Apple‘s knucklehead businesspeople, The Underdogs, are again in one other prolonged and riotous have a look at computing within the enterprise world, this time with a recollection of considered one of Home windows’ darkest moments: CrowdStrike and the collapse of 8.5 million Home windows PCs world wide.
The business, titled ‘BSOD’ and viewable immediately (October 7, 2025) on YouTube, is equal components intelligent and cringy. It recounts the day The Underdog crew attended Container Con and the way a lot of the Home windows PCs failed, ostensibly on July 19, 2024, with Blue Screens of Loss of life bringing the whole tradeshow to a halt… except Staff Underdogs, who had been working Macs.
Apple by no means explicitly mentions cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and the way a little bit of unhealthy code uploaded by the corporate to its flagship safety product, Falcon, made its method to endpoints, or Home windows PCs, across the globe. It was an actual, albeit non permanent catastrophe: shipments had been stalled, inventory markets closed, banks grew to become inaccessible, and even some healthcare suppliers couldn’t serve sufferers (and perhaps one non-existent tradeshow all however collapsed). The incident revealed a hidden vulnerability throughout untold numbers of Home windows PCs.
Not the Home windows we all know
It’s a topic ripe for criticism and parody, and I feel Apple could possibly be forgiven for making BSOD the title and core focus of the video. In spite of everything, that did occur on that day. However is it consultant of the Home windows world that one billion folks face day by day? Not likely.
By most measures, incidences of Blue Screens of Loss of life (BSOD) have fallen considerably in recent times. Home windows 10, which I used for nearly a decade and nonetheless dip into on a few house computer systems, is strong and remarkably steady. My spouse makes use of it day by day for her actual property enterprise. She additionally makes use of me as her in-house IT assist. I have not seen a BSOD on both of her methods in ages.
Based mostly on this business, I am unsure Apple is conscious that Microsoft is within the strategy of altering the Blue Display screen of Loss of life to the Black Display screen of Loss of life, an motion that I feel is meant to sign how uncommon it truly is. In actuality, the hue adjustment is all however meaningless – it would not even change the primary letter of the initialism.
I am not arguing that Apple’s finest Macs aren’t inherently extra steady and, maybe, safe than Home windows. In all of the a long time I’ve used Macs, there was no equal for the BSOD. Plus, there may be the truth that Apple’s platform was just about impervious to viruses. In case you owned a Mac, you did not actually run antivirus software program. In case you owned a Home windows PC, you had been in a mad scramble to get safety software program put in earlier than connecting to the web. I nonetheless bear in mind assaults just like the ILOVEYOU bug and others infiltrating the system as quickly as you linked to the World Broad Internet.
Trendy Home windows, although, is infinitely safer. Even with out safety software program, it has its personal Defender system, which, when you hold it updated, is extraordinarily efficient.
Some higher targets
If, although, Apple had needed to extra successfully assault Microsoft and Home windows, there are softer targets than the BSOD.
Let’s begin with the obvious. Microsoft is within the strategy of implementing Home windows 10 Finish of Life (EOL), largely so it may possibly get everybody to put in Home windows 11. The issue – and that is one thing I’ve not seen Apple do with nearly all of its macOS updates – is that Home windows 11 is just not universally supported by some Home windows 10 methods that, whereas maybe nearly a decade outdated, are fully practical. The first purpose: they weren’t constructed with TPM 2.0 assist, a Home windows 11 safety requirement.
Now, Microsoft is forcing the difficulty, with the EOL date fast-approaching this month. For some folks, meaning in the event that they wish to keep safe and guarantee third-party {hardware} nonetheless works with their pc, they’re going to possible want to purchase a brand new system that helps Home windows 11.
It is a unhealthy search for Microsoft, however Apple did not go after it for that. As a substitute, it is made a comedy about someday in tech historical past and, in some methods, inadvertently confirmed the recognition of Home windows within the office. In spite of everything, 99% of the methods at Container Con (and even the billboards alongside the way in which in a blink-and-you-missed-it BSOD second) all run Home windows.
Apple may’ve gone after Microsoft for its efforts to push Copilot, and even Edge, on Home windows customers. Or its occasional insistence on discovering locations to insert adverts into the system, or for its behavior of taking years to repair some niggling bugs.
These are all truthful criticisms.
So yeah, I laughed a bit of and perhaps loved the music, however Apple largely misses the mark with this newest advert.
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