Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says that Apple did not need NeXT, the company that provided the foundation for Mac OS X; he argues that System 7 wasn’t nearly as bad as it was made out to be. Wozniak also says that Mac OS 9 was more secure than OS X is now: Mac OS X is built in Unix and is therefore more prone to attacks because people are familiar with the holes in Unix, explained Woznaik. “Some of the holes in Unix are well known. So keeping Firewalls on is more important. And we keep announcing, even our own security fixes, not as many as Microsoft but still we never really had those in the OS 9 days.”
I have to respectfully disagree with the great and powerful Woz.
First, security through obscurity is never a plus of an operating system. I mean, let’s say I was running an OS that I developed that was full of security holes, but because no one had access to a copy of it (the only copy in existence being on my computer), it would be hard if not impossible to crack. Maybe obscurity makes you less prone to attack, but it doesn’t mean that it’s more secure.
Second, OS9 didn’t live to see the days when computer attacks were so common. The internet was still pretty safe, people hadn’t migrated to cable modems and such as much. It was simply living in a different reality. OS9 was pretty much out as the attacks on WinXP started. I remember that fall at my school – nearly half of windows machines got compromised – but OS9 wasn’t really used anymore. It just never saw a time when attacks were common.
What? Safe? Maybe less crapware for home users, but the era of OS 9 was rife with server intrusion and other malicious Interweb warriors.
OS/2 and banks. Secure, obscure. Read about attcks on ATMs, etc then Vs. now when they run Windows as their moin interfaces. It has nothing to do with internet connectivity.
Maybe isolated, maybe noone cares. 🙂
Or is Woz really starting to almost attack Apple lately?
If you read the article he’s not attacking Apple. He has criticized various things publicly, probably because he loves the platform and wishes for it to shine. Here he is reflecting on the past and offering opinions that at least sound somewhat naive when put into a news article.
back in the old days, the internet was less prevalent – macs were not online all the time. security by obscurity does not work in these days. i can’t imagine how a os without memory protecion can be “secure”
there is this even more famous computer vip who seems to think memory protection not really necessary see 3.7 of
http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.pdf
Wirth only says that it memory protection “should” have been superceded by safe languages and correctly implemented compilers.
While creating a safe language is certainly possible (if you’re prepared to pay the cost in flexibility and/or performance), ensuring a correct implementation that is safe not only from accidental bugs but also from malicious exploits is a huge problem.
Meanwhile, hardware memory protection may not be as fain-grained as compiler-based schemes, but it costs very little in performance and one can be fairly certain that it’s correct.
I did understand what Wirth says and I do share your reservations but
i responded to
” i can’t imagine how a os without memory protection can be “secure” ”
and maybe Wirth can help a person imagining that?
But in this context we are really talking about a specific system, not that you, in theory, can make a secure system without protected memory. I don’t think anyone would doubt that it is possible even without reading Wirths work, it just wouldn’t make sense that using protected memory was the one true way.
Now about MacOS 9 being secure without it, hell, it wasn’t even close to being stable, so i seriously doubt it would be, in any way, secure. I personally think the Macintosh would be dead if they hadn’t switched OS. I just don’t see how they could fix up an OS that in important ways were technologically behind even Windows 95. (of course it would be possible, but would be a slow and expensive process)
Another question would be, how many of the current MacOS X users would have used a system based on OS 9. I know i wouldn’t have touched it with a 10′ pole 🙂
No of course you are right I was not totally serious of course and I am typing this on a mac a thing I would never have imagined back in the os-9 days.
Well you see the latest 3rd episode (I think) of channel 9’s coverage of the Singularity project http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/ . IIRC they had about 10% increase in perform. To put that in perspective that would your safer compiled language would run faster than your C code. Java could be beating it regularly (but not always of course, because under some situations Java just starts to suck shit).
> hardware memory protection [cut] costs very little in performance
That’s not what the guys from the Singularity project said: they had the same level of performance for system call with their unoptimised implementation as Linux or Windows.
The reason why they were able to do so is that they are not using the hardware memory protection.
L4/Iguana is a single address-space operating system also; it does not provide hardware memory protection and uses “protection domains” and “certificates” to achieve the same goal.
…they needed Be, Inc.
