...And the ONLY reason it got as far as it did, was because of all the lame-ass website admins. who got infected by the fake banner ad, and then the genius move of then poisoning several Search Engines' Page Rank systems, so those sites came up high in search results. So, the REAL SUCCESSFUL "attack" was on those websites.
Clearly, you are not very informed about modern cybercrime. Mass website compromises are probably the main way malware is distributed nowadays (on any platform), either through drive-by downloads or by tricking the users (trojans). Macs are no different, now that they are big enough to be a target.
So, what you're saying is that my comment was correct. The fact that "it happens all the time, to everybody" should not be seen as an inevitability; but rather a rallying cry to tighten up webservers and website design.
There is absolutely no reason why an outside attacker should be able to inject anything in the web-content delivery process, other than the possibility of having a lazy admin serve up a malicious banner ad. And that can be taken care of by the admins themselves, banning that lazy ad service from their site. Eventually, that works up the chain, and the people actually responsible for accepting the malicious ad will learn to be more careful.
You can't trust a machine that's running malware to tell the truth when it tells you that it is now clean - because for all you know, the malware has hooked into the very API routines your anti-malware product depends upon. Anyone who's spent any serious length of time trying to clean up a heavily infested Windows PC will attest to that.
Then how do Windows A/V apps do such a bangup job of reporting? It seems that if there is a "signature" available for a particular infection, then, even if it cannot be eradicated (such as things that infect "whitelisted" files like svchost.exe), it can still be detected.
So no, not complete balderdash.
There's booting from a CD - which is much more sensible but only 100% workable if you have a whacking great database of checksums for every valid executable, every DLL, everything that may contain runnable code on the planet and you can somehow use the CD to patch all known vulnerabilities on a system - including local exploits that may take advantage of something the user's already downloaded.
A heuristic algorithm is never going to be 100% reliable because you're essentially only one step away from trying to solve the halting problem - the only real difference is instead of saying "Will the computer halt?" you're saying "Will the computer do something undesirable?". The best you can hope for is to say it probably won't.
Or, you can simply have a system design that repels attacks. Nothing can stop social engineered attacks, of course; but drive-by attacks can be stopped dead by good system design. OS X is gradually growing those good practices, and so far, at least, it seems like they are significantly ahead of the curve.
I'm no MS apologist ( I run slack on my laptop and Ubuntu server at work, eucalyptus cloud), but there is a whole lot of inaccuracies here. Any kernel level malware invalidates your "literally impossible" file replacement argument.
And yet, you fail to explain how. And yes, the rest of your comment firmly labels you as a Windows (or at least Windows Registry) apologist.
The original execution of the registry was poor, but the concept of a fast and reliable btree key-value store for all your program settings isn't that idiotic (think dbus, gnomeconf, etc).
ANY centralized database of critical configuration information is inherently fragile. Period. And doubly so with the Windows registry, because it is such a mess.
The modern windows registry has plenty of permissions built in the important areas, although it is admittedly a mess of disorganization still.
Permissions are only good until the filesystem is tricked into ignoring them with a privilege escalation. And since most Windows users still run as Administrator, that isn't even necessary.
There are plenty mechanisms to restore a registry; in fact it can be rebuilt in parts if need be. You can walk the structure and recreate the index. UBCD has an excellent one, for example.
That assumes you both know which of the hundreds or thousands of keys have been affected, and then, what you need to set those keys' values to.
If you want to get on a soapbox against MS, there are plenty of arguments why the OS sucks, from a bone-headed approach to library version control, to ugly API's like the MFC, inconsistent handling of kernel mechanisms/calls, a still evolving/broken application install system, extension based file types, a complete lack of usable logs and diagnostic tools built into the OS, the command line is a joke... I could go on and on.
Please! Don't let me stop you...
But please, don't give the windows guys a swiss cheese argument... there are some smart ones out there, if we want to point and laugh we need to go at them with facts:)
I personally don't think that pointing out the Registry as a big, steaming pile of Windows vulnerability is anything like "swiss cheese", and neitherdothesepeople.
Time to breach is even less relevant because the order of people attempting is randomised...
On the other hand, if someone finds a bug in OSX there is really only one target for the exploit, whereas with windows there are many different versions which may require modified exploit code (wildly different hardware/drivers, home/pro/ultimate/etc, different language versions)... And Linux actually takes this even further.
