Slashdot Mirror
Apple Yanks Mac Virus Immunity Claims From Website
redletterdave writes "Apple quietly switched out a statement that claimed its Mac computers were completely immune to viruses with a less-forward statement: 'It's built to be safe.' The PR shift comes in the aftermath of the Flashback Trojan, which affected hundreds of thousands of Macs back in early April. From the article: 'Apple strives for perfection, but stating something is perfect when it isn't is ultimately bad for PR and company morale. Jobs used his reality distortion field to "rally the troops," so to speak, but "Mountain Lion" will ensure Apple can tout its closed, highly-secure operating system for the foreseeable future in a much more realistic sense. Just because a product isn't impervious to sickness doesn't mean it isn't "insanely great."'"
I mean, that type of statement COULD be construed as false advertising? Or am I completely wrong?
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
Apple viruses have been around for awhile. Linux viruses exist. Viruses exist even for obscure, closed computer systems (look at STUXNET). Statistically, were they less likely to get viruses because Apple's OS is on a lower percentage of the computers out there? Yes. Immune to all viruses? Laughable.
IIRC, the claim was that Macs were immune to "Windows viruses".
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How many viruses are there for Windows? "Apple quietly switched out a statement "? What are they supposed to do have a press release? Would any company on the planet do that? Just because they got nailed by a virus doesn't make them worse than a PC. So many people are desperate for a chink in Apple's armor that they overreact to things like this. Put it into perspective. They are still very resistant to viruses. I have more legitimate issues like searching for files on a Mac is a joke and they aren't as stable as they used to be, especially since Lion came out.
Here are before and after images of the marketing text.
Also, contrary to the summary, it never claimed complete immunity to viruses, merely immunity to Windows viruses, which is, admittedly, a trivial and silly distinction to make, but I like playing the pedant.
And everyone that ever used Linux will eventually die.
It's like when your Pokemon uses Confusion. It makes fanboys rabidly attack anyone and everyone near by while mostly just hurting themselves.
As opposed to the reality-distortion field which causes *some* people to think that Apple 'fanboys' think that Apple invented the mouse.
...its closed, highly-secure operating system...
Apple's OS is a lot of things, but it's still Unix based. If I want to do something, a terminal window is a click away. They've made the low level settings harder to get to via a settings window, to be sure; but at the end of the day, I can always issue the appropriate command. Closed might describe their mobile OS well, but that doesn't apply to their desktop OS (yet).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
"That'll never compile."
And everyone that has used one SAP's systems, but it will be a death by confusion.
Re-animating the dead had nowhere near the profit margins as printer ink.
Twenty? I used a one-button Mac six years ago - one of those ugly uncomfortable puck mice. It was made maybe ten years ago, probably a bit less.
Not to mention that *technically* their current touchpad mice have only one "button"...
It's like a Someone Else's Problem (SEP) field run in reverse; instead of people subconsciously avoiding the problem, they're all drawn to it.
I am John Hurt.
The reality distortion field is what causes Apple fanboys to think that Apple invented the mouse.
Wow I've never actually heard this. I've never heard that Apple has invented the smartphone or the mp3 player, either. I sometimes think people think they heard the word 'invent' when the word used was 'innovate'.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And Microsoft fanboys to think that MS invented windows.
I think one of the reasons for the re-wording was to remove the word "viruses" since it so obviously confuses people who don't know the difference between viruses and trojans and think the handful of Mac malware in 12 years is equivalent to over 17,000,000 for Windows. Sorry, but market-share doesn't account for that discrepancy.
I consider this to significant progress on the part of Apple and they deserve to get credit. Much as Microsoft has their head buried in the sand for years before they started making changes, we should applaud Apple for taking the first step. I welcome Apple to world of reality, a world in which operating system have security flaws, require patches and get viruses.
Now that Apple is in at least some small way acknowledging the real world, let's see if they can clean up their act the way Microsoft did years ago. Admitting you have a problem is always the first step, now we can always hope that they will start to embrace industry standards for dealing with security issues. Perhaps someday their users will no longer also have their heads in the clouds about security issues?
Kind of funny thinking about it, a decade ago I never would have imagined citing Microsoft as a company that can be cited as cleaning up their act for security. /responsible for securing an environment that is %50 mac, so I'm not trolling.....
They have a better track record for not being targeted. That comes with a smaller market share. You can't objectively evaluate security, since you don't know how or when/if things will be exploited, but the general consensus in the security community seems to be that OSX has more security holes that Windows 7. Windows is just targeted more because it's more economical.
