PC & Mac differences

[Tenolian Bell]

OSX isn't really a complete rewrite either though, it's like a frankenstein operating system with code taken from all sorts of Unix based operating systems (Unix, Linux, BSD). 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

No Apple did not invent Unix or BSD. But from a code standpoint it is a complete rewrite in its look, form, and functionality from OS9.

[Guest Sean McVeigh]

From my experience any foreign programs that try to execute that OSX isn't sure about I always get a flag asking for permission. For it to do anything I have to type in my administrator password. And I've been told that's one big reason a virus is hard to successfully exocute in OSX. I'm sure there is a flaw in there somewhere to be taken advantage, the question is how easy is it to take advantage of.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Right.. by default you do not have superuser priviledges on your Mac. Whenever software needs to run that requires access to protected system-level resources, it requires that it be run with superuser permissions. This window that pops up is generated by the system, and it is essentially asking "this program wants to mess with something.. type in your password so that I can temporarily elevate its priviledges".

(It's a frontend to 'sudo' if you want to get technical.)

 

By default, most windows users can tramp around all over their systems. This is why that email attachment you just clicked on was able to format your hard disk or muck about with things that should otherwise be off-limits.

[Jon Allen]

IAnd Your saying "And Final Cut Pro is not specialized software, its a consumer editing program,". I Dont know of to many people editing home movies on FCP HD.

 

They make programs like Windows Movie Maker and iMovie for that.

 

Apple has FCP listed as "Professional Software".

 

Im not trying to act like I know more than you guys here, only stating my opinion.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm with ya man. FCP is a VERY powerful piece of software considering the price range it's in. There are some newer pc-based HD editing suites that are not exactly par with FCP HD and they run $2000 for the baseline program- nevermind that you can get FCP HD, motion, AND dvd studio pro 3 for $1300... pretty good deal for us editors.

I've been reading that more and more studios are switching to macs for at least their initial cutting- when they need to get it done fast. The simple fact that television has been produced on high end machines for so long, the idea of cutting on an off-the-shelf mac has a lot of them stupified.

Isn't 'Scrubs' cut on fcp?

[Tenolian Bell]

Isn't 'Scrubs' cut on fcp?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You're right it is.

 

 

 

"Whenever software needs to run that requires access to protected system-level resources, it requires that it be run with superuser permissions. This window that pops up is generated by the system, and it is essentially asking "this program wants to mess with something.. type in your password so that I can temporarily elevate its priviledges."

 

Thanks, much more elegant of what I was trying to say.

[Dan Salzmann]

Walter Murch editor and sound designer for "Cold Mountain", "The Conversation", "The Godfather Trilogy", and more is using FCP.

The Coen brothers and Steven Soderbergh as well.

This sounds pretty professional to me.

[Keith Mottram]

My ten pence. After cutting proffesionally on Avid for several years I switched to FCP for a feature, since then I have cut exclusively on FCP (commercials, docus and trailer). I am getting offered more FCP work than Avid. I slightly prefer the Avid interface and thats about it. I have no complaints about cutting on FCP if I did I would insist on Avid (alot of editors still do) infact workflow wise I prefer FCP, its integration with other products is second to none. I have no compatability issues in any part of the workflow and have significantly less crashes than last time I used an Avid (adrenaline). However prior to 4.5 HD FCP was flaky. This is why people are switching, the system and workflow works at a price which is exceptional. Thats it. When you are budgeting for the editorial department what would you choose. An Avid and an editor, or a few FCP suites with an entire team. There is no difference in EDLs, OMF exports or quality (other than the fact that there are considerably more export options and higher quality codecs on FCP).

 

As far as Mac versus Windows, well I cant even get through the doors of the mac centre in London, its that busy. I'd therefor kindly ask that all PC users stay in planet cukoo land and make my shopping trips easier.

 

Keith

[Tenolian Bell]

An interesting idea for the Mac mini.

 

Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top. That's a 720 gigaflop micro-supercomputer that costs less than $9,000, can fit on a bookshelf, and can be up and running in as little time as it takes to connect the network cables. High schools could be sequencing genes.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

That's great, although you could probably get more horsepower for less cash with PCs. The major issue with clustering is the software - the Linux software Cinelerra will do it out of the box, or rather compressed file archive.

 

Phil

[Jon Allen]

An interesting idea for the Mac mini.

 

Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top. That's a 720 gigaflop micro-supercomputer that costs less than $9,000, can fit on a bookshelf, and can be up and running in as little time as it takes to connect the network cables. High schools could be sequencing genes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

At my work we've talked to the boss about going with the mac minis for render boxes for 3D stuff- our 3D guy prefers the look of stuff rendered in maya on a mac over pc (but I think he's crazy).

