Mac OS X version 10.7 is now live in the Mac App Store.

[Jack]

After a year of anticipation, Apple has finally let loose its biggest cat - Lion - in the Mac App Store.

Quote:OS X Lion is the next major release of OS X, the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. It includes over 250 new features that will transform how you interact with your Mac. Tap, swipe, and scroll your way through your apps using fluid Multi-Touch gestures that make everything you do feel more natural and direct. Full-screen apps take advantage of every pixel of your display — perfect for reading email, surfing the web, or browsing photos. Launchpad gives you instant access to all the apps on your Mac in a stunning new layout where you can quickly find any app and open it with a single click. And Mission Control brings together Exposé, full-screen apps, Dashboard, and Spaces in one unified experience. With a gesture, your desktop zooms out, displaying a bird’s-eye view of everything running on your Mac and making it easy to navigate anywhere with a click.

More details

[Jack]

Quote:Major overhaul makes OS X Lion king of security

[..]

Unlike the introduction of Snow Leopard in 2009, which offered mostly incremental security enhancements, OS X 10.7 represents a major overhaul, said the researchers, who spent the past few months analyzing the OS.

The most important addition is full ASLR. Short for address space layout randomization, the protection makes it much harder for attackers to exploit bugs by regularly changing the memory location where shell code and other system components are loaded. Other improvements include security sandboxes that tightly restrict the way applications can interact with other parts of the operating system and full disk encryption that doesn't interfere with other OS features.


“It's a significant improvement, and the best way that I've described the level of security in Lion is that it's Windows 7, plus, plus,” said Dino Dai Zovi, principal of security consultancy Trail of Bits and the coauthor of The Mac Hacker's Handbook. “I generally tell Mac users that if they care about security, they should upgrade to Lion sooner rather than later, and the same goes for Windows users, too.”

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Nothing is perfect and everything can be 'hacked'...it's just a matter of popularity.... once the cyber criminals will turn their head towards OS X..... we will really see how secure this OS really is.
I must admit that ASLR technique sounds very good and will give a run for their money to the cyber crooks.

[LoftedAphid86]

Unix gives it a distinct advantage in security right off the bat, so the combination of it and ASLR gives Mac OSX a distinct advantage over most other Operating Systems, notably Windows, as far as security is concerned.

[Shadow Death]

(07-21-2011 05:45 PM)elliotcroft wrote:  Unix gives it a distinct advantage in security right off the bat, so the combination of it and ASLR gives Mac OSX a distinct advantage over most other Operating Systems, notably Windows, as far as security is concerned.

Only for now, but as people make it more popular it WILL be exploited. I fear that with Apple not having any real threats when they do get hit it will be very hard.

I recall the guys at the college giving Micro$oft flack for using the Windows Moble interface for Windows 8. They didn't laugh or say anything when I said the same thing about Lion using the iOS interface.

I don't care who uses what idea so long as there is a way to turn it off. Honestly, I wish Apple would make the Apple OS general purpose like Windows so you can run it on custom built computers.

[Earth]

Looks like it's causing more problems for the early adopters using Lion, even some with clean installs.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/23/mac-o...g-for-you/

[silviu_c]

(07-21-2011 05:45 PM)elliotcroft wrote:  Unix gives it a distinct advantage in security right off the bat, so the combination of it and ASLR gives Mac OSX a distinct advantage over most other Operating Systems, notably Windows, as far as security is concerned.

What Windows version are we talking about here? XP ? Fine. Granted. If we are going to talk about W7, then I really do not see it being inferior to any Unixy OS security wise or any other way... With the inclusion of ASLR, Mac OS X is finally up to par with other systems. Linux has had ASLR for a long time, Windows has it since Vista...

[silviu_c]

By the way, here's a piece of news :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/26/...d_stealer/

But, then again, any machine that can be accessed in a physical way has very low chance of not getting pwned.

[Jack]

Quote:

OS X Lion: Macs are no longer beginner-friendly

Now that OS X Lion has been out for a couple of days, complaints are mounting from users about how some of their favorite functions have changed or that adapting to “natural scrolling” is difficult due to years of muscle memory. One thing people aren’t talking about, however, is the effect that Lion’s changes will have on new users — who nearly always switch from Windows machines.

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Security comes with a price.....And as the OS X market share will grow , Apple will be forced to add other security layers.

[Fluxon]

The Siberian Tiger is the largest cat, even larger than a Lion. So, Mac OSX Tiger was the biggest cat released by them...

[iPanik]

according to the reviews and the piles of complaints about things that are now broken and more difficult, i can't stop thinking about the release of Vista.
Is OS X Lion, apples vista?