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Wall Street Journal On The Switch

Posted by Hemos on from the good-press dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's personal technology columnist, has long appreciated Macintosh, in a very unbiased, but still probably slightly business-oriented way. Today, in honor of tomorrow's "Panther" release, he has a very positive article in favor of "consumers and small businesses" switching for peace of mind. "If you're tired of the virus wars, the Mac can be an island of serenity.""

5 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yay by Zelet · · Score: 0, Informative

    How is this flamebait? Read the freaking article. There AREN'T any viruses for OS X yet.

    --
    ...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
  2. Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac by azav · · Score: 3, Informative

    But the point is that even if it is a target, it is much harder to write a virus for OS X at this point in time.

    --
    - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
  3. Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac by dbirchall · · Score: 4, Informative
    Small market share is a common argument, but it's a red herring.

    Compare Apache's webserver market share to that of Microsoft IIS. Compare the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in those products, and the severity of the results.

    Compare Sendmail's SMTP server market share to that of Microsoft Exchange. Compare the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in those products, and the severity of the results.

    Compare Oracle's (or IBM's) SQL RDBMS market share to that of Microsoft SQL Server. Compare the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in those products, and the severity of the results.

    Deduction: Microsoft manages to lead in introducing exploitable vulnerabilities to market segments, with severe results, even in segments where they do not enjoy market share leadership.

    Now that's innovation! :)

    To be blunt and honest, Microsoft designed and maintained its operating system product(s) in ways that failed to take security (and multiple users, and networking, and...) into consideration for far too long, and now finds itself in the unenviable position of being the only operating system vendor most people have even heard of that doesn't have a properly secure operating system.

    -Dan (whose new "cheesegrater" G5 has fewer holes than Windows)

  4. Re:Do we need to keep painting a target on our bac by gsdali · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think the key feature of the OS X security model is that the root account is disabled by default. Doing admin by sudo instead of su seems much safer. I agree wholeheartedly with the above post and would like to add that I find the continual challenging for admin passwords very reassuring. Fair enough, passwords are only as secure as you keep them but I am fairly confident, using OSX, that no one can get my password without me specifically telling them (which isn't going to happen).

  5. Re:Yay by Huge+Pi+Removal · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are no known viruses *until you install Office X*.

    Got infected by Walker-E the other day. A Word macro virus that was written in 1999 actually infected Word on OS X. And all documents that passed through it.

    Now, to be fair, this isn't a virus that runs on OS X, it's a virus that runs under VBS emulation. However, that's not a distinction most users will make...

    Fecking Microsoft.

    --
    - Oliver

    The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...