Firewall not enabled by default in Mac OS X Leopard
August 30th, 2008Whoa. I have been helping a friend of mine set up her new Mac laptop, so another one of my friends, as self-professed Mac enthusiast, gave me his list of what he does to set up a fresh Mac. I skimmed over it, and relished this glaring block of text:
TURN THE FIREWALL ON. It’s in the Security pane. Turn it on, and leave it that way. That it ships turned off is just arrogant and stupid.
If you don’t know, firewalls are one of the most basic forms of security, and for it to be OFF by default is just ridiculous! I even had to confirm with the author of this list, and do research to confirm that this is the case, because it is simply crazy for the firewall to be off by default. (Note: the firewall is on my default in both Windows XP and Vista.) This really annoys me. If the firewall was off by default on Windows and on by default in OS X people on the Internet would throw shit. This is clearly a double-standard in how people judge Windows and OS X.
Clearly opinion: Being an avid Windows user myself, it has been a very enlightening learning experience working with this Mac. My conclusions so far have been that things that are important to me are simply easier in Windows and/or that Windows has more complete implementations of features. But more on that in later posts.