So yeah, sure, the expected value of using Mac over "PC" is currently more personal security due to less exposure to attacks. But that doesn't mean that OSX itself is more secure.
And it's a lie.
No it's not.
All depends on your definition of "perfect" vs. theirs.
And as our bullshit legal system can attest, there are so many ways to skin that cat that if it were carried out literally, the feline species would be extinct.
It is precisely those unequivocal words like "nothing" that get people into trouble.
I like how you deride him for making a blanket statement, and then go on to do just that yourself. Are you just being ironic? The "architecture" is a sweeping generalization which you need to qualify. What about the "architecture"? What aspects?
It deflects all attacks of Logic and Fact type targeted at Apple while in use. Probably the most effective resistive spell in all of computing, even better than RMS' "shroud of bizarre."
Great Intellect...
The reality distortion field is what causes Apple fanboys to think that Apple invented the mouse.
No true Apple fan believes Apple invented the mouse. The story of Steve Jobs visiting PARC and exclaiming "you're sitting on a goldmine!" in exasperation when they said that they had no intention of commercialising it then rushing back to Apple and calling the hardware guy in and told him to drop all current projects because "*this* [the mouse] is what we've got to make".
I mean, if we're being truthful about what the RDF is.
It would be more accurate to say that it's the effect that gets people to cheer during the keynote when Jobs announced that they had updated iOS4 to enable the volume-up key to work as the shutter release in the camera app (and yes, that did happen. I eyerolled with amusement - I mean, it's a nice feature but it received a round of applause for goodness sake).
I think one of the reasons for the re-wording was to remove the word "viruses" since it so obviously confuses people who don't know the difference between viruses and trojans and think the handful of Mac malware in 12 years is equivalent to over 17,000,000 for Windows. Sorry, but market-share doesn't account for that discrepancy.
And why not? When you can design a virus (Trojan, whatever, no one outside the tech community gives a crap what term you use) that hits 20 times as many targets, many used in industrial or commercial settings (such as what Stuxnet targeted), why would you bother trying for a Mac virus? The point of most malware isn't to hit a specific target (there are exceptions of course, but as I said before, many of them run Windows, and are usually targeted in more precise attacks anyways), but to hit as many targets as possible. In that light, it's almost stupid to bother making a Mac virus at all.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
*missing words. "The story of Steve Jobs visiting PARC is famous...."
Blame Al Gore, for innovating the Internet :)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Yeah, now you've got... this thing: http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/. No humor to be found there. That said, get your timeline straight: the one button mouse was discontinued as Apple's official mouse in 2007. Not 20 years ago.
I think you'll find most people who do not think highly of Apple here think just as little of Microsoft. I know it can be hard to get out of the mentality that it is Apple vs. Microsoft and you have to pick one, but there are, in fact, people who have legitimate reasons to dislike both the company you love and the company you hate.
Great Intellect...
It also has less legacy cruft.
What fool thinks that any computer system is immune to one sort of malware or another?
Linux zealots.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
According to Apple, there are only 66 million Mac users out there. This is in contrast to Microsoft, who sold over 600 million copies of Windows 7 alone, which does not count everyone still out there on XP, which is probably another couple hundred million. Let me put it this way: more people use Windows Vista than use a Mac.
Because Mac OS X has an actual security model, whereas the default on Windows (pre-Vista) has always been the same as MS-DOS security.
Here is a link showing the before and after of the Apple web page in question.
http://sophosnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/mac-osx-before-after.jpg
I don't think they could be sued, there is no false advertising on their part. It blatantly states "A Mac isn't susceptible to the thousands of of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers."
That is a completely accurate statement. Mac OS X cannot be infected with a Windows virus.
The old (but still true) fact is that Mac OS X has less malware because it is a smaller target (about 10% market share) than Windows for the bad guys to be cost effective.
Baloney. If Apple and Mac developers are making money off of the platform - and they are - then malware writers should be as well. We're not talking
"a tenth of the malware of Windows", we're talking a significant order of magnitude less malware, almost all of it trojans requiring user intervention to install itself, and just two that were self-propagating (drive-by downloads rather than viruses), and one of those required you to run a version of MacOS X best described as "antique."
