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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

I don't think so.

Apple has enjoyed the fact less companies target OSX and, assuming the same competent to incompetent developer ratio for both platforms (something risky in itself, because the barriers of entry for Windows are much lower), it would be no surprise if there were less buggy programs for OSX.

Also, OSX is a bit older than the current Windows platforms. Don't forget OSX is a direct evolution of the NeXT operating system and that makes if a good four years older than Windows NT. It also builds on both the Mach microkernel and the BSD more conventional kernel, so, its plumbing is a tad more mature too.

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>Apple has enjoyed the fact less companies target OSX and, assuming the same competent to incompetent developer ratio for both platforms (something risky in itself, because the barriers of entry for Windows are much lower), it would be no surprise if there were less buggy programs for OSX.

You can't say there's less buggy programs because it's hard to break through. You can say there's less buggy programs because there's less programs in general, which is a much more rational assumption considering you assumed that there's the same ratio for competent to incompetent developers thus making about the same ratio of buggy to polished programs.

However I don't see how Apple's Kernel really is "locked down", I interpret that as a forced cull of functionality for safety or in terms of things like DRM. The only thing I'd consider is the lockdown of the hardware because of forced lack of choice.

Me neither. I can't call OSX core locked down except it doesn't go out of its way to provide hooks for malware.

Depends what you'd call "hooks". In terms of the Windows API there are some really cool really useful dynamic features in the toolkit, but they're obviously borderline virus/malware type functions. (IE read the text of the entire window if you have a WID).

Stuff like that is standard to any toolkit. However what you may be talking about is that bullshit they call the Windows directory and Windows Protective Service where it doesn't let you modify it directly but it's easily modified programmatically.

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