| justinian said: @Soleron "And, for the software, your security and stability comes from your UNIX/BSD foundation. Apple themselves have done everything possible to sabotage that in the name of usability" Is security more important that usability? What's the point of having a secure desktop computer if it is not very usable. I do understand where you are coming from, but... |
I do think it is a tradeoff. For example, Windows used to let user applications do whatever they want to core system files without permission, and had the admin account by default. Very usable; everything worked like you expected, but terribly insecure.
Vista tried to change this with UAC etc., and suddenly there were lots of complaints about usability. But it made it much more secure. I do criticise many decisions made in Vista, but the concept of UAC is not one of them (the implementation was poor, however).
Out of all of the Unix-like OSs, only Linux has made an attempt to be usable. They've partially achieved it -it's possible to be an average PC user and do e-mail, office and internet as easy as Windows. Anything more complex and it makes sense only if you know how a computer works and what parts interact with others - which ought to be basic knowledge and isn't. Linux still has some way to go before the average 'power user' can do everything as easily as Win or Mac. BSD, Solaris, etc. don't even try but are indeed more secure than Linux.
And I think Mac has gone too far the other way: They would rather sacrifice security and good design at all costs to make things shinier and more usable. This is because they had no threats to security. But I think the frequency of real Mac exploits will increase in the future.