Cabling is a thing of the past, right? It'd be awesome to outfit them all with airport or bluetooth; so basically, plug them in, set up your server and go- sweet!

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

It wouldn't be awesome, because RF networking is incredibly slow.

 

Phil

[Guy Meachin]

Watch this, it should clear up any doubts you may have about which side of the fence you want to be on!

 

Check those shorts!

 

http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/1984.html

Edited February 1, 2005 by Meach

[Jon Allen]

Hi,

 

It wouldn't be awesome, because RF networking is incredibly slow.

 

Phil

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I didn't say the speeds would be stupendous- if you're taking at least a couple minutes to render a frame (remember, this is a g4), then it really shouldn't matter how sloooow it uploads back to the wired server.

Of course, I only have limited knowledge of the qmaster engine in maya...

[Tenolian Bell]

Here are clips from an article I read about UNIX BSD and how it is used in OSX. In the article they address the ?security through obscurity? myth and raise some interesting points. [/i]

 

 

Though many amateurs may be looking for, and finding, holes in Windows, the FreeBSD Unix code that forms the foundation of OS X has been prodded by legions of expert programmers for 30 years.?

 

Many orders of magnitude more people look over the source code for OS X and the related BSDs than have access to Windows source code," said John Klos, a developer of NetBSD, a flavor of Unix closely related to OS X.

 

Thus, many of the obvious holes in OS X were closed years ago. That, some suggested, actually makes OS X a more attractive target.

 

If I were a fame-driven cracker with solid technical skills, cracking a BSD-based system would be the fastest way to show off my capabilities," said Rich Morin, a programmer and consultant based in San Bruno, Calif.

 

 

What this means in real world use. [/b]

 

 

Mom, Dad and Sis all can have separate user accounts. This also is true of Windows. But in OS X, only an account with administrator privileges can install software -- and even those accounts cannot access or change applications or data in other accounts, especially not the core of the system software.

 

Furthermore, only a user with "root"-level permissions has full access to the system, but Apple has this access disabled by default. Most users never will go to the trouble of figuring out how to enable the root user, and don't need to -- as nothing a regular user would want to do requires root-level authority.

 

In other words, even if Dad got hit with an OS X virus that wiped out all his data -- and, remember, no OS X viruses presently exist -- the Mac still would operate, and Mom's and Sis's stuff on it would be untouched.

 

Also, because OS X always asks the user to type an administrator password before modifying anything in the system, attempts to install malware or alter system files immediately would be flagged.

 

The virus would have to be an application," said Alan Dail, an independent senior software engineer in Wooster, Ohio. "You'd have to see that it's an application and make a conscious decision to run it for it to actually do anything."

 

Windows software allows many tasks to execute themselves in the background without the users' permission or knowledge. This maximizes malware's ability to do harm. And, unlike the Mac OS, a user account with administrative privileges on a Windows machine can wreak catastrophic damage to data, programs -- or the system itself.

 

 

 

Virii through email.

 

 

?Microsoft made a decision 10 years ago that their e-mail client, Outlook, should be allowed to run any script that it finds as an attachment to incoming mail," said Darrin Cardani, president of Buena Software Inc., a Chicago-based company specializing in audio-, video- and image-editing tools.

 

No Mac e-mail program allows this, so Mac users would have to spread a virus like SoBig manually by intentionally mailing it other users -- not a likely scenario.

 

Cluley had to admit that Microsoft bore some of the guilt because of its "sloppy coding" -- a sentiment expressed by several readers of last week's column -- and that the open-source Unix core of OS X was, indeed, more secure.

 

Despite the "trustworthy computing" initiative ordered by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in January 2002, most of the millions of lines of code in Windows was written before that. Even if Microsoft is succeeding in writing a more secure code, old vulnerabilities will continue to lurk in Windows for years, gradually being found and patched.

Edited February 1, 2005 by tenobell

[Tenolian Bell]

To be fair the article did not say it was impossible to create a virus for OSX, and one never knows what will happen in the future. Here is what they did say:

 

"While creating a Mac OS X virus is not impossible", Janz said, "the degree of difficulty here is at least 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10."

[Jon Allen]

So if I'm a big-time 14 year old hacker, I'm going to gain notariety by bothering to figure out a crack to OSX when I can exploit any already well-known security gap in windows? Yeah right.

I think we forget that people only become well-known in the virus writing community if their code successfully travels through many computers. Meaning that they're probably going to exploit a vulnerability that they know has the potential to hit a lot of machines- not pore over lines and lines of BSD and UNIX to find a hole that might make it possible for code to maybe travel to a few hundred macs- instead of a hundred million windows machines.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

This is going to be very, very lengthy, but if you're a Mac user I suggest that you have a good reason to read it.