Mac OS X is more secure than Windows on an ongoing basis - that fact is indisputable. This isn't theory, this is stark, cold reality when you look at the numbers of "in the wild" rather than theoretical exploits. The reason for it is that the tricks to bypass the Windows security model with third party software are all still there - where Apple ruthlessly roots out and deprecates without notice unsupported API's and other system hooks that cause trouble. Mac devs need to play nicely with the security model, and make changes to accomodate new OS releases, or their software breaks. This makes many devs and users screamingly angry, and none more so than malware writers, who find months worth of development rendered useless overnight.
Microsoft goes out of its way to make backwards compatibility happen for even its most wayward developers, and that means keeping around the kluges and hacks and workarounds that have been floating in the Windows ecosphere since forever. This gives everyone the warm fuzzies, especially the malware writers.
Microsoft plays whack-a-mole with security, Apple plays nuke-them-from-orbit.
I'll blame the massive media distortion field that turned:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's...
Into:
Dude, I'm in your base inventing your internet.
Because Mac OS X has an actual security model...
Of course, the security model of "No, you can't install that because technically we're only renting this box to you" is probably a large part of why their market share has been practically non-existent until recently...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So, in other words, they have a corner on the "expensive computer" market. Maybe because the majority of Windows based computers are under $1000, whereas it's difficult to get a Mac based computer for under $1000. It's kind of a self-fulfilling statistic since prices on Windows based comps have gone down significantly. :)
Apple's market share is 66% for all personal computers sold in stores for more than $1,000. In addition, Apple's market share as been increasing as sales of PCs as a whole have been dropping.
That's because most Windows PC's are less than $1000. We don't pay the $2-300 extra for the Apple tax. My completely decked out PC was $1300 and had twice the computing power of an Mac of the same price. So of course an entry level model will not register in the $1000+ market.
The NPD Group has reported that Apple is market share at retail store fronts for the first quarter in the U.S. is 66 percent, but only for those PCs costing more than US$1,000. For all PCs, it is 14%.
You used 4 qualifiers (bolded) to find a niche subsegment where Apple performed well. Moreover, your "report" is from 2008, before Windows 7 was released. Since then, Microsoft has sold 600 million copies of Windows 7, whereas Apple estimates only 66 million people use Macs in total. The PC market is fantastically huge, which is what makes it such an appealing target for malware.
You joke... but this is actually the kind of thing that was lost with Steve Jobs. Not that OSX is impevious, but the almost religious belief in whatever Apple says.
Jobs would have kept saying it. Mac user would parrot it. You won't believe how often I hear Mac users (although I am one) delude themselves into thinking how great their platform is. The marketing speak of "Macs are immune to viruses" doesn't have to be true, the consumers just have to believe it is.
It's sort of like how Howard Camping said the world was going to end in May last year and then it didn't, and then people STILL believed him when he said it was going to end in October.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying this but since Apples now use "PC" hardware (ie. x86 architecture) it seems to reason that a boot sector virus could possibly effect any type of system or does that not count as a "PC" virus?
Disclaimer: I'm definitely not a security expert.
I don't have time to make a sig
How can someone with a six digit /.UID not know what a reality distortion field is? The phrase was coined 31 years ago and spoken of here quite often.
Free Martian Whores!
Google can still claim that ChromeOS is virus free!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Apple is awesome, Linux and Windows are lame. Just in case you were wondering.
windows 2000 had security, but when people defaulting use an admin account for everything stuff happens, osx didn't allow that for accounts so most can be pointed at end users. But truth is with windows on 20x more machine then osx it would get targeted. Osx would be a prime target if it was reverse. Least with MS they didn't Deny the exsistent of virus's and flaw's in their OS, Apple on other hand up til now made the claim OSX was 100% secure and never got virus's. MS least takes a proactive approach to updates to windows where as Apple took 2 months to fix the flaw that Flashback trojan targeted. Windows side had update to fix it the day after it was announced to be a flawed code. 1day vs 8 weeks. Overall Avg windows user is more proactive at taking steps to protect their computer then osx users since Apple has built the false image of virus free OS which everyone that seen that mac vs pc add where mac claimed he don't get virus's, Apple fans said its true, but people like me that didn't have our heads up our ass's knew OSX probably had as many flaws as windows did just no one was looking for them. Well over next few years flaw's will be found that been missed in OSX probably dating back to earliest versions.
Exactly what I thought. I did a double take on the title as well.
According to the site you linked to, that figure only applies to PC's costing $1000 or more and are purchased at retail stores.
