FileVault 2, Find My Mac and sandboxing
The security of OS X Lion has been beefed-up in a number of small ways, but there are three major features that will contribute greatly to your newer, more secure Mac.
FileVault 2 is a completely revamped version fo the much-maligned FileVault hard drive encryption in Snow Leopard, every application that is compatible with Mac will be required to have sandboxing enabled and, once it’s working properly, Find My Mac will be a must-have.
FileVault 2 will now encrypt external drives as well as your entire internal drive, not just your Home folder. This shortcoming, along with the fact that the original FileVault only uses the standard 256-bit AES encryption, led many to rely on third-party software instead of Apple’s built-in solution. Now, with FileVault 2 capable of encrypting all your drives with the enhanced XTS-AES 128 standard, many who were using other solutions might want to take another look. The inspiration of FileVault 2′s hardware encryption key and ‘instantaneous wipe’ no doubt lies in iOS devices, where this feature has been standard since the iPhone 3GS. The erasure of data key will make the data completely inaccessible to unauthorized users if your computer is stolen or fiddled with without your consent. Once the key has been erased, your Mac will perform a DoD standard data wipe of your hard drive.
The remote wipe features of OS X Lion are activated through an iCloud account and are iCloud only. You cannot use the Find My Mac feature to locate, erase, lock or message your Mac with a MobileMe account. Since iCloud isn’t fully functional yet, this makes the implementation of the feature sloppy still, because you cannot be signed in to a MobileMe account and an iCloud account at the same time, but the rest of iCloud’s features, like Back to My Mac, are not up and running yet. Once iCloud is fully armed and operational, Find My Mac should be a default option that everyone should have enabled, just in case.
Application sandboxing is one of the best tools that Apple has to combat malware and crashing due to apps taking too many liberties with system resources. To quote my article on how Apple will use sandboxing in OS X Lion:
“Sandboxing limits the resources available to applications and restricts their access to areas of the operating system, or bits of hardware, that they don’t need to function. This technique is what makes iPhone apps so stable and unlikely to affect the system as a whole. If an iOS app undergoes a horrific crash the most that will happen to a user is that the app will close and they will be dropped back to the home screen of the device.
This kind of stability and security is where Apple wants to be with the Mac. To that end they’re going to be moving all Mac App Store apps to sandboxing very soon. Some of the information about this transition is protected under NDA but it’s safe to say that it won’t be optional and it’s going to be soon. Apple wants apps using only the resources that they need unless they have a very good excuse to do otherwise.”
I’m not really sure if the NDA still applies in this case, but I’m going to err on the side of safety and say that it does. So I’ll just say that within the next few months, every app coming through the Mac App Store will have to be using resources in a closed off area of your Mac’s system, AKA, the sandbox. This will make your apps, and your entire system, more stable and resistant to malicious code. It’s a good thing.
Odds and endings
Along with the major changes that we’ve talked about, Apple has also gone through and given much of the rest of OS X Lion a good once-over. Some old applications and a couple new ones are definitely still worth mentioning here.
FaceTime has been given a minor overhaul, giving it full-screen capabilities, HD support and is linked up to Address Book to start calls. I was unable to test the HD capabilities of FaceTime as I don’t have an HD camera. The full-screen view seemed nice, if relatively unspectacular due to the quality of my cameras.
AirDrop is a very cool concept in that it offers peer-to-peer file-sharing with zero configuration over a local WiFi network. If there is another Mac running OS X Lion on the same WiFi network, it will appear in the AirDrop interface and you can drag and drop files on the person’s profile picture to share it. The first time that you share a file, AirDrop will ask the person’s permission, then you’re good to go. Early reports indicate that this works well, although we only have one machine running OS X Lion concurrently here so I was unable to test it. Once we rectify that we’ll bring you our impressions.
About this Mac gets a very nice visual makeover that spruces it up considerably. Along with a sleeker tabbed view after you hit the ‘More info’ button, you also get an iTunes/iOS device inspired storage menu that shows you exactly how you’re using up the space on your hard-drive. There’s also an additional tab which tells you how much RAM you have installed and what slots it’s taking up, which is information that’s rarely easily exposed to the user.
Time Machine has been upgraded to support encrypted backups to external drives that are encrypted using FileVault 2. In addition, Time Machine will now perform backups even when you’re way from your Time Machine drive or Time Capsule. It does this by creating copies of files that you edit, saving them to your Mac’s hard drive. Then, when you come back to your home base and plug your backup drive back in, Time Machine will merge those backups, creating a seamless timeline out of the two sources. This is very slick and very welcome for heavy MacBook-users.
Back to the Mac
If you’re to glean anything from this in-depth look at OS X Lion, it’s that the Mac is safe for the foreseeable future.
The core of what makes OS X one of the best operating systems ever is still intact, despite the influx of new blood in the form of features inspired by iOS. What is most telling is that some of those features, like the implementation of extensive multitouch and natural UI, hardware encryption and sandboxing, all feel organic, as if they were always meant to be on the Mac.
Others however, such as Launchpad, feel as if they never should have left the confines of iOS. Something like the SpringBoard is to be tolerated on the iPad, but it just doesn’t feel like it belongs on the Mac at all.
When you look at the ways that OS X and iOS are converging in light of the massive performance of iOS devices over the last two quarters, it’s easy to see that Apple’s portable business will continue to be dominant and inform the Mac for many years to come.
But remember that the Mac isn’t standing still either, with sales up 14% year-on-year, despite the massive impact of the iPad. Even Apple’s COO Tim Cook was realistic about the impact that the iPad was having saying that “some customers chose to purchase an iPad rather than a new Mac,” then adding, “but what we’re excited about is that people chose to buy an iPad instead of Windows PCs.”
Yeah, yeah, but should I buy it?
If I was nice, I could have just added a link to this paragraph at the beginning, right? The short answer is yes. OS X Lion offers enough value in its security enhancements and improvements to features like Exposé and Spaces, in the form of Mission Control, to justify the $29.99 price tag alone. There’s really very little reason not to purchase the upgrade if you’re already a Mac user on Snow Leopard.
In addition to new features and additional security, you’re also getting a solid look at what the future of UI on the Mac looks like. That is to say, gestures, and naturalized interactions with our tried and true friends like the web browser that are inspired by portable devices such as the iPhone and iPad.
Within one, perhaps two generations of the Mac, the mouse will be as outdated as a keyboard-only interface was in those years after the Mac was first released. Upgrading to OS X Lion now will acclimatize you to the new way before you’re thrown in head-first.
I would also note that if you’re on a portable computer like the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, OS X Lion is absolutely made for you, so the recommendation to jump on board applies double to you. The combination of Spaces and Mission Control, along with slick gestures, make a small, single monitor workflow feel like an entire desk full of monitors. It’s really something you have to try for yourself.
In the end, both OS X Lion and iOS are solid enough to shape and harden each other without losing their individual luster. OS X Lion’s surface is especially shiny and polished, but if you look deep inside there is still a flawed Finder that needs fixed, as well as a new, useless appendage called Launchpad. If Apple finds a way to remedy those flaws then they’ll have one of the finest and most worthwhile OS offerings in the company’s history.
