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Microsoft Ships Antivirus For macOS as Windows Defender Becomes Microsoft Defender (arstechnica.com)
Microsoft is bringing its Windows Defender anti-malware application to macOS -- and more platforms in the future -- as it expands the reach of its Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) platform. From a report: To reflect the new cross-platform nature, the suite is also being renamed to Microsoft Defender ATP, with the individual clients being labelled "for Mac" or "for Windows." macOS malware is still something of a rarity, but it's not completely unheard of. Ransomware for the platform was found in 2016, and in-the-wild outbreaks of other malicious software continue to be found. Apple has integrated some malware protection into macOS, but we've heard from developers on the platform that Mac users aren't always very good at keeping their systems on the latest point release. Further reading: Microsoft launches previews of Windows Virtual Desktop and Defender ATP for Mac.
If would be ironic if someone found a way to use Defendwr to put viruses on a Mac.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's purely a marketing move. I can see the advertisements now.
"Windows so secure, we're porting over protection to OSX so that users of MS Office can also benefit from Microsoft technology"...or some such.
Life is not for the lazy.
In general all these early systems were so primitive and designed for single use
Yes, indeed. And weren't even network connected on any large scale, so not much targetted by malware.
Sneakernet was, for a long time, the only viable way for a virus to have an chance at replicating (until BBS were a thing).
The UNIX, VMS and other Mainframe OS's were just to system intensive to run on these early PC's to be affordable for a normal middle class family to own.
Yes, indeed. But on the other hand, those massive machine where multi-users, connected, and among the first to communicate across larger territories, once arpanet started existing.
Meaning that the knowledge about security, etc. did exist.
I wasn't relevant to apply it to Apple II computers or the first 8088-based IBM PC, but the knowledge did exist.
These Early PC OS's had a few commands, and mostly just populated RAM in its executable sections with the program code, and pointed the program counter to that location.
These all these early PC OS's are acceptable to viruses.
Again, I agree. These home machine were simple, and couldn't afford much in terms of security, and on the other hand, weren't much exposed to multi-users, networks, and menace (from anything else than sneakernet).
Now the MSDOS system because of the PC Compatible market, and with a legal loophole IBM had.
Still agree. MS-DOS getting popular was a fluke.
Mostly due to IBM designing an expensive machine (and slightly under-powered. Hey, you gotta protect your core business !) exclusively made out of common, off-the-shelf parts (gotta catchup after missing the micro-computer revolution). Giving a great opportunity to clone (anyone else could buy similar or better parts from the same metaphorical shelf) and make attempts at slightly better or cheaper alternatives.
Also IBM was a big brand, giving even more popularity to the platform.
And thus MS-DOS (and the BIOS underneath, be it IBM's original, or cloners' clean-room re-implementation's Phoenix) becoming a de facto standard.
Microsoft being already at that point marketing itself aggressively, of course were going to win (note that two other BASICs from your list were ALSO written by Microsoft: Apple's non-ROM/non-Integer BASIC is written by Microsoft (as opposed to the in-ROM Integer BASIC), Commodore's BASIC was single-licensed from Microsoft too). No matter which company took off, they were on board automatically.
Created a Generation of software build around MSDOS Compatibility Up to Windows ME. Because these OS's needed to be backwards compatible with older software, they kepts on hacking and tricking the DOS Environment to keep working.
That is the exact point where we start to disagree.
Microsoft systematically opted for the most lazy and fast fix-ups, because they wanted to concentrate more on marketing aggressiveness than on correctness.
e.g.: There was very little effort from either IBM or MS-DOS to standardize on anything but the few offerings of BIOS and DOS. To do anything but simple CLI software, you had to directly bang the hardware.
They could have worked together with various software developper to make something like standard libraries, etc.
Compare the situation with Mac OS which was much more reliant on API, AmigaOS which had strong API offering, etc.
The NT Kernel got rid of a lot of the DOS code, but still had limited compatibility, which still lead to security problems. But the problems moved from easy virus code, to problems with access and authentication, mainly because Multi-tasking, Multi-User OS's was a new thing for the home User, and the fact that software can run in the background without a UI is possible, making it a problem.
The problems were with mostly Microsoft trying to keep as much compatibility with older software than possible, b
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Reminds me of Microsoft Visual Studio Code - lots of people at work raved about this app, but when I tried it on my MacBook its as full of telemetry as any Windows 10 app
Maybe just maybe -- (1) people raved about it, (2) they raved about it because it's good, (3) it's good because they had the right telemetry to know how to achieve this, (4) better telemetry in the sense of being more representative and more actionable comes from it being opt-out rather than opt-in.
I don't like telemetry. I'm a hypocrite free-loader -- I turn off telemetry on software I run on my own machine, but I happily enjoy the the better products that come from better telemetry submitted by other people.