On Tuesday, some no-good hackers decided to post a vulnerability, complete with a proof-of-concept Python script, that can remotely crash any Windows-based computer that has the SMB 2.0 network protocol enabled, which includes any system running Windows Vista or later. So like anybody with a bunch of free time would do, I cracked open a couple of VM’s and had some BSoD fun with Vista but noticed that 7 didn’t budge whenever I sent the exploit packets, so I suspected that they probably tested the RC version against this exploit

Well my gut feeling was right, and Microsoft released a security advisory later that day stating that it only affected Windows Vista and Server 2008, as well as the Windows 7 RC, but no mention of the 7 RTM (or Server 2008 R2). Plus, the scope was narrowed further when it was revealed that Public network locations were unaffected (they blocked incoming connections anyway). So nothing that bad to get riled over.

Of course, until a hotfix is released, if you’d like to completely protect yourself from the exploit you can follow the directions to either

• Block ports 139 and 445 from inbound connections using a firewall
• Disable the SMB2 driver
• Both (why not? unless you’re actively using file/printer sharing)

This is the final part in a series of two.

Yesterday, I focused on the un-selling points of the new MacBook Pro line as announced during the WWDC keynote. Today, my focus is going to be on Snow Leopard, Apple’s rather depressing tendency to bash Microsoft, and the rather nasty turn-off this all happens to be. Granted, most of Apple’s recent ad campaigns have comprised of “let’s make things up about Windows!” in order to try and gain market share. Microsoft is only avoiding suing Apple because of the potential for the world’s worst Streisand effect, which is depressing given the libelous nature of the ads themselves.

Having said this, it’s no surprise to see this mentality persist throughout this year’s WWDC keynote, so I’ll pick up from yesterday and explain just why Snow Leopard in and of itself is nothing more than hypocrisy.

I won’t even bother to discuss the Mac v. PC non-Ad that opened the WWDC keynote. Instead, I’ll start with

“Even more complexity is present in Windows 7 – the same old tech as Vista. Just another version of Vista.” -Bertrand Serlet, 10:19 AM

So he slams 7 as another version of Vista and follows it (within the same minute) with:

“We come from such a different place. We love Leopard, we’re so proud of it; so we decided to build upon Leopard. We want to build a better Leopard, hence Snow Leopard” -Bertrand Serlet, 10:19 AM

Holy crap, that’s a new time record for admitting to being completely hypocritical! But wait, there’s more!

“Adding Exchange support to Snow Leopard. We’ve got chills. Chills we tell you!” –Bertrant Serlet, 10:20 AM

If the audience in that room had any idea as to who makes Exchange, I’m sure we would have seen many bricks in their chairs.

Bertrand later admits to the three major changes coming to Snow Leopard: refinements to the operating system, a few new technologies here and there, and Exchange support. What are these refinements of which he spoke? Nothing much; just a few under-the-hood changes to Finder and an installation process which is 45% faster and takes up 6GB less space! It sounds remarkable on face value until you realize that they dropped support for PowerPC.

PowerPC is a platform which Apple stopped using only three years ago, and Snow Leopard has already slapped it down to the pits of hell. If Microsoft had discontinued support for an older hardware just like that, there would’ve been a massive uproar, but apparently Apple users will follow along. Add the fact that Windows 7, which can run on hardware Vista couldn’t run, also installs faster than Snow Leopard and Windows Vista as well as the fact that Leopard is less stable than Windows Vista (let’s see how many times you run into that Rainbow Swirly of I-Want-To-Pull-My-Hair-Out compared to a Blue Screen of Death), and we’ll see which platform is the better platform to build off of. Bertrant talks about how bad a platform Windows Vista is, and yet, Leopard is sadly worse.

Let’s get to these so-called “new technologies.” Which new technologies did they add? How about Aero Peek?

“Next up, the Dock: We’ve had a feature that we use to deal with clutter, called Expose, and now we’ve built it into the dock.”

