secretstalks
Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, may not be a huge lover of Windows PCs at the moment, as you can see. After all, his company suffered more than nearly any other when antivirus software manufacturer CrowdStrike released an update that resulted in 8.5 million PCs displaying the “blue screen of death.” To fix any of those PCs, it essentially required a manual reboot into safe mode.
At Delta, many of those computers were used for the airline’s scheduling software, which disrupted crew scheduling and led to over 5,000 flight cancellations within five days. Bastian reported that more than 40,000 servers required manual repairs, resulting in costs exceeding $500 million for the company. He is seeking compensation for these losses.
When asked whether he had second thoughts about using laptops running Microsoft Windows, Bastian answered what many people were wondering. “We must,” Bastian answered. They seem to be the most brittle platform in that area, in my opinion. When was the last time you learned of a significant Apple outage?”
While macOS is more popular than ever, it is still far smaller of a target than Windows, which continues to have a commanding global market share. One may argue that because Macs aren’t utilized in nearly as many enterprise settings as Windows PCs, you don’t hear about this kind of disruption.
That is somewhat accurate. Another factor, though, is that developers do not have the same amount of access to the kernel—the lowest-level code that communicates directly with the hardware of the computer—on MacOS. Apple moved away from kernel extensions with the introduction of the Silicon Macs, encouraging developers to utilize system extensions instead, which operate with fewer rights than kernel extensions.
Bastian speaks from experience when discussing Apple. All of Delta’s flight attendants received iPhones in 2021. They are utilized for flight management, scheduling access, and managing in-flight transactions with the devices’ integrated tap-to-pay feature.
As you can see, defects can occur in any software. Millions of Macs or iPhones could be bricked by a release that Apple might release today. It is most likely not going to happen, but it is possible. As the CrowdStrike outage demonstrates, human mistakes do occur in software development and can have disastrous results.
However, Apple has made it far more difficult for developers to create the kind of issue that harmed Windows computers. Generally speaking, Apple is the one who will break your Mac severely enough that it won’t boot up. It won’t be because a bug was inadvertently or intentionally released by a third-party developer who was fiddling with the kernel.
Additionally, iPhone security is significantly higher than that of the Mac. You cannot access the kernel using iOS. Apps, in fact, operate within their own “sandbox,” limiting their access to user space as well. Apps are unable to
Apple has received criticism for its approach, as restricting developer access to the operating system could be seen as disadvantaging them, particularly in terms of competition with Apple. However, in balancing security with competition, it seems Apple has achieved the right mix to deliver the best and most secure user experience overall. According to Bastian’s comments, it appears that at least one person appreciates the company’s approach.
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