Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 12th May 2006 13:53 UTC, submitted by IndigoJo
Alcibiades' recent article hit some sensitive nerves. One of our readers wrote a retort, stating: "The reader will notice that this author glosses over two important issues in attacking the Mac community. One of these is that Windows, at least since 95, has always been notorious for its reliability and security issues. He does not mention the 'Blue Screen of Death' even once. He does not mention the fact that, to run Windows reliably, you need anti-virus software which costs extra (unless it came bundled with the machine), and uses extra system resources. He does not mention the continual updates, which as time goes on, detract from the performance of Windows - or even that the last fresh Windows OS was released as long ago as 2001."
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RE[7]: ...the last fresh OS ???....
by junior on Sat 13th May 2006 09:15
in reply to "RE[6]: ...the last fresh OS ???...."
Member since:2005-07-07
"Err ... first of all, OS X does not ask you to approve any new file as it arrives. It asks you to authenticate yourself if an application wants to do something that only administrators can touch"
Additionally, OS X asks you for approval if you try to download an executable file and if you try to run an executable file for the first time.
"Third, none of this has anything to do with file system permissions. And ACLs still win out over typical UNIX permissions. "
Luckily, OS X has support for ACL's which you can turn on or off with a single command. FreeBSD has had ACL support for years.
"Bzzt. You lose."
I always love intelligent, mature discourse.
Member since:
2005-07-06
> 1. As far as I am concerned "fresh OS" means exactly that: a new OS from the ground up. Windows NT was that for Microsoft and Mac OS X 10.0 was that for Apple.
Nope. Mac OS X is a conglomeration of various other (and old) technologies, with some new-era spice. NeXTStep, Mach, FreeBSD ...
Windows NT? Ever heard of OS/2? ;-)
> 2. Windows NT was introduced with support for 16 native threads per CPU and not much has changed in XP.
Do you have a source of information about this? Or is it just hearsay/FUD on your part?
> 3. Permissions is the simple biggest reason that Mac OS X is safer than Windows. Windows ACLs are not the same and the user is NOT asked to approve execution of any new file as it arrives.
Err ... first of all, OS X does not ask you to approve any new file as it arrives. It asks you to authenticate yourself if an application wants to do something that only administrators can touch.
Second of all, XP with SP2 asks you to confirm execution of downloaded/received files.
Third, none of this has anything to do with file system permissions. And ACLs still win out over typical UNIX permissions.
> 4. Vista has been gradually eroding in feature set since it was first mooted. The new file system was booted and so forth. I don't know the exact details of the new feature set but it all sounds like warmed over leftovers to me.
Vista never had a new file system, but rather a database layer on top of NTFS. This is still coming post-release.
The rest of your points ... well, you have no points. It just "I don't know the exact details, but I'm sure there's SOMETHING wrong with it!"
Bzzt. You lose.