Originally posted by Aramis:
Funny, every time a virus comes out for Mac OS X, Apple patches the OS...
Everytime a new virus for windows comes out, M$ says "It's Not Our Fault" and then does nothing...
While I won't defend Microsoft's record on security, that's an untrue characterization because it is exaggerated and does not reflect the structural changes M$ has made internally. We'll see the results of those in Longhorn and other places as time goes by. Transforming an organization the size of M$ and changing a corporate culture that has proven so economically successful isn't a trivial feat. But is is being done, slowly and in ways which will show out over time.
Yes, their currently release product set truly does have some fairly regular exploits. There was just an article the other day however pointing out (and not from a Windowsphilic source) that Firefox will shortly be experiencing more viruses and other sundry electronic shenanigans due to its growing popularity.
If MacOS or even OSX were as popular and had as many different suites of tools and as much capability across the wide range of enviroments and configurations Windows is deployed in, they might find themselves a little overwhelmed. They aren't so big, don't support the range of offerings, and don't have the same base of crackers attacking their work. Consequently, they look better. Now, I'll concede that alone doesn't explain things, but it is a factor.
BTW, Mac OSX is BSD Unix, with a pretty interface, and a Mac OS 9 emulator. And nearly biweekly security update patches.
Mac OSX is a flavour of BSD. If it was actually BSD, they wouldn't call it OSX, now would they? And MacOS is still out there too, no?
With their small market share, they still need to execute biweekly patching. Is that supposed to indicate they've got solid code?
BSD is nice, and is prefered by some security types do as much to their small scale lists of people with commit authority as due to their security audits. I discussed such matters with a computer security professional recently employed by a government agency known for being concerned with such things.
But BSD is also considered by many in the *NIX community to be behind the times in various particulars. While I don't necessarily agree that their desired 'new things' are important, as I personally prefer security over featuresets, the claim can be advanced that BSD's strategy comes with a price.
You've already expressed a distaste for "non-mainstream" OS's, and then claimed no bias. Which one's the lie?
Have you stopped beating your wife, Aramis?
If you can't manage a better straw man than, you aren't really trying.
I said I had no preference and that I was being humorous in my other comments. You can choose to make as little or as much of them as you see fit.
Your reaction marks you out as more of a partisan than I....
Besides which, if we wanted to continue this, I suppose we should take it off of this thread, though I think you should lighten up a bit.
PS - Self-deprecating humour is the best kind. I *am* an OS/2 Warp Connect fanatic! EPM is still the best version of 'notepad' yet. And that OS had a wonderful memory management subsytem and threading model that kicked M$ butt. But marketing ruled the day and IBM marketed M$ into market leadership. So there!
