Why are there no Mac viruses?

Bull! Try here:
http://www.romow.com/computer-blog/mac-viruses-and-trojans-becoming-more-prevalent/
or here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12537279/

Or just live in your dreamworld. If it has a processor, ram and a hard drive – you can get a virus.

ex ped: More worms. Still waiting for that Mac OS X virus in the wild.

@ Randy from Philadelphia

You're the moron for buying a Dell.

My buddy bought a $1500 MacBook and I got a 750 MSI laptop yet mine has a faster processor, better video card, subwoofer, bluetooth, better webcam, and better sound card.
He's got that light up keyboard and apple logo so I guess his is better….

"The Macbook Pro 17" is probably the most value for money. I mean dual graphics cards, DDR3 RAM, and multi touch track pad?"

Um.. Let's see..
17" MacBook Pro starts at $2499
vs
17" Alienware M17x starts at $1799

Not to mention you can add high end features that a MBP could only wish to have. Even the default specs smear the MBP.

Here in lies the catch 22, Mac doesn't make an IDE or SDK that gives developers access to as much as MS does. So you are always going to have issues finding people that want to develop for macs. Sure we can develop using Eclipse. But why take the time to learn a generic IDE for a commercial operating system. Everytime I see people working on Mac's I can't help but think to myself, stuck up ass's. My point is, as Mac users don't expect anyone to make your favorite software for a Mac if you decide to use a Mac, at least not expect to pay the same amount for it. It's like asking someone that is part of a small minority ~10% to expect to make on average 10x the amount of money as someone in the 90% of the population just because you are part of the 10% minority. WTF right?

And yes, if Mac's market share was bigger, a lot more people would make virus/spyware for your computer just like they would start to make more software for it. So keep buying mac's and all your virus nightmares will probably come true. Think about it. I can write a virus that infects 90M users or 9M users. Even if 20% of the 90M use virus protection I'm still way over the time benefit of writing it for Windows. One more catch 22 for mac users. Get more people to write software for the Mac at the expense of getting more virii for it. Just the fact that Windows has taken the high road with their commercials says loads about the company, instead of taking the time to attack Apple back they simply continue making progress, not mentioning all of the spyware etc that apple is just as vulnerable to, the fact that their IPhone leaves burn marks in some people's legs, catches on fire while charging randomly, had huge AT&T 3G network issues in the beginning, the fact that they are just now cuting and pasting, has horrible pixel resolution, a horrible camera and no flash (something windows mobile has been doing since about version 2003) hasn't been in their commercials. Just that alone tells me enough that windows and further more Microsoft really is the better company and brand name that I can trust to give it to me straight, and not be afraid to tell me a problem that exists, instead of just stuffing it away like Apple is famous for.

After reading a bunch of these "intelligent" comments I just want to add a few things. Firstly the whole Mac "too expensive machines" debate is unfounded. The Macbook Pro 17" is probably the most value for money. I mean dual graphics cards, DDR3 RAM, and multi touch track pad?? For the price they're selling it, you can get one and remove shoddy OSX and install Windows 7. Secondly, I have been using Windows Vista, 7 from the day each version released a public beta, and I have only once got a virus, installing a program after deactivating my AV because it constantly warned me about impending doom. So I prove a point that whether or not you run Windows or Mac, viruses dont just roam the internet looking for a connected computer, you as the user need to access this content. Thirdly, I have run Windows 7 without an AV for the past year, since the beta and I use P2P networks and Torrent site pretty regularly, and I'm online 99% of the time when using my PC, and no attacks from any form of Malware/Virus/Trojan/Spyware/SwineFlu. And I installed the latest up to date AV to check that my system was clean. So it all comes down to the user. Macs (Macbook Pro) are great alternatives for a PC, it's OS however is useless, and I do not understand the "parallel" theory, as it would mean you need to buy an additional Windows lisence just to make your Mac work.
And if you cant afford a new Mac and cant live without the "most advanced OS(sic)", pick up the Retail Snow Leopard, and install it on your Celeron notebook, it can be done with a quick Bing search.

Mike from Harrisburg wrote:

"Their crap is TOO EXPENSIVE for what it does. They do nothing special. They make trendy, expensive crap for rich morons."

And I respond with:
I'm neither rich nor a moron. But apparently you are not rich but ARE a moron.
My Dell XPS M170 pales in comparison so my MacBook Pro. And I spent less on my MacBook Pro than on my XPS.
Who'd a thunk it? Oh wait. Is that something a moron would say?

The PC, or more aptly put, "Windows vs. Mac argument is a stupid issue obscured by a massive marketing campaign upon which the adspend has now entered the billions.

In the browser-based economy, all personal comps (yes, Macs included) need to be monitored and protected from incidences as a result of browsing.

I am not a technical person, but I owned PC's and had one problem after another. Finally, I gave up and now the proud owner of my baby Mac and I haven't had a problem since!

