Full Disclosure: Sick of Blue Screens? Get a Mac!

PC World ^ | From the September 2002 issue of PC World magazine | Stephen Manes

[Fresh Wind]

I have the same opinion about Porche.

What about Fods, Cevrolets, and Cadillas?

[breakem]

Macinto$$$h!

[nutmeg]

bump

[toupsie]

People are usually nailed by trojans, not viruses, and there's not much that can be done to protect someone who runs malicious code on their box.

Apple has made it very difficult for novice users to access the "Admin/Root" account. Its based on FreeBSD which has an excellent record of preventing local root exploits. These two factors make writing Trojans for Mac OS X very, very difficult. The worst a Trojan could do is delete data in the User's folder but not harm the OS itself.

As for virus vulnerabilities, I don't know what Apple has done to shore up the port vulnerabilities of Unix (which are legendary). Garden variety Unix CAN be very secure if you have a good system admin who applies all the patches and keeps an eye on the logs. But there are tons of hacks for Unix -- people don't hear about them as much because the targets aren't end-user PCs mainly, they are enterprise servers and companies keep those security lapses very quiet.

A default Mac OS X install has all ports and services turned off. if you NMAP a Mac OS X box, you will come up with all closed ports. The only way to open them up with the Admin password. Most Mac users will just leave it alone. Mac OS X also has ipfw built in which is an excellent firewall package if you are super paranoid...like me.

[discostu]

Can the users install software? If they can install software they can "install" trojans. No security can ever be 100% effective because eventually you have to let the user to stuff and that's an undefendable security hole. Most trojans go after the data, the data is the important stuff. Corrupt my OS but leave my data alone I'll be back and running by the end of the day with no real harm done; kill my data and ignore the OS, there's a good chance I won't be able to recover from that.

[monday]

"However, pen and paper does not have a spell checker to tell you that "alot" is not a word."

hehe..I didn't say I didn't need a computer! I use 'a lot' of other non words too:( When does FR get the spell check upgrade?

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[avg_freeper]

I have a mac at home and use a PC at work.

There is some atrociously buggy terminal emulation software on the PC I use to simultaneously access multiple types of servers. At the same time I have huge datasets being run through huge fortran programs on the PC and juggle megolithic Excel spreadsheets.

With all this I have only seen the system lock-up about once per year. I get MS office crashes about 2-3 times a year. I think that's pretty darn good. And I'd say that all this "blue-screen-of-death" talk is dated and doesn't apply to MS's new operating systems.

[avg_freeper]

Can the users install software?

No, typically they can't. Only users with administrator privileges can install software. Which is why I only log in as admin to do maintenance and installs. OS X does that fairly well. Although it irks off some who use to be happy with the ability to muck up their mac however they want.

[discostu]

Assuming there's only one user on the machine, and it's your typical non-geek user (ie people that don't know enough about security to know that they should normally use the system while logged in with administrative capabilities), how protected are they? Will the path of least resistance setup dumb security or real security?

[avg_freeper]

Any modification to root, the system path, application path and other users path requires admin rights. Non admin users (or code being run by non admins) are only able to modify their own home directory and library.

But, I think the weakest link is probably in the setup of a new system.

A user, not knowing any better, could just use the admin account as their own account. Malicious code would then have to prompt for permission to bad things. If the user then does so by entering their pass-code then all bets are off.

[discostu]

Well the weakest link in security is always the user, eventually you can't protect them from themselves (if only the people trying to Nerf the world would learn this). So basically with Mac right now the situation is pretty similar to NT/ XP: if the user is being smart they won't be exposed to a virus in the first place and the OS offers some protection (sounds like a bit more than NT by default, but if you've gone NTFS and enabled file security should be about the same), if the user is dumb all bets are off.

Gosh, reasonable discourse in a tech thread, I feel I have violated some rule.

[Paul Atreides]

For the record, I'm not "geeked-out" on technology either. I am middle-of-the-road. I know more than some and not as much as others. I, too, am concerned with apps. However, as a marketing minor, the ads don't come across as the greatest. It is almost like the Florida voters bragging that they were too dumb to use the butterfly ballot.

[kylaka]

If OS X were available for the machine you have now, wouldn't you be frustrated enough with Windows to give it a try?

No. Period.

[Irene Adler]

"Speaking from a strictly marketing perspective, the Switch ads a stupid. First, they get four of the most moronic-looking people on Earth to give testimonials (I wouldn't listen to these people if they were advising me on which deodorant to use) and, second, they are blathering about how difficult it is to use a PC (though, they tell us, they owned one for years, before switching). Excuse me, but CHILDREN use PCs everyday and don't have a problem."

My opinion as well. The people in the ads sound like total airheads, too. Could Apple have defined their target market as every scatterbrain in the U.S.?

[boris]

"Quantity has a quality all its own" -- Stalin

The mac--especially its latest incarnation--is a device designed to impress...interior decorators.

Cute. Below critical mass. End of story. Yeah, Betamax was "better" than VHS. So what.

--Boris

[Captiva]

"Tired of a larger selection of software? Tired of paying lower prices for your hardware? Get a Mac, by all means."

LOL!!!

Help support aging hippies on the left coast!

[supercat]

No, typically they can't. Only users with administrator privileges can install software.

How easy is it to install software in such a way as to limit its actions? One thing I'd like to see in an OS would be a means by which programs could conveniently given temporary permissions to read/write selected files if the currently logged-in user had rights to those files and selected them via file-open or file-save dialog box (with the system dialog boxes being protected against faked mouse or keyboard events). Any idea if any OS provides such a notion?

[supercat]

VHS was quite inferior to Beta, but the non-illuminated marketplace did not care. It often does not reward the "best" for whatever reason.

Yes, but the professional video market chose Betacam (the high-end version of Beta).