The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit over 12 months reveals that the world’s safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment – operating system plus applications – is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD and the Mac OS X based on Darwin. On the same report, Linux doesn’t rate as well. Elsewhere, AppleInsider and Gavers posted news about OSX Tiger: Burnable folders, revised Smart Folders.
Study: Mac OS X (and BSD) ‘world’s safest and most secure’ OS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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So you are telling me that OSX out of the box is more secure the OpenBSD out of the box. Riiiiiight
can you say “FUNDED STUDY” ???
Where to start…
Q: How do you define “safest and most secure”?
A: According to this “report”, the definition is “fewest breaches and malware/viruses that exist”. Guess what? When you have < 2% market share on the desktop, and almost no server presence, what is the point of developing attacks? A *better* but still flawed metric would be breaches/malware instances VS. market penetration… but even then, it doesn’t account for the fact that there is more motivation to attack Linux or Windows.
Q: How do you predict future vulnerability?
A: According to this article, by past performance. This is what is called an ASSUMPTION. Nowhere is that stated, and nowhere is that justified.
So you are telling me that OSX out of the box is more secure the OpenBSD out of the box. Riiiiiight
can you say “FUNDED STUDY” ???
If you would’ve actualy read the article you’d know that they say BSD and OS X. When will people learn to read.
I hereby put forward a motion that we should all undertake the effor to exclude the following phrases from posts:
* “Guess what”
* “Can you say”
* “Get a clue”
* “ever heard of”
* “oh no wait”
All in favour say aye.
well.. i got 2 computers, a homebuilt jalopy running ubuntu( undecided) and a week old 14 inch ibook 1.3ghz .Come on guys. Lets not become religious about this and lets also look at some simple facts. Firstly there are a buttload of linux machines out there being run by newbs who have no idea how to secure their linuxboxen. Secondly, and sadly there really arent a ton of macusers. Combined these two facts alone would tend to skew any study , that is if one merely looks at the absolute statictical data. Thirdly, what is osX? from what ive read an all, its bsd with mach. Bsd is known to be a realtively(heh) secure OS, yes? also… its just plain damn sexy to look at. Aqua on kde(msofet liquid) isnt anywhere as sexy as the native treatment on osX.
It’s just the title on OSNews that’s very wrong and misleading – they clearly say “BSD and Mac OS X” in the article, yet the title on OSNews.com only says that Mac OS X is the world’s most secure OS.
While I kind of like the news, since I’ve got a Mac now, I can’t say that I trust the source. Pity.
What study?All they present are plain numbers.Like the misleading photoshop benchmark on the Apple website.They don’t like you to see the real-life gaming benchmarks that’s for sure.Still i think MacOsX is an very nice OS but some people like to play with proportions.
This is clearly security by obscurity. It does NOT show that under the same types of attempts by the same hackers, that OS X is more secure.
take teh security rating they give, X.
divide it by the number of working installations, Y.
a more realistic score is X/Y.
i have a very secure operating system. there are only 5 installs in the world and it has not yet been hacked.
Maybe people should try to understand what empirical studies mean, before discounting them as biased or claiming they are the gospel truth.
It means you feed a certain set of data in, and obtain certain conclusions. This study seems to be pretty clear about what data is going in, and it is pretty clear about the conclusions being drawn. For example: they don’t say that Linux is less secure than Windows, they say it is more prone to non-automated attacks. They are also very clear that BSD and Mac OS X users don’t have to worry about malware and such as much, because of the smaller market.
As an earlier poster suggested: people should learn how to read.
The security by obscurity argument doesn’t hold water. Sure, a lesser used operating system is going to receive less exploits than a popular one, but if the obscurity argument held true then you would see a number of security exploits that are proportionate to the OSes install base.
The reason why OS X and BSD are so secure is because there are *0* ports open on a default install. When we compare this to Windows which practically has all of them open and then incorporates macro technology in all their software applications you have a firtle breeding ground fro viri and security problems.
The survey is right. Those of you that are working so hard to find conspiracy theories only prove your bias.
As an earlier poster suggested: people should learn how to read.
Hah! Next you’re going to suggest we think critically about something.
They are also very clear that BSD and Mac OS X users don’t have to worry about malware and such as much, because of the smaller market.
Only due to the smaller market share?
Hah! Next you’re going to suggest we think critically about something.
