Nice dodge attempt and avoiding the whole subject and point: "All this is why the latest Mac security hole should surprise no one except the Mac lovers who refuse to admit the truth -- Mac OS X, like every other operating system, is vulnerable to attack. And there are plenty of security researchers who think it's less secure than Windows."

That's a quote, not from me. And you start in about Java and removing it?     

Check out the underlined part.

Java for Mac is not an Apple product, it is an Oracle one�

Java is useless for 99.9% of the users.
You have just to disable it unless you are part of the 0.1% needing it.

Nice dodge attempt and avoiding the whole subject and point: "All this is why the latest Mac security hole should surprise no one except the Mac lovers who refuse to admit the truth -- Mac OS X, like every other operating system, is vulnerable to attack. And there are plenty of security researchers who think it's less secure than Windows."

That's a quote, not from me. And you start in about Java and removing it?     

Check out the underlined part.

Quote from: Beppe Grillo on January 11, 2014, 04:32

Java for Mac is not an Apple product, it is an Oracle one�

Java is useless for 99.9% of the users.
You have just to disable it unless you are part of the 0.1% needing it.

Modern OS X disables Java if it is not being used. By default. Switch it back on - and it gets switched off again automatically if it is not being used. Unfortunately many Adobe products still require Java to be installed. Bizarrely. Personally I think that the day is drawing closer when we will no longer need Adobe (but I guess that is a different thread).

Safari does a neat thing with browser plugs-ins e.g. Flash. They are off by default. You authorise them on a per site basis. So, for example, I have Flash enabled only for Alamy because Manage Images requires it. Flash is also periodically switched off to save battery power. Safari also blocks 3rd party cookies by default. It blocks out of date browser plug-ins.

OS X users are certainly subject to the same stupid javascript pop-up exploits as Windows users (e.g. - the bogus FBI ransomware thing). Defeating this is as simple as Safari -> Reset Safari. OS X includes built in protection against real malware (which you would need to deliberately try to install). Better still (and this is great for anyone who looks after a computer perhaps for someone else) Gatekeeper lets you set the machine such that only programs from the Apple OS X app store can be installed.

It would be tempting fate and silly to claim that OS X and Unix variants in general are definitely more secure than Windows. But it is certainly true that they have tended to be so far. That is definitely partly down to Windows representing a bigger target. It is also because Unix has always been much more about one tool per job - where as Windows was very much about a daft vision of integration even back to the days of OLE, Active X and scriptable software. They deliberately built a system of bits in which one thing could, in theory, be controlled from another. Though my experience on a team producing Windows software back then was that it nearly always crashed anyhow. I always felt much more at home in a Unix environment.

(I can happily build computers. I soldered one together in 1981 with a Radio Ham friend - you could not buy motherboards ready made in those days. Today I could build a machine which would run OS X - if I wanted to. But I Jonny Ive makes nicer computers and I deplore clutter and top posting).