arcman said:Granted a password-permissioned filesystem isn't 100% sure to keep out all malicious software, there's only so much the OS can do to keep itself secure from a user that doesn't know any better. But seeing as how OSX and the various Linux and BSD variants have something like less than 100 viruses among them versus the hundreds of thousands of viruses for win32, it seems to be an effective strategy. Even if you get an infected file, there are safeguards that the virus has to overcome to be able to do any more harm than simply delete the /home directory. Whereas in Windows where the default user is always the root administrator, all you have to do is point your web browser to an infected activex site and your system is as good as compromised. I'm not quite sure what this means, I'm afraid. OSX's core is based on BSD (Darwin to be exact), if that helps any.
Just raises my curiosity ... I am fairly new to mac and have yet to scratch the surface but I appreciate your insight