Comments
Comment by Dave2:
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I just think that they picked a boring topic… what they really needed to do was start “A Month of Apple Annoyances” because those are things that EVERY Mac user can relate to.
I’d probably start off with a week devoted solely to Mail’s numerous annoyances, then move on to iSync (which still feels like beta software), and finish up with a run through the OS itself and save Spotlight (which is more annoying than everything else put together because it’s used so often) for the grand finale.
Comment by Simone Manganelli:
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I don’t understand. Do you really think there are a bunch of Mac zealots out there who think that Mac OS X cannot be exploited whatsoever? I am constantly bewildered by this statement; yes, there are people who profess their love for Macs and bash everything Microsoft, but if you asked them point blank, I don’t think a single one of them would say that Macs are completely invulnerable. I don’t think they even say that on their own anyway!
I know I’m latching on to one sentence of an entire post, but I think it’s worth discussing. What most “Mac zealots” like to point out is that in practice, the Mac’s security is a thousand times better than Windows’. (Well, Windows XP, anyway… we’ll see how Vista fares.) There have been tens (hundreds?) of widespread viruses and worms that have actually infected millions of Windows PCs, that have caused billions of dollars in damages (by some metrics), and that have caused headaches around the world.
On the Mac? I can’t think of a single widespread virus or worm that has ever hit the Mac in recent memory. There have been some proofs of concept (mostly regarding Safari’s “open safe files” option), there was a lame OMG-IT’S-A-SHELL-SCRIPT-THAT-DELETES-YOUR-HOME-DIRECTORY-DISGUISED-AS-AN-ILLEGAL-MICROSOFT-OFFICE-2004-DOWNLOAD!!!11oneone “proof of concept”, there were some dubious claims about Wi-Fi exploits that remain dubious, and there have been numerous security holes that have been pointed out and fixed by Apple. But not one of them has caused any real damage on the Mac.
The last thing to really affect the Mac that I can remember was the MBDF A virus, that was easily stripped with a free utility called Disinfectant. That was over a decade ago, and that only affected Mac OS 9. (Might I point out that Intel Macs can’t even run Classic anymore, so the MBDF A is history, if that was ever in question.)
Sure, the Mac has plenty of security holes. But none so glaring that they can cause widespread attacks. (Granted, there could be one such glaring bug, but obviously it hasn’t yet been found or exposed.) And if Mac OS X “is as buggy as any similar software”, then why haven’t there been a number of widespread attacks proportional to Apple’s market share? Surely, what with the prestige of creating the first widespread Mac virus, and if it is true that “[e]very single day, they come out with a total exploit [of Mac OS X]” (c.f. Bill Gates), then why is it that Mac users can be totally nonchalant about security and not eventually get whacked in the face with a virus? Why is it that Windows gets 100% of the widespread infections and the Mac gets 0%, instead of Windows getting 95% and the Mac getting 5%? The point is that you can write all you want about theoretical vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, or about how buggy the operating system is, or how Apple is lax about security, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mac OS X is a safer platform than Windows, in practice.
By the way, can you also explain exactly how you know that Mac OS X “is as buggy as any similar software”? Do you have inside access to the Mac OS X source code and have found numerous bugs but decided not to tell any of the Apple engineers? Or are you secretly a security researcher who hordes all his information about possible exploits to himself? How do you back up this statement at all? This seems, again, to be an observation that at best, is a completely clouded opinion, and at worst is outright false. (If this were true, then again, shouldn’t the Mac be seeing 5% of the widespread virus outbreaks?)
Comment by ssp:
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Dave2: Great idea. That certainly would bring up more topics which hinder people’s daily work with the Mac today. Although all previous attempts I have seen at such lists, inevitably contained completely vacuous points and points that are a question of preference or taste. It’s probably much harder to ‘prove’ UI problems because they depend your way of using things. — Hence the frustrating ‘Behaves as specified’ status that Apple likes to assign to bug reports you file with them.
Simone: If there are no such Mac zealots out there, I wonder where all that noise from people claiming the Mac is a ‘secure’ system comes from. If people claim this in public, it doesn’t matter if they take on a more reasonable point once you ask them in private, because they already sent the ‘all-secure all-the-time’ message.
Sure Mac OS X has been spared serious and widespread problems so far. But what does that prove? We don’t know the future developments as far es exploits are concerned and I don’t see how our experience of the past few years can give us evidence for what to expect in the future. If anything, the virus and worm business is only starting to develop and I’m sure those guys are getting smarter and more experienced every day.
Of course I do not have access to OS X source code. So I can only guess as anybody else does. And I consider it to be a reasonable guess to say that Apple started out with something based on BSD stuff long ago. Then I’d be optimistic and give them credit for putting some paid people at tracking down a few problems. And then I’d take into consideration that they added a lot of non-trivial features and thus code to the OS which should have made it more buggy again. And thus, with that bit of optimism, they end up where they started. Which isn’t too bad but no reason to be complacent.
Comment by Simone Manganelli:
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Being secure doesn’t mean “all-secure all-the-time” and doesn’t mean secure in the future for all eternity. Secure means that you can be confident that in the near future, you won’t have your computer taken over by random people on the ‘net. Confident? Yes. Absolutely sure? No. That’s the state of the Mac right now: you can be confident that your Mac won’t be taken over. Yes, the Mac is a ‘secure’ system, and no, that does not make me a Mac zealot. It’s quite a reasonable statement.
Equating secure with absolutely-positively-secure-with-no-exceptions makes the whole discussion pretty useless. With your definition of secure, there’s no possible way an operating system can never be secure.
(In any case, I’d also be interested to see if you can actually cite a single “Mac zealot” who thinks that the Mac can never, ever be compromised. I stand by my statement that no one has ever asserted this.)
You’re also making a burden-of-proof fallacy with regards to Mac OS X’s security. You acknowledge that “Mac OS X has been spared serious and widespread problems so far”, but then turn around and say that that doesn’t prove anything with regards to Mac OS X’s security. So I have to wait 10 more years to show you that Mac OS X still hasn’t been compromised, and even then you can still say that I have to wait another 10 years to prove that Mac OS X is secure.
You say that Mac OS X not being compromised speaks nothing about its security. Sure it does! By analogy, say you buy a safe and in all of 6 years, there hasn’t been a successful attempt — and there have been attempts — to illegitamately gain access to the contents. Do you tell your friend that the safe you bought is as secure as his safe that has been compromised tens to hundreds of times? Of course not. But saying that your safe is more secure doesn’t mean that you say that it can never be compromised.
Even the best security systems can be eventually compromised. Adhering to a strict 100%-effective definition of “secure” is pretty pointless.
Comment by ssp:
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With your definition of secure, there’s no possible way an operating system can never be secure.
Which is exactly why I don’t like people speaking about secure systems. And thus I don’t like people advertising the security of their system. It just comes down to promising something vague which companies cannot be held responsible for. So it’s worth nothing.
I’d be perfectly happy if Apple and the pro-Mac zealots restricted themselves to saying that the world is mostly worry free today for Mac users. That would be reasonable and there would be no need to argue. But apparently people prefer to make (and hear) strong claims about security and the future.
I do not think I’m making a “burden of proof fallacy” here as whoever claims that something is ‘secure’ is the one owing us a proof. And if not that, a precise explanation of what they mean by ‘security’. Anything else is just a piece of puff.
Ultimately, in our wonderful capitalistic world, I’d only start believing about security if Apple offered some of our money back if things go wrong (just like Knuth offered cash for bugs people find in TeX). That’d show that they are reasonably serious and confident about their software being secure. And I doubt they are.