I would have suggested it, but some fool would send their lawyers after me if they hurt themself in the process.
Give mac users a break. The last 2 articles on osnews were against mac users like the gartner report and the mac gaming market.
You guys, and this article have it all wrong:
Apple’s OS 9 is by far the most secure OS.
{:o)
“Only due to the smaller market share?”
#1) You mean install base. (Market share is totally non relivant to this discussion)
#2) if that were true you would see a number of exploits proportionate to its install base.
well market share has nothing to do with an os having built in security. for example windows has no such thing as previleged separation and persistent file system security. mac osx does and bsd plus macs has state of the art iptables that perform stateful packet filtering. including a openssh server for secure remote logins vs telnet in the clear. try to run an executeable on macosx or bsd and it will prompt for root user permissions do that on windows and it just runs. surf the web with macosx or bsd and go to any site without being taken over do that with windows and system starts to crash all over the place. face it market share has nothing to do with it, macosx bsd are based on technology that was invented 37 years ago called unix, it just works vs windows crap that dont.
Even with its small userbase (about the same size as OSX), Linux comes up with over 65% of the breaches?!? I’m guessing thats from people who have no idea what they’re doing installing a Linux distro and running everything/leaving everything wide open.
In terms of share of breaches/share of market (lower is better):
Linux: 65%/4% = 16.3
OSX+BSD: 5%/4% = 1.25
Windows: 25%/90% = .278
(the numbers are rounded, but you see the overall trend)
you know whats interesting how i can run my osx box with no virus scanner and still download a bunch of p2p files and songs and such without being breached your percentage means nothing. osx and bsd are based on real operating system technology which is unix and thats it. windows was not the first operating system in existence and its based on a flawed monolithic design versus a secure modular design which is everything else based on unix, ie macosx bsd linux openvms aix
solaris etc you get the point dude get a clue and use something that is secure by default, either that or get a clue about what an operating system is
Would you people stop interchanging market share with install base. You sound like idiots when you do it.
You might as well use a nonsensical word like “color ratio” or something like that as that has just as much relivance when you’re talking of the total number of computers in use.
Market share does not mean the total number of computers within the market… it ONLY means the number of computers sold during that quarter.
I am not worried about the stupid market share numbers that stuff is meaningless just the morons that have no knowledge of
operating system technologies outside of windoze.
If all you people rely on is some posting about market share and system security you really dont have a clue about the technoligies behind unix vs windows. Only fools would reply that smaller numbers mean less viruses thats not it. its really much more difficult to code a worm for unix systems than its for windows because of the ground up design of the 2 systems. windows will forever be flawed because of its initial design, vs unix systems which will always be 99.9% more secure than windows.
I’m sorry, but your divide comprimises by installed user base bit doesn’t hold for this study. They were pretty clear that these numbers were for machines running 24/7. I’m fairly certain that a larger percentage of *ix users run 2/47 than Windows users (or Mac OS X users, for that matter). Also, a lot of office computers will have no internet connection — or internet access will be so tightly controlled that you may as well say they have no internet access. This would cut down the Windows share of connected machines quite significantly.
http://www.attrition.org/errata/charlatan/mi2g-history.html
The survey is right. Those of you that are working so hard to find conspiracy theories only prove your bias.
What convinces you that the study is right?You can’t even view he whole study unless you’re going to pay for it.Unless they publictly make the results avaible so one can have a look at and judge it on its real facts and merits it’s just a canar.A real test would have involved a population of IT experts with all the same system skills connected to the internet.If someone makes an unhappy decision what turns out o be disastrous for the system-wide security and the systemgets hacked, will this one count?There are a lot of apps that see the commercial light to soon or are just bad.If a linux webserver gets
rooted due to the webmaster screwed with php,the system gets married with, does this one count in the overall linux or other OS is less secure?
Conspiracy theory?Nah we leave that to others to masturbate over.
“I am not worried about the stupid market share numbers that stuff is meaningless just the morons that have no knowledge of operating system technologies outside of windoze.”
yes, but it is these same morons that make business decisions based on market share statisitcs and equate them with install base statistics. They fuel the notion that Apple’s numbers are shrinking thus causing some to think buying Apple hardware is a risky investment.
We need to not fuel that misconception and make sure we correct it whereever its used.