So, that's why there are something like 863 examples of Linux malware, (yes, I was frankly shocked, too!) to OS X's THREE?
No, that was just an example (of which 4 variants of Inqtana were found). Go farther back and you'll also find reports for Mac OS Classic
Um, MacOS ("classic") has about as much in common with OS X as OS X has in common with DOS. Therefore, any comparison of virus counts is utterly irrelevant.
Seriously now that there is blood in the water the sharks will come, and it will only get worse. they saw they were able to get some good numbers with MacDefender and now MacGuard, and thanks to Hackentosh they don't even need to buy an Apple to test their code on! The first Windows bugs were pretty primitive and easy to kill too. I remember when a simple booting into safe mode and tossing the files would kill a great number of bugs. Mark my words this is just the beginning, within 6 months I predict we'll be seeing our first really nasty deep buried Apple malware. Who knows, we may even see an Apple Code Red style mass infection!
Yeah, their "Pretty Good Numbers" were measured in maybe a few hundred Macs, worldwide. Yeah, that's some epidemic. And the ONLY reason it got as far as it did, was because of all the lame-ass website admins. who got infected by the fake banner ad, and then the genius move of then poisoning several Search Engines' Page Rank systems, so those sites came up high in search results. So, the REAL SUCCESSFUL "attack" was on those websites. And I would bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of infections were of gullible Windows-Switchers, who cannot fathom a computer platform that DOESN'T regularly need "Virus Scans". The veteran Mac users KNOW better! (Yes, I'm being smug).
Oh, and one of the reasons this will NEVER get to the level of a Windows problem is simple: Macs don't have a "Registry", in the sense that Windows does. Without that idiotic, centralized database of thousands of system and application settings, it is literally impossible to create malware that can survive simple file-replacement techniques. The problem is that there is literally NO reliable mechanism to "rebuild" a seriously damaged Registry. Microsoft can't do it, Third Parties can't do it, and users DAMN sure can't do it!
This is why SO many problems with Windows end with the tried-and-true mantra of "Wipe and Reload" (a/k/a the "back off and nuke it from orbit" method). Because, quite literally, it is often the ONLY way to be sure.
But, since Apple uses.plist files, and since the rule is that they can be REBUILT if deleted, it's gonna be pretty damned hard for something to really scrog an OS X system. At least in a way that cannot be relatively easily "rebuilt".
And that tune you've been singing has been sung for over ELEVEN years now, and what? Heck, even Linux has much, much more "malware" that OS X. In fact, over 250 times as much.
So every virus for Macs will get killed in the next update? Very nice work for Apple if it happens that way.
'It's reasonably trivial to remove MacDefender,' said Wisniewski. 'It's not burying itself in the system, not compared to some of some of the crap that we see on Windows.'
Pity it won't always be that way, survival of the fittest applies to viruses too.
Maybe so, but with 11 years and counting, and three, count 'em THREE Trojans (only), I'm pretty sure that Apple is ahead of the curve on this one.
Sure, versioning has been around forever.
But autosave, and preserving system state through a restart? I've seen both done on a per-application basis, but not systemwide.
Then I guess you missed Lisa 7/7 (also the world's first integrated office application(s)). That lighted power switch on the front of the Lisa? If it was running the LisaOS (instead of MacOS), pressing that button performed a system save and shutdown, and pressing it again did a restart and reboot. This two-part video here and here shows just how advanced the Lisa was. In fact, that (and the hideous price) was (were) the two main reasons the Lisas became landfill, instead of a household name. And there's no denying that it paved the way for the desktop/windowing metaphor.
BTW, notice that even in the first incarnation of the Lisa OS, it allowed for heirachical folders. That feature didn't appear in Windows until Windows 95. Amazing.
Designed starting in 1978. Released in 1983. I think they won.
And before someone starts all that bullshit about "Apple stole Xerox PARC's work", let me say this: 1) Apple PAID Xerox for to use their work. And 2) Without the improvements (not the least of which was pulldown menus!) that some very talented engineers made, that preliminary GUI work would not have become really useable, let alone nearly ubiquitious.
What are the odds that this iCloud service isn't run OSX server at it's core?
Well, some is OS X. But certainly not all.
