[zottel]

Hi,

just a general rant: Far too many OS X users use an account with admin priviledges for daily work. That's not a good idea at all. True, there are no real viruses for OS X in the wild right now, but it's only a matter of time until there will be some. Working as an admin user, you give any application you run the right to write to the /Applications directory and alter any applications that are present there; to add virus code to, say, Adobe Photoshop, e.g.. If you are working as a normal user, the only directories any malicious code you execute can write to are your home directory and its subfolders (and, of course, the temp directory, and some similar, but that isn't a real threat, of course. ;-) ).

Plus, OS X works greatly and without any problems for any normal user—different from Windows, where there are a number of applications and, above all, installers that simply won't work if you're not logged in as an admin user. So, for an OS X user, there is no reason at all to take the risk and be an admin all the time, apart from a few very dumb installers that aren't able to ask for admin priviledges. Most of the time you can just punch in your admin user and his pw, and everything is great.

Not so with the (otherwise great) new upgrade function of OW. So please make this feature as professional as the rest of OW and have it ask for admin priviledges if they are not present.

[troyb]

Sorry for the trouble here. This is a limitation in the new updater that we hope to fix. Please keep in mind that this is all pre-beta and the updater is included with our automatic builds as changes are made. Keep an eye out!

[JKT]

Fwiw, I run as a non-admin account as well, but install the alpha in my own /Applications folder within my home directory. The updater doesn't have any problems with this as no password is required for installation.

[pjb]

If an installer insists on an admin pswd then by default it insists on putting the app at the system level but I often just want to put it at the user level where no admin pswd should be required. The sophisticated answer is to have the installer allow the app to be relocatable and adjust the pswd requirement accordingly (haven't seen that yet).

[zottel]

@Jonathan: Sure, this will work, of course, but at least theoretically it presents a similar security risk as working as an admin altogether: Any malicious code might install itself in an application you run regularly. This is more a theoretical than a practical threat, probably, as virus programmers probably will focus on those that don't keep an eye on their installation, i.e. work as admins—there are more than enough out there to make it feasible not to invest additional working time to "get them all". ;-) But still, I like it to be as secure as it is possible without losing usability.

Best regards,

Christian

[dangerous]

Meh, all the important stuff is in my home directory, not my applications directory, so running as a non-admin user is not going to offer me much protection. The biggest risk on a mac is running a trojan anyway, and if you make that mistake you might easily end up entering your password believing that it's for a legit application.