(see subject). It’s a bunch of numbers here, but relates little to practical use. Example: if I hook up 10 Windows PC’s in a home network, and that to the internet, with Linux on a router box in between. Now if a hacker decides to break into that network, what does that mean? He’ll have to break into the router box first. Does that make the Linux box less secure, because it’s always the first to get broken into? Surely not.
Also, I assume that a properly configured Linux install can be very secure, comparable to BSD systems. And badly configured can be very insecure, regardless of Linux, BSD, Windows or other. Badly configured=less secure OS? Nope, just a sloppy admin.
For some sensible results: take large number of end-user systems (with every OS present in similar numbers), hook up directly to the same large network (LAN party style), then take a varied group of skilled hackers, give ‘m the same set of tools, same time, and $$$ for every box broken into (regardless of OS), then you get some idea of how secure various OS are in practice. And even this would tell you little about differences in how the owners/admins handle their boxes.
“What convinces you that the study is right?You can’t even viewthe whole study unless you’re going to pay for it.”
because those is not the first time this study has been conducted. The same results were drawn after a study that occured approximately 3 or 4 months ago. I sall the full report then.
Even if I haden’t, it doesn’t take an genius to understand that a locked door is less likely to get broken into as compared to something without any door at all.
When I realised it takes absolute numbers of compromises as its definition of ‘most secure’. i.e., in the situation where 1 server runs A, 50,000 servers run B, and 100,000 servers run C, if the one server that ran A was breached, two servers that ran B were breached and three servers that ran C were breached, this survey would conclude that A was twice as secure as B.
bwaahahahahahahaha…
Adam, you’re assuming that the numbers were garnered using existing install base numbers.
They took an equal sampling from each platform.
These numbers mean nothing. It’s a bunch of bull shit. And I’m not swearing gratutiously.
http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=296
quote:
The report does not include the number of failed attacks versus successful attacks, so we don’t really know how secure or insecure the OS’s are on their own. It also doesn’t include any details on what types of organizations the penetrations happened in or how experienced the server administrators are.
It does however make the point that Linux can not depend on obscurity as a fallback. Poorly written code is poorly written code, be it windows, linux, bsd or others. Security == good code + good administration.
do you think OSX only have nice interface?
try osx then tell me.
n terms of share of breaches/share of market (lower is better):
Linux: 65%/4% = 16.3
OSX+BSD: 5%/4% = 1.25
Windows: 25%/90% = .278
OK…now I’m going to answer this intelligently. When you viewed the statistics for install base…did you happen to look at desktop install base. Now factor in servers, where Linux sits at a higher number than 4 % and Mac OS runs on a lot fewer computers.
I bet there weren’t any MS-DOS hacks at the time..
It’s more secure!
Any “study” is met by cries that it proves nothing, and further no study proves anything, until you stop dissing my OS.
Yet, this talk is silly, because we don’t need any studies to “prove” that Windows is more susceptible than BSD to viruses, malware or remote exploits. That’s like a study proving that dolphins are less likely than rabbits to be run over by cars. Does anyone really need numbers to confirm that BSD is safer from viruses?
That being said, I don’t generally trust reports or studies on these matters. More often than not they are PR pieces, or suffer from bad methodology. Yet, I wouldn’t expect their conclusions to be so disputed.
Caj
Anonymous (IP: 62.132.1.—) –
[i]Even if I haden’t, it doesn’t take an genius to understand that a locked door is less likely to get broken into as compared to something without any door at all.
To much closed doors wouldn’t do the e-business any good.
A webserver has to be reached otherwise it is pretty useless.
Often stated that firewalls shouldn’t be seen as the first defence line,but more as little remedie when everything else fails to prevail.Even if allmost all services are shut down ,some have to be on on every server otherwise the server can’t serve anymore.On every system here can’t be none possible ways of abusing apps because of future bugs yet to be discovered.Doesn’t matter *only* which port is open but allso what’s behind it.
What is equal sampling? That’s so vague.
I will say that OSX ships very damn secure out of the box and setting up the firewall is a matter of opening a control panel and making a few mouse clicks. The control panel makes it clear what is/isn’t locked.
Fast, straighforward, simple.
(If I want to hit the terminal I can totally customize it. But the user doesn’t have to go to the terminal or know *nixish to get solid basic security.)
I’m going to load Ubuntu on a powerbook of mine, soon, and one of the things I’m interested is how secure by default it is, how easy is it to determine what my settings are, and how easy is it to change them.
