Apples computers can get hit with viruses?

Cap'n Jack

Cap'n Jack

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Cap'n Jack
Macs are immune to viruses
This myth is one that is pushed relentlessly, both overtly and subtly, by Mac fans, and, of course, by Apple. Everyone knows that Windows machines are constantly being bombarded by malware and that keeping them secure is a never-ending task.
But you rarely hear about such things from Mac users, and the common theory is that it's because Apple's computers are simply safe from being attacked.
Not so fast. It does seem, as has been well-reported, that that are far fewer exploits hitting Macs than their Windows-based cousins. But it's hardly because Macs are immune from attack. Indeed, according to security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, it has much more to do with market share--there simply aren't anywhere near as many Macs out there as there are Windows machines.
"If we were to flip the market share, we would see a lot more exploitation in the wild," Dhanjani told my CNET colleague Elinor Mills earlier this year. "More specifically, browser security is one of the more important items to consider today from a risk perspective. I know Internet Explorer has had a considerable share of vulnerabilities, but the Safari Web browser also has a lousy reputation in the security community--it almost seems a child's play to locate an exploitable condition in Safari. Apple really needs to get its act together with Safari since OS X is enjoying a healthy market share climb at the moment."
Other security experts seem to agree that Macs' relative lack of virus problems has much more to do with the computer's market share than any kind of actual fortitude against attack. As Halvar Flake, head of research and CEO of Zynamics, told Mills, "Vista/Win7 has more extensive countermeasures against attacks and a codebase with presumably fewer security issues. But it's the operating system of the majority of users, hence making it profitable to attack. Attackers will therefore spend lots of time bypassing the countermeasures. Mac OS has fewer countermeasures and lots of easily exploitable bugs, but the market share is low, making it a less likely target."
Then again, the market share dynamic does, in fact, mean that Macs are less likely to get hit, so in that sense, they are safer. "For an everyday consumer that just wants to use a computer and not worry about getting owned with every click of the mouse, I'd go for a Mac," Joe Grand, president of Grand Idea Studio, told Mills. ​
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Ref: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20026047-52.html?tag=TOCcarouselMain.0 Retrieved 2 Jan 2011

:devil:
 
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I hear that argument time and time again. At the end of the day if that's the reason - I don't care. It's sure nice not to have to constantly be removing spyware from my dad's computer.
 
The only people I know that say anything about macs being safe from viruses or immune from attack are people trying to defend windoze. It's a false strawman.
 
Same old FUD. You don't need "countermeasures' when the measures to counter are behind a permission system in a multiuser multitasking operating system that goes back the first line of UNIX code written for that purpose in the 1970s.

Reminds me of the "wisdom" that you needed to reboot the servers at least least every weekend to handle memory leaks and "bit rot." No, you need to reboot your servers. I don't need to reboot mine. I would save screen shots showing continuous uptime of over two years.
 
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I had to change over to a Windows-based server, for software reasons, recently. It took less than a week before an outsider had hacked into the server and was using it as a proxy to run eBay scams.

Now, I'll acknowledge that there were certain security measures which the guy who set it up (not me) failed to take, measures which once taken made the server safe from further exploits, but my Linux server ran for eight years without a glitch, the only shutdowns ever having been planned ones.

As for Macs, can't comment, but assume that as they have a Linux kernel in there somewhere, they're probably better by design at resisting unwanted attacks.

A properly protected PC is just fine, too - I find pretty much all infections I see anymore are the result of someone affirmatively doing something stupid, like clicking on a program they should not.
 
SCCutler said:
As for Macs, can't comment, but assume that as they have a Linux kernel in there somewhere, they're probably better by design at resisting unwanted attacks.
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Not quite Linux - they're running Darwin which is a POSIX compliant open source product released by Apple. It works very similar to Linux and can run most Linux software without a hitch.
 