Maybe people are constantly asking him (Woz) what he thinks about OS X or something, and are driving him nuts.
Maybe Apple didn’t need NeXT, but they probably didn’t “need” the iPod. And by his measure, they must not have needed3% of desktops either.
Without NeXT, Apple’d probably be bankrupt by now.
Now this is an example where security by obscurity DOES work: Apple OS 9 and earlier were closed-source systems, but they were also relatively obscure.
Subtract the internet, and you have a system which is more secure from attacks than the open-source and well-understood BSD. It has holes of a different colour to those of Windows.
Change one of those elements (so that OS <9 becomes an open-source, but obscure, OS, a closed-source OS as ubiquitous as Windows, or an OS as wide open to the net as OS X is now, and you have all the potential for this non-memory-protected OS to be every bit as insecure as Windows.
sure, obscurity works agains script kiddies doing wide spread generic attacks to make botnets.
But those sort of attacks aren’t the one people should be worried about. They are easy to prevent on any OS.
Obscurity is pointless when a direct attack is made on you company by someone(competitor, theif, etc.) to steal your data or spy on you. The attack would have researched you company and know that you were running OS 9.
They would get a copy of OS 9 and do some random attacks on it’s network services to attempt to uncover bugs, and surely there would be many because being obscure also means having less resources to search for bugs.
Or, the attacker might just send you an email with a malicious program attached that expoilts the lack of memory protection in OS 9 and gain complete control of your system.
“Subtract the internet, and you have a system which is more secure from attacks than the open-soemse urce and well-understood BSD.”
Uh, if you subtract the internet and any outside connectivity all systems are equally “secure”.
You cant compare a connected BSD system to a disconnected OS9 system.
True-ish. If you are working on a machine not connected to the Internet on which you have no administrator privileges, you can’t install anything that’ll damage more than your own user account.
Two things.
Watching these security updates for some time, many of them come from the bundled open-source applications that are included as part of the OS. With such a large range of developers working on all of the different components, its no wonder that they’re releasing more updates as they discover more issues.
Secondly, you have to admit that OSX is ten times the OS that OS9 was, you really can’t compare them. The more features you have the more little bugs will sneak in the door.
What you need to be more concerned with are the operating systems that don’t get regular updates.
“Secondly, you have to admit that OSX is ten times the OS that OS9 was, you really can’t compare them. The more features you have the more little bugs will sneak in the door.”
I’m not a programmer, nor am I a mac user, but I did learn C for a couple of months on PowerMacs, a few years back. In CodeWarrior, running on top of (I think) OS8. Well any memory allocation mistake in my (crappy) code used to bring the entire system down at runtime. Fatal error message with the bomb and all.
It may have been more secure at the time, but there was probably not much that could be saved under the hood…
First, security through obscurity is not a security. The holes exist and are neglected on the assumption that no one will try to exploit them… Until someone exploits them.
Also, there were less possible holes in Classic because it didn’t have near the functionality that Mac OS X offers. This is tantamount to selling a rickshaw on how little engine care is involved. What the salesman isn’t telling you is that the thing hits 7 MPH and carries two people, tops.
As for Apple continuing on with the Mac OS 7/8/9 lineage, it may not have been as much of a mess as Apple or others made it seem in the late Nineties, but it certainly was not up to the task of doing everything a more “modern” OS could do. BeOS and OPENSTEP had it beat in all of those departments. Shunting in that functionality to Classic would have been a larger headache with about the same amount of risk as the Rhapsody/Mac OS X plan was. So, why not just go to a new platform? And that’s exactly what Apple did.
And, among many of the other benefits already mentioned above and elsewhere, buying NeXT got Jobs back in the company. Really, some would say that they paid $400 million for Jobs, and got OPENSTEP as a free bonus.
Edited 2006-10-26 04:11
Those who know the history of Apple easily recognize that Steve Wozniak was the man behind the technical splendor that was emerging. Apple I, Apple II was due to his labour.
Nevertheless, I think that Steve has lost a little bit sense of reality. Times are different, way different and raw comparasion is not that easy.
Also, the option to base Mac OS X on *nix grants access to a lot of Free Software apps already available for *nix. On the other hand, there are a lot more programmers with knowledge of a *nix than compared to those that have expertize on Mac OS 9.