Another little fact the author felt worth mentioning that you did not is that $1,000+ PC's purchased at retail stores only make up about 14% of the PC market.
So, the whole snippet (minus your arbitrary edits) reads like this:
Of the 14% of PCs sold for more than $1000 at brick-and-mortar retailers, 66% are Macs.
Gee, sounds far less impressive when you put in all the facts, I see why you selectively edited them out...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
*sigh*
All tech companies copy off of other tech companies, then patent everything in between in case they get sued.
It still happens today!
I feel like no one got the reference. It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to having an article talking about Steve Jobs (a dead person) with references to AD&D while the title is about something happening today.
Apple's market share is 66% for all personal computers sold in stores for more than $1,000. In addition, Apple's market share as been increasing as sales of PCs as a whole have been dropping.
Are you serious? Those are sales figures (sold new at retail stores in first quarter 2008 for over $1000), not usage figures. You're not talking about what's being used in the market, just what was sold during the first quarter - OF 2008! - and even then you're only considering retail stores and $1000+ computers, where the average PC cost is $650. So not only are your sales figures irrelevant to a discussion about usage share, but they're cherrypicked to such a ridiculous level that they're not even relevant as overall sales figures. That's like saying a large percentage of the cars on the road are Cadillacs because, in June of 2010, they sold the most domestic cars that cost more than $40k. Most cars cost less than that new, many cars aren't bought from domestic dealerships, and most of the cars on the road aren't new or weren't bought new in that time period. Likewise, most computers don't cost that much, many of them aren't bought from retail stores, and there are more computers out there than what was bought new in the first quarter of 2008.
The GP's point was that Mac's desktop OS market share is less than 10%. And that's not only true, but it's generous - as of 5/2012, they've got about 6.5%. Like it was mentioned earlier, less than Vista.
Luvaglio's market share is 100% for all personal computers sold for more than $X and Apple's is 0%.
X being quite a large number, mind you.
Market share comparisons don't mean a damn thing when you cut out broad portions of the overall market.
How the hell is this insightful? With the original CRT iMac going forward, you could take any third party USB mouse, plug it in and have your two or more mouse buttons.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
No, they think that because they read it here over and over.
That said, get your timeline straight: the one button mouse was discontinued as Apple's official mouse in 2007. Not 20 years ago.
The Wikipedia says it was 2005, and anyway that is with Apple's official mouse. They've supported 2-button mice for much longer.
No true Apple fan believes...
Provided that they're not Scottish as well.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
My favorite part about Apple's virus/malware policy is how, when someone would publicly point out a security flaw, Apple would proceed to demonize and harangue them in an attempt to ruin that person's reputation... then quietly include a fix for the aforementioned flaw in their next OS update, never once admitting that there was a legitimate issue.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The platform is great (or not) irrespective of what idiot fan boys think. This is what I hate most about any conversation about Apple ever. I too am a Mac user (think they are great) and accept that malware is not impossible to get. I, however, am not the stereotypical hyper-logical binary slashdotter who doesn't realize that marketing is marketing and exists to try to get people to buy your stuff.
Whether a bunch of fanboi hipsters buy Macs or not, I'm still going to like my Mac, regardless what others think. People who hate Macs, for whatever reason, think I am trying to tell them how awesome my Mac is (really don't care what you think), or even worse, that I'm trying to IMPRESS you by purchasing something anyone else can also buy. Again, I don't really care what you think about my computer. I'm using it a public space, because, a) I have it with me, and b) there's free wi-fi. Not c) to try and impress all the chicks with my Macbook...but this is slashdot, so maybe that's the logical conclusion.
Not sure you can use that word for Apple and mice either. In particular, I'm not sure reducing functionality qualifies to be an "innovation." Making things simplier or easier certainly does, but going from a two- or three-button mouse to a one-button mouse when the interface necessitates a two-button mouse at the minimum doesn't qualify as either.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I went and said hi to my old boss from when I was doing PC repair recently. They're by far the largest PC repair shop in the area, and he was telling me about how they had gotten Apple certified (amusingly, they are now the only Apple certified shop in a 90 mile radius, including four towns of 20-40k population and *three* universities. Previously, Apple owners had to either ship it off or drive it to the next largest city, an hour and a half away.)
