From Apple eNews, June 1, 2006:
It’s really sad that so many people have to be wary about opening email, visiting websites, chatting with presumed “buddies,” or downloading music, photos, movies or other files over the Internet.
No one should have to zealously guard their computers against spyware, viruses, trojan horses, or various other types of malware. Or run a bewildering assortment of (quickly obsolete) virus-protection apps. And no one should have to run a computer to a nearby computer store, so it can be “cleaned” on a routine basis.
Do you know why people put up with that? If their cars didn’t drive where they wanted to go; their TVs didn’t play what they wanted to watch; or their phones didn’t connect to the party they called, how long would they keep using them?
Apple provides more info online about Mac’s lack of viruses here.
By the end of 2005, there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs. In March 2006 alone, there were 850 new threats detected against Windows. Zero for Mac. While no computer connected to the Internet will ever be 100% immune from attack, Mac OS X has helped the Mac keep its clean bill of health with a superior UNIX foundation and security features that go above and beyond the norm for PCs. When you get a Mac, only your enthusiasm is contagious. – Apple’s “114,000 viruses? Not on a Mac.” webpage.
Subscribe to Apple’s free eNews: http://www.apple.com/enews/subscribe/
Read Apple’s eNews online: http://www.apple.com/enews/currenteissue/
MacDailyNews Take: Finally, Apple’s gloves are off. Let’s go!
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Related articles:
Apple Macs and viruses: Fact vs. FUD – May 26, 2006
Mossberg: Is there a virus threat for Apple Macs? – May 11, 2006
Macs and viruses: the true story – May 02, 2006
FUD Alert: Viruses don’t catch up to the Mac – May 01, 2006
Gartner: Boot Camp won’t expose Mac OS X to Windows viruses or worms – April 13, 2006
The Idiot’s Guide to Mac Viruses For Dummies 101 – February 24, 2006
Atlanta Journal-Constitution asks: Is ‘Mac virus’ all just propaganda from Mac haters? – February 20, 2006
FBI: Viruses, spyware, other computer-related crimes cost U.S. businesses $67.2 billion per year – February 01, 2006
Microsoft apologists and why Apple’s Mac OS X has zero viruses – October 24, 2005
Hackers already targeting viruses for Microsoft’s Windows Vista – August 04, 2005
How to lose the text ads, paste sudo pico /etc/hosts, arrow down and add (don’t delete nothin) 0.0.0.0 macdailynews.us.intellitxt.com, press control x, then y, then return. All done.
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Altos,
An interesting — and for the most part accurate, IMHO — assessment. However, there is one striking counter example: the fact that there was a virus in the wild for Windows Vista less than 10 days after it was shipped to only 10,000 developers.
Let’s see how the Mac obscurity theory stacks up to that…
Windows Vista:
10,000 users * 10 days = 100,000 user days with one virus.
Mac OS X:
5,000,000 users (conservative, linear average over 5 years) * 5 years = almost 9 billion user days with no virus so far.
Some might counter that the Vista virus really did not do anything so it does not really count. That does not matter any more than saying that the Mac OS X Trojan that was in the wild did not do anything. It still existed and was in the wild.
So the count is 100,000 man days for one virus versus almost 9 billion user days with no viruses. Sounds to me like Vista was really the more obscure target. Yet it got hit.
Shadowself:
Thanks. I feel young again.
(BTW: I remeber Bournelli drives, too….ahh and SyQuest…if I can find one of those in my attic I might use it as a coaster)
Bernoulli not “Bournelli” sorry.
DJ
I remember my boss getting a new Quadra. We had a little network set up in the office and would send instant messages back and forth. I had a great setup at home — a II something with a Radius monitor. I had the kind that had a letter sized screen and you physically could rotate the monitor from portrait to landscape. It was awesome!
And I loved Pagemaker! I was using it on a school SE/30 long before Quark was introduced. Ah, the good old days…
Aaah, removable media.
I used at one time or another:
Graphite encoded cards
Cassette tapes
10 inch, 5 1/4 inch and 3.5 inch floppies
SyQuest 44, 88, and 200 mb cartridges
SyQuest SyJet cartridges
Iomega Jaz and Zip disks
– all SCSI (hated assigning IDs and terminators) except Zip was last used as USB. Thank heaven, for cheap CD-R and DVD-R and faster burners!
Oh yeah, and I caught a harmless Word macro virus once. That was it.
” . . . a Radius monitor. I had the kind that had a letter sized screen and you physically could rotate the monitor from portrait to landscape.”
The Radius Pivot. It was pretty cool. As I recall it had a mercury switch that sensed rotation to trigger the portrait to landscape change or back.
AMPAR:
Talk about living on the edge…I would use a blank SyQuest when I need additional scratch-disk space when using PhotoShop 3 I think it was.
Top that!!
: )
The Radius Pivot. It was pretty cool. As I recall it had a mercury switch that sensed rotation to trigger the portrait to landscape change or back.
Yep, I miss that monitor, made broadsheet layout a breeze.
Wow…
Old Mac User’s day!
Don’t forget that the Mac Plus had a non standard SCSI interface and in order to boot from an external hard drive the drive had to support the Mac Plus’ variant of the SCSI standard. (Most people had Jasmine hard dirves back then with the pretty little flower on the fron — but I liked my Photon 30 by Warp 9 Engineering!)