I suspect the real reason behind the lack of viruses or malware is the requirement to enter a password to do anything major installwise on a Mac, but then again, Windows 7 has that feature as well, and it doesn't appear to have staved off the bad stuff.

I suspect the issue lies in a few specific places:

1. Marketshare - I don't think anyone can deny that Mac holds a much smaller market share, and is, therefore, a much less desirable target.
2. Difficulty in propagation - Again, requiring the password keeps a lot of stuff from being installed
3. Lack of software options - Plain and simple, if you want to run a Mac to do most things, you won't find the software to do it. I run a Mac, almost exclusively, and I run into this problem quite frequently.
4. No one pirates software on a Mac - Well, some people do, but usually only through serial number use and iSerial. Try searching PirateBay or some other bit torrent engine for some pirated Mac software someday. Aside from the most common software, you're not going to find it. Pirated software is where a good chunk of viruses and malware come from.
5. WMVs don't play natively - and as such, even with Flip4Mac, I don't believe the videos that require software installations work on a Mac either, which means, the actual number 1 virus causer, porn, is not as dangerous.

All speculation, of course, but it seems logical at least to me. But as Jesse said, who cares? There's much fewer viruses, and that's all that matters. I'm much more concerned about the lack of options when it comes to software on my Mac. If it wasn't for Google's web offerings and OpenOffice.org, my Mac would be a $2000 paperweight. Instead, I can accomplish most of what I do by just compromising on what I need.
 
SkyHog said:
I suspect the real reason behind the lack of viruses or malware is the requirement to enter a password to do anything major installwise on a Mac, but then again, Windows 7 has that feature as well, and it doesn't appear to have staved off the bad stuff.
...
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Your first guess is what I'm saying. Correctomundo.
 
SkyHog said:
I suspect the real reason behind the lack of viruses or malware is the requirement to enter a password to do anything major installwise on a Mac, but then again, Windows 7 has that feature as well, and it doesn't appear to have staved off the bad stuff.

I suspect the issue lies in a few specific places:

1. Marketshare - I don't think anyone can deny that Mac holds a much smaller market share, and is, therefore, a much less desirable target.
2. Difficulty in propagation - Again, requiring the password keeps a lot of stuff from being installed
3. Lack of software options - Plain and simple, if you want to run a Mac to do most things, you won't find the software to do it. I run a Mac, almost exclusively, and I run into this problem quite frequently.
4. No one pirates software on a Mac - Well, some people do, but usually only through serial number use and iSerial. Try searching PirateBay or some other bit torrent engine for some pirated Mac software someday. Aside from the most common software, you're not going to find it. Pirated software is where a good chunk of viruses and malware come from.
5. WMVs don't play natively - and as such, even with Flip4Mac, I don't believe the videos that require software installations work on a Mac either, which means, the actual number 1 virus causer, porn, is not as dangerous.

All speculation, of course, but it seems logical at least to me. But as Jesse said, who cares? There's much fewer viruses, and that's all that matters. I'm much more concerned about the lack of options when it comes to software on my Mac. If it wasn't for Google's web offerings and OpenOffice.org, my Mac would be a $2000 paperweight. Instead, I can accomplish most of what I do by just compromising on what I need.
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Curious what software it is what you're missing? I've been using Mac OS pretty much exclusively on my desktop/laptop for several years and never really have a software problem.
 
jesse said:
Curious what software it is what you're missing? I've been using Mac OS pretty much exclusively on my desktop/laptop for several years and never really have a software problem.
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A decent project management suite for one. Like it or not, MS Project is tantamount to project management. Quickbooks Pro or something even close to it would be another one.

A decent CRM option would be nice also.

There's more, but I can't recall at the moment. I don't think a week goes by where I don't say "Damn, I wish I could do this..." before I find some other way to do it instead through some really braindead method.

