“Here’s the deal on viruses: Nobody is going to waste much time creating something that will hammer only a tiny fraction of the computers out there. That’s why the only virus news that makes it into the paper is when some cretin finds a previously undiscovered way to goober with Windows, which is the operating system in more that 90 percent of the world’s computers,” Dr. Emilio Bombay writes for The Star-Telegram.
[MacDailyNews: Bzzzzt. Please try again:
Is Mac OS X really inherently more secure than Windows? – August 26, 2003
BusinessWeek’s Haddad gets it wrong; thinks low market share spares Macs from viruses – August 28, 2003
Shattering the Mac OS X ‘security through obscurity’ myth – August 28, 2003
Fortune columnist: ‘get a Mac’ to thwart viruses; right answer for the wrong reasons – September 02, 2003
New York Times: Mac OS X ‘much more secure than Windows XP’ – September 18, 2003
Columnist tries the ‘security through obscurity’ myth to defend Windows vs. Macs on virus front – October 1, 2003
Gates: Windows ‘by far the most secure’ system; tries to use ‘Mac OS X secure through obscurity’ myth – January 27, 2004
Mac OS X has no viruses; what’s wrong with Windows? – February 11, 2004]
“I guarantee you that if Steve Jobs had had more business sense than ‘vision’ years ago and Apple had the dominant operating system today, we’d see nothing but stories about new viruses bringing the world’s Macs to a standstill and how really savvy people were safe because they used this quaint little niche product called Windows,” Bombay writes.
[MacDailyNews Note: see last note above.]
“Operating systems like Unix and Linux (kind of like Unix, but free) are harder to infect, but it’s not impossible. And Mac’s OS X (based on Unix) is not as virus-safe as its champions like to think. Already, there’s at least one serious worm that affects it, plus several more that can attack when running in the “Classic” environment — which lets an OS X machine emulate an older one so it can run programs whose publishers are too lazy to write new code for the new operating system,” Bombay writes.
[MacDailyNews Note: Wrong. Apple does release occasional security updates for OS X. An OS security update is not a virus, it’s not an exploit, just a hypothetical issue. There are no viruses or worms for Mac OS X.]
“If you go with Apple, at least your wife won’t complain about how long you linger in the software section at the computer store. Minuscule market share, minuscule selection of software. Oh, there are some fantastic programs, especially for graphics, digital imaging and video work, and Microsoft is still making Office for the Mac (at least until Jobs ticks off Bill Gates one more time) but just try to find a copy of Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto,” Dr. Bombay writes.
[MacDailyNews Note: There are currently over 18,000 Macintosh applications and software titles available on the market. Because Dr. Bomaby doesn’t see them in Wal-Mart, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If you devoted just a day to learn to use each piece of Mac software available, it would take you over 49 years and 4 months to use all of the Mac software available.]
Dr. Bombay is supposed to be funny, we think that’s the point, but in this case he’s just plain wrong. We hope the good doctor isn’t offended, but we’re going to need a second opinion when it comes to computing answers. Full article here.