Hint: It ain't HP or Dell, neither. Nor is it running a "free" (as in beer) Linux distro; so no snarky comments about OS X Server. Those to Linuces are know for their superior load-balancing software, and I would imagine that's what they are being used for.
despite the fact that I have found several Macs infected with such rootkits
I don't think you know what that term means.
Even on a Mac that is infected with the MacDefender Trojan, it is exceedingly simple to eradicate, relative to most of the Windows malware I've encountered (for example just TRY to get rid of something that has infected svchost.exe, and/or has polluted the Registry (and deleted all the System Restore points!)). I know. I just went through that on a client's machine. NOT fun!
Rootkits are anything BUT simple to eradicate. In fact, most of them are installed so deep in the system that they are almost impossible to DETECT, let alone ERADICATE. They are also nearly always interested in gaining control of your machine, not simply phishing your credit card info, as MacDefender does (and there ARE no other examples of OS X malware on the RADAR right now, and haven't been for YEARS).
Stop spreading FUD. There are ZERO "rootkits" for OS X. Prove me wrong and I'll gladly STFU. But until then, you do the same, ok?
the honeymoon won't last thou, malware makers and worse will quickly start exploiting macs if they see a corporate market to do so, but for the next 2 years it might be ok.
Aren't you hoarse from singing that same song for ELEVEN YEARS?!?
Since the count for the Mac is now at one, and the count for Windows is in the hundreds of thousands - there's a pretty huge advantage there.
Just tell users not to download THE malware.
Actually, in the TWELVE YEARS that OS X has been in existence, I believe there have actually been THREE (count 'em) three pieces of Malware for Macs. All Trojans. I double-dog dare ANYONE to find more.
w00t, it's an epidemic, I tells ya!
I think there's actually been more Malware for Linux (WOW! Actually MUCH more!). So obviously, it ain't all about "marketshare".
they want a Mac because of the grass-is-always-greener perception
Not ONE of the now dozen or more dyed-in-the-wool, decades-long, I-will-run-nothing-but-Windows users (ranging from grandmoms to serious engineering power-user types, and everything in between) I have personally "switched" has EVER looked back. Not even the ones I thought would hate their "switch". In fact, the ones that insisted I keep their Windows machines accessible (I didn't argue) NEV-ER turned them back on. Not even once. Not even during the "Damn! Did I just make a mistake? Where IS everything?!? How in FUCK do I do $whatever???" phase (which I have found lasts about a week, sometimes as long as as two or three, then magically. just. stops.).
Sometimes the grass IS greener. You need to take off the blinders and actually look, instead of just hating.
Im not cursing, just pointing out that perhaps the reason you dont see the issue is because youre not responsible for managing (/securing and auditing) more than a handful of machines. Efficiency is wonderful and all, but good luck deploying a few hundred macs and keeping them all up to company spec (unless theres some centralized management for OSX that I am unaware of).
Indeed you are. Been around for years and years. Client (actually a server?) is built into every Mac since at least OS X 10.2 or 10.3 (maybe earlier). Think of it as "Back To My Mac" on steroids. Serious steroids.
At $500, it's not that cheap; but it's designed for people who have more than just a handful of machines to manage. Serious software for serious installations. Oh, and as far as performance goes, it rocks!
(my white iMac simply has a temperature sensor that attaches to the outside of the drive, so you just transfer it to the new one), but I'm sure it won't be long before some third party solution comes along to cure it.
Well, with the newest iMacs, there is in fact magic fairy dust sprinkled on the hard drives: They have a custom power connector and firmware that also handles temperature sensor reporting to the SMU. If you swap the drive for another(even one of the same model; but without the Apple blessing) the system goes into full thermal freakout mode.
The firmware isn't the issue (never has been. I really don't know why Apple does that; but it doesn't matter anyway); it's merely the fact that Apple is using some unused pins on the drive connector. Fortunately, there's already a simple solution (will be available in production quantities in June, according to the article).
Dell and HP have several knockoffs, and if you go to Newegg theres an entire section dedicated to "All-in-one" PCs (read, iMac knockoffs)
And they all look like unshaven ass (with apologies to those who enjoy unshaven ass). (Look at some of the Lenovo and Asus offerings! Ewwww CHEEEZY!), are underspec-ed compared to the iMac, or are by a company one would get fired for even considering spec-ing into a business environment (MSI), are rebranded who-knows-what by a monitor company (Viewsonic), and/or are as expensive as an iMac anyway (HP). I note that you didn't include a link. How telling.