And another Apple SCSI variant was on the “Wicked Fast” (according to Scully) Macintosh IIfx. It had to have a terminator which was different from every other Mac.
But SCSI wasn’t so bad.
There was a group out of Berkeley that even wanted people to refer to it as “sexy” rather than “scuzzy”.
Besides, I loved the “SCSI disk mode” of my old 180c.
Ampar, I never used 10″ floppies. What was that on? I’ve used 14″ (DEC), 8″ (DEC and various others), and 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 (too many machines to even think about), but never 10″ (unless your talking about those removable hard drive platters in the sealed cases used on some IBM mainframes, DECSystems 10 and 20, and some PDP and VAX machines, but I don’t think I’d refer to those as floppies).
The RadiUS Pivot was interesting, but IIRC didn’t it have a pixel density of close to 120 pixels per inch? (Maybe I’m thinking of a different RadiUS monitor. They say the memory is the second thing to go.) That was a bit too high density for my tastes.
DJ,
Want some more of those Syquest disks (and a dual SCSI Syquest drive)? I’ve got the drive and about two dozen disks sitting in my closet.
Talk about living on the edge…I would use a blank SyQuest when I need additional scratch-disk space when using PhotoShop 3 I think it was.
Top that!!
I still got chemical burns and damaged brain cells from processing photo’s the real original way, by hand in the dark-room.
In fact desktop publishing output was so bad we shot down all that was laserprinted 50%!
Forget about dropping out text on a photograph in software, we did that manually.
So don’t blame me because I’m nutz, it’s the chemicals!
DJ,
I just have to respond to that challenge…
How about front ending a Cray XMP4/4 with a Mac Plus over a fractional T-1 from over 1,000 miles away — and going real time on the Cray to do nuke symulations analyses.
Now there’s both versatility of the Mac platform AND derring do at the same time.
Static Mesh:
I started out (like yourself) doing PASTE-UP.
I used to work for a newspaper, and we would take turns using the STAT CAMERA.
We had to shout out what percentage of reduction/enlargement we were gonna shoot, and if anyone else had shots needed that were anywhere close we would have to do their shot(s) as well.
And then there was RUBY-LITH.
Anyone remember cutting RUBY.
Wait…wait….remember waiting for a galley of text to come from the typesetter (type house) only to find it was wrong or didn’t rag the way you wanted?
Good times.
The “Classic” Mac System software was around for 15 years and there were only 50 or 60 viruses ever written for it. This does NOT include Word macro viruses. Macs were NEVER as susceptible as DOS and Windows OS machines.
I saw a Mac virus once. I think it was in 1991 when a friend called to tell me that her kids brought one home on a floppy and infected their Mac LC. I dropped by, ran SAM virus software… Yep, it was a virus… and killed it.
I continued to religiously ran virus software for years. I never saw one again.
From the webpage:
In order for software to significantly modify Mac OS X, you have to type in your password. You’re the decider.
The “decider”? LOL! Looks like GWB has created a meme!!
Shadowself:
Not sure I understand a word of what you posted, but I think you just spanked me!
DJ
Shadowself:
You’re probably right. I think it might have been 8 inch. It was for a long dead, proprietary data entry/database system from twenty years ago? My memory is at times as fuzzy as a partially degaussed disk. SCSI had its upside. It was convenient to run a chain and the speed was o.k. with a fast and wide card.
DJ:
A SyQuest for PS scratch space? That IS living dangerously! But creative. I’ve had my share of weird workarounds to get peripherals to work. And I always had a paperclip handy. You know why.
yea DJ remember them well,
I guess you recall CompuGraphics and having to do all your type calculations beforehand ?
We used to hand sketch the ads, remember all the paste up rolls of lines, corners etc?
How about waxing machines? Remember the smell? The Xacto knives and light tables?
Damm computers didn’t sit well on the angled tables either. We had to sit at desks to use their tiny 9 inch screens and felt demeaned.
I used to create material for years manually, even when computers were somethingthat only existed in research labs.
We knew our type too. Every part of it.
There was no such thing as a computer geek in my day because computers were not even created yet.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are young punks to me.
And don’t forget Letraset sheets for lettering. That’s how I learned patience.
This is the closest thing to a computer we had.
Ahhh yes the Letraset sheets for display type and headlines.
Now that’s typesetting!!
Linotype machines too.
We used to bitch that Mac’s would lower our pay because it made it too easy for smucks to produce crappy material.
It was true. We cursed Apple too.
It was either adapt or die, but one thing kept me alive. Talent.
The newbies on computers were horrible designers.
Static Mesh:
I’ll give you a dollar if you can still remember how to spec this type for me:
Apple rules. Microsoft sucks.
I want it in 36 pt. Helvetica Bold. : )
Yeah, Apple put a lot of TypeSetters out of work. Some of them embraced the MAC and survived.
To this day I still see young kids buy a MAC so they can “become” a designer….makes my skin crawl.
Any designer worth his salt can sketch and draw FIRST! The best designers I know ALL have drawing skills.
Static Mesh:
Sound like you are working in the creative field. What do you do? Do you have a web site?
DJ
Oh yes, rubylith, letraset, mac plus. mac II, 2fx, Quadra 900, several others that I don’t even remember the names of.
I even had a Powerbook 100, loved it, I think you could drive a truck over it, and it worked great also as an auxiliary hard drive with SCSI.