Roland Dobbins wrote:
> This brings up an interesting point - how many Mac users go to the
> trouble of setting up a nonprivileged account and then do their
> normal work under that? I don't know, but my guess is that it's a
> pretty low percentage, especially as, at least with Tiger, one runs
> into some issues such as borked /Applications perms/ownership which
> require a *NIX background to even understand, much less remedy.

This is a really critical point.

I have advocated and even officially requested that Apple consider the
[sarcasm]wholly radical and industry changing step of[/sarcasm]
modifying the wizard to walk new users through creating two accounts
during initial setup: An administrative account and a non-administrative
account. Most people I know use an administrative account for ALL of
their Mac OS X use. (For that matter, it's pretty much the same for
Windows users, although it doesn't exactly compare.)

> How many Mac users have been faced with a seemingly-random request to
> grant a non-obvious background app/utility Keychain access, not to
> mention commonly-used apps asking for it without an easily-discerned
> reason? And in such situation, what do they typically tend to do
> (I've my own opinion about this, but clue welcomed).

Another excellent point. I think most users have an ingrained
subconscious response to click "OK" on whatever comes up on the screen
without reading it or consider the impact of their choice.

Security Response Researcher
Focus-Apple Moderator

Todd D. Woodward
Technical Support Engineer
NetBackup Support
Symantec Corporation
www.symantec.com
Springfield, Oregon

Office: 541-335-7441

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