 

> Though many amateurs may be looking for, and finding, holes in Windows, the

> FreeBSD Unix code that forms the foundation of OS X has been prodded by legions

> of expert programmers for 30 years.?

 

The same goes for Linux. Subscribe to Red Hat Update for a while and you will quickly realise that Windows is no pariah in this respect. It's also ironic that the quote mentions amateurs, upon whom most open source software is almost entirely reliant. Windows has much more input from a software engineers who it's fair to say are freqently misdirected but are certainly professionals.

 

> Many orders of magnitude more people look over the source code for OS X

 

OSX is not open source! This is an incredibly common misapprehension. The Darwin core of OSX is open source - it could not be any other way by the terms of the licence under which Apple must use the most BSD-like parts of the software, and commercial expediency demands that they do this only where they have to. Trying to make political capital out of it in an "I'm-securer-than-you" competition is just misleading.

 

> Thus, many of the obvious holes in OS X were closed years ago. That, some

> suggested, actually makes OS X a more attractive target.

 

This is an interesting point, because it raises two more things I've found to be true:

 

- To make a Windows machine secure, you only have to make it slightly more difficult to hit than the next guy. There are enough easy boxes about there to hit that there's no need to try for difficult ones. Make all machines harder to hit and it will actually become harder to make them secure enough to avoid intrusion.

 

- Apple Macs and Linux boxes don't avoid trouble because they're hard to hit - in fact, Linux-based web servers are hit all the time because, as previously mentioned, they're rewarding targets - they avoid trouble because they're a minority that generally doesn't offer much of a reward. Make them more popular and they'll get hit just as much as Windows machines.

 

> If I were a fame-driven cracker with solid technical skills, cracking a BSD-based

> system would be the fastest way to show off my capabilities," said Rich Morin, a

> programmer and consultant based in San Bruno, Calif.

 

This is certainly true and points-based online competitions typically offer bigger rewards for proof of compromising machines running operating systems other than Windows. This is partially because people don't bother keeping windows machines up to date, but mainly because the tools required to compromise Windows machines are far more prevalent and compromising others requires more original software engineerng. Mostly people reuse a few standard pieces of software, so you don't actually have to be very skilled to do it. It's not about how difficult it is to do, it's about how much it's already been done and how easily available the tools are.

 

> Mom, Dad and Sis all can have separate user accounts. This also is true of

> Windows. But in OS X, only an account with administrator privileges can install

> software -- and even those accounts cannot access or change applications or data

> in other accounts, especially not the core of the system software.

 

...which is precisely how it works in Windows. It's just that everyone runs as Administrator all the time, and I have no sympathy for people who do that.

 

> Furthermore, only a user with "root"-level permissions has full access to the

> system, but Apple has this access disabled by default.

 

Not disabled, merely hidden behind an attractive front-end. This is part of the irresolvable quandry of software security - there has to be a way to achieve root-level access or you can't use the machine. It's a completely inevitable and circular issue. The way a lot of virii work is to persuade the user that they're benign ("Would you like to download and install Something Safe Sounding....") in order to gain the necessary permissions.

 

Now, I'm all in favour of discouraging people from constantly running Windows as Administrator if they don't know what they're doing and I think Microsoft should do that more strongly, but it's dangerous to assume that everyone else has it completely locked down. I have little sympathy for beginners who don't listen to the advice to run as a restricted user, anyway.

 

> no OS X viruses presently exist

 

Wrong. There's been half a dozen. If there were as many Macs as there are PCs the situation would likely be reversed.

 

> "You'd have to see that it's an application and make a conscious decision to run it for it to actually do anything."

 

True only for certain values of "program." Let's take a typical example - you're viewing a web page which uses HTML for its layout, embeds a Java plugin and some flash animation. To view this under Windows you are running at least eight or ten processes, of which several are foreign code, including the Java runtime environment and the Macromedia Flash player. That's the obvious stuff. But also executing under the same process ID are anything up to a couple of dozen background management tasks (I've still yet to learn what DirectDBListenWndProc is) which must be automatically launched by the system. And you think all you did was download a web page.

 

People who claim that forcing people to sudo every explicit application launch protects them from things like buffer overruns in web browsing applications are either tragically misinformed or pursuing an agenda.

 

> Windows software allows many tasks to execute themselves in the background

> without the users' permission or knowledge.

 

So does OSX. You want to be able to print, read compactflash cards, drag-and-drop onto DVDs, without having to launch independent apps to do it all?