Anyway, he loves it. They get paid more by Apple to do the same repairs as they charge for PCs. And on top of that, he sees just as many Apple machines in for repair as any other manufacturer -- except when Apple owners drop off their hardware for repairs, most of the time they're still *glowing* about how much better their machines are than some HP or Dell. They clean up plenty of Mac malware infections (doesn't matter if there are 17 million more infections for Windows -- all it takes is one to hose your machine), and the customers are still glad that they don't have all those Windows viruses. It's a level of compartmentalization or rationalization or whatever phenomenon you want to call it that is nearly unbelievable.
But hey, he's laughing all the way to the bank, along with Apple. If you can make a decent product, but convince your customer base that it's *flawless* -- that it's some sort of unparalleled special experience -- they'll lap it up. You don't want to sell facts -- like a larger screen or a faster processor. Apple can't compete there. They can put out a solid piece of hardware, but there's too much competition -- they'll rarely be the best at anything. You want to sell emotions. Emotions can't be quantified. Feelings can't be disputed. Sell feelings and you're golden. Sell facts that require your customers to think analytically? That's suicide.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
What always sickens me about the anti-Apple Fanboy is that there's this sweeping generalization that they make as a strawman argument, "All you Apple fan boys claim that Macs couldn't possibly ever get a virus". I see that time and time again, but don't recall anyone actually saying Macs couldn't get a virus. The reality here is that there has not been a single Mac OS X virus spread in the wild. If you think there was, or "heard" there was, get the name. Look it up. It's a trojan or other malware. People may speak in broad terms such that viruses=malware=trojans=worms, and there's some practical truth to that as opposed to technical truth. That's fine, but still, the overall level of OS X malware is significantly lower than not just Windows, but also lower than OS 9, OS 8, System 7, and especially System 6. This is an important counter-point to "security through obscurity" since previous Mac Systems had much lower numbers of users and lower market share, as well as fewer vectors for infection (less networked). In practical terms, I know many users who had infected PC at one point or another. Face it, it's been a huge issue over the years, and a huge selling point for the Mac (even if it was through obscurity). Sure, many of you IT guys here have never been infected, and that's great, but what about your clients, moms, friends, etc? How many of you can say you've simply never come across a PC or anyone with a PC that was infected? I know countless people who have "lost everything" due to a virus (or maybe a trojan or other malware on a PC). I simply don't know anyone, not even my mom, who's had any malware problem on a Mac. So when Apple advertised, "There's no *PC* viruses on a Mac", ya, it's technically misleading, but in practical terms, the reality is that for many people, malware is an issue they've had to directly deal with and be frustrated by on a PC, while it's not been an issue (to date) on a Mac.
I have yet to see proof that even 1 mac was infected with the trojan. where's the proof that hundreds of thousands were infected? out of how many million macs?
also, trojans are not viruses. generally speaking, a trojan must be kick-started by an unsuspecting user, while a virus can run on it's own in the background, without requiring user action. i haven't seen a virus on a Mac since MacOS 9.21, many many years ago.
I see pc infections on a fairly regular basis, although more spyware and fake AV programs than outright viruses like in the early 2000's.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
To make any practical use of a Windows 2000 system you needed to be admin, because practically any software available required admin to install and run correctly. Including much of MS's own non-OS software.
It didn't matter how good the OS was if MS couldn't keep its dev community in line (or even its own in-house devs in line) and code/test for use with non-admin accounts.
It was really only with Windows 7 that the culture had been shifted enough to realistically use a Windows machine without local admin rights. And there's still a crap ton of software in regular use that still pretends it's 1997.
--
On the flip side MS has now gone bonkers with security...far beyond the point of practicality in many cases and end up with less secure systems as people disable/workaround the layers of muck they've added. I'm dealing with TFS currently...just the simple act of adding a user to a project (or god forbid, creating a new project) is an absolute nightmare requiring permission changes in at least 4 different systems managed by at least 9 different administrative interfaces, many of which require RDP (no remote admin)....and that's not even including the AD side. It's pretty much forcing us to circumvent it (just as Win 2000 did a decade ago) to legitimately use it.
In the end, while MUCH better then years past, MS still fundamentally doesn't grok security.
My
What they mean is that as Mac users they more or less don't worry about virus and they more or less don't have to. And that is true. The chance of infection and seriousness of infections are still so much lower that mac users don't experience virus, trojans, malware... as everyday events that are a universal threat but extremely infrequent anecdotal events.
That's not a small thing
And they are essentially right. While Apple certainly didn't invent the GUI they demonstrated it, developed the standards for it, and advanced it. They took what was a niche research item and made it a consumer product.
