has affected Gates personally. He said his home PCs have had malware, although he has personally never been affected by a virus.
"I have had malware, (adware), that crap" on some home machines, he said.
--
Heh!
Sif (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mac OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
As hardware gets cheaper and more powerful and becomes a commodity, Apple is likely to have an increasingly difficult time selling its own line of expensive machines. With the Mac OS now a layer on top of Unix, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple eventually gives up reserving its software for its own hardware and begins to sell Mac OS as a GUI and software bundle on top of Linux, essentially a commercial counterpart to Gnome or KDE.
MS doesnt need to make anti Adware products... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe somebody ought to introduce him to Mozilla. I can say for certain that 99.99% of all Ad and MalWare infections are because of IE and ActiveX. I've not seen a pop up of a piece of crap ware for more then a year now, ever since I started using Mozilla.
Microsoft doesn't need to make anti adware products. All they need to do is either replace IE or make IE as secure as Mozilla, then keep updating it and the problem will go away. An Adware program will only add to the bloat.
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the least of their problems. The big problem is when the 800lb gorilla will patent anti-spyware software. How will the other simians react to that?
Re:Mac OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
I met Dvorak recently, and I have to say, he's very difficult to talk to. He's one of those guys who has no ability to just listen. A poor quality in a journalist. I found it very frustrating. His opinions aren't total crap, though. I think he's wrong WRT Mac OS, but he would have been right if Apple hadn't finally gotten a real OS by now. Until X, the OS was a toy, inferior even to Windows. Now it's for real, and it's serious. Microsoft has a long way to go if they hope to rival it.
My prediction... (Score:3, Interesting)
But on a more article-based note, as has already been said, it seems that the OS comment is a basic "*BSD is dying" troll.
Re:OS X and FreeBSD (Score:2, Interesting)
FreeBSD by the way is gaining more users, just at a slower pace than linux. Take a look here [netcraft.com][netcraft.com]
Re:Mac OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
> almost 2 decades now. That "wizard" over at PCMag, John
> Dvorak, has been doing so for almost that long, and look at
> where that prediction has gone.
Almost? He's been there right from the start with his way off base 'predictions'. He's a troll, and it gets him paid.
"The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."
-John C. Dvorak, SF Examiner, Feb. 1984.
FreeBSD (Score:5, Interesting)
Apart from the Dell machines I have reciently purchased for my company for a web developer who needed photoshop dreamweaver etc I'd not have a single windows pc in my office. With the speed in which Eric Laffoon is pushing along Quanta and having it built into base KDE I can see a time very soon when I will make Quanta my only development platform, intergration with CVS etc just makes it a great choice for PHP and web development.
For mail I use Evolution and simply love it. Forget about all the virus problems that Outlook has.
In fact the only thing I think windows has going for it is Photoshop. I've tried the gimp and sorry but it just isn't there yet for me, but in 10 years time I'm darn sure it will be!!!
Say good night Bill, you are history!!!
Gates on spyware (Score:5, Interesting)
in the article, Gates states "Operating systems like Linux (Red-Hat) require capable system administrators to maintain.. I want to do away with that"
Does that mean that Windows sysadmins are less capable or will be less capable in the future??
Doesn't that say alot for their fearless Leader??
Doesn't that say alot for his Great intelligence( or lack thereof).
You tell me what you derive from this statement, much less the article..???
Gk.
Bill knows he's lying, and heres why (Score:5, Interesting)
As I said in another post, I think he knows darn well Linux isn't going to be the only other arround. He's just trying to get everyone else to gang up against Linux. It is a brilliant strategic move on behalf of MS, and a classic divide and conquer strategy. He's trying to do the same thing between redhat and novell too.
Message to SUN (Score:3, Interesting)
10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market.
>>
stirring the pot are we?
He can't say "10 years forward Windows will be the only OSs left in the market." now can he?? (remember the european court has a ruling coming soon). He could say "10 years forward Macintosh and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market." but that would send too many to the mac sales rep. Whatever he puts in the "[any-os] and Windows will be the only OSs.." the "Linux" choice is the smartest, it will push (further) Schwartz and McNealy to launch their attack on RedHat . My guess is that he had those brainwashed to belive that LINUX is the threat to them, and if they would get back to former greatness, they could still get the high-end server market - "and between us [he put his arms around them, tilts his head and smiles], we don't plan to pursue the server market, we belive the desktop is our thing, you know, china and the expanding market" As they embraced the idea, he padded them on their backs and forwarded a bunch of cash as a part of a "bigger deal" and laught to himself.