At 3D tasks, the new iMac was in a class of its own. The iMac completed the Crysis test with a smoothly playable 70 frames per second (fps) at Medium quality and the Lost Planet 2 test with a respectable 32 fps at Middle quality. None of the other competitors could produce playable scores on either test. The new iMac also topped all other comers at the PCMark Vantage test (8,141 points) and at the 3DMark Vantage test (19,397 points). If you want to get things done quickly as well as stylishly, get the iMac.
There really isn't any comparison between the Apple iMac 21.5-inch (Thunderbolt) and other desktops in this price range. The new iMac trounces all at performance and styling. It's the class leader for non-touch all-in-one desktop PCs. The Asus ET2400IGTS-800SE has comparable multimedia performance, but the new iMac outclassed the Asus ET2400IGTS at 3D and day-to-day performance. Sure, the Asus ET2400IGTS has a few more features like a touch screen, Blu-ray, a larger hard drive, and HDMI-in, but the Asus' included software is nowhere near as integrated as that of the new iMac. The iMac is also $100 cheaper than the Asus ET2400IGTS, which dispells the myth of an "Apple tax" (i.e. Apple products are supposedly more expensive than Windows).
It'll die an obscure death, just like firewire. USB won this war a long time ago and there really is no compelling reason to go with thunderbolt over USB 3.0.
Ya know, I went a-lookin' a few weeks ago (about 2) when the last article/MacHateFest(tm) appeared on this site, and I was quite surprised that the number of actual USB 3.0 devices is actually vanishingly small. In fact, not much larger than the number of TB devices.
I'm sure someone will prove me wrong (or try to); but the criteria is SHIPPING USB 3.0 devices; not "planned".
Technically, the video card can be upgraded the same way, but it's on an MXM card and you'd need a Mac-compatible video card, which would be quite hard to find and expensive as hell when you do unless you want to pioneer flashing a standard MXM card with a modified Mac ROM.
Actually, there is talk that Apple is moving away from custom video drivers; so perhaps going forward, at least, one will be able to put a bog-standard video card in the iMac. One can hope...
Those of us who are lucky enough to live in range of a Frys have it made in the shade..
The Fry's here in Indianapolis is diagonally across town from where I live, about 25 miles one way. Mightaswell be in another city!
Yeah heaven forbid you get your pasty butt up off your chair and brave the scary fireball in the sky by going for a little drive.
Even though you are patting yourself on the back for your immature, unnecessary, and asinine comment; you have failed to objectively analyze the situation.
At $4 a gallon for gas, the average car will take nearly $8 to make a 50 mile round trip. I know from experience, that when I daily get my pasty butt off my chair to brave the scary fireball in the sky, that my car generally gets a mile or two less than that per gallon. Now, that extra $8 wouldn't be so bad, if I was assured that, when I got there, the actual stuff I wanted was actually waiting. However, unless I spend an extra half-hour on the phone, trying to get a Fry's droid to run around and (hopefully!) know what their own inventory is telling them, or (I don't even know if you can do this) order the stuff online (do they have their component inventory on their website?), it is rather a crap shoot. This "crap shoot" effect was mitigated with Radio Shack, because they have several stores around town, including two (well, now one) store that is less than a ten minute drive from my house.
So, the bottom line is, for me, at least, Fry's is about a toss-up as far as cost goes. The gas money I spend is too close to shipping charges I would incur shopping online, to make it worth the "crap shoot".
Now, get YOUR pasty butt off your chair and stop reading Slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
...And the ONLY reason it got as far as it did, was because of all the lame-ass website admins. who got infected by the fake banner ad, and then the genius move of then poisoning several Search Engines' Page Rank systems, so those sites came up high in search results. So, the REAL SUCCESSFUL "attack" was on those websites.
Clearly, you are not very informed about modern cybercrime. Mass website compromises are probably the main way malware is distributed nowadays (on any platform), either through drive-by downloads or by tricking the users (trojans). Macs are no different, now that they are big enough to be a target.
So, what you're saying is that my comment was correct. The fact that "it happens all the time, to everybody" should not be seen as an inevitability; but rather a rallying cry to tighten up webservers and website design.
There is absolutely no reason why an outside attacker should be able to inject anything in the web-content delivery process, other than the possibility of having a lazy admin serve up a malicious banner ad. And that can be taken care of by the admins themselves, banning that lazy ad service from their site. Eventually, that works up the chain, and the people actually responsible for accepting the malicious ad will learn to be more careful.