Statistically, were they less likely to get viruses because Apple's OS is on a lower percentage of the computers out there? Yes.
No, there is no evidence for that. Were that the case then the number of viruses for OSX would be about the same as it was for OS9, since their market shares are roughly equal. And that's not what the data shows. Nor do we see a major increase in virus for iOS as it has an even larger market share.
like a larger screen or a faster processor. Apple can't compete there.
Huh? Apple comes with an HDMI port. Short of the absolutely gigantic screens that require completely custom hardware, what can't it run? As for processors:
2x Xeon 5675's with 12 cores ain't the best. But I don't know many people who get more than that.
How the hell is this insightful? With the original CRT iMac going forward, you could take any third party USB mouse, plug it in and have your two or more mouse buttons.
And before that, you could do it with a third party multi-button ADB mouse.
"claimed its Mac computers were completely immune to viruses"
No, that's not what it said. It said, and I quote, "A Mac isn't susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers."
That is still true today.
You are quoting a 2008 article, it is now more like 90%. of all computers over $1000 also from NPD. As an aside the averages from last year:
average windows box $515
average Mac $1400
NPD's data (the source he was using) has Apple at about 90% for computers over $1000. His old data was underestimating not overestimating Apple's place in the high end market today.
Right, and I'm not saying this to be snide at all but I consider Apple to be kinda like Linux in that regard. "Viruses" aren't what people think they are, even on Windows it seems. People always think if something gets onto your system and makes it do something you don't want it to, it's a virus. I hate that, since that's just a trojan, and isn't really a problem with spreading to others... unless the user just randomly runs apps as administrator.
For those that can't seem to fathom the concept, a virus is a piece of data that finds a way to spread itself to other machines by it's own volition. (without asking for admin password)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
There certainly are a lot of people that don't understand that these days not everyone buys Apple products in an effort to satisfy a superiority complex (in fact i'd say most of apple's customers these days don't given the ubiquity of iDevices).
I've never heard that Apple has invented the smartphone or the mp3 player, either.
Never? Now here's an interesting statistical anomaly: I've heard from dozens of Apple users statements to the effect that "Jobs has put the Internet in my pocket" or "Apple has invented the smartphone." or "We have apps on the phone thanks to Apple". I've heard this bullshit repeated so many times, that I am very hesitant to believe you when you say that you have never heard that Apple has invented the smartphone.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
My favorite part about Apple's virus/malware policy is how, when someone would publicly point out a security flaw, Apple would proceed to demonize and harangue them in an attempt to ruin that person's reputation... then quietly include a fix for the aforementioned flaw in their next OS update, never once admitting that there was a legitimate issue.
In reality, Apple credits everybody (first) reporting an issue to them in the documentation of the security updates. Well, maybe not if they acted like complete asshats - is that what happened to you?
"Jobs has put the Internet in my pocket"
That doesn't mean 'invented the smart phone'.
"We have apps on the phone thanks to Apple"
The word 'invent' doesn't necessarily apply here, either.
I've heard this bullshit repeated so many times, that I am very hesitant to believe you when you say that you have never heard that Apple has invented the smartphone.
It makes perfect sense to me. You're hanging out in places where they babble and hearing what you want to hear. Two of the three examples you gave only really mean "This is finally accessible to me". The word 'invent' just magically appeared in your head... which is exactly what I'm talking about. Heh.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Double yawn.
The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
Whether you use 2008 data or 2012 data, you can conclude that there enough Macs out there to be a nice target for malware. We will see more malware for Macs but, because Mac OS X is more secure than older versions of Windows, never as much as we have seen for Windows.
In fairness to Windows, how much malware is for Windows 7 and how much is for previous versions which may not have been as secure?
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
The current Mac mice and trackpads are still "one button" by default, but you can enable right-click (two-finger trackpad tap is my preference) on a per-account basis. Mac OSX has supported right mouse buttons (and scroll wheels IIRC) since its public beta in 2000.
The puck mouse was introduced in 1998 with the original iMac, and discontinued in 2000 for obvious reasons.
He doesn't mean MS fanbois are still talking about it even after Apple got rid of the one-button mouse, because of course the default is still one virtual button.
He means that they've been going on about it ever since the Windows PC world started using mice on a regular basis and claiming 2 and 3 buttons were better.
20 years ago places it smack dab at the start of the Windows 3.1 era. Win3.0, the first Windows version to see widespread use, was only 2 years older than that.
