I just got a new MacBook Pro. It’s the fifth one I’ve had since 2005, and as usual the hardware is gorgeous, and migrating from the old laptop was a breeze. But there’s one thing that boggles my mind about the default system configuration the firewall is off by default. It was off by default on my previous MacBook Pro too.

(I have a short file describing the steps I took when migrating to the old laptop, and “Security & Privacy: turn on firewall(!)” was one.) My wife bought a MacBook Air a couple of months and I just checked and the firewall is disabled on it, too. I admit I am not a world-class expert on matters of network security. Is this totally insane and negligent, or is there something I’m missing? The average application should not be listening on any ports to begin with.

I’d hope the out-of-the-box configuration has few if any listening ports (probably just mDNS service discovery). And a client firewall tends to have one of two properties: either it makes it a pain to run applications that legitimately listen on a port, or it automatically gets a hole poked in it by any application that wants to listen on a port.

You may not need a firewall, but you do need a VPN. Port Protection Your computer's internet connection grants you access to a limitless collection of entertaining and informative websites and videos.

The former is obnoxious and not user-friendly (leading to many “why does my application not work” issues), and the latter is pointless complexity. “Personal firewalls” are snake oil. You cannot protect a vulnerable machine by running more software on it, only by running less software. Any malicious traffic has already reached the machine, so all you can do is run extra software – which has its own attack surface – which breaks networking in attempt to prevent the malicious traffic from reaching the attack surface of some other software. All that really does is make your computer work worse.

The only way to actually firewall a machine is to prevent the malicious traffic from reaching it at all, which means a real firewall must be a separate device physically placed on the network in front of the machine that is to be protected. If that device is specialised enough to be fully auditable (a pipe dream nowadays) then it can actually shrink the total attack surface of the network. I don’t agree with people up here.

I understand that the best is that no application listen to any port until really required but you can’t check every software for open ports It can work also as a warning: “Hey, this software wants to open a port to the internet? Did you know?”. And if someone need to open a port, like running a server or a P2P application I suppose it can open the required port on the firewall and set port forwarding on the router. Also it can be useful to deny outgoing connection to some program. For example I don’t like programs that sends statistics about usage This is general, not Mac related. Incoming-connection firewalls don’t add security on desktop OSes.

Users have no way of knowing how much attack surface an app’s listening adds, or of knowing what app features require listening. Firewall requests just add to annoyance and security dialog fatigue. Apps that want to “just work” have ways around the firewall.

Apps can make other apps connect on their behalf (because desktop OSes lack inter-app protection). P2P apps regularly punch holes in NAT firewalls.

Best free music player for mac 2017. Here are the best free Mac music play tools for you with their great features. VOX: Music Player. Vox is a good and simple music player sporting minimal looks with tons of options. It supports all the present audio formats like FLAC, MP#, APE, etc. If you love to tweak and fettle with the music settings. The best free music player 2018. Versions for Mac, Linux, Android and iOS are also available. If you're looking for a single app to handle both music and video then it's hard to beat, but for. Best Mac Music Player: 2017 List of Best Media Players App [Free & Paid] Ricky Shah January 17, 2017 Apple No Comments While iTunes itself is a next to complete Mac music player, there are plenty of good options out there that are far superior then default iTunes. VOX Music Player. This is hands down the best music player you can get for your Mac. It hits all the right boxes. The layout is minimalistic, with an intuitive and easy to use interface. You can create playlists and collections to organize your music. When you are playing a certain playlist you can just drag and drop songs to queue them. You can also connect your SoundCloud account and sync your music across both the platforms. 2017 Best Music Player for Windows and Mac. January 31, 2017 by Karlie Harris / 0. But one of the best free music players for Windows 10 on the scene. Don’t let the basic interface fool you into thinking this isn’t worth your time: You can customze the interface however you want, and play anything from MP3s and WMA to Musepack, Speex.

When that doesn’t work, they “listen” using outgoing connections, which just adds complexity and wastes the bandwidth of nodes that aren’t behind firewalls. I have the Win7 firewall enabled and it’s a nightmare. The firewall dialog regularly pops up *behind* applications (especially games) while preventing them from working. What boggles my mind is why Mac doesn’t have a decent or unified application-update system.