Complete balderdash.
You can't trust a machine that's running malware to tell the truth when it tells you that it is now clean - because for all you know, the malware has hooked into the very API routines your anti-malware product depends upon. Anyone who's spent any serious length of time trying to clean up a heavily infested Windows PC will attest to that.
Then how do Windows A/V apps do such a bangup job of reporting? It seems that if there is a "signature" available for a particular infection, then, even if it cannot be eradicated (such as things that infect "whitelisted" files like svchost.exe), it can still be detected.
So no, not complete balderdash.
There's booting from a CD - which is much more sensible but only 100% workable if you have a whacking great database of checksums for every valid executable, every DLL, everything that may contain runnable code on the planet and you can somehow use the CD to patch all known vulnerabilities on a system - including local exploits that may take advantage of something the user's already downloaded.
A heuristic algorithm is never going to be 100% reliable because you're essentially only one step away from trying to solve the halting problem - the only real difference is instead of saying "Will the computer halt?" you're saying "Will the computer do something undesirable?". The best you can hope for is to say it probably won't.
Or, you can simply have a system design that repels attacks. Nothing can stop social engineered attacks, of course; but drive-by attacks can be stopped dead by good system design. OS X is gradually growing those good practices, and so far, at least, it seems like they are significantly ahead of the curve.
I'm no MS apologist ( I run slack on my laptop and Ubuntu server at work, eucalyptus cloud), but there is a whole lot of inaccuracies here. Any kernel level malware invalidates your "literally impossible" file replacement argument.
And yet, you fail to explain how. And yes, the rest of your comment firmly labels you as a Windows (or at least Windows Registry) apologist.
The original execution of the registry was poor, but the concept of a fast and reliable btree key-value store for all your program settings isn't that idiotic (think dbus, gnomeconf, etc).
ANY centralized database of critical configuration information is inherently fragile. Period. And doubly so with the Windows registry, because it is such a mess.
The modern windows registry has plenty of permissions built in the important areas, although it is admittedly a mess of disorganization still.
Permissions are only good until the filesystem is tricked into ignoring them with a privilege escalation. And since most Windows users still run as Administrator, that isn't even necessary.
There are plenty mechanisms to restore a registry; in fact it can be rebuilt in parts if need be. You can walk the structure and recreate the index. UBCD has an excellent one, for example.
That assumes you both know which of the hundreds or thousands of keys have been affected, and then, what you need to set those keys' values to.
If you want to get on a soapbox against MS, there are plenty of arguments why the OS sucks, from a bone-headed approach to library version control, to ugly API's like the MFC, inconsistent handling of kernel mechanisms/calls, a still evolving/broken application install system, extension based file types, a complete lack of usable logs and diagnostic tools built into the OS, the command line is a joke... I could go on and on.
Please! Don't let me stop you...
But please, don't give the windows guys a swiss cheese argument... there are some smart ones out there, if we want to point and laugh we need to go at them with facts :)
I personally don't think that pointing out the Registry as a big, steaming pile of Windows vulnerability is anything like "swiss cheese", and neither do these people.
Time to breach is even less relevant because the order of people attempting is randomised...
On the other hand, if someone finds a bug in OSX there is really only one target for the exploit, whereas with windows there are many different versions which may require modified exploit code (wildly different hardware/drivers, home/pro/ultimate/etc, different language versions)... And Linux actually takes this even further.
So, that's why there are something like 863 examples of Linux malware, (yes, I was frankly shocked, too!) to OS X's THREE?
No, that was just an example (of which 4 variants of Inqtana were found). Go farther back and you'll also find reports for Mac OS Classic
Um, MacOS ("classic") has about as much in common with OS X as OS X has in common with DOS. Therefore, any comparison of virus counts is utterly irrelevant.
Seriously now that there is blood in the water the sharks will come, and it will only get worse. they saw they were able to get some good numbers with MacDefender and now MacGuard, and thanks to Hackentosh they don't even need to buy an Apple to test their code on! The first Windows bugs were pretty primitive and easy to kill too. I remember when a simple booting into safe mode and tossing the files would kill a great number of bugs. Mark my words this is just the beginning, within 6 months I predict we'll be seeing our first really nasty deep buried Apple malware. Who knows, we may even see an Apple Code Red style mass infection!