I know I didn’t specifically go looking for security settings on YDL during the 3 months I ran it. (But I have faith that KDE managed to bury & scatter the relevant settings throuout several different control panels.;p)
I can’t begin to tell you how to secure XP here at work — I’m locked out of the relevant control panels and all my kanoodling hasn’t let me find an unlocked back door. (Durn systems! They did a competent job setting up user permissions!)
At the end of the day, if setting up and securing a home computer isn’t as straightforward as it is OS X, I can see how it doesn’t get done, or how it gets done badly.
Security through obscurity is one thing, but security through good defaults and clear, straightforward, user friendly interfaces are the other half of the equation.
This article states what we already knew…stop whining all you cry babies. “its not fair, its biased…wah wah wah…”
Besides the long clouded history this so called company has I also was not impressed with the article which Mac Daily News stated as “The most comprehensive study ever undertaken by the mi2g Intelligence Unit”. That quote in the first paragraph of the article had me nearly falling off my chair laughing. It’s amazing how a company that has supposedly obtained the “Queens Award for Enterprise Innovation” can spew off random percentages with out backing it up with facts. Where are the white papers showing the test in process so others can evaluate the test?
Also, saying “Linux” is just generalizing all Linux distributions to be the same when they are not. Novell, Red Hat, etc provide their own enhancements to the kernel and offer various security features that may not be present in other distributions. If Linux is so insecure as MI2G would like everyone to believe then why does the NSA contribute on open source projects such as SELinux? http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
Nope, sorry, they’re wrong. I don’t think it’s fair at all to treat OSX and the BSDs as a block – OpenBSD is well known for being the most secure OS available. That deserved a mention – sure, OSX and the other BSD’s may be in second place, but OpenBSD has had ONE potential security flaw. Ever.
That kicks the crap out of any other OS.
Which isn’t to say OSX is insecure – but this is simple naivety on their part. They’ve heard OSX is “based on BSD” so they’ve lumped them all in together, which isn’t really a fair approach.
… I don’t say nothing. 😀
OpenBSD does not claim to be the most secure OS available. In fact, to say that would be completely inaccurate. OpenBSD lacks many fundamental features required to meet even the lowest levels of high security operating systems such as MAC (Mandatory Access Controls) and ACLs (Access Control Lists).
As an OpenBSD user I NEVER claim it to be the most secure OS. I proclaim it to be proactively secure. It doesn’t leave unncessacery ports open by default, and requires some knowledge and intervention to enable the services that you wish to provide. This still requires you to balance risk vs security.
Installing OpenBSD doesn’t instantly make your system secure. Understanding the fundementals of the systems and services and the risks that they open you up to does.
I don’t see that stated *anywhere*. I simply see absolute numbers of breaches quoted.
A: According to this “report”, the definition is “fewest breaches and malware/viruses that exist”. Guess what? When you have < 2% market share on the desktop, and almost no server presence, what is the point of developing attacks? A *better* but still flawed metric would be breaches/malware instances VS. market penetration… but even then, it doesn’t account for the fact that there is more motivation to attack Linux or Windows.
you know the other problem is with Windows and linux rootkits. some of the rootkits are incredible. one can hide at user level with a ring 3 kit, escalate privs, and hide with a ring 0 kit i.e. most admins won’t know the hacker is there. not to dump on admins, but hackers spend 100% of their time trying to defeat security, and it’s no suprise that the typically end user or admin is behind the curve.
i bet a lot of compromised boxes are reported as clean by their administrators. on Windows esp there are dedicated rootkit detectors that still can’t find a good ring 0 kit. Slanret for instance was discovered only because the server rebooted spontaneously. the newer rootkits are much more stable.
The reason why OS X and BSD are so secure is because there are *0* ports open on a default install.
Proportionally, very few security breaches occur via listening network services.
When we compare this to Windows which practically has all of them open and then incorporates macro technology in all their software applications you have a firtle breeding ground fro viri and security problems.
Ever heard of Applescript ?
The survey is right. Those of you that are working so hard to find conspiracy theories only prove your bias.
The survey probably is right, if your definition of “secure” is “exploited least”.
for example windows has no such thing as previleged separation and persistent file system security.
Yes it does.
mac osx does and bsd plus macs has state of the art iptables that perform stateful packet filtering.