But, I love my Mac because its fast, and now that I have a 2nd monitor running on it, it has plenty of real estate as well. Dual booting is not an option because I just don't feel like dealing with viruses/malware/random slowdowns anymore. My house consists of my mac, and a myriad of Linux PCs/Laptops. My home office for business purposes consists of all Linux setups. Only at work do I use Windows, and that's not by choice.
 
jesse said:
Curious what software it is what you're missing? I've been using Mac OS pretty much exclusively on my desktop/laptop for several years and never really have a software problem.
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M$ Access.

Although the Apple Filemaker Pro is very nice and I use it too, I have to do some stuff using Access. Alas no Mac version.

Another is Quicken. There is no FULL Featured version for Mac. There is a stripped down version but it is pretty useless if you also are then going to do taxes with your quicken accounts.

Another is Visio. For the Mac side I run OmniGraffle, but I also need to do stuff in Visio and that means only Windoze support.

Lastly, Golden Eagle from flight prep or Voyager from Seattle Avionics. I have not yet found any full featured flight planner that will work on a Mac.

But even with these few issues I still do 90% of my work on the Mac side of my laptop and only occasionally have to go over to Windoze side to run that unique software. I love my Mac more than I love my little HP laptop that work just bought for me. But that dislike is also because there is a lot IT bloatware and WinXP running on it.
 
SkyHog said:
I suspect the real reason behind the lack of viruses or malware is the requirement to enter a password to do anything major installwise on a Mac, but then again, Windows 7 has that feature as well, and it doesn't appear to have staved off the bad stuff.

I suspect the issue lies in a few specific places:
...
Click to expand...

Perhaps there are a few other features of the Mac OS and Linux itself that make it inherently easier to protect?
 
SkyHog said:
A decent project management suite for one. Like it or not, MS Project is tantamount to project management.
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I use ms project and I sure as heck wouldn't call it a decent project management program. I don't know of any others, but ms project is a piece of junk.

Keyword here is "decent"
 
Mac viruses have been around from the very beginning. When we launched our first Prodigy software for the Mac, we would leave the write tab open and our installation diskette would become immediately infected by lots of users. It was so common that the installation software warned users of the virus attack. Of course, the result was that many consumers believed we were supplying the virus. sigh.
 
AuntPeggy said:
Mac viruses have been around from the very beginning. ...
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That was pre-OS X based in the Next Mach kernel. I think system 7 and OS 9 shipped with the trail version of Mac McAfee virus scan.

Even then, like today, mostly what they scan for are Windows "virus."

The permissions/rights protection in Unix is the key that makes 'em much safer. User programs never run as root and don't need to. Even administrator accounts only get root rights as needed and are prompted for password.
 
I've been using a Mac for about 3 months.

What I miss about the PC is a good picture viewer. PC has VuePrint, which is FAR better than anything I can dig up for the Mac.
 
SkyHog said:
3. Lack of software options - Plain and simple, if you want to run a Mac to do most things, you won't find the software to do it. I run a Mac, almost exclusively, and I run into this problem quite frequently.

I'm much more concerned about the lack of options when it comes to software on my Mac. If it wasn't for Google's web offerings and OpenOffice.org, my Mac would be a $2000 paperweight. Instead, I can accomplish most of what I do by just compromising on what I need.
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Nick,

Google's stuff is pretty much Office-type stuff, right? I use Google Docs, Excel, and Numbers (for example) which are all spreadsheets I can use on the Mac. How many more do you need? :dunno:

SkyHog said:
Quickbooks Pro or something even close to it would be another one.
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Ummm... You can get QuickBooks Pro on the Mac. I've been using it for years. http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/mac-accounting-software.jsp

I do note that they don't call it "Pro" any more, they just call it "Mac." :dunno:
 
kgruber said:
I've been using a Mac for about 3 months.

What I miss about the PC is a good picture viewer. PC has VuePrint, which is FAR better than anything I can dig up for the Mac.
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What exactly do you want to do? Heck, even Apple's Preview does most of what I need as far as being a picture "viewer."