 

> This maximizes malware's ability to do harm. And, unlike the Mac OS, a user

> account with administrative privileges on a Windows machine can wreak

> catastrophic damage to data, programs -- or the system itself.

 

So can an account with root priviledges on a Mac.

 

> ?Microsoft made a decision 10 years ago that their e-mail client, Outlook, should be

> allowed to run any script that it finds as an attachment to incoming mail,"

 

Yes, a catastrophically stupid decision long since corrected.

 

> No Mac e-mail program allows this, so Mac users would have to spread a virus like

> SoBig manually by intentionally mailing it other users -- not a likely scenario.

 

Or they'd have to find a buffer overrun in whatever mail client you were using, or Quartz, or any of the other daemons that run as root and push shell code into system-priviledged execution space. Bit techy? No kidding, but this guy clearly hasn't bothered to inform himself so you may have to.

 

> Despite the "trustworthy computing" initiative ordered by Microsoft Chairman Bill

> Gates in January 2002...

 

That's got almost nothing to do with system security issues. The TCPA (google it) is an organisation dedicated to creating a system on which rights-managed media can be controllably distributed. It's insidious because it encrypts certain parts of the computer that would otherwise be open and effectively removes root access to your own machine, but it has nothing to do with security and everything to do with things like online movie piracy.

 

The point is this: I have no beef with Apple's products. However, I believe I've made it sufficiently clear that any idea that they are intrinsically unbreakable by some magical expedient of their design is mistaken and dangerous.

 

Phil

[Tenolian Bell]

I?m sure he wasn?t saying that OSX is a broadly open system, I?m sure he was only speaking of the Unix BSD source code. Of course the user interface is very much closed.

 

Even though ?open source? is the buzz word of the moment, something can be said for closed proprietary software. Which makes it difficult to compare OSX and Linux (RedHat) and how they deal with security. You can?t really make a comparison based solely on their Unix roots.

 

The article does say Unix is a much more difficult code to crack which has been proven true with Linux in general. There are viruses for Linux but not in nearly the same way as they are for Windows, at this point a Linux box is in little danger of being rendered useless from malware. Linux more than Windows or OSX has the flexibility to completely change itself as a defense from viruses.

 

None of this really accounts for how many viruses may be created for OSX or Linux. The litmus test is based on successfully infecting computers. So the assumption is made that few are infected so no one is trying. It could not possibly be because one system may have security features the other does not.

 

I do agree that Windows being a bigger target therefore will attract more attacks. But can that simple explanation really account for no major attacks on OSX. There isn?t at least one hacker who is interested in spreading grief to Mac users, not one? I find that difficult to believe.

 

Its obvious Apple has put safeguards into place that along with its lower market share make OSX a less desirable and more difficult target. No one is saying ?intrinsically unbreakable by some magical expedient of their design? . But much more difficult because of forward thinking design.

 

On the other hand. If we have to resign ourselves to feeling that hackers are in full control of which OS is attacked and which is not, that Apple and Microsoft have little power over their own security. Then I and I?m sure other Mac users would much prefer things stay the way they are. Apple keeps a small user base in exchange for Windows taking the brunt of all the viruses, I could live with that.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> The article does say Unix is a much more difficult code to crack

 

Right, this is the core of the technical issue and it bears understanding. That statement from the article is so vague and general as to be completely meaningless. The reference to "code cracking" suggests cryptanalysis, which is not a major part of most virii. This is not the movie "Hackers," it's not about typing "run icebreaker" into a command prompt and having some pretty graphics come up. This is about hardcore, high-level computer science and to make it relevant we are forced to take the statement as an allusion as vague as "video is better than film." How? Why? In what specific circumstances? Day interior or night exterior? Two people conversing in a bar or the road chase scene from Matrix Reloaded? Are you port scanning, looking for buffer overruns in the web browser or brute-forcing the root password, trying to install a trojan for dynamic denial of service attacks, sending spam, sniffing credit card numbers?

 

It's not about code cracking or runing Linux or OSX or Windows or BeOS. It's about running a competent firewall and not running unknown email attachments, not running with high level priviledges, and being informed about the nature of the threat. People writing articles claiming smugly that [insert your OS of choice] is proof against attack does not help the cause.

 

Phil

[Tenolian Bell]

It's about running a competent firewall and not running unknown email attachments, not running with high level priviledges, and being informed about the nature of the threat. People writing articles claiming smugly that [insert your OS of choice] is proof against attack does not help the cause.

 

The last question I leave with you my good friends is why? What other product would we buy its manufacturer expect us to keep ourselves informed of, evade, or battle outside threats to keep their product working the way it did when we purchased it? What sense does that make?