Continuing to develop over Mac OS 9 would be senseless. I’m sorry Steve, you’ve missed this one.
Edited 2006-10-25 20:17
Those who know the history of Apple easily recognize that Steve Wozniak was the man behind the technical splendor that was emerging. Apple I, Apple II was due to his labour.
Yes, that is the common myth, but read the book “On the Edge” about the history of Commodore and you get a very, very different perspective of the Woz. He is not and was not the god that some people make him out to be.
Commodore?
“He is not and was not the god that some people make him out to be.”
Indeed. Commodore, Acorn and various other companies were making better engineered 6502-based microcomputers than Apple were, although Woz’s “from scratch” hardware hacks do afford him some respect.
But, Wozniak concedes, the switch to OS X wasn’t a bad thing. “Now looking back it’s a good thing we have a better more stable more complete better operating system, from the ground up,” he said.
So Woz don’t think it was needed, but he also don’t think it was a bad choice…
There is (and there was) much more to OPENSTEP than preemptive multitask..
Of course, it provided proper multitask, obviously an improvement on OS9. But the main advantages of NeXT’s OPENSTEP were the absolutely incredible development tools (InterfaceBuilder and the OpenStep framework), the really object-oriented environment (sadly, OS X tonned that down — all the capacities are here but aren’t as exposed to the user as they were on OPENSTEP) full vector display (DisplayPostScript), true multiuser, etc.
OS X is an evolution of these concepts. In addition to that, beeing based on PostScript, OPENSTEP provided a perfect environment for DTP — one of the big Apple markets.
BeOS was a very cool OS, indeed, with excellent ideas. But OPENSTEP was pragmatically better (if only because it supported printer, pantone colors, was more robust, had a proved track record, etc), and really a better choice in the end. The BeOS toolkit was nice, but Cocoa is quite a few steps above (beside Objective-C > C++ .. but hey).
Edited 2006-10-25 20:32
How much does the Woz know about software (in comparison to his knowledge of hardware?).
My impression is he is a hardware guru, can anyone shed light on this? Having owned an Apple IIe, Mac SE (still working), and now a G5 (with a couple of things in between), I have emense respect for the man and what he helped create but is this really his forte?
… it was a steaming pile of spaghetti code that could be extremely unstable depending on what programs you loaded, it didn’t recognize more than one processor, and it was crap for multitasking.
I’ll take OS X over classic any day.
I think what Woz is hinting at is that Apple needed not ditch the structure of OS 7-9 in favour of a UNIX-based one. I think he wants to say, hey, we could’ve extended and improved our existing OS, so that it would be capable of doing all the things OS X does now.
And I think he has a point.
…need one say more?
How many years of development was it before Apple finally discarded the idea of the ’32-bit, multi threaded, multi tasking, memory protected, smp-aware modern OS based on OS 7.x’???
I personally don’t think they’d ever get it right… It’d be too much work, too many changes had to be done.
Edited 2006-10-25 21:32
SO they could have spent millions trying to get their not-so-great older OS proper memory protection, SMP support, preemptive multitasking etc etc or purchase a very nice, already completed OS and add a VM that would run a version of the older os for backwards compatibility?
I think NeXT was a MUCH better choice. They would have had to completely rewrite classic and still had to use a VM (most likely) to be properly compatible with older apps.
or maybe im totally wrong.. who knows…
Erm, it is not as if OSX is NeXT 2.0. They used components and ideas from NeXT.
I think that in the end, either way would’ve succeeded. Personally, I would’ve preferred they bought Be, since I like BeOS more than I do UNIX or UNIX-like systems.
Thats good! Since the versions were up to Openstep 4.2!
And, OSX is more Openstep than you think.
Erm, it is not as if OSX is NeXT 2.0. They used components and ideas from NeXT.
Having actually used NeXT for a while back in the day, saying OSX uses components of NeXT is silly. It is not a fundamentally different OS, OSX IS NeXT. It is heavily modified under the hood and has a spiffy new paintjob, but it is still NeXT. OSX is NeXT with components of System 9 in it, not the other way around.
“I think NeXT was a MUCH better choice. They would have had to completely rewrite classic and still had to use a VM (most likely) to be properly compatible with older apps.”
