Also from Apple:

‘Mac OS X offers a multilayered system of defenses against viruses and other malicious applications, or malware. For example, it prevents hackers from harming your programs through a technique called “sandboxing” — restricting what actions programs can perform on your Mac, what files they can access, and what other programs they can launch. Other automatic security features include Library Randomization, which prevents malicious commands from finding their targets, and Execute Disable, which protects the memory in your Mac from attacks.”

The Mac’s 32 bit kernel is relatively secure, but the Mac will become more so in the future when it boots into 64 bit.

Lets say that Mr Miller of Intego finds a un-patched file in Apple’s BSD foundations and tries to exploit it, as he has done so often before at ConSecWest. In the 64 bit kernel, that vulnerability will be placed in its own sand box. It will have very limited permissions. It won’t be able to over-write your files or open up a port to infect some other machine. If it demands too many cycles, you will be notified, so you can delete that process and get rid of it.

No computer is invulnerable, but you can moderate the harmful effects.

I am more interested to hear about OSX’s booting procedure, as I am quite unfamiliar.

@nick : I agree, negative repercussions are quite possible in a more restrictive release.

@rat : “I’m a MAC and I am a PC”. This does have a nice sound to it, should help to diffuse trolling attempts. Although, like game systems, it can be beneficial to have the vertical integration between the soft+hard wares.

@Louis Wheeler : I had honestly never thought of OSX as either 32b or 64b, that was a bit of culture shock. Is the 32b kernel less restrictively secured?

@Caleb Kraft / HAD : I know in some articles you link to previous related posts [sometimes overdoing it...]. How feasible would a related posts sections be? Similar to the ‘Recent Posts’ available between the content and comments, mostly just parsing some random content from matching tags.

–PidGin128

2. why pay for this instead of using the free opensource methods for installing osx on x86?

Doesn’t change the contents of the pretty case it was stuck into. It’s still the same thing as a PC.

I suspect that Apple is restrained from doing much until it can boot all Macs into the 64 bit kernel, by default. That will not until the majority of applications are converted through out the next year. When Mac’s are on the 64 bit kernel, then a new security paradigm takes over which is much more secure. Will it lock out any computer which is running Snow Leopard on PC hardware?

No doubt, the hackers will say that they will always be able to spoof Apple’s security, but we’ll see.

Provenance, and design.

Protip: Since the Intel switchover, there is no difference between a “Mac” and a “PC” except for the OS that was installed on it. Consequentially, this also means there is no difference between HP and Apple branded products as they all have come from the same OEM/Builder at one time or another.

I really wish people would stop saying PC as if it referred to anything distinct from Macs. Macs ARE PCs, to the traces that connect each and every component. The only thing that makes a Mac a Mac is the order in which the bits are stored on the hard drive.

I still see all this attention they are bringing to the hackintosh community as negative attention. . . . . . . .

I installed my retail 10.6 (Snow Leopard) using the RebelEFI disk boot it. I then installed PCEFI and did everything manually. You don’t have to use their “app” to get everything worked out. I prefer this to Boot132 because it’s graphical and easier (not that Boot132 was difficult) to use.

Quite a nice disk. I’ll keep it in my arsenal. And nice to know that if you know what you’re doing, you don’t have to pay the $50.

My system specs are as follows:

Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
C2D E6600 (@3.2GHz)
8GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
Several HDDs.

Everything works flawlessly.