Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs

Barence writes "After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility, Apple is now advising its customers to install security software on their computers. Apple — which has continually played on Windows' vulnerability to viruses in its advertising campaigns — issued the advice in a low-key message on its support forums. 'Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.' It goes on to recommend a handful of products." Reader wild_berry points out the BBC's story on the unexpected recommendation.

Comments

Re:I'm sure there is a side deal with the AV comps

[BradleyUffner]

Hey, if our sales go up by 10% we'll float you a $50,000 hold back check.

So basically the cost of 2 new mac books?

[rim-shot] Thanks folks, im here all week.

Quietly?

[halcyon1234]

So, Apple, you have something to tell us?

geh ammprpmp sm

I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. A bit louder please?

Get a vmrs smmmr

It sounds like 'get a...' One more time, please, for everyone to hear.

..... get a virus scanner...

'Get a virus scanner'. So all this time you convinced us to use you bareback because you were 'safe' was just a lie?

Not always...

Oh that's right, I forgot. You invited Windows into our boot. You said we'd all be safe together. But didn't I warn you that when you boot with Windows, you boot with everyone Windows has ever had contact with? And that's a lot of people. So when did it happen, hmm? When I was taking care of all the little iPods we have together? Who mounter whose file system, hmm? No, don't touch me. I can't look at you right now.

Viruses? On a Mac? Nooooo Waaaaay?!

[wiedzmin]

But, but I thought Apples had no viruses? Can it possibly be that every fanboy biggest argument is actually false? Is Apple's market share actually becoming significant enough for the bad guys to start bothering with exploits for it? Oh the humanity!

Re:Viruses? On a Mac? Nooooo Waaaaay?!

[M-RES]

Well DUH! Or so I believe the saying goes.

No, the fanboys biggest argument is 'it just works', which still stands. There have been viruses on the Mac since before Windows existed, but just nothing so heinously compromising that it's wiped out half the world (or even a significant number of Mac users).

As things stand there are still no serious exploits being widely flouted in the wild under OS X, so even the original premise isn't far from being true. Not bad really for the best part of a decade in existence. Before that, the last (and only) infection I had was perhaps the Autostart9805 Worm under OS8 - and the fix, once it was deleted from System Folder>Extensions, was to dsiable CD autoplay in the control strip. Took about 2 minutes to clean a machine and not get reinfected.

Quite a good history compared to my current Win box which has a scan running every day removing the previous 24 hours' crap.

Re:Herd Immunity

[phillymjs]

if you're taking the time to right a piece of malicious code you generally want it to have the greatest impact possible

Yes, and being the first person to come up with a true Mac OS X self-replicating malware wouldn't have any impact at all, would it?

Please just stop with the stupid 'market share' argument. Not everyone who writes malware wants to run a Windows botnet for fun and profit. There are also a lot of people out there who would looooooooove the notoriety that would be attached to being the first guy to do it on Mac OS X. They've been working at it for nearly eight years and haven't succeeded yet. And Apple is working hard to ensure they don't succeed.

~Philly

Apple at it again - marketing

[slashdotlurker]

Apple freeloads off BSD developers' work. There have not been any viruses on BSD (or Linux) in the wild (active, harmful and self-propagating) to date.

I guess they figure that people dumb enough to pay their high prices are dumb enough to not see this through for what it is - a push tactic to sell software for a new Apple software partner.

That is Macworld for you - smart executives, smart psychologists, smarter marketing staff, adequate engineers married to dumb status conscious users while freeloading off extremely smart open source software developers (not employed by Apple) using a license written by some idealistic people without any rudimentary understanding of human nature.