Indeed. Apple’s operating system rewrite projects were just tar pits, and the infighting and politics that make up 90% of the Apple story would have made the whole strategy unviable. If you have to credit Steve Jobs with one thing it’s cutting right through all that and giving the Mac the operating system it should have had all along.
If you’re talking about Rhapsody …? From what I understand, anything that offered protected memory, true multiprocessor support, and multitasking was going to require a start from sratch approach; very little of the original OS could’ve been used.
I agree that Woz has a point.
Apple’s failure to produce a “modern” operating system was the result of bad management, rather than the shortcomings of the classic Mac OS. It took Apple many years after the acquisition of NeXT to recover from those management issues and produce a mediocre operating system (Mac OS X 10.0 and Mac OS X 10.2).
Carbon itself should be ample evidence that Mac OS could have been modernized. It is the classic Mac OS API, adapted for memory protection and preemptive multitasking and other such goodies. But Apple felt that they had to reinvent itself, so NeXT became the keystone.
…who makes dog collars now
How about purchasing danger next steve jobs – make Woz happy 🙂
… read this article (and cry) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_memory_management
[bomb] “Sorry, an error of Type 11 occurred.” Which I saw constantly on my Powerbook 520c, running Systems 7.5.3 – 7.5.5.
There are some things I liked better, appearance-wise, on the Classic Mac OS, such as labels coloring the entire folder, not just the title, but for the most part System 7 was not very stable. I am a Mac user, and supported Apple throughout their troubles in the mid-1990’s, but a lot of their efforts during the years weren’t really that wonderful. Better than Windows, but not up to OS X standards.
“Sorry, an error of Type 11 occurred.”
That always made me wonder. Wouldn’t the kind of people the Mac is marketed towards (non-techies, basically) think, “What the F*CK is an Error of Type 11?!”
I never did figure that out
I had a PowerPC 603e upgrade in the 520c, before that it was Type -1 errors or something.
You’re right, though… not at all user-friendly!
“In this book Wozniak claims that the OS 7 crashes were linked to running Microsoft Internet Explorer, rather than the Apple operating system. He says that his own research made it clear that people with IE installed on their Macs were suffering from crashes, but those who used alternative browsers, such as Netscape, were experiencing no problems…There was nothing wrong with OS 7.”
HA HA HA
I remember using OS 7 before the internet was even a reality. To say that the mysterious crashes were a post-IE problem is laughable to anyone who used those systems. The lack of proper memory managament caused the system to crash all the time when using industrial apps like Adobe Photoshop or QuarkXPress. One sloppily written plugin could bring the whole machine down. That says nothing for the cooperative multitasking model causing ridiculously poor multitasking performance. I recall running large print jobs intentionally while playing Tetris because it made the advanced levels slow as molasses. I’d love to sample a little of what Steve is smoking.
Edited 2006-10-25 21:56
I remember using OS 7 before the internet was even a reality.
The internet pre-dates the MAC, so I wonder what hardware platform you were using OS 7 on.
The internet pre-dates the MAC, so I wonder what hardware platform you were using OS 7 on.
Are you confusing the original ARPAnet with internet? The pubicly held concept of the internet is a 1990’s thing, and last time I checked the Mac was first made in 1984.
Regardless, the world wide web was several years after the introduction of the internet (back then it was all the proprietary BBS’s, AOL, Compuserve, GEnie, et cetera) and Internet Explorer for the Mac came even later than that. It doesn’t change the original point that there were stability problems with OS 7 long before Internet Explorer first graced the platform with it presence.
Edited 2006-10-26 12:28
Are you confusing the original ARPAnet with internet?
In ’84, we split MILnet from ARPAnet with only a few trusted gateways allowed. At that time we started calling it the internet, although it was always an internet. The “public” internet started when we split off NFS net and DARPA stopped funding. At that time it became possible to access the net via a limited number of commercial ISPs.
You’re “90s” thing was when we allowed the internet to be used for commercial purposes. Bad mistake, but there’s no going back.
In ’84, we split MILnet from ARPAnet with only a few trusted gateways allowed. The “public” internet started when we split off NFS net and DARPA stopped funding. The “public” internet started when we split off NFS net and DARPA stopped funding. At that time it became possible to access the net via a limited number of commercial ISPs.