I thought the Persidential debates would be Dumb (Score:2, Interesting)
the future is uncertain... Thank goodness (Score:4, Interesting)
10 years ago, we were all cursing Windows 3.1, because it was so unstable. Very few of us even heard of Linux. No one, at that time, thought it would be as critical to our lives as it is today.
I predict that in 10 years, "personal computers" won't be the center of our computing universe, like they are today. We'll all have moved on to something completely different. WHo knows what that will be?
Nobody today can possibly guess what our future computers will be like. But I sure hope whatever they are, they don't ALL come from the tiny little imagination of money grubbing jerks like Bill Gates. And if it does, God help the rest of us.
--
Patrick Wolfe
"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet"
Re:Mac OS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:1, Interesting)
You should poke ur head out of that bunker sometime, amigo. Ur inbred thoughts would welcome a little refresher from the real world (ie, NOT IRC), methinks.
Re:640K is enough.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, if you did your research, you'd find out that he never said that. He's not an idiot, and only an idiot would make a definate statement about the evolution of tech.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.", Thomas Watson Senior, Chairman of IBM, 1943
I was under the impression that Mr Watson wasn't an idiot (no more than Mr Gates, anyway), but here he goes making rash statements about the evolution of tech.
Also see Moore's 'Law', which is a somewhat definite statement about the evolution of tech from a non-idiot.
Is OS X really not worth mentioning (Score:4, Interesting)
"I have had malware, (adware), that crap" on some (Score:1, Interesting)
i would like to know, did he reinstall the os or
use regedit and/or use some free antispyware
software or buy a mac
Dvroak = professional troll (Score:5, Interesting)
There is always a plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mac OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does that include Linux? I use Linux exclusively at both home and work and I would struggle to make any stability comparisons amoungst any OSes that stay up for such long periods of time. In my (limited) experience, OS X and Linux seem to be on par with eachother when it comes to stability. Obviously OS X is easier for the average user to use, so that where it wins.
I'm a big fan of *nix based OSes and I think Apple have made a good call with moving to a BSD-based platform. I agree that Microsoft seem to be overlooking Apple if they think they'll be gone in 10 years - it has seemed to me recently that OS X is rapidly gaining popular support.
Re:oh god ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I miss my Amiga 500, with its startup-sequence, and it's MagicWB (was that really just an icon set?), and it's NeXT-like toolbar, and my Supra28 accelerator (which burned out), and it's 1.3/2.04 ROM switcher (which also burned out), because Pirates! didn't work under 2.04, and the Guru meditation errors, and my side-mounted hard drive controller with 8 mb of 1x8 SIMM memory, and the Fat Agnus 1 mb vid mem expansion, and it's standard RCA-out jacks for stereo sound, and its 1024x768x24 video resolution for high res IFF images, and... and... and...
Re:Your mom (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Windows?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's worth RTFA, folks (Score:3, Interesting)
He understands the history of Unix better than most Unix companies did, and the anti-Linux strategy he describes makes business sense. (Of course, he also has anti-Linux strategies based on barratry, manipulation of legislatures by thinly-concealed bribery, etc but you can't blame him for not discussing those.)
One thing that worries me about the Linux vs Windows scene today is that there are too many Linux cheerleaders who loudly proclaim that Linux' victory is inevitable. Gates is smart enough to take the threat seriously, and his team may be smart enough to beat it. He's certainly one hell of a lot smarter than the Linux cheerleaders.
A good start for Linux advocates would be to do what Gates has clearly done: understand the opponent's strategy.
Re:He's right (Score:3, Interesting)
Even then, more and more I find myself not needing to reboot into Linux. ZSNES works better in Linux than Windows with its native OpenGL support. ePSXe works just as good in Linux as in Windows. Mupen64 emulates many n64 games. Not as good as Windows/PJ64 but still damn good.