 

I place the accountability on Apple to keep a product I bought from them in a productive working condition. Any threats to their product from outside sources beyond my control, I place the responsibility on Apple to fix, that should not be my problem to deal with. So far they have done a good job. We?ll see if it continues.

 

That would be my expectation of any product I?ve bought. It should be no different for a computer whether you are running OSX, Windows, or BeOS.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> What other product would we buy its manufacturer expect us to keep ourselves

> informed of, evade, or battle outside threats to keep their product working the way it

> did when we purchased it?

 

Do you insure your car? Do you lock your house at night?

 

You have to pass a test to drive a car. Ham radio enthusiasts are required to take courses and pass exams to pursue their interest; I believe there should be a similar reqirement for people who want to use the internet at more than a very basic level. This isn't so much to protect people from themselves, it's to prevent them becoming part of other people's problems (spam relays, trojans, DDoS attacks, worms) - I really couldn't care less if every AOL user from coast to coast wants to sit there repeating the mantra "Microsoft should solve it" as their machine falls apart, but there should be more of a sense of civic responsibility than there is.

 

Phil

[Tenolian Bell]

David Gelernter, a computer scientist and tech visionary at Yale.

 

"As modern computer users, we go through our lives resigned to mediocrity; this is true of Windows users, but it's even true, he says, of Apple users. "

 

Gelernter wants machines that are "transparent," that are more like appliances than fancy gadgets, machines that put your data, your information, before their own idiosyncrasies. "I don't care about the machine, I care about my documents," he says.

 

And why should anybody spend any time at all "securing" your machine from outside threats, he wonders. Why can't the machine do this for you? "Most people don't want to spend their time to download the latest thing to deal with the latest disaster to strike," he points out. Would we deal with such tediousness for other products we use on a daily basis?

 

".....you wouldn't use a car in which the brakes didn't work. Yet we put up with computers all the time in which key functions just stop working, and, routinely, we are OK with that."

[Andrew Kimery]

"Security through obscurity" is only part of the reason Mac users suffer so little compared to Windows users. If the roles were reversed would their be more virii for OS X? Of course, but it wouldn't be as bad as Windows is currently.

 

MS is not the leader in the web server market, but they suffer the most attacks. If fame is gained by causing the most damage why is MS the biggest target even though it's not the biggest player? Do people really hate MS that much? Or are the holes in MS software that much bigger/more plentiful? Maybe a bit of both? I'm sure there are a ton of Apple-haters that would love to show Jobs w/egg on his face by creating a virus that would run wild thru the Mac world, but that's yet to happen.

 

Excuses aside the current reality of the situation is that an off-the-shelf Mac will survive a lot better than an off-the-shelf PC in terms of spyware, malware, and virii, unless that PC gets a lot of TLC. It's one reason I've started gravitating away from my Win2k box towards my Panther box for web browsing and the like. Tinkering for a hobby is fun. Tinkering 'cause malware fouled your system just plain sux.

 

 

-Andrew

[Tenolian Bell]

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. It's an article sarcastically picking fun at but shows example of how PC users bring PC logic to the Mac platform.

 

 

 

"So is the Mac mini a maxi value? For me, clearly, no. When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware--none of which are available for the Mac platform--it doesn't make sense for me to "switch" to a Mac at this time. But will Apple's famous marketing team be able to sell the the emperor an invisible computer anyway and turn the mini into a maxi hit? That?s the question that remains to be answered."

 

 

 

 

http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/MacMini2.html

[Jon Allen]

The way that guy rips on technology is proof of the fact that he knows nothing.

First of all, he gets the new, smaller iPod confused with the new, smaller G4.

Second, all mac minis come with the standard crappy mouse and keyboard.

Thirdly, for this guy not to know about DVI is even more evidence he hasn't seen any new video cards since '95.

Lastly, he mentions the "benefit" of Windows XP, need I say more?

 

I don't need so say more, just one question: With the site he blogs for, they're still in the middle of the Linux v WinX debate, are these serious articles- or an onion ripoff?

[Tenolian Bell]

That blog is satire that points out the way some hardcore PC users sound, many of whom never/rarely touch a Mac. They are using PC ideas that don?t apply to the Mac so it doesn't make any sense.

 

I will never use a Mac because it doesn?t??

 

-support hardware/ software/ functions that are legitimately Windows only and are not

accessible by Mac

 

- support hardware/ software/ functions that are not supported by Mac on purpose,

Apple may feel certain concepts are unnecessary or have a different way to accomplish the same

task

 

-support hardware/ software/ functions that Mac users don?t really want, and some that PC users

don't really want

Edited February 5, 2005 by tenobell