Merger of NSFnet and ARPAnet occured in 1986, but it was still for government and academic uses, if I recall correctly that was after the release of the original Macintosh wasn’t it? Likewise widespread public use of the internet, specifically outside the government and academia, wasn’t several years later. Furthermore Woz’s contention about the IE browser caused the stability problem is more an issue of the world wide web aspect of the internet, not the network itself. While the first web server may date to 1990, it wasn’t until 1993/1994 that anyone was really using it. At that point System 7 had been around with stability problems galore for some time.
You’re “90s” thing was when we allowed the internet to be used for commercial purposes. Bad mistake, but there’s no going back.
I know, it’s been so horrible that we’ve managed to connect so many people to each other and information resources while at the same time letting people make some money in the process.
Actually Steve Wozniak’s correct.
Except for two (?) caveats, “inits” and A5 worlds.
Mac OS 8 (Copland), the real one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201479559/qid=1152563948/sr=1-16/…
was on it’s way to addressing much of what we enjoy today.
If you have ever seen any of those Copland builds “floating” around, as crash prone as they were, were beautiful, the ResEdit they shipped with it was functional and they had new resources/extentions thingys (<– technical term) that I never quite figured out, kinda, maybe an OpenDoc modular model.
The OS 8 book sited above clears up a lot, it’s quite through.
The programmers that built the Macintosh were artist
System 7 was a work of art.
What became Mac OS 7.6, 8.x (7.7) and 9,x, were the remnants of that failed attempt/experiment.
I’d really like to have seen what Copland could have become, that whole OS model was a revolution.
http://myoldmac.net/webse-e-flash.htm
http://www.nd.edu/~jvanderk/sysone/
http://main.system7today.com/
http://www.macdrivermuseum.net/disk.html
http://www.mackido.com/
Since when has THAT been a good idea?
“Since when has THAT been a good idea?”
Are you saying that strong passwords isn’t a good idea? There’s good obscurity and bad obscurity.
I have owned my own Mac since the days of the Performa 550 running os 7.5.3. During which time I was constantly online (eWorld then AOL). My friends all had x86 boxes running WFW3.11. During this time my friends were always getting some kind of virus or trojan on their computers and I NEVER HAD ONE. Not because people didnt write them for Macs, just because it was harder to compromise a Mac. True, if you compare an OS9 box to a new XP SP2 or Mac OSX box, it probably isnt as secure, but for its time I believe they were very secure.
OS X is an incredible OS, but I think that Apple, with the right direction, counld have taken their own os and combined it with the best of the others around (BeOS and OpenStep) and made an OS that would have destroyed everything in sight
Edited 2006-10-25 22:35
At least you could make heads or tails of what was going on then.
Now:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/…
You don’t have a chance of figuring out who is really controlling what’s going on.
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/402
CarbonErrors
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19236
Meaning of Error Type 11
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=16004
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=18912
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos8/mac8.html
ResEdit
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/417
MacsBug
http://developer.apple.com/tools/debuggers/MacsBug/
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos8/DevTools/MacsBug/Ma…
Stuff
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Up…
LOL
Did anyone see him on the show?
This guy is a moron. He might be a good hardware engineer, but probably not for software and no business sense probably. He just seemed really dumb on the show. Stephen even asked him: “Are you sure you invented the computer?
The merger had come and gone, the Engineering teams were restructured and the Tevanian team salvaged Mac OS and release the last versions of 8.x and then OS 9 to satisfy the legacy needs of Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, etc.
Mac OS never compared to Openstep and it sure as hell didn’t compare to what was planned for OS X that is still just beginning to show its teeth.
The title of this article is soooo wrong!! Sorry to say but this feels like an OS News flamebait.
Lets break it in 4 small parts:
1- Most of the crashes in OS7 were because of Microsoft’s IE even if it wasn’t running:
QUOTE:
“OS 7 crashes were linked to running Microsoft Internet Explorer, rather than the Apple operating system(…)those who used alternative browsers, such as Netscape, were experiencing no problems(…)IE did not have to be running for the crashes to happen”
2- Woz never says OS9 is more secure than OS X, not once! He only says he has warned Steve Jobs that Apple didn’t need the huge amount of money needed to buy NeXT.