A trojan isn't a virus.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The NPD Group has reported that Apple is market share at retail store fronts for the first quarter in the U.S. is 66 percent, but only for those PCs costing more than US$1,000. For all PCs, it is 14%.
You used 4 qualifiers (bolded) to find a niche subsegment where Apple performed well. Moreover, your "report" is from 2008, before Windows 7 was released. Since then, Microsoft has sold 600 million copies of Windows 7, whereas Apple estimates only 66 million people use Macs in total. The PC market is fantastically huge, which is what makes it such an appealing target for malware.
First of all: Macs have been outgrowing the rest of the PC market for several quarters now. And number two: why would a "fantastically huge" market be more appealing than one with immensely higher profit?
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Macs have fewer viruses because they are not nearly as numerous as Windows Machines, less machines == Fact.
Macs have the same kind of malware Windows machines, Flashback proved that == Fact.
So your statement is not only disputed, it's quickly refuted.
Apple plays stick your head in the sand with security.
Their response to Flashback and every other bit of Mac Malware is proof of this. First pretend it didn't happen, then months after the event add that particular file to a blacklist. The core of OSX security is a freaking blacklist of known threats. Anyone with an iota of security knowledge knows blacklists are useless because of unknown threats.
This statement has just proven you don't live in the real world. Backwards compatibility for business (not developers, actual users) is a very big thing. A lot of printing shops were scared off of Macs when OSX was released because a lot of software written for OS 9 would not work on OSX and the developers had no interest in making software that was compatible with their current systems. So a lot of shops were forced to change their procedures, equipment and in many cases, pay up to tens of thousands of dollars for an updated program. Many just went to Windows because Microsoft has a good history of backwards compatibility (even with Vista/7).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm sure that the cybercriminals gather at bi-annual conferences and calibrates their attacks to OS market shares: "Ok - OS X is now at 10% so we need 1 out of every 10 attack to target OS X"
Get real.
Nowadays attacks are created for financial gain - not for personal breast-thumping like in the MacOS and DOS/early Windows days.
Imagine the attacker at a shooting range. He can choose between two targets of equal size (equally hard to hit). Each time he hits target A he receives $10. Each time he hits target B he receives $90. He has 100 shots.
What does the attacker do?
1. Targets A with all 100 shots because that's the cool thing to do?
2. Targets B with all 100 shots because that'll maximize his ROI?
3. Take 10 shots at A and 90 shots at B because that's more fair to the targets?
Even if target B is moved further away he will *still* target B each time until it gets 9 times harder to hit than A. Because that's how he maximizes his ROI.
There is no secret sauce in neither OS X nor Linux which prevents attacks. Indeed, battle-hardened Windows sports many more and more efficient anti-exploit features than any of them.
The old "but Windows users still run as administrators" hasn't been true since Vista, and even before that it was really only true for home users. Nowadays even if you log in using your administrator account you are still not running as an administrator. Unlike Linux/OS X Windows actually has fine-grained user and process tokens and when you log in a special token is created for you which is stripped of admin privileges. All processes you start will by default run with such a stripped token. What happens when you "elevate" (the UAC prompt) is that your non-stripped token is associated with the process being elevated.
This is what most OS X and Linux users don't get about Windows: Even when you log in as an administrator you are still not running as an administrator.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Your mom is a virus. ;-)
Macs have fewer viruses because they are not nearly as numerous as Windows Machines, less machines == Fact.
Macs have the same kind of malware Windows machines, Flashback proved that == Fact.
Please explain the disparity in scale. The amount of malware simply isn't proportional... there was one self-installing bit of malware available for the Mac platform. One. In the entire history of the platform, dating back to the '80s, when it was NeXT, up until just this year. And you're really going to say it's because the Mac has a smaller user base? Really? Don't Mac developers make money hand over fist on the platform? Isn't it mostly comprised of home machines, which would be more likely to have valuable personal information to strip-mine?
Your hand-waving is alarming. It indicates you don't understand security, or worse, believe it's a problem solved by third party software - a common problem for Windows enthusiasts.
While I agree that Microsoft has yet to create the extensive walled garden of Apple it has done so on a smaller scale in the past (see the browser wars). More topical is the fact that this is EXACTLY what they are planning with the new Metro App store.
