ehenning writes "SecuriTeam has posted a paper on some known vulnerabilities in Mac OS X. It lists methods for developing shellcode based on the PowerPC architecture. They note that there are similar vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and Darwin as in IA32 machines."
Why not just IM an OS X user and tell them to go to the Terminal and type sudo rm -r / 'cos it removes all those Photoshop files they can't be bothered to clean up?
Well what do you expect from proprietary software?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: -1, Troll
Many Unix geeks, particularly on Slashdot, have praised Apple's decision to base Mac OS X off of the enterprise-ready BSD codebase. However, it seems that most have never actually taken a closer look at this OS. If they had, a closer inspection would reveal that Apple's philosophy toward *nix and Linux compatibility has been one of "embrace and extend", and this is meant in the M$ sense. Wherever possible, Apple has engineered their operating system to be incompatible with industry standards. Simply put, Mac OS X is a nonstandard, bastardized Unix that bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as does, say, Windows ME.
Let's start with the windowing environment, since that is the first thing users will notice. While both KDE and GNOME are mature, stable, and accepted as IEEE standards, Apple has elected to use neither. In fact, they don't even use X at all! Their display system is a proprietary, closed-source system called Quartz Extreme. In addition to the moral issues involved with closed software, this precludes the user from running X apps. There is an untested and alpha-quality X11 emulation layer available for download, but it is emulation, so programs will be slow. Does this sound like a standards-based system to you?
Looking under the hood, it gets worse. While all other *nixes use standard ELF binaries, Darwin (Apple's name for their proprietary "Unix" kernel) does not. It uses Mach-O, an unproven format that is proprietary to Apple. The moribund FreeBSD, off which OS X is based, uses ELF, so clearly Apple went to the extra effort of "switching" (heh) simply to break compatibility. With ELF, users would be able to run most of their Lunix apps; with Mach-O this is impossible. Additionally, Apple has moved most configuration info fromhuman readable text files into a proprietary database called "NetInfo", which is much like the Windows registry we all loathe. Why? These are only a few of the ways that Apple has deliberately broken compatibility with other systems, presumably in order to lock users in to expensive Mac hardware.
When we factor in the threat to users' civil liberties that is posed by the DRM included to support the iTunes Music Store (do you really think it will end there?) it
is obvious that real *nix gurus should give OS X a wide berth. Caveat emptor.
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Why not just IM an OS X user and tell them to go to the Terminal and type sudo rm -r / 'cos it removes all those Photoshop files they can't be bothered to clean up?
Let's start with the windowing environment, since that is the first thing users will notice. While both KDE and GNOME are mature, stable, and accepted as IEEE standards, Apple has elected to use neither. In fact, they don't even use X at all! Their display system is a proprietary, closed-source system called Quartz Extreme. In addition to the moral issues involved with closed software, this precludes the user from running X apps. There is an untested and alpha-quality X11 emulation layer available for download, but it is emulation, so programs will be slow. Does this sound like a standards-based system to you?
Looking under the hood, it gets worse. While all other *nixes use standard ELF binaries, Darwin (Apple's name for their proprietary "Unix" kernel) does not. It uses Mach-O, an unproven format that is proprietary to Apple. The moribund FreeBSD, off which OS X is based, uses ELF, so clearly Apple went to the extra effort of "switching" (heh) simply to break compatibility. With ELF, users would be able to run most of their Lunix apps; with Mach-O this is impossible. Additionally, Apple has moved most configuration info fromhuman readable text files into a proprietary database called "NetInfo", which is much like the Windows registry we all loathe. Why? These are only a few of the ways that Apple has deliberately broken compatibility with other systems, presumably in order to lock users in to expensive Mac hardware.
When we factor in the threat to users' civil liberties that is posed by the DRM included to support the iTunes Music Store (do you really think it will end there?) it is obvious that real *nix gurus should give OS X a wide berth. Caveat emptor.