OS X uses IPFW, not iptables.
try to run an executeable on macosx or bsd and it will prompt for root user permissions do that on windows and it just runs.
If you’re running as a regular user on Windows (for a fair comparison) it will either prompt for a privileged user or fail to run.
surf the web with macosx or bsd and go to any site without being taken over do that with windows and system starts to crash all over the place.
I’ve been “surfing the web” with Windows for years.
face it market share has nothing to do with it, macosx bsd are based on technology that was invented 37 years ago called unix, it just works vs windows crap that dont.
Market share has a *lot* to do with it.
windows was not the first operating system in existence and its based on a flawed monolithic design versus a secure modular design which is everything else based on unix, ie macosx bsd linux openvms aix
solaris etc […]
I think that says it all about your level of knowledge, really.
Market share does not mean the total number of computers within the market… it ONLY means the number of computers sold during that quarter.
Says who ?
“Install base” is a phrase that I would interpret as being the raw number of users of a particular platform.
“Market share” I interpret as the *proportion* of a given market a particular thing has. That can mean the market as a whole or just the sales figures for a quarter, depending on the context.
Was OpenVMS included in the study?
It’s not the OS, but the admin really. MS is more widely used and is locked down by default. You cam make MS very secure if you take the time and do your job as systems administraot/analyst. People without proper knowledge and care can leave a BSD, Linux, or MS systems open to attacks and breaches. Let’s face it, a majority of IT folks out there are uneducated to the concept of security and ar to lazy to take any preemptive measures needed in order to secure your systems. MS makes it easy for you to do with tiwht automatic updates for crying out loud. Point is laziness and ignorance can’t be confused with insecurity.
please note I meant MS is more widely used and is not locked down by default…sry.
There is a conflict between security and usability that is not adressed by the article.
Of course systems that have a low market-share also in some sense are more secure. The downside is that they are also less “usable”. Compatibility problems with other users that use the market leader, software that isn’t available etc.
I would say that a reasonable secure system that is also useful would be a good compromise. I would say that MS Windows, MacOS and Linux would all be qualified for this (maybe som others too, I don’t know). Even though you don’t have access to some market-leading software if you choose MacOS or Linux, in many cases that is no big deal.
Games are not the yardstick by which computer performance is measured! People say what a resource hog Doom 3 is btut a buddy of mine with a P3-800 has no trouble playing they game at 1280×1024. He has a really nice graphics board.. No neon tho, I think that would give him a 5fps boost. His loss.
But really, the game fanatics seem to think games are the true measure of performance. This simply is not so.
When I had my old dual G4-500 I tried a simple test with OS X 10.0 or .1? Dunno.
I opened every application on the hard disk and let it run, so I could see how the system performed in this state. To my surprise the system was still stable and responsive with 75+ apps open and consuming resources. I tried the same on a PIII 1.2 or 1.3. Forget it, after about 15 apps the system came to a crawl.
My G5 is currently acting as a SQL server, streaming music server, web server, ftp server, windows file server, and mail server. Additionally, I run 8 instances of setiathome in the background. The system never hiccups and its current load averages are: 8.27 8.19 8.24
While games can capture some metrics they are hardly a decent measure of overall system performance.
OVMS, OS/400. I have yet to see any OS that even approaches the security track record of these two (especially the latter). Of the *nixes OpenBSD definitely has the nicest security record.
-uberpenguin
Games are not the yardstick by which computer performance is measured!
That’s true,it’s one of the many factors that play a rolewhen you are evaluating system performance to get the overall picture.Games are an ideal means of stress testing
the graphical system.For some it matters that they have support for shader (3.0) instead of (2.0). Others can spend hours or months on rendering landscapes or making their own dolby digital 5.1/7.1 music dvd’s.It depends on what you want to do with the cycles.I think it’s a challenge to make a supposedly “insecure” OS a tough nut to crack, up to the point it still has its optimal use.This can be done more or less on a variety of platforms though.
The Reg (www.register.co.uk) has an insteresting discussion on this mob:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/why_is_mi2g_so_unpopular/
yvjdtyv
I run freebsd 4.10 on my desktop computer. It is pretty secure, but i DID have to take measure to secure it. You can select the level of security when you install.
**if one selects extreme, this is pretty secure. a major problem arises in that if the computer is secure enough that it can not gain access to the programs required to run my Wm. im assuming most of the ports are closed, due to the fact that inetd would be closed automatically on this. This setting is recommend if you are running a mailsever, or http based server. you can just let it run, run and run some more.
