“All personal computing platforms get their share of snake oil. Windows certainly had a rich collection. Many were based on Unix code hastily ported; others exploited false impressions about how the platform worked. This is not to say that all purveyors were scheming charlatans, but at some level, even the most honest of them were at least fooling themselves (and you, the customer, as a consequence),” Rixstep reports. “From file and disk shredders to memory optimisers to generic system cleaners, it was all the same.”
“The one type of snake oil that couldn’t be effectively criticised was the antivirus software package. Windows has had, has today, and tomorrow and forever will always have an endemic weakness for technical attacks (as opposed to social engineering attacks – trojans – which can sneak into Fort Knox if needed). (Microsoft’s criminal ‘heroin economics’ ecosystem),” Rixstep reports. “There are repeated attempts by AV vendors to port and then sell their wares on Apple’s OS X. Once again, it can be a deluded belief on the part of the vendors that such tools are necessary, but ask any system engineer and you’ll hear the truth. Ask Brian Krebs and you’ll hear that he would never buy AV for his Mac. And why not? Because OS X is a UNIX, and UNIX doesn’t need it. But Windows is not UNIX and Windows cannot protect itself – ‘real’ operating systems don’t leave files (and users) unprotected.”
Then this turned up the other day at the always eager NoodleMac site:
Let’s look at these claims.
• The Mac doesn’t need ‘dozens’ of cleaner apps. True.
• Many of them are simply clones or copies of each other. Somewhat true, yes.
• The only ‘cleaning’ apps one needs are Onyx and AppDelete. See the reply from ‘carlton’ above.
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Your Mac is an amazing machine. Don’t gunk it up with snake oil!
SEE ALSO:
How to detect and remove MacKeeper and keylogger malware on your Mac – July 17, 2015
Controversial MacKeeper security program opens critical hole on Mac computers – May 12, 2015
What ‘MacKeeper’ is and why you should avoid it – January 21, 2015
How to uninstall MacKeeper from your Mac – December 19, 2014