Like the way Aero Peek is built into the amazingly more usable Windows 7 taskbar? It’s funny because their particular implementation is the most minor thing, and yet it somehow warrants inclusion within a keynote. Aero Peek is more functional than Expose and a bigger boost to productivity than Expose all because it allows for full window previews, thus boosting productivity in the office, and yet the best Apple can come up with is just adding Expose to the dock. They have three buttons dedicated to it on the keyboard, which lends one to the idea that the only reason they even attached Expose to the dock was because Microsoft successfully created a more usable taskbar than their dock.

Of course, that’s not all. Apple finally started trying to truly join the x64 club, and this is what we have:

“So first, 64-bit. The obvious reason is to take advantage of a lot of memory. When you run in 64-bit, the memory limit is… 16 billion GB. It’s unlimited.”

First of all, it’s actually over 17 billion, but I won’t pick nits. The point is that Windows has been doing this since the days of XP, and that Vista and 7 have basically mastered the art of 64 bit. Apple has been so late to the game that Adobe actually stuck with Microsoft for a 64 bit implementation of Creative Suite 4. The Windows world has almost completely finished adapting to the 64bit world, and Apple is only just now beginning to arrive.

“All the major system apps run in 64-bit mode in Snow Leopard.”

Wow, it’s not even a complete transition! They only ported the major apps over to 64bit; the minor processes and non-system-essential applications are still stuck in the last decade.

Sure, Snow Leopard isn’t a complete disaster. There is one technology which Apple did well to include, and that’s Grand Central Dispatch. The thing about GCD is that it will allow for programmers to easily create their own multithreaded applications without actually having to worry about the threads, which is a wonderful addition to the OS and is a tool I hope developers use to their advantage to create better applications.

Then there’s OpenCL, which stands for Open Computing Language. It’s essentially a framework that can run code along any processing-capable path, such as CPUs and GPUs. Kudos to Apple for making it open, but it’s not even Apple’s technology anymore. While Apple still holds trademark rights (which they’ll no doubt abuse), the Khronos Group is now the managing force behind OpenCL, so anyone can include it if they fit the bill.

However, that’s basically it in terms of any new technology. In the end, Snow Leopard is a partially-64bit OS comprised of Safari 4 (standalone included), Quicktime 10 (standalone included), Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, Exchange 2007 support, tweaks to Expose and Stacks, performance fixes to the Finder, and an update to the Common Unix Printing System, all while dropping support for Macintoshes more than three years old.

Apple is charging 29 dollars for this? Keeping in mind that the only new technologies are Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, 64bit readiness, and Exchange 2007, it’s time to start picking this price apart for what it is: a rip-off.

Vista Service Pack 1 brought the finalized Server 2008 kernel to Windows Vista. That’s an enterprise-quality near-bulletproof kernel added to consumer versions of Windows for free! In addition to boosting performance just about everywhere (not just in Explorer), Vista SP1 also introduced support for an entirely new filesystem, exFAT. Following this was Service Pack 2, which brought a new version of Windows Search, support for Bluetooth 2.1, native support for burning Blu-ray discs (something Apple still doesn’t support even reading), a new framework for wifi connection management, support for VIA’s new 64bit CPUs, as well as a new power management framework which actually puts an emphasis on saving power both for desktops and laptops as opposed to just being efficient with how it’s all used.

Together, these service packs introduced more performance boosts and features to an already fast and powerful operating system for free. Apple is not only introducing less new features, what they’re introducing is either behind the curve or won’t directly impact productivity, and Apple is still charging 29 dollars for previous Leopard users. Worse yet, if you happen to be one of the holdouts still using Tiger because you figured out that Leopard is an unstable sack of crap for an operating system, you’re out of luck; Apple’s going to flip the bird and charge you “full price,” whatever exorbitant amount that is for a gimped service pack to an operating system which you already didn’t like.

Let’s not forget that Apple dropped support for the ZFS filesystem, which was one of the features many Apple users were looking forward to the most.

