The New York Times ran an article on the paranoia at Apple last year- <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/technology/23apple.html?_r=1&amp;hp" rel="nofollow">here</a>
It would seem that little has changed in the past year. As you point out, it is surprising that there has been only one article of note on this in the mainstream media. As a longtime Mac user I feel this is reflected in the OS too - when OS X came along suddenly all the control panels were done away with. This gave the impression the system was being hidden so you couldn't change anything. You got what you got.
You can, of course, still make changes to the system but I feel you need a greater depth of knowledge.