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.

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