Hilarious. You forgot to mention the 'virus' is executable only by user action. It is impossible to make Windows hardy enough to stop this.

I purchsed one of these iPods. It erased all of my Blondie.

Apple fan here agreeing that that's lame.

What if it wasn't a virus, just a program that erased your hard drive? The problem isn't that Windows isn't "hardy" against viruses, it's that iPods are distributing executables.

The fact that the executable happens to be a virus is almost irrelevant (at best, it's a secondary issue).

Dare, before accusing people of making accusations, you should have highlighted and underlined the part of the sentence that followed: "and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it."

Seems to me they're even more upset with themselves than they are Microsoft, and shouldering the bulk of the blame. I suppose it's just as easy for Microsoftians to get trigger happy is it is Microsoft's competition.

Tom Bradford,
You're kidding right? If an MP3 player shipped with a Mac OS X executable that formatted my hard drive, is that the operating system's fault or the fault of the manufacturer who sold me a device containing malware?

Ok, and I'll quote again... "and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it" It's somewhat akin to saying "Here's a salad... there's a slight chance that there's E-Coli in it... If it is, shame on E-Coli, and shame on us."

The quote, at least how I read it with my limited vocabulary, seemed to imply that they hate the fact that MS' operating system/apps are a magnet for various virii, but they should have known better.

I think that's a legitimate enough way to state the problem that they encountered.

Tom Branford put down the koolaid. No one's denying they are taking some of the blame. The point is they should be taking 100% of it. Not doling out some to MSFT or anyone else. I love Apple but they are arrogant f**ks. This is disgusting corporate behavior. What a PR nightmare.

And I don't recall the spinach growers saying 'shame on e coli'. They recalled their product and took responsibility. Good example. Not!

Winston... the example was of a salad, not a bag of spinach... We're talking about a customer chain... restaurant buys a bag spinach, serves a salad... restaurant knows the risk, restaurant serves salad anyway. Sorry the comparison was lost on you.

And debbie, in light of that comparison... apple being the restaurant, is Apple 100% to blame? No, certainly not. Are they 80%? Maybe, but you can't blame the restuarants for E-Coli. Can't even blame the farmers.

Tom are really that stupid or are you just acting dumb. Apple sold a product to a customer that contains an virus. What don't you get? Sorry the big picture is lost on you Tom. I'm sure if the Zune had a Mac virus installed on it you'd say Apple was partly to blame. Are all Mac users this demented? Sheesh

No we are not all are this demented. Just Tom.

Ok... Let me make this simple. You use an operating system that is susceptible to virii (Windows)... It infects a file that's part of your device's deployment image. Since your device doesn't run the susceptible OS, it's not at risk and you wouldn't otherwise notice the infection. Who's to blame? The deployment engineers who didn't notice that infection or the OS vendor whose operating system propogated the infection?

Please tell me how you see that any one party is 100% to blame, and please refrain from namecalling if you can't. The point I was making is that Apple was taking most of the blame for an infection caused by a Microsoft OS, and that Dare was jumping the gun, sensationalizing only part of the sentence for the sake of vilifying Apple in the industry's ongoing "Microsoft Vs. Everyone Else" FUD war.

"Here's a salad... there's a slight chance that there's E-Coli in it... If it is, shame on E-Coli, and shame on us."

That doesn't sound right, Tom. Here's a better analogy.

"We recently discovered that a small number of the salads we served last week had E-Coli in them. This known bacteria affects only our customers who used X-branded ustensils. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. Those who used B-branded ustensils to eat their salad are E-Coli free, as those ustensils kill any bacteria that comes in contact with it. As you might imagine, we are upset at X Inc. for not making better ustensils, and e are even more upset with ourselves."

Apple deserves 100% of the blame for shipping defective products.

Denis, your analogy is excellent, but your summation is flawed. When you have a chain of product where one of the links in that chain is tainted in some way, you either (a) blame the tainted link in the chain, or (b) distribute blame evenly. There are three links in this chain, as I see it... Microsoft, Virus Writers, Apple, all of whom are to blame (either equally or with varying weights) for iPods being shipped with a virus.

If Microsoft had an OS resilient to infection, there would be less of a reason for people to write virii for that particular platform. If there were less virii for that platform, there would be less likelihood that somebody's repository would be tainted by that platform-born virus.

So when you draft such and excellent analogy, yet sum it up with a completely unrelated statement based on absolutely no logical justification, I have to call shenanigans. The point I was making is that the blame should be distributed among all parties, and that Apple was bearing some of the blame. The original post presented it as though Apple was completely passing the buck, which is entirely untrue.

I can't believe what a fanboy you are.