Yeah, their "Pretty Good Numbers" were measured in maybe a few hundred Macs, worldwide. Yeah, that's some epidemic. And the ONLY reason it got as far as it did, was because of all the lame-ass website admins. who got infected by the fake banner ad, and then the genius move of then poisoning several Search Engines' Page Rank systems, so those sites came up high in search results. So, the REAL SUCCESSFUL "attack" was on those websites. And I would bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of infections were of gullible Windows-Switchers, who cannot fathom a computer platform that DOESN'T regularly need "Virus Scans". The veteran Mac users KNOW better! (Yes, I'm being smug).
.plist files, and since the rule is that they can be REBUILT if deleted, it's gonna be pretty damned hard for something to really scrog an OS X system. At least in a way that cannot be relatively easily "rebuilt".
Oh, and one of the reasons this will NEVER get to the level of a Windows problem is simple: Macs don't have a "Registry", in the sense that Windows does. Without that idiotic, centralized database of thousands of system and application settings, it is literally impossible to create malware that can survive simple file-replacement techniques. The problem is that there is literally NO reliable mechanism to "rebuild" a seriously damaged Registry. Microsoft can't do it, Third Parties can't do it, and users DAMN sure can't do it!
This is why SO many problems with Windows end with the tried-and-true mantra of "Wipe and Reload" (a/k/a the "back off and nuke it from orbit" method). Because, quite literally, it is often the ONLY way to be sure.
But, since Apple uses
And that tune you've been singing has been sung for over ELEVEN years now, and what? Heck, even Linux has much, much more "malware" that OS X. In fact, over 250 times as much.
So every virus for Macs will get killed in the next update? Very nice work for Apple if it happens that way.
'It's reasonably trivial to remove MacDefender,' said Wisniewski. 'It's not burying itself in the system, not compared to some of some of the crap that we see on Windows.'
Pity it won't always be that way, survival of the fittest applies to viruses too.
Maybe so, but with 11 years and counting, and three, count 'em THREE Trojans (only), I'm pretty sure that Apple is ahead of the curve on this one.
Sure, versioning has been around forever. But autosave, and preserving system state through a restart? I've seen both done on a per-application basis, but not systemwide.
Then I guess you missed Lisa 7/7 (also the world's first integrated office application(s)). That lighted power switch on the front of the Lisa? If it was running the LisaOS (instead of MacOS), pressing that button performed a system save and shutdown, and pressing it again did a restart and reboot. This two-part video here and here shows just how advanced the Lisa was. In fact, that (and the hideous price) was (were) the two main reasons the Lisas became landfill, instead of a household name. And there's no denying that it paved the way for the desktop/windowing metaphor.
BTW, notice that even in the first incarnation of the Lisa OS, it allowed for heirachical folders. That feature didn't appear in Windows until Windows 95. Amazing.
Designed starting in 1978. Released in 1983. I think they won.
And before someone starts all that bullshit about "Apple stole Xerox PARC's work", let me say this: 1) Apple PAID Xerox for to use their work. And 2) Without the improvements (not the least of which was pulldown menus!) that some very talented engineers made, that preliminary GUI work would not have become really useable, let alone nearly ubiquitious.
What are the odds that this iCloud service isn't run OSX server at it's core?
Well, some is OS X. But certainly not all.
Hint: It ain't HP or Dell, neither. Nor is it running a "free" (as in beer) Linux distro; so no snarky comments about OS X Server. Those to Linuces are know for their superior load-balancing software, and I would imagine that's what they are being used for.
despite the fact that I have found several Macs infected with such rootkits
I don't think you know what that term means.
Even on a Mac that is infected with the MacDefender Trojan, it is exceedingly simple to eradicate, relative to most of the Windows malware I've encountered (for example just TRY to get rid of something that has infected svchost.exe, and/or has polluted the Registry (and deleted all the System Restore points!)). I know. I just went through that on a client's machine. NOT fun!
Rootkits are anything BUT simple to eradicate. In fact, most of them are installed so deep in the system that they are almost impossible to DETECT, let alone ERADICATE. They are also nearly always interested in gaining control of your machine, not simply phishing your credit card info, as MacDefender does (and there ARE no other examples of OS X malware on the RADAR right now, and haven't been for YEARS).
