Root Is Disabled
Another powerful security feature under Mac OS X is that the root user is disabled by default. Apple encourages users to rely on the sudo command instead, which has a five minute time-out. Disabling root requires a user to consciously use root privileges to accomplish a task. Going even further, any GUI application requiring administrative or root permissions to accomplish a task must ask the user for permission, which enables users to be more aware of when an application is attempting to modify system files or attributes.