Until I personally suffer from any of those issues I'll continue to hold Apple products in high regard. There isn't enough evidence to support your claims (outside of they run hot and their server performance, which isn't important to me). I'm not saying your claims aren't true, only that they might be anecdotal and/or biased. I think anytime you work with massive quantities of something, you are bound to encounter the negatives you otherwise wouldn't have. Like having 50 Ferraris in my garage and two of them have intake manifold problems...doesn't detract from the awesomeness of the other 48 Ferraris.
Personal dislike of the OS is perfectly fine and a legitimate complaint. I have a feeling that 15 years of Windows indoctrination is really hard for many people to kick. (Not you per se, but in general).
I work in an environment of roughly 5000 Macs after years of working with Dell Shitbox 9000s. I don't know a single IT person here, but I knew the entire IT staff at Dell Shitbox company by first name. I've never been locked out of my AD account and my roaming profile has never become busted because of shitty admins not knowing what they are doing on top of questionable Windows OSes on dubious Dell commodity hardware.
I switched to Mac almost 5 years ago because I was tired of fixing problems with Windows and still needed Photoshop. I still run Win 7 for work, and Parallels does a good job of that, but we gotta make money somehow.
I also consider myself not a fanboi. I think, overall, it's better than Windows. I have never thought it impervious to malware, the best defense is being cognizant of the threats out there and avoiding such behavior. And I've never tried to impress chicks as I've been happily married for 7 years now.
There's an additional practicality reason for me switching to Macs: my wife's job. She's an astronomer, and her observatory runs almost exclusively *nix and Macs, so it's a lot easier to support her if I'm running the same platform and it's easiest for her to run the same platform as what she does at work. I've never actively proselytized for Macs, but I've had a lot of people come up to me in public spaces and ask me about it. I always play down the 'immune to virus' plank because it's not true. It's not yet to the point that I have to install anti-malware, and I hope it doesn't get to that point, but we'll see.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
> I see that time and time again, but don't recall anyone actually saying Macs
Funny, I had people telling me that all the time when I worked in a user-support role, to the degree that they regarded me as misinformed, deranged and/or stupid if I hinted that Macs were even theoretically vulnerable to malware.
To be fair, my personally experience *does* shadow yours, but with some changes:
'I don't recall anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature actually saying that Macs couldn't get a virus'
Haha, I'd be worried about the chance of success for anyone who uses their computer to "impress the chicks". That's right up there with "using my Magic the Gathering card collection to impress the chicks", or "using my Marvel comics collection to impress the chicks", or "using my sick calculus skills to impress the chicks".
But on a serious note, I've never felt the urgency to buy my personal computer based on my work/professional needs. The last thing I want to spend my own money on is something for work. That, in a nutshell, is why I've been a Mac user for a long time (even though my current company uses Macs exclusively...first time in 20 years of Mac using that I've had one at work, and it is great for all the reasons normally cited by users, multiplied 10-fold for all the additional quirks work requirements add). You know what I've NEVER had to do with my Mac at work? That's right, get up and walk over to the printer to see why my page didn't print. I've also never been locked out of my account because of a dumbass admin who can't manage Active Directory. The list is long.
Such as? OK.. I have my 2 yr old Win 7 install booted. I have process explorer loaded, and rammap available if needed. Tell us what "cruft" is loaded in memory or is actively consuming CPU cycles - either in kernel mode or in user land.
there was one self-installing bit of malware available for the Mac platform.
That is not only false, but it lies in the territory of "Liar Liar, Pants on Fire". Please stop commenting on security related issues till you obtain in-depth technical knowledge on the subject.
Lets evaluate how malware gets installed in the three most common scenarios.
1) User visits a website and is infected (aka drive by download)
Causes of Infection: remote execution vulnerability bug in browser (java script engine, rendering engine) or plug-in (flash, java),
Do such bugs exist in Safari/Firefox/Chrome/Flash/Java on OSX - YES.
Have people demonstrated ACTUAL attacks using them: YES
2) User opens an innocuous email containing an attached binary and executes it
Cause of infection: User executes attached binary file.
Does this happen on OSX: In most cases, no. The reason is the executable bit is unset for external files.
Have people demonstrated ACTUAL attacks using them: Probably, but I haven't seen any. (In theory you could craft the email in such a way that it triggers a bug in the email client causing remote execution)
3) User downloads Software A and installs it but it contains a trojan
Cause of infection: User installs software.
Does such software exist on OSX: YES.
Have people demonstrated ACTUAL attacks using them: YES.
My wife does not approve of your post. I, on the other hand, am open to further exploration of the topic.