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Apple Preparing to Seed Developers with First Build of OS X 10.8.1
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Speaking as a security expert, what others have said is basically correct, running as root (or as others pointed out, more likely, an Administrator account) means you are giving any website or software which has bugs in it that can be exploited by hackers, viruses and other malware much greater access to your system.
In many cases, viruses, worms, and hackers write malware assuming the user is running as Administrator (in both the Mac and Windows worlds) because so many do. Because of this, if you make an unprivileged account and use that as your regular account, most malware will fail (or at least, not be as damaging as it could) and anyone able to compromise your user account (via stealing your password, buggy application, etc) will not be able to do things like break system security, install backdoors, trojans or other evil things.
There is a basic computer security principle to follow, called "least privilege". Only use the privilege you need for the task you are doing. If you are reading mail, browsing the web, etc, you only need normal user privileges. When you need to install software, or make changes to system settings, Mac OS X does the right thing and asks you for an administrator account password. This makes it very easy to run as a normal user and only use administrative privileges when they are absolutely necessary.
Finally, don't give the administrator account and your normal user account the same password.
Boom, you're more secure than 95% of computers out there.
I hope this fixes issues Im having with my iMac after installing ML. I must constantly restart it after it wakes up from sleep mode Airport gets disabled, Safari and Mail are always freezing
Just for some peace of mind, I've seen this on both my Macs at home... Mid 2009 MacBook Pro and Mid 2012 MacBook Air. Wasn't an issue on Lion.
I've reported the issue to Apple, so hopefully they can repro and implement a fix.
Just chipping in with the bugs/differences I've experienced.
Mainly, screen sharing between a MBP and an iMac. I've never had any problems before, but connecting to the iMac (same conditions, same network, same settings as before) is unreliable at best.
Also, experienced a couple of weird crashes when OSX has just restarted out of the blue.
Very slow shutting down pretty much any app.
Mainly, screen sharing between a MBP and an iMac. I've never had any problems before, but connecting to the iMac (same conditions, same network, same settings as before) is unreliable at best.
Also, experienced a couple of weird crashes when OSX has just restarted out of the blue.
Very slow shutting down pretty much any app.
I've noticed a few tiny bugs that are not performance related. A good example is if you open Notification Center, even if it's one you see for a brief moment as it opens the "turn on/off" slider. More of a "needs polishing" kind of bug.
Only main bug I have is the fact that you HAVE to use the email account that is the same as your Apple ID on your Mac running ML to receive messages or facetimes from other people. Multiple reinstalls prove that to be the case, at least for me. That didn't happen in Lion at all. Tech support knows about it and is supposedly trying to fix it.
Another bug, which may be just me, is that streaming of any kind is really, really slow in all browsers.
Only main bug I have is the fact that you HAVE to use the email account that is the same as your Apple ID on your Mac running ML to receive messages or facetimes from other people. Multiple reinstalls prove that to be the case, at least for me. That didn't happen in Lion at all. Tech support knows about it and is supposedly trying to fix it.
Another bug, which may be just me, is that streaming of any kind is really, really slow in all browsers.
That could probably be fixed with SMC reset. You could try that. As long as you follow the steps it should be easy as walk in a park http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Hope it helped 
iPhoto with its lag seems to be my biggest issue, the last update prior to ML coming out. I hoped it would be better in ML but it still persists...
Mountain Lion broke my wifi on my MacPro. Works grand on all our other computers but the MacPro has gone to whack with constant dropping connection.
Noticed a few smaller glitches such as some bugs in Launchpad when moving items into and out of folders, but they are not breaking for me, the wifi is...
Noticed a few smaller glitches such as some bugs in Launchpad when moving items into and out of folders, but they are not breaking for me, the wifi is...
No bugs for me
I had loads of issues with Lion but I did a clean install of ML and it's the best OS I've ever had - no bugs at all.
My advice is do a clean install, if you had issues with Lion upgrading to ML probably won't fix everything.
I had loads of issues with Lion but I did a clean install of ML and it's the best OS I've ever had - no bugs at all.
My advice is do a clean install, if you had issues with Lion upgrading to ML probably won't fix everything.
There is virtually no reason the average user would ever have to log in as root. Root is disabled by default. While you can create any number of admin or regular accounts, there is only one root account. Root can do anything on your system without having to authenticate. The risks to that are obvious.
I seriously started laughing when I read that.
And for everyone complaining about Safari issues ... I haven't had any since I installed ClickToFlash years ago ... highly recommended!
Best tip I've seen for notification center is to add a hot corner top right to show notification center, works really well.
There's a major difference between enabling and using the Root account and simply using the default Administrator account. It sounds to me like you're using an Admin account.
Oh okay yeah I'm just using the default admin account. I know what you're talking about now. I have enabled the root account in the past one time when I had forgotten my password to the admin account. (I had changed the admin password and made it too long for me to remember. I remembered it for the day that I had changed it but by the next day I had forgotten it since I really only log in once a day.) I disabled the root account immediately after I was done with it.
Had in issue in Finder preferences where all the Sidebar checkboxes were unchecked even though they all showed fine on a finder window. Rebooted and they showed as checked again, without me having changed them. #odd
This was on a fresh install of ML on a new disk, no prior SL or Lion.
This was on a fresh install of ML on a new disk, no prior SL or Lion.
All this root business is new to me...
Ok, how do I tell if the account that automatically set-up when I commissioned my MBA is a root account? It is for sure the administrator account, and aside from a guest account that seems to be part of the default set up, is the only account that I have on my unit.
If I should transition from using the Admin account, and set up a lower-privledge account for my daily use, how do I go about this? Do I change some settings to downgrade the Admin account, after creating another Admin account with full privileges? Or do I have to move all data, etc from the current Admin account to the "new" daily use acct?
BTW, wrt the original question, I would like my battery performance increased from 2.5 hours back to the original 5 hours ... also the single finger flick-scrolling in Safari when going back and forth between pages could be improved ... seems to move, then bounces back to the page one is trying to leave.
This is the first fairly stable .0 release I've experienced in a while. Apart from the crippling battery life of my 2011 MBP.
So looking forward to this. Broke my cardinal rule and upgraded instantly and since have had loads of problems. Need this so hopefully the worst will go away..
My cousin XD
It's actually quite convenient because you never have to enter your password, which is especially annoying in Finder. It works fine in Leopard, but Mountain Lion hates it when you use root.
For some reason, he didn't know about adding more than one admin account (new to Mac) and thought that root would just be the same thing but less secure (doesn't matter since he doesn't download malware anyway), so he just used root and gave his sister the main account.
The default account you sign up with is an Admin account, not a root account. There's no need to set up a lower privilege account. If you wanted to downgrade your current account, you could make another Admin account, log out of your main Admin account, then from within the new Admin account, go to the Users & Groups settings in System Preferences and turn the admin account into a normal account.
Sounds like he shouldn't be using... a computer.
I used to love ClickToFlash, but it seems like they never update it. It used to actually allow you to play all YouTube videos as Quicktime elements, not with the Flash thing, and that was wonderful because it killed the ads and annotations and ran much faster.
Since I have AdBlock, I don't really have a need for ClickToFlash since it only blocks stuff that I need.