As usual, share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

Update: Sam chimed in via WLM with the following:

Sam says:
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I just wrote this long comment to explain why Snow Leopard is worth $29.
Just as I was thinking Safari is naturally going to crash now, it disappeared.

Nice.

Update 2: I thought about it a bit longer and decided that not only is Apple issuing a gimped service pack, they’re also doing nothing to embrace the future. Tablets are one of the handiest business and graphics design tools in existence, and yet while Apple could easily have dominated the game, they didn’t bother. Now, Windows 7 is more touch-ready than ever, allowing for a far more favorable user experience on capable computers (such as on the HP TouchSmart and the Dell Latitude XT).

Not only has Snow Leopard seemed to not have any purpose, Apple itself seems to have gotten a bit distracted and lost any desire to improve usability, whereas Microsoft made usability one of their major goals with 7.

Yes that’s right, Builders! This week, AeroXperience was the first to get exclusive previews from Andreas Verhoeven’s Vista Style Builder.

I happen to be one of the fortunate people testing this application and giving feedback to Andreas mostly from an End-users Perspective. This Application does everything we could do before plus loads more. Whereas before we could only see numbers for images, now we will be looking at descriptions or, at the very least, class names. Instead of Hex-editing, we can insert/edit class properties using a language we can one day understand. At the moment, most of us will not understand what each Visual Style class does as they have not been publicly documented, so this is where I hope to step in and help.

I don’t want to Speak for Andreas as I am sure you will be hearing from him soon, but from what I gather, his plan is to make an application that the end-user can understand and use easily. Due to the large content of .msstyles, that will not be an easy thing to do. At the moment Avestyle is a Work in progress, but Andreas worked hard to make the application as usable and functional as possible. The actual core of the application works beautifully, but the UI is still in the process of being built. In the early builds, the Vista classes will be displayed in the application with the class name and a description.I am currently researching these classes to organize the Treeview in the application in a way where the user can find what he/she is looking for.

So Instead of researching image numbers and variant hex-edits, I will be focusing my attention on researching Vista class names and property names. This will most likely be more useful to us all as I am really confident that AveStyle is the way forward. Look out for more blog’s right here at AeroXperience about the new Customizing possibilities avestyle has to offer.

www.vistastylebuilder.com | Aves Pages | AeroXperience Forum Discussion

If anybody else would like to start getting familiar with class and property names, you will find the following links useful.

• Vista Visual Style Class names
• Property Identifiers

After I created a few Visual styles and struggled with the graphic design side of things, I turned my efforts to researching and documenting my methods for Resource Hacking and Hex-Editing. Resource Hacking is where it all starts. The first time I opened the .msstyle with Restorator, I did not know where to begin. All those image numbers meant nothing to me, but 12 months of research for much of what we need has already been documented.

In October 2007 Stardock released their solution to Customizing Vista; WindowsBlinds 6.0 adds full support for skinning Windows Vista as well as applying a host of new special effects to skins (blurred glass, advanced animations, etc.) Users also can create their very own WindowBlinds skins using SkinStudio 6 Pro.

However Stardocks solution does not suit everyone and In the last 12 months, skinners using the hacking methods have been documenting what they find; the vista customization community has really pulled together to share expertise.

UxTheme Patches: (To Date)

• Raphael’s uxTheme Patches
• Vista Glazz
• PsycoB’s Style Selector

Tools:

• ResHacker (Resource Hacker)
• Restorator 2007 (Resource Hacker)
• Mirkes Tiny Hexer (Hex-Editor)
• XVI32 Hex Editor (Hex-Editor)
• Alpha Image Converter
• Png Alpha Fixer

Documentation: (Threads and Tutorials)

• How to make Aero.msstyles compatible pngs
• How to make a Visual Style for Windows Vista
• The Resource Research Thread
• Aero Resource ID’s (Wiki)
• Decimal to Hex (Calc.exe)
• Hex-Editng (general)
• Hex-Editng (Margins)