Just as the restaurant deserves 100% of the blame for SERVING salad ith E-Coli, Apple deserves 100% of the blame for SHIPPING iPod with virii.

Also,

your assumption(from your recent blog post) that most of the commenters here are Microsoft employees is laughable.

"The point I was making is that the blame should be distributed among all parties"

No it shouldn't. I forked over money to Apple. I don't have a relationship with their manufacturing or design contractors. Apple's product screwed up my computer. I blame them. Not the virus writer. Not Windows. Not the contractor. They should fix it. Period. If Apple has a gripe with their contractors then that's their problem and they should deal with it. Microsoft has nothing to do with this transaction.

Ah, but that's where you're wrong. Microsoft has everything to do with this transaction. The iPod that you say you purchased may have been a carrier for the virus, but you are a user of the operating system that was susceptible to, and ultimately infected you with the virus.

Much like Adrenoleukodystrophy is carried benignly by a mother and passed down to a male fetus. Would you blame the mother in this case? You were using the operating system (Windows) that was susceptible, and you somehow managed to execute the program that caused you to get the virus. Who's to blame for the failure of your operating system's virus checker at that point? Apple or Microsoft?

The fact is that we are barraged by virii every day from uncountable directions... The CDs your friends burn at the home, the software you install from the internet, the netbios ports on your OS that may or may not still be opened, the word doc that youre colleague just sent. Who do you blame when your hard drive is erased? Your colleague for not knowing he was infected? Or the vendor of the operating system that was supposed to be protecting you in the first place?

Stop trying to pass the buck. Microsoft has been far more preoccupied with adding features and flash over the past decade than it has been with security. It wasn't the iPod that gave you the virus, it was Windows that didn't bother to keep you from being infected by it. Apple took the blame for not detecting the virus on the device that they shipped, but they were never responsible for ensuring that you wouldn't receive it from another source, or that you'd be protected from it by your OS. If you got it... your AV wasn't up to date... That's either the fault of my previously mentioned group (virus writer, OS vendor, device manufacturer), or yours. I'm leaning toward the latter at this point.

"Stop trying to pass the buck."

Oh, look! Irony!

Nonsense, I'm simply making the point that Apple didn't write the virus, nor did they write the OS that was susceptible to the virus, nor did they write the Anti-Virus program that didn't detect the virus, nor were they one of the less-than-paranoid users that executed the infected file, thus infecting themselves.

Apple stated, and I guess I can't say this enough for you people to understand, that they are more upset with themselves for not noticing. That is certainly taking responsibility and not passing the buck as far as I'm concerned, where they could just as easily wholly blamed Microsoft for its operating system's inadequacies.

But there is no way you're going to convince me that they are 100% to blame for the scourge of Windows-born virii, or for the fact that someone's antivirus software isn't up to date, especially on an operating system that is a virus magnet.

All said, my original post was contending that Dare jumped all over one part of a sentence without presenting it in proper context, solely to bitch and moan about how the rest of the tech industry likes to rip into Microsoft. I can't be convinced that this was one of those cases, though I admit that there have been plenty in the past.

One of my friends made a good point. When somebody watches a David Hasselhoff video on YouTube, whose fault is that? Is it David Hasselhoff's fault for sucking? Sony for employing him? YouTube for carrying the video? Or the viewers fault for watching the garbage?

Huhhh? Huhhhh? Think about it.... Of course, the answer is YouTube for carrying it.

"Who's to blame for the failure of your operating system's virus checker at that point?"

Holy mother of code, we are not blaming Apple for the "failure of our operating system's virus checker". We are not blaming them for the fact that someone's AV is not up to date either. We are blaming Apple for ***SHIPPING*** a product containing a virus, because Apple, not Microsoft, ***SHIPPED*** the iPod.

And I'm officially blaming the dasBlog developers for implementing a comment system that does not automatically detect and reject trolls.

"But there is no way you're going to convince me that they are 100% to blame for the scourge of Windows-born virii, or for the fact that someone's antivirus software isn't up to date, especially on an operating system that is a virus magnet."

Nobody thinks Apple is "100% to blame" for any of these things. But the fact of the matter is that these things are irrelevant to the issue at hand (Apple selling iPods containing viruses) -- and that Apple *knew* that when they misleadingly raised these issues in their statement. It's spin and bullshit, and you're falling for it.

I think the proper e-coli analogy is like this:
"We discovered that we shipped spinnach with e-coli. Of course, we're mad at God for not making humans more hardy against this e-coli, but we're even madder at ourselves for not catching it".

Tom Bradford, that is how ridiculous Apple's PR spin sounds.