root on Mac

[lowell]

Folks:
   A friend works on Macs exclusively and an announcement of an M$ Word 
vulnerability went across one of the sites she visits. This engendered a 
discussion of his habit of always working with administrative rights , 
and  separate root accounts  and being able to "su -" in a terminal. 
Then I (we) remembered that one must "verify..." and then "repair 
permissions" on a regular basis, even when working with administrative 
permissions all the time. I recall hearing that that is a common failing 
in the recent MacOS's (X.*)
   I remember some people on this list speaking of working with or using 
Mac's; would anyone care to comment on this situation, i.e. working as 
root (that's what it amounts to) and still having permission problems...