If I could WINE Subspace/Continuum and FUO, I'd never touch windows again. A few years ago, my list of apps would have been much bigger.
Microsoft's security reputation (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:2, Interesting)
On another topic, Gates is living in a dream world. In ten years, there will be Linux, Symbian, and Mac OS XI. People will be saying "Microsoft what, Microsoft who?" Linux has got traction, the mobiles have rejected MS, and Apple is revitalised and being imaginative again.
MS is losing credibilty, losing friends in high places, and people who shouldn't know anything about computers are appalled at the consequences of using Windows.
At this point, I would like everyone to rush off and contribute to an open-source project to finish them off.
...something different with this competitor (Score:2, Interesting)
Has Gates lost it? Nothing different with this competitor? Except that it's more about a movement. People will spring up to replace others and build on the work done before.
Re:It's worth RTFA, folks (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux and other free software does not depend on the destruction of Windows to survive. It is not driven by a profit motive and cannot be attacked on that front. Windows' market share is irrelevant. On an economic basis, free software is unkillable.
The only real threat is legislation and/or patents. Keep that under control, and free software will prosper.
So mamy people get into this 'Linux versus Windows' thing, and get emotionally invested in it... but really, it doesn't matter. What free software is doing is changing the nature of the game, so that Windows has to play on free software's turf, rather than the other way around.
Microsoft is a smart company. They have more money than God. Windows isn't going to go away EVER, at least not in our lifetimes. But, aside from legislation, there's nothing they could really do anymore to lock out free software; the hue and cry if they tried would be vast. People just aren't going to buy DRM-enabled hardware unless they control the keys. If they'd done this kind of thing five years ago, it might have worked, but at this point Linux et al are too entrenched, and cannot be killed at a system or hardware level.... any attempt to do so would be a commercial failure.
Microsoft has to adapt to a world with a lot of great free software, not the other way around.
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:2, Interesting)
Worked for start ups, worked for companies that have been taken over by large companies, call me crazy but the larger the organisation the worse it gets, I read somewhere they compared multinational corporations to vampires, they take over smaller organisations for their fresh blood, they like vampires couldn't live without it.
K.
Re:Mac OS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Still, I use a mouse, and have no disdain for it. Each device has it's strengths and weaknesses. If I want to open a console, I don't navigate through menus, I hit Ctrl-F12. But I wouldn't dream of using only a keyboard to navigate through all the myraid links and menus of the web.
Re:Mac OS? (Score:1, Interesting)
You obviously don't use a Mozilla browser. Find as you type [mozilla.org] is usually faster than moving the mouse and clicking a link.
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not really hard to provide a case where Microsoft has made end users pay for a bug fix:
Look at Windows 98 Second Edition.
What was this, other than a 'bug-fix' upgrade? The only feature added was Internet Connection Sharing, the rest was to make it stable. Those who had the first (highly unstable and crappy) edition had to pay for an upgrade to the second edition.
And what about Internet Explorer? Microsoft is now saying that it will not provide a stand-alone version of IE, but that it will be integrated within Longhorn. Those who want a bug fix for IE will therefore have to upgrade to Longhorn.
You have to remember, Microsoft is not as tactless as SCO, it is one smart and cunning company.
Who knows what individual suggested these things? Maybe it was good old 'generous' Bill himself, forcing an audit onto US schools one moment, and giving free software to third-world schools the next?
Anyway, I'm sure that you can understand, from the above points, why I am of the opinion that it would be likely for a software engineer at Microsoft to come out with such things.
eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
For MOST people, Macs are indeed far more expensive. I just got my wife a laptop(... running XP, *sniff* -- she was running Linux up to now...), and a comparable Mac would have been 50% more expensive, with less memory and a smaller display.
In fact, in her situation, the Mac offering didn't even include a DVD burner or wifi, while the PC included wifi.
Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that Macs are terribly overpriced, just overpriced for the majority of people. There's nothing wrong with that, and indeed, I would recommend a Mac over a PC in a lot of situations.
Just as examples... I'd recommend a Mac for people who aren't saavy enough to keep a clean 'doze machine, or people who ARE saavy enough to take advantage of the nice Unix underpinnings of OS X.
