As someone who has professionally done legal reverse engineering. No. No it isn't.
The security you get through vetting your code is invaluable. Closing off things makes it more likely for things to not be caught by good actors, and thus not fixed and taken advantage of by bad actors.
And obscurity does nothing to stop bad actors, if there's money to be had. It will temporarily stop script kiddies though. Until the exploit finds it's easy into their suite of exploits that no one's fixed yet.
I'm late and this will get buried, but this really speaks to the difference between the open source / ESR / OSI ideology and the free software / RMS / GNU ideology.
Open source ideology says it is better because it produces better software. If MacOS X was closed source and better it serves as a repudiation of that ideology.
Free software ideology says it is better because denying users any of the four freedoms is an immoral act. If MacOS X was proprietary software and better, it would still be immoral to deny users their freedoms; the ideology is not impacted.
The main reason why MacOS has less viruses is that it's even more than that. Want to run programs not from the app store? Hope you like a convoluted set of settings you have to go through to install that in the first place.
The second main reason is the constant obsolescence of API.
Lol, Linux literally owns the server space, windows owns the desktop space, what exactly does MacOS Own exactly? If best means most pretentious then sure.
I would concur. You can record high quality encoded audio on your iPhone, audio design on your iPad with your other samples, and add the mixed soundscape into your film on iMac.
I literally know someone in the media industry who's whole effortless workflow is what makes him a go-to guy for quick and flexible turnaround for audio mastery for films. He works exclusively on apple devices for this exact reason.
I'm not saying it's impossible another way, but he really likes the ecosystem.
But it would be a stretch to say that support is the result of current macOS. The Mac has always been popular with creatives, since way before it was UNIX-based.
I'd argue the popularity with creatives is largely from being marketed to creatives since its earliest days.
The lack of non proprietary art tools is a big reason I didn't go into digital art / graphic design. GIMP just cannot keep pace and I did not want to shell out $500 a year or more in subscriptions just to be able to do a job with no security that pays pennies.
Its also a big part of why I'm "pro" AI art (I'm actually pretty neutral, I'm not liking that they're burning down the Amazon to make shitty ads with). I think it's gonna be a decent tool for artists to automate repetitive tasks like cutting backgrounds out of photos for collages, upscaling / enlarging images, adding background textures to landscapes, touching up acne in portraits, and animating repetitive shots like walking. but right now we're unethically sourcing the training data and shoving it into anything and everything with 0 regard for how many resources it's costing to make content that's shitty anyway.
The other half of my argument "in favor" is that the only thing worse than AI existing is AI only existing in the hands of the bourgeoisie and is plebs not even knowing how it works in addition to them using it to gain an unfair advantage over us. I think we have an opportunity to make sure that the open source tools are decent to begin with instead of letting them have complete control over even more of the creative world.
As someone in the video and audio production sphere professionally, you are 100% correct. I have a Mac desktop that I use for any work I do, but I run Mint on a notebook for my own purposes.
Designer here. This is true, but they are also have a seriously good trackpad and good energy use (finally). They work well for design, video and audio, but they are also really nice to operate. It’s a bit like driving a very nice car (which I can’t afford, but have borrowed from a client). Once you get accustomed to it, every other computer—especially laptops—feel like 1980s GM econoboxes.
And a lot of rich people are art dilletants or are able to afford putting their children through expensive art programs with no need to have it pay off. And of course they all buy the "top of the line" (which of course is obviously the most expensive right?) brands.
Don't get me wrong, Apple plays into it so the cycle is recursive.
it's very popular with developers due to being a turnkey posix environment. given the choice between mac and windows for development, i would go with mac every time. it's not my personal first choice but it's tolerable.
It certainly isn't the enterprise space, ALL their business features and integrations are half-assed at best and downright painful to use at worst (ESPECIALLY iOS device management, fuck what a shit show that is)
I came up with the phrase "Windows is an enterprise OS with consumer features, MacOS is a consumer OS with (half-assed) enterprise features" to describe it perfectly.
Have you used windows lately? I swear it's become half-assed as an OS. Might still have the enterprise management features, but it's incredibly painful in a mixed enterprise environment that is not standardized office boxes. (e.g. science equipment). I avoid it like the plague if at all possible due to it's now quirky nature.
I'm dating myself, but at least NT didn't crash all the damn time when you access a share on a NetApp or install a new version of the evil Java... Etc.
And then those "enterprise features" get borked on the next major macOS release.
Oh you wanted to ensure your remote assist tool could be granted the proper permissions to work? Well screw you! We took away the ability to grant Screen Recording permissions through a MDM profile. Suck it!
In case you didn't know the Screen Recording permission is needed to be able to view the display/screen in applications like Zoom when screen sharing or for remote assist through Screen connect.
Apple's "reason" was essentially "... Think of the users! It's for their security".