**if one selects medium, its not nearly as secure. i found that sendmail runs a daemon outside of the inetd. i turned off inetd, and sendmail would show up as being up (sumbit and one other one). i think sendmail is installed by default, this should be an option. A major pain in the ass, but now, its off. i ran nmap/netcat on my system, and came back with one open port. this was by choice, and you can limit what access is given though this port.
i have noticed using my everyday login account, that i can only write to my folder. The overall feel is that i can write, and excute my files in this folder. the OS will NOT let me switch it so that i can write to any other folder. i wanted to create my login to be able to write to a specific folder outside of my normal directory. I can not write, edit, modify any other folders/files. for example, i can login with my normal account, view my xfree config file, but not edit it unless im logged in as root. Which is handles some of the inside work.
I think some people have the idea that security is just closing a few/most outside ports, and call it secure. i think of my computer in the form of a military base. Please bare with
Closing the ports is like building a fence, you can limit who can come in. And yes, people will still figure out ways to get in. The problem is that people on the insider can do just as much damage, if not more with a bad system admin/os. In the same way that a base requires card access to certain area, we should be doing the same. we should be limiting access to specific files/directories. we should be monitoring the ports that are open for activities, and limiting what access is given though these.
Many, many people will graduate in May with degrees in Computer science or computer info system. Not many of them have had enough real experience to sit down and truly secure their OWN computer, let alone a network.
My class catalog at my school is ample proof, look at any schools class catalog. Security is not taught, not taught until one is at a graduate level (my school), or it is an elective. why should something so important that one will have to deal with on a daily basis be an elective!? Ive also wondered how much one learns in these classes as well. It’s one thing to define ‘this is spyware!’ or ‘this is a port’. It’s another thing to say this is how to find spyware on your computer (not talking about spybot/adaware either). The process of learning is more than reading a book, this is shown time and time again.
I firmly believe that the best system admins were at one point ‘hackers’ (not talking about script kiddies). we know the who, how, when, and where of computers, and the attacks. Who is better equipped to secure a network than someone who has had experience playing with/exploiting it? Take for example a system admin who doesnt know a lot about security, he does know the pretty well and networking. in general, he knows what a hacker is, and a little bit about the attacks. he sets some of the options, and believes its secure (sadly an everyday occurance!). A few days/weeks/months later, the network is exploited or hacked. the problems were there, he just didnt have the same level of knowledge of where/how to fix the problem. the hacker has had the background and knows where the exploits are. It is wise to say, he knows the OS in/out, and knows networking. he knows the general pattern of attacking, and can predict on a certain level the attack itself. In theory, he can either slow down the attack, or prevent it all together.
The best system admins need solid knowledge on the OS, and the varying types of attacks. If one knows both, he can take the steps needed to prevent future attacks. i believe if one is truly a ‘hacker’, this person will have knowlegde not just of the how to run a script (script kiddie), but knows how to fix/prevent a problem. if one just knows the attacks (script kiddie)and not the system he is useless. he wouldnt know where/how to prevent the attacks in the operating system. And the IT person who knows the OS, but not the attack, wouldnt know how to prevent it.
For example, ive attacked my own computer from the outside to find different ways in. if/when i find one, i can fix the hole and continue. why would i wait for someone else to find a potential hole when i can?
—-
“When I had my old dual G4-500 I tried a simple test with OS X 10.0 or .1? Dunno.
I opened every application on the hard disk and let it run, so I could see how the system performed in this state. To my surprise the system was still stable and responsive with 75+ apps open and consuming resources. I tried the same on a PIII 1.2 or 1.3. Forget it, after about 15 apps the system came to a crawl. ”
—–
this isnt a scientific experiment i see. way to many factors involved to say os x is that much better. Consider the Operating systems used, amount of memory, and the processor are all needed.
One can not compare how opening 15 programs on windows with a p3 can be that much worse than a mac when the systems are vastly different. we all know that windows has poor memory management. if they were similar processors, and memory then id say you could be right. Ive run many programs on my freebsd machine in KDE, gnome and fluxbox. In my experience, KDE slows down much faster than gnome, and gnome is still slower than fluxbox; they all run better than windows. What i am saying is that you need to take many things into consideration even on the same processor, same memory, and same os, the results can vary.
k