Another one to check out is GraphicConverter, it'll open and save pretty much any graphics format known to man, and has lots of additional tools as well. Give it a look. http://www.lemkesoft.com/content/188/graphicconverter.html
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Nick,

Google's stuff is pretty much Office-type stuff, right? I use Google Docs, Excel, and Numbers (for example) which are all spreadsheets I can use on the Mac. How many more do you need? :dunno:
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That's my point, its all office stuff that the Mac really has. If it weren't for that stuff, the Mac would be useless. Ever try to game on a Mac? It has plenty of power to do so, but absolutely nothing in the way of games. This is going to change shortly now that Steam is out for the Mac, but at the moment, the game situation is pretty barren.

You're right about Quickbooks, I was confusing it for Linux, and never actually looked for it on the Mac, but now that I see it, that makes me a happy Panda, and it means I have a new purchase to make.

Now, if you wanted to ask about things the Mac can do that the PC can't? Well, I can't think of anything except function without problems (which is huge), but between the two, I know which one tends to have everything you could want, and which has almost everything you could need.

Need vs. Want. Is a computer a tool or a toy? I tend to think both, but lately, my computer has become a tool and not much more, and I think that's because I use a Mac.
 
SkyHog said:
Need vs. Want. Is a computer a tool or a toy? I tend to think both, but lately, my computer has become a tool and not much more, and I think that's because I use a Mac.
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No question that if you're a seriously hard-core gamer, you need a Windoze PC.

Me, I don't have much use for games other than flight simulators (X-Plane is cross-platform, even runs on Linux) or the occasional time-waster, though most of my time-wasting games are things I have on the iPhone or iPad because those are MUCH more likely to be with me when I have occasion to waste time.
 
Granted, I'm really far from my previous "hardcore" gamer years, and rarely have time anymore -- but why not just dual-boot the Mac hardware with Boot Camp?

The machines themselves are often plenty fast for all but the "I need a $400 video card with more processing power than the machine itself... oh and two of them installed strapped together to double the horsepower" top of the line FPS games.

Maybe you really do need such things still... don't know. Don't play. But the thread seems to be completely missing the fact that Macs run Windows just fine. That's one of the beauties of the hardware, really... I can boot Mac OSX, Windows, Linux, or any combination thereof at the same time with Parallels installed. (I hear that VMWare might have better performance than Parallels these days, but I'm an original Parallels customer and get cheap upgrades, so without a compelling reason to switch to VMWare I'll keep it.)

I hear that VMWare and Parallels both handle most of the Windows games well too, complete with hardware acceleration pass-through, but I'd think splitting the available RAM in half or so is just silly when you could just boot the Mac hardware directly to Windows...
 
My Macs have gotten viruses before. Pesky things, easily dealt with. I don't have the time for video games, so the Mac does just fine for me. Besides, if I wanted a toy I'd go buy a playstation.
 
denverpilot said:
Granted, I'm really far from my previous "hardcore" gamer years, and rarely have time anymore -- but why not just dual-boot the Mac hardware with Boot Camp?

The machines themselves are often plenty fast for all but the "I need a $400 video card with more processing power than the machine itself... oh and two of them installed strapped together to double the horsepower" top of the line FPS games.

Maybe you really do need such things still... don't know. Don't play. But the thread seems to be completely missing the fact that Macs run Windows just fine. That's one of the beauties of the hardware, really... I can boot Mac OSX, Windows, Linux, or any combination thereof at the same time with Parallels installed. (I hear that VMWare might have better performance than Parallels these days, but I'm an original Parallels customer and get cheap upgrades, so without a compelling reason to switch to VMWare I'll keep it.)

I hear that VMWare and Parallels both handle most of the Windows games well too, complete with hardware acceleration pass-through, but I'd think splitting the available RAM in half or so is just silly when you could just boot the Mac hardware directly to Windows...
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You gotta remember, the reasons I (and I presume, most people) left Windows is because, quite frankly, it sucks as an Operating System.