Stop spreading FUD. There are ZERO "rootkits" for OS X. Prove me wrong and I'll gladly STFU. But until then, you do the same, ok?
the honeymoon won't last thou, malware makers and worse will quickly start exploiting macs if they see a corporate market to do so, but for the next 2 years it might be ok.
Aren't you hoarse from singing that same song for ELEVEN YEARS?!?
Fuck, LINUX has over 250 times more malware than OS X (863 / 3 = 266), and it only has about 2% (being VERY generous) of the desktop market.
So, stop it, already. After this much time, you only sound like a fool.
Since the count for the Mac is now at one, and the count for Windows is in the hundreds of thousands - there's a pretty huge advantage there.
Just tell users not to download THE malware.
Actually, in the TWELVE YEARS that OS X has been in existence, I believe there have actually been THREE (count 'em) three pieces of Malware for Macs. All Trojans. I double-dog dare ANYONE to find more.
w00t, it's an epidemic, I tells ya!
I think there's actually been more Malware for Linux (WOW! Actually MUCH more!). So obviously, it ain't all about "marketshare".
Oh please! The MacOS terminal is a PITA! You can see where Apple puts their UI design efforts.
Fine. there ARE alternatives, ya know.
BTW, that took about five seconds on Google. Maybe less.
These business are probably mom and pop shops or startup hipsters who'll never run anything more enterprisey then Outlook on the Macs.
No. Of course not. Nobody seriously uses Macs (or is currently studying same) in a large-scale deployment. And of course, this doesn't even count the countless educational institutions (from K through college) and R&D (pure science) labs that have each used dozens to thousands of Macs for years. If you think those don't count as "enterprise-scale" deployments as well, you're delusional.
they want a Mac because of the grass-is-always-greener perception
Not ONE of the now dozen or more dyed-in-the-wool, decades-long, I-will-run-nothing-but-Windows users (ranging from grandmoms to serious engineering power-user types, and everything in between) I have personally "switched" has EVER looked back. Not even the ones I thought would hate their "switch". In fact, the ones that insisted I keep their Windows machines accessible (I didn't argue) NEV-ER turned them back on. Not even once. Not even during the "Damn! Did I just make a mistake? Where IS everything?!? How in FUCK do I do $whatever???" phase (which I have found lasts about a week, sometimes as long as as two or three, then magically. just. stops.).
Sometimes the grass IS greener. You need to take off the blinders and actually look, instead of just hating.
Im not cursing, just pointing out that perhaps the reason you dont see the issue is because youre not responsible for managing ( /securing and auditing) more than a handful of machines. Efficiency is wonderful and all, but good luck deploying a few hundred macs and keeping them all up to company spec (unless theres some centralized management for OSX that I am unaware of).
Indeed you are. Been around for years and years. Client (actually a server?) is built into every Mac since at least OS X 10.2 or 10.3 (maybe earlier). Think of it as "Back To My Mac" on steroids. Serious steroids.
At $500, it's not that cheap; but it's designed for people who have more than just a handful of machines to manage. Serious software for serious installations. Oh, and as far as performance goes, it rocks!
(my white iMac simply has a temperature sensor that attaches to the outside of the drive, so you just transfer it to the new one), but I'm sure it won't be long before some third party solution comes along to cure it.
Done and done.
Well, with the newest iMacs, there is in fact magic fairy dust sprinkled on the hard drives: They have a custom power connector and firmware that also handles temperature sensor reporting to the SMU. If you swap the drive for another(even one of the same model; but without the Apple blessing) the system goes into full thermal freakout mode.
The firmware isn't the issue (never has been. I really don't know why Apple does that; but it doesn't matter anyway); it's merely the fact that Apple is using some unused pins on the drive connector. Fortunately, there's already a simple solution (will be available in production quantities in June, according to the article).
iMac knockoffs
Yeah, I agree: That last word says it all.
I think this is the most germane definition:
"An imitation product, usually of lesser quality, and normally sold for a lower price."
Dell and HP have several knockoffs, and if you go to Newegg theres an entire section dedicated to "All-in-one" PCs (read, iMac knockoffs)
And they all look like unshaven ass (with apologies to those who enjoy unshaven ass). (Look at some of the Lenovo and Asus offerings! Ewwww CHEEEZY!), are underspec-ed compared to the iMac, or are by a company one would get fired for even considering spec-ing into a business environment (MSI), are rebranded who-knows-what by a monitor company (Viewsonic), and/or are as expensive as an iMac anyway (HP). I note that you didn't include a link. How telling.