In fact, considering that something insane like 50% of all Windows PCs connected to the 'net are acting as spam relays... Maybe Macs ARE comparatively cheaper! :D
Re:Did everyone miss the critical point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Red Hat and the Linux companies have little incentive to make products which require less support
I called Microsoft for support once. They asked me for my credit card number first thing. I've already ranted on
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, no. That is the primary purpose of a firewall. It is your first line of defense. It won't necessarily (shouldn't be) your last though.
If you don't want someone accessing a service, you turn it off or change it's configuration to deny specific external hosts.
Yes, turning it off is recommended if you don't need it at all, but if you need it (e.g. for local machines) then it's not a solution. Most services aren't configurable enough to allow/deny specific hosts. If they were, they would essentially have their own mini firewalls builtin. You think that's better than having one centrally managed firewall?? Also, denying specific hosts is not the same as dropping packets. It's generally preferable to drop packets so as to appear "invisible" rather than deny connections, which not only confirms your existence but allows for straight denial of service attacks against your machine or even reflexive denial of service attacks against another machine.
If there are holes in the OS that a hacker can exploit, then a firewall is only a band-aid, that may or may not work.
The most secure setup involves layers of security, and that is what Microsoft has been preaching recently. It's pretty hard to argue that removing layers of protection is better. Don't you wear your seatbelt even though there's also an airbag?
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:2, Interesting)
This kind of filtering is pointless. It is trivially easy for any malware that gets onto your system to work around this kind of protection, usually by subverting an existing application in order to make it happen. E.g., write a suitable piece of javascript to a temporary file, then open it with internet explorer.
Assuming it actually helps is akin to sticking your head in the sand. It only helps you against incompetently written script-kiddie style attacks. And even those, I suspect that there's quite few that ZoneAlarm et al won't pick up.
Microsoft's firewall, in my experience, does nothing except take you machine off the network. Big deal I can get the same effect by unplugging my ethernet cable, thank you.
If you don't actually need your network, I'd recommend taking that route. MS's firewall allows all outgoing access, though, so it isn't equivalent.
To make a firewall that 'keeps people from breaking into my machine' is asinine. If you don't want someone accessing a service, you turn it off or change it's configuration to deny specific external hosts. If there are holes in the OS that a hacker can exploit, then a firewall is only a band-aid, that may or may not work. And it isn't any help if you actually intend to run services on you machine.
Please, tell me how I can configure MS's RPC implementation to only allow connections from localhost without using a firewall? I certainly don't trust that service not to have a large number of unknown holes that any remote host could access to gain local administrative access over my computer if I left it open, yet I need it for local operations on my machine. Oh, and if you can find a way to exploit those holes remotely through MS's firewall, I'll be _very_ impressed. Like I said, it'll stop any remote worm from spreading to me (unless I initiate a connection out to let it in).
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:1, Interesting)
Either way, is that worth paying out an upgrade for?
don't forget that they had SP1 for 98 that was a free download.
I don't think that this makes any difference. If a service pack had already been provided free and yet Win98 still sucked badly (which it did), surely Microsoft could have released a further free update with just bug fixes, and released Win98 SE as a chargeable upgrade.
Frankly, I think Bill's a more likely suspect.
I would have to agree.
Software engineers, at least the ones I've met, wouldn't want to buy software like that, let alone make it.
Neither would I, and I certainly wouldn't work as a software engineer at Microsoft. I guess you have to make some kind of ethical compromise to actually work at the place. I am aware that there are nice guys working for Microsoft though, and I wouldn't want to say that everybody working for the beast is evil!
I'm not trying to be difficult or overzealous in my point.
I can tell, and my hat is off to you for your manners.
Re:What an endorsement (Score:3, Interesting)
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then they crush you
How's it any different? Oh right, his shows that the little guy gets ignored, laughed at, then fights and wins the day. "Oh, those evil bastards will rue the day they ever laughed at me!"
It's good to keep up the hope but don't live by someone words as if it's already shown the outcome and we're all just waiting for it to come true.
Re:Mac OS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hitting enter has resulted in some of the most irritating calls my service desk has had to deal with. The people who are smart enough to use the keyboard are the ones less likely to listen to the responses from the service desk because they are obviously smart enough to know better.
If you're going to preach using the keyboard (like I do), preach it right.