What turned me away from Windows was an error message that was so vague that there were about 3000 different fixes for it, each one suggesting a repair to a different file. Which would have still been ok, if it hadn't been for the fact that booting into a recovery console on Windows XP (or Vista) was like a 20 minute process because it had to try to load all kinds of drivers off the cd first. Really? To give me a dos prompt and access to the file system?

So, after about 4 hours of trying to repair different files, I gave up. Never to return if I can avoid it. Luckily, Linux saved my day by allowing me to retrieve all of my necessary files by forcing a dirty mount (which is another thing about Windows that ****es me off, that they flag a drive just because Windows didn't shut down properly).

So no, I won't go back to Windows, but I also won't settle for the state that Mac OSX is in at the moment. Things are getting better, but they'll stop improving if people stop asking for new features.
 
kgruber said:
My guess is that you've never used VuePrint, or VueScan.
"Preview" is worthless.
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I have used those, they were great 15 years ago when they were state of the art. But even the Windoze native pict viewer was more than adequate. For the Mac I just use Preview, works great and has everything I need including some stuff that was not available in VuePrint like rotation via mouse gestures.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
No question that if you're a seriously hard-core gamer, you need a Windoze PC.

Me, I don't have much use for games other than flight simulators (X-Plane is cross-platform, even runs on Linux) or the occasional time-waster, though most of my time-wasting games are things I have on the iPhone or iPad because those are MUCH more likely to be with me when I have occasion to waste time.
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I use OpenOffice, Apple iWork, and Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Between all those I'm pretty well set on my Office needs.
 
ScottM said:
I am using MS Office for Mac 2007 or is it 2008, got a chance for a cheap upgrade to 2011. Is it worth it?
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Meh. I might try to get one upgrade for Office so that I can read/write docx files, but I'm doing most of my stuff in iWork now - And I bet a brand new full version of iWork costs less than the upgrade to MS Office.
 
kgruber said:
My guess is that you've never used VuePrint, or VueScan.
"Preview" is worthless.
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What do you want it to do, though? No, I've never used those programs.

But, did you check out GraphicConverter? Even without knowing what you want it to do, I bet it'll do what you want.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Meh. I might try to get one upgrade for Office so that I can read/write docx files, but I'm doing most of my stuff in iWork now - And I bet a brand new full version of iWork costs less than the upgrade to MS Office.
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I will never really understand some of MS's licensing schemes.

On the school software store they had Office 2011 for Mac at $55. You could only buy one copy. I needed to upgrade my Access from 2007 to 2010 and of course their is no Mac version of Access. I run that on my PC side. But you cannot upgrade just Access to the 2010 version. You have to buy Office Professional 2010. The school's selling price for that is $5 (five dollars). Along with that copy of the PC Office Professional 2010 you get a copy of Office for Mac 2011.

So for $5 I got full blown MS Office professional on my PC AND Mac Office 2011. Plus I could order more copy for each of my machine. It is far cheaper to buy that then the single Mac version of the software.
 
ScottM said:
I will never really understand some of MS's licensing schemes.

On the school software store they had Office 2011 for Mac at $55. You could only buy one copy. I needed to upgrade my Access from 2007 to 2010 and of course their is no Mac version of Access. I run that on my PC side. But you cannot upgrade just Access to the 2010 version. You have to buy Office Professional 2010. The school's selling price for that is $5 (five dollars). Along with that copy of the PC Office Professional 2010 you get a copy of Office for Mac 2011.

So for $5 I got full blown MS Office professional on my PC AND Mac Office 2011. Plus I could order more copy for each of my machine. It is far cheaper to buy that then the single Mac version of the software.
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Thanks for the tip... I guess it would be worth $5 to have an updated copy of Office. :rofl:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Thanks for the tip... I guess it would be worth $5 to have an updated copy of Office. :rofl:
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If only to go through just the first part of the installation process (i.e., deleting the old copy of office). :-/
 
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