QUOTE
“we didn’t really need a new operating system for that amount of money involved in the purchase of NeXT”
3- But he does compare both OS9 and OS X, just to say the oposite of the article’s title:
QUOTE:
“Looking back it’s a good thing we have a BETTER MORE STABLE MORE COMPLETE BETTER operating system, from the ground up”
Again:
– Better
– More stable
– More complete
– Better operating system
4- The only thing he says is that Unix is more prone to attacks because people are familiar with the holes in Unix. Well duh! But Unix is around for more than 30 years, this is a proven base for any ‘internet ready’ Operating System. The core of OS X is NOT made of unproven technologies!
5- The rest of the article is just boring stuff about his past experiences, talking about the type of person who seeks to break into an operating system and such.
Apple’s project ‘Copland’ gave us nothing. They were just spending money and resources while Win95 was eating Apple’s market share. Gil Amelio and even Ellen Hancock realized the situation was hopeless. So they did the right thing. NeXT was bought, Steve Jobs returned more matured to his ‘home’ and Apple in right on track.
Again, the only reason I can find for such a bad chosen title is, I’m afraid to said, that this is just a flamebait. Even the original article only says ‘Apple didn’t need NeXT’ – Woz.
Edited 2006-10-26 01:38
Woz never says OS9 is more secure than OS X, not once!
Oh? He clearly says OS 9 was more secure than OSX:
“Not that Mac OS 9 – the operating system that predated OS X – was not stable. According to Wozniak. “That was something to say for Mac OS 9. It was just so secure,” he said, denying that the security was based on the fact that being a minority operating system meant that nobody was interested in attacking it. He explained: “Mac OS 9 was differently constructed to anything else. It wasn’t because it was minor and unknown.”
Mac OS X on the other hand is built in Unix and is therefore is more prone to attacks because people are familiar with the holes in Unix, explained Woznaik. “Some of the holes in Unix are well known. So keeping Firewalls on is more important. And we keep announcing, even our own security fixes, not as many as Microsoft but still we never really had those in the OS 9 days.”
I see the distortion field is still up and running
.
Edited 2006-10-26 08:11
I think you got it all wrong. Ok, he does say Mac OS X is more prone to attacks. Its Unix and it has been around for more than 30 years. Sure its faults are well know. OS 9 was not an ‘internet OS’ and security via obscurity is no security at all. The worst thing is not being unsafe, is thinking you’re safe when you’re not.
He does compare OS9 to OSX when he says that, and I quote again “Looking back it’s a good thing we have a better more stable more complete better operating system, from the ground up”
Once again, comparing to OS9 in Woz’s own words, OSX is:
– Better
– More stable
– More complete
– Better operating system
No distortion whatsoever. I really think you got it all wrong.
No distortion whatsoever. I really think you got it all wrong.
No, YOU get it wrong. He says CLEARLY that OSX is less secure than OS9. It’s RIGHT THERE in plain sight.
“That was something to say for Mac OS 9. It was just so secure,” he said. […] Mac OS X on the other hand is built in Unix and is therefore is more prone to attacks [than OS 9] because people are familiar with the holes in Unix, explained Woznaik.”
Governa, it’s right there in plain sight: he says OSX is more prone to attacks than OS9. In other words, Woz says that OSX is less secure than OS9. Anyone not affected by the RTF understands that.
> No, YOU get it wrong.
It doesn’t need to be an expert to realize Mac OS X is a better OS in every aspect (and I surely include security) than previous incarnations of Mac OS. I don’t think Woz meant what you think he meant, and from what I’ve read, most of the replies seem to express the same feeling as mine.
One thing we agree is that we disagree. No hard feelings.
I still think you’re flamebaiting though…
Edited 2006-10-26 14:01
Its Unix and it has been around for more than 30 years. Sure its faults are well know.
You know, UNIX actually evolved during these 30 years. Also, most “UNIX” exploits are actually application exploits (eg. SSH exploits, sudo exploits). The few that are kernel based are often specific to a particular kernel (linux exploits will not work on FreeBSD, FreeBSD kernel exploits will not work on NetBSD, NetBSD kernel exploits will not work on OpenBSD and so on and so forth)
The worst thing is not being unsafe, is thinking you’re safe when you’re not.