OK, I feel better now.
Re:Mac OS? (Score:3, Interesting)
MacOS Classic was, technically by the standards of modern operating systems, a toy. But damn if it didn't win in a lot of respects *despite this*.
I came from the Amiga. Watching a Mac attempt to multitask was _so painful_. But it was certainly pretty.
Now, I've got a windows machine for doom and half life, and a linux fileserver, neither of which I love -- and two macs, which I spend most of my computing time on. I even find ways to use my PowerBook at work (I write code that crunches weather data. It runs on linux, but my visualization and debugging stuff runs on the mac.)
Former Microsoftie Perpsective (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked as a Developer Support Technical Router and our job was to triage, route and/or resolve technical support incidents relating to a wide variety of products ranging from IIS and SQL to Visual Studio, Windows API issues, etc. We also handled misrouted calls from other departments in the same fashion. I was told going in that it was easy to get hired into other departments, but of my 100 or so co-workers, I think only 3 or 4 got hired out to other departments within those three years (I am not counting pilot programs that ended up being sort of lateral moves, etc). It is very likely that this change was due to changing economics (.com bubble bursting) but this meant that there were a number of highly overquallified people working in this department.
Like any other large corporations, all performance is based on numbers relating to work done with respect to your job. I ended up doing some competitive analysis work for other departments and then being told that this was a "a distraction from my core goals" because although I met these goals I did not do so by more that other people on my team. Among my accomplishments:
1) I helped frame the discussion which lead to the inclusion of a POP3 server in Windows Server 2003.
2) The suggestion for taking SFU to Linuxworld was mine, though other parties funded it.
3) I provided other advice on how to compete with Linux, including the arguments that SFU needs a fully kerberized Telnet or SSH client capable of encrypted sessions, and that it needs to be bundled with the server OS.
But this was not appreciated because it was "not my job."
I would not go back there if offered another job.
Re:800lb Gorilla (Score:1, Interesting)
Microsoft has a core of REALLY talented developers -- but they aren't in MSN. They are in Windows, SQL, and the Developer Tools division (C/C++/C#/.NET/etc.). Sure, you can occasionally find a good developer in other teams, but not often.
MSN, as a development team, is shit, and pretty much always has been. I worked for about 4 years in Windows and LOVED it. Awesome developers, even some really awesome architects and managers. But for some stupid reason, I transferred to an MSN property (not going to say which one) for a few years. It was SO BAD that I got majorly burnt out, and left the company. I intend to go back -- it really is a good place, and Microsoft needs developers that are both talented and community-minded (which I consider myself to be) -- but no way no how will I ever step foot in any MSN property again.
Yeah, MacOS sucked... (Score:1, Interesting)
Because:
It was so easy to hack over a network...?
It had so many viruses, numbering possibly even into the double digits after 16 years of development...?
It suffered from DLL hell...?
The "Desktop Database" and type/creator code was so much more prone to file-type spoofing than the "three letters at the end of the name" approach...?
You needed to re-install it every 6 months to keep it stable...?
It was prone to spy/adware that needed risky registry editing to remove...?
You couldn't add or remove device drivers by simply dragging a file into or out of the system folder...?
Said extensions didn't have human-readable names for easy identification, and therefore easy system optimization...?
The HFS+ disk format couldn't handle large volumes...?
It was prone to buffer overrun exploits...?
I could go on, but the only real issues with the old OS were the use of co-operative rather than pre-emptive multitasking (and that was only a problem with programs that didn't multitask at all), and the lack of protected memory (but then, in reality it doesn't matter whether its the OS or an application crashes if I've still lost the last half hour's work. Rebooting just adds an extra 2 minutes. Big deal).
Macs have always had less down-time, and a lower total cost of ownership than Wintels, which has made them the platform of choice in production work for many years. Avid/Digidesign didn't even bother attempting to use the PC as the basis of their systems until quite recently, yet there are Avid systems based on 68040 proc Macs that have been and still are in constant use. ProTools thrived on the Mac, but the PC-only TripleDAT died a miserable death: coincidence, or a measure of reliability?
The old MacOS is a toy if you believe the only use for computers is the study of computer science. But for production work, even the obsolete OS is still a potent platform.