El Capitan adoption rate is now estimated at 25%, one month after launch. This is very similar to Yosemite's adoption rate, which was the most successful OS X release to date. I don't see any evidence of many users getting to previous OS. You can't judge this just by looking at few posts here and there on these forums.
Which is expected given who fundamental the change is — and — which also shows that this change was bitterly needed. SIP only protects locations that are of no business to applications running in the user space (SIP or no SIP), so the issues show the extent of bugs and unsafe behaviour that currently exists. With SIP, Apple is enforcing the best practice rules, which will make computing a better experience for everyone. The initial period is always accompanied with problems. And I am quite surprised that the problems are not more severe than they are — which shows that SIP was really designed very well and that developers have adapted quickly. I never run into any substantial issue in over half the year of using 10.11
BTW, a similar story from the MS world. The permission system in Windows used to be basically non-existing. Any application could write essentially anywhere. It was a commonplace for applications to arbitrarily write to their own folder to save data, and the whole thing was a security nightmare (one of the reasons why Windows has the stigma of being insecure). Its not that Windows did not offer tools to do things properly, its just that nobody bothered. MS has eventually fixed this in Vista, which started enforcing write permissions in a manner similar to how Unix does it. It was a huge disaster initially, because most applications have stopped working. Funnily enough, this was one thing that Vista did right but it was also the primary reason why Vista is regarded as a failure. Eventually, most contemporary applications got fixed, the Windows became much more stable OS and everybody got quite impressed — this more or less coincides with the release of 7, which then suddenly became a "good" OS.
Bottomline: programmers are lazy and if you allow them to do everything, they will often choose the unsustainable, messy solution. Sometimes, best practices need to be enforced with iron hand. Apple does good for enforcing this one now.
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If your own experience with 10.11 is a good one, I deeply envy you but it doesn't solve the situation of all those users less lucky than you seem to be.
I am no less fan of Apple regarding hardware and software than you are.
However I have a solid machine less than 2 years old and although I bought Apple Care just to be on the safe side, until now in 1 1/2 years never needed it.
My MP 6.1 worked OK both with Mavericks and later with Yosemite.
I don't recall a single kernel panic since I have this computer.
Needless to say I fully respect your knowledge and endorse all the security measures you mention and all those which could be invented.
However when I upgrade after almost 3 weeks (a reasonable waiting time IMHO) to 10.11 and find soon that I must use the ON/OFF button (or pull the power supply cable) to shut down my computer, since the shut-down command doesn't work any longer,
that a restore of Yosemite trough my Time Machine backups doesn't work either,
that the so called Internet Recovery stops after forcing me to endure long waiting (and hoping) periods ending with repeated failures (and if by rare chance I would reach it,...it would offer me only Mavericks which came with my Mac)...
well I do not see any progress in the new "SIP-compliant" OSX 10.11 that justifies so much fundamental and basic (and not light, minor and forgivable) problems.
And your remarks about Windows are not entirely true.
If MS Windows is the most dangerous OS it is not only because of the previous lack of safety measures that you mention as its cause, but because it is by far the most widely used OS in the whole world.
Why would thieves lose their time and efforts to create and spread viruses and trojan horses to attack the few percentage of computer users in the world running OSX...if their chances to get much more succesful infections, larger armies of bots and ultimately much more money are countless higher if they do it for MS Windows?
The "iron hand" of Apple you so much admire is strangling many users like myself.
Unless of course we downgrade to Yosemite as I did and many many others.
Should we be thankful to Apple for creating so many deeply, utterly and comprehensively "safe"... corpses?
I am not so sure...
Ed