That applies to any OS, Mac OS classic included.
2- Woz never says OS9 is more secure than OS X, not once! He only says he has warned Steve Jobs that Apple didn’t need the huge amount of money needed to buy NeXT.
QUOTE
“we didn’t really need a new operating system for that amount of money involved in the purchase of NeXT”
What you’re actually saying is that Apple did not need the money needed to buy NeXT.
This effectively means that in your interpretation, Apple had way too much money and that they didn’t need it…
Where exactly does the quote state that??
> What you’re actually saying is that Apple did not
> need the money needed to buy NeXT.
> This effectively means that in your interpretation,
> Apple had way too much money and that they didn’t
> need it…
Well my english is not perfect, but you got my point. I’ve quoted what I meant.
Maybe you prefer to continue this discussion in my mother tongue?
I believe it was a Macworld article at the time of the purchase of NeXT that basically said, Apple didn’t buy NeXT. Apple bought Steve Jobs.
Edited 2006-10-26 02:06
Completely agree with you, Apple needed Steve Jobs more than NeXT. OS X got Apple a lot of respect in the computer world, OS X was/is the one of the major reasons for so many users switching to the mac. There has also been an increase in the number of apps and quality of the apps, OS X has more than 10,000 applications, a lot of X11 based apps etc.
OS X, all the Linux based operating systems, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, other Unix like Operating Systems are prone to the security exploits of Unix, guess that makes Windows the most secure Operating System ever.
I remember some company specializing in web server software for the Mac OS held a contest with a prize for $100,000 for someone being able to break in to their secure Mac OS config. No one claimed the money for the duration of the contest. So they extended it. And still no one was able to win, so eventually they ended it I think. Anyone remember anything about this?
Woz says: “I love my dog, he’s wonderful, but sometimes when he chews up the remote I just want to smack him. But all dogs are like that.”
Media reports: Woz expressed his dislike of dogs. “I just want to smack [them]. All dogs are like that.”
Computer nerds see: Woz has taken to patrolling the streets with a flamethrower, incinerating stray dogs. He blames Apple.
Woz has apparently bought into the “security through obscurity works” myth, when he claims that OS 9 is “more secure” than OS X. The fact of the matter is that there are probably more security problems in OS 9 than OS X. The fact that no one is actively looking for them doesn’t alter that fact.
> And we keep announcing, even our own security fixes, not as many as Microsoft but still we never really had those in the OS 9 days.
I am a huge Woz fan, but this quote is ill-considered. Back in the Day, there were about 50 people on the Internet, and the only hacker was Woz. So of course nobody hacked his OS 9 box.
I’m being silly, of course. But there’s no possible comparison of the Wild West Internet we have today and the gentler era in which the lovely and exotic OS 9 dinosaurs walked the earth. I liked OS 9 (it was fast!) and keep a dual boot iMac around for when nostalgia bites, but OS X is vastly superior.
I’ve got two words to describe one aspect of OS X’s superiority to Classic,
Protected Memory
OK, I found the details of the “Crack a Mac” contest that no one was able to win. Here’s a link: http://db.tidbits.com/article/02166
Here’s a snipit from the article:
What We Did and Why — To prepare for the Crack A Mac contest, we simply unpacked a standard Power Macintosh 8500/150 from its box. Then we installed WebSTAR 2.0 (the popular Macintosh Web server from StarNine), upgraded to Open Transport 1.1.2, connected the machine to the Internet, and put some Web pages on it. We didn’t do anything special with the server – it wasn’t behind a firewall, and we didn’t make any other security arrangements.
The article is pretty interesting in how people attempted to crack the server unsuccessfully.
I for one do not miss the quagmire that was OS9. Extensions, Inits and the like were a bear to troubleshoot.
I don’t miss the instability and the complete freezes that OS9 brought too. Freezes that are all but gone in OSX, thanks to the architecture and the way things multi-task that were impossible in OS9.
And yet MacOS versions < OS X completely suck and without OS X, Apple could not have enjoyed the success they have had during the last 4 or 5 years.
Woz may be right with regards to security, but if your OS has gone the way of OS/2, I don’t see that it really matters much.
You never heard of DOS exploits either, but I don’t think we should all revert to DOS.