So, I think I will...
And BTW, since people are always talking about the so-called "Apple Tax", why doesn't anyone whine about the damned SONY TAX?!?
I wonder if they've gone backwards in terms of performance?
Um, that would be a big "not hardly".
From PC Magazine:
At 3D tasks, the new iMac was in a class of its own. The iMac completed the Crysis test with a smoothly playable 70 frames per second (fps) at Medium quality and the Lost Planet 2 test with a respectable 32 fps at Middle quality. None of the other competitors could produce playable scores on either test. The new iMac also topped all other comers at the PCMark Vantage test (8,141 points) and at the 3DMark Vantage test (19,397 points). If you want to get things done quickly as well as stylishly, get the iMac.
There really isn't any comparison between the Apple iMac 21.5-inch (Thunderbolt) and other desktops in this price range. The new iMac trounces all at performance and styling. It's the class leader for non-touch all-in-one desktop PCs. The Asus ET2400IGTS-800SE has comparable multimedia performance, but the new iMac outclassed the Asus ET2400IGTS at 3D and day-to-day performance. Sure, the Asus ET2400IGTS has a few more features like a touch screen, Blu-ray, a larger hard drive, and HDMI-in, but the Asus' included software is nowhere near as integrated as that of the new iMac. The iMac is also $100 cheaper than the Asus ET2400IGTS, which dispells the myth of an "Apple tax" (i.e. Apple products are supposedly more expensive than Windows).
It'll die an obscure death, just like firewire. USB won this war a long time ago and there really is no compelling reason to go with thunderbolt over USB 3.0.
Ya know, I went a-lookin' a few weeks ago (about 2) when the last article/MacHateFest(tm) appeared on this site, and I was quite surprised that the number of actual USB 3.0 devices is actually vanishingly small. In fact, not much larger than the number of TB devices.
I'm sure someone will prove me wrong (or try to); but the criteria is SHIPPING USB 3.0 devices; not "planned".
Technically, the video card can be upgraded the same way, but it's on an MXM card and you'd need a Mac-compatible video card, which would be quite hard to find and expensive as hell when you do unless you want to pioneer flashing a standard MXM card with a modified Mac ROM.
Actually, there is talk that Apple is moving away from custom video drivers; so perhaps going forward, at least, one will be able to put a bog-standard video card in the iMac. One can hope...
Those of us who are lucky enough to live in range of a Frys have it made in the shade..
The Fry's here in Indianapolis is diagonally across town from where I live, about 25 miles one way. Mightaswell be in another city!
Yeah heaven forbid you get your pasty butt up off your chair and brave the scary fireball in the sky by going for a little drive.
Even though you are patting yourself on the back for your immature, unnecessary, and asinine comment; you have failed to objectively analyze the situation.
At $4 a gallon for gas, the average car will take nearly $8 to make a 50 mile round trip. I know from experience, that when I daily get my pasty butt off my chair to brave the scary fireball in the sky, that my car generally gets a mile or two less than that per gallon. Now, that extra $8 wouldn't be so bad, if I was assured that, when I got there, the actual stuff I wanted was actually waiting. However, unless I spend an extra half-hour on the phone, trying to get a Fry's droid to run around and (hopefully!) know what their own inventory is telling them, or (I don't even know if you can do this) order the stuff online (do they have their component inventory on their website?), it is rather a crap shoot. This "crap shoot" effect was mitigated with Radio Shack, because they have several stores around town, including two (well, now one) store that is less than a ten minute drive from my house.
So, the bottom line is, for me, at least, Fry's is about a toss-up as far as cost goes. The gas money I spend is too close to shipping charges I would incur shopping online, to make it worth the "crap shoot".
Now, get YOUR pasty butt off your chair and stop reading Slashdot!
Somebody's going to post this link. It may as well be me. Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business.
WOW! I don't think I've EVER seen that much truth in a CEO's statements. And he's right on, too. I have wondered what keeps RS going for years. ...
Ummm ... you do know that The Onion is a parody news site, right?
Oh, JEEZUS!
/."!!!
Yes, I know about The Onion; but that's what I get for getting up to pee and deciding to "check out what's on
Boy, is my e-face red!