Linux owns more than server/web space. It's everywhere. A lot of IoT is Linux too. Also drones, router, switches, NASs, smart white goods, cars, etc, often have Linux in somewhere too. TVs were Linux, but are now Android, which is Linux but not GNU/Linux. Basically user facing Linux is often Android, though not the Steam Deck.
I'm old enough to remember when people thought OSX Server was a competitive option because it was technically "unix". Needless to say, once people figured out Apple was using Linux for their own servers, despite numerous attempts to switch over to OSX Server. OSX Server went tits up. Apparently OSX Server hung around as an addon to OSX for casual use.
The "luxury" space. It's overpriced hardware with an honestly relatively pretty aesthetic and the OS has so many guardrails they're hard to really mess up, and when someone does mess it up, apple stores are ubiquitous enough that its a pretty quick trip to get it fixed. Perfect for people with a bit more money than sense who don't want to or have the time/ability to figure out how to properly use a more flexible OS that requires a bit more knowhow to use and not break.
If you're memory bound then sure, you can get way more bang for your buck with Intel/AMD. But for pretty amazing CPU performance I think the "Apple is overpriced" trope isn't really true any more.
I would say thats mostly because of Company policies since devs would use the same tools you would use in a linux box. As an Android Developer and CICD Manager I really hate that I have to use a MacBook Pro when a good ol Thinkpad would be more than sufficient.
Joke's on you: GNU/Linux isn't Unix to begin with (that's literally what GNU means: "GNU's Not Unix")!
Therefore, MacOS is "the best Unix" only because it managed to squeeze by the BSDs and some dead proprietary Unixes ("Unices?" "Unixen?") -- hardly an impressive feat.
BSDs aren't even Unix AFAIK because they didn't bother to pay for the official recognition, despite literally being derived from UNIX. MacOS is pretty much the only UNIX that the average user will actually directly interact with.
According to the paper [5], windows is the most user friendly and has more hardware compatibility. In terms of security, Linux is the most secure among all OS given that it is an open- source operating system which gives users the ability to customize and implement security patches. As for memory management, macOS is the better option due to its fully integrated virtual memory system which is often on and continuously provides addressable space up to 4 per process. The virtual memory system allocates extra space for swap files on the root file system as a program uses space.
All available OS offer some level of security features such as firewalls, antivirus software, and encryption [6]. macOS has a level of security due to its unique operating system designed specifically for Apple devices with no third-party developers involved. Linux, being open source, is often regarded as more secure than Windows, which is a target of many malware attacks [7].
As for memory management, macOS is the better option due to its fully integrated virtual memory system which is often on and continuously provides addressable space up to 4 per process.
I don't think this is of interest, this is an article in a student journal, written by one person which seems to be a student too. The quote is weak and cherry-picked.
A quote from the same paper:
Security measures in Linux are slim to none as it is a free OS to download.
Linux is the most secure among all OS given that it is an open- source operating system which gives users the ability to customize and implement security patches.
Imagine trusting folks to keep their stuff up-to-date, though. People get very hostile at the mere suggestion that they need to update when "everything works fine right now, why should I?"
Honest question, what does MacOS do better than Linux? The only benefit Mac has, IMO, is their ecosystem, and if you don't use Facetime or iMessage I see no reason to stay on MacOS vs installing something like Linux Mint. My case is a little different, since my Macbook Pro keyboard no longer works UNLESS I am on Linux, but I still much prefer Linux to MacOS in almost every way.
I ran Apache on a box at work, but it was configured by our insanely intelligent sysadmin. Nothing got past her. Never met a sysadmin as brilliant as her. I don't know how they managed to hire and retain her, but she was given a lot of freedom to run things how she liked - she even had a custom firewall between us and head office!
I also had an insanely cheery yellow iMac G3 at the same time - if it made it through the first ten minutes without crashing it would make it through the day. Somehow its stability and resilience improved over time. Not so my windows PC. If you left that on too long, memleak.dll and slowdown.dll would take over and everything would get shakier and shakier. I never quite got used to only having one button though on the mac.
did you see 38c3? is there any doubt ios/osx is insecure, hackable and has plenty of rootkits avail? this facebook meme shouldnt trigger any tech savy nerd.
I still remember the iPad ad where this quote was mentioned and it... idk, it definitely feels a bit weird to me. I'm probably guessing there will be more people who will wonder what a computer is in the future.
Huge numbers of people are constantly testing and reworking open source security.
Once closed source has a bad encryption found or accepts certain strings for SQL Queries, it becomes a feeding frenzy, and the people who set it up never put any counter measures in place because a small team never had any chance of approaching the vast well of human knowledge on security.
Just look at the news: US Government Facility Hacked, Credit Company Hacked, Industrial Plant Hacked, Proprietary Vehicle Hacked, etc.
Unironically agree. I want to write my code, not your configs. The fact that saying it causes purists of every ilk to absolutely lose their fucking minds is a fringe benefit.