Just because a virus has not arrived on the Mac yet does not mean it is invulnerable to any attack. You can't stop the signal.

Oh BS this article. Mac OSX isn't anything special and the truth is that there is nothing to gain to write a "Virus" for mac. Malware normally can cause enough damage that viruses in general are pretty much a thing of the past. Being a network infrastructure and security professional the fact is this, MAC isn't big enough in the business market to even bother. Viruses were at one time a way to destroy data, now the thing is to steal it, and Malware is the way to do it. Opening virtual ports leaving open back doors is what most people want and the fact is that there is a lot more to gain by exploiting and accessing PCs than MACs. I'm not a Mac hater ( I have 3 of them) but the fact is that a Virus is a program written to do damage and that over 95% of so called viruses are more categorized as Malware or Spyware and in that note if any 1 cared enough they could write one or 100. The prob with OSX is that they have very limited security and when someone does write one or more to do damage it will be a HUGE problem for Mac owners.

The Mac BSD based security architecture is arguably tighter than Windows. However, it is not bulletproof. There have been plenty of OSX vulnerabilities in the past and without a doubt more will be identified in the future. To understand why they these vulnerabilities are not actively exploited is simple. First, market share has a role in it which should not be dismissed. At 11%, OSX is still pretty small. Most hacking activity is either credit card fraud or botnet based denials of service. In both cases, the larger the number of infected machines the better as far as the hacker is concerned. Another reason is simplicity. If Windows is easier to exploit, and I can find hack tools already made for Windows to simplify my effort, then its less effort for me to get what I am after.

So bigger bang, less effort. That's why Windows is a far better target than OSX.

Deciding to exclude a whole host of attack vectors to arrive at an arbitrary definition of "virus" is pretty poor analysis. It is like asserting that men do not get sick due to the fact that they never get ovarian cancer. Just plain flawed.

I was a PC, now I'm a Mac. Why? Because it works well. I am very technical, 25+ years in the computer business. I watched the first virus outbreak unfold. However, I run a Mac more than just because I don't need to run AV Software. I use it because I don't have to waste my time or money fixing it, or making it work. For those who say only rich stupid people use Macs, I am neither rich nor stupid. I bought my first Mac just over a year ago. It was a 400 MHz Power Mac G4 running Tiger. After the first month of use, I loved it. I have been upgrading ever since. Why do I love it? No one else integrates multi-media the way Apple does. I have two stereos with Airport Express connected to them, and I can stream my music from my Quad G5 to either or both of them without wires. I can control what song is playing, which speakers it is coming out of, and the volume it plays at right from my iPod or iPhone. And I did all of this at a fraction of the new purchase price for these products all by buying used, and upgrading. I still run an iMac G3 built in 2000 and love it. With the right OS and patches on it, it is a very nimble machine, and it has an awesome retro design!

So, to put it simply, I got tired of editing the windows registry to remove trojans and malware that my AV software didn't catch. If I want to, I can go into my Mac OS Kernel and change things, or look at things in detail, but I don't, because I would rather just use and enjoy it.

That is why I am a Mac. As for trojans or viruses, so far, I have been running clean with no AV software. If I mail just text, no virus will be transmitted to a windows machine. But watch out, if you run a windows machine and put it on my network, because I know there are windows viruses on it. I just don't care!

I don't have a hate on for windows. I just prefer elegant code that works well! And I think Linux is a great OS.

I replaced my old PC with the iMac (the one that look like a lamp) a few year back. I'm using yahoo messenger to talk with my grand children and I see them via the web-cam. The iMac crashed quite often and I now have to reinstall the system. Unfortunately I couldn't find any yahoo messenger program that allow me to install on this iMac so I can talk and see my grand children via the web-cam.

If you could help me locating a software that I can use with yahoo messenger and it has both voice chat and web-cam please let me know.

"no serious computer user or programmer gives a crap about apple, that's why there are no viruses."

Completely stupid thing to say. I write software for a living and care a lot about Apple (personally own one of the new Nehalem Mac Pros). In fact, in college I my computer science classes only issued assigned for Linux. Programmers increasingly need to care about Apple and Mac OS X because a.) traditional software is dying and being replaced with web-interfaced software which can be accessed by any computer with a browser, b.) if you wanna write iPhone apps you need to do it on a Mac, and c.) their market share is increasing.

Posted By Tony – Boston, MA: September 5, 2009 11:43 PM

"completely stupid" is saying Traditional software is dying. It will always be there, it's just moving to the backend where you MAC users won't see it. And, yes, it will most likely be Linux/UNIX/BSD in the background doing all the work while your MAC does nothing. EVERY operating system can view web pages, you don't need a MAC for that. I'm not sure how that argues your point. Plus the IPhone is ridiculous reason to buy a MAC. I know the news makes it sound like everyone has an IPhone, but they don't. Actually, I'm willing to say not even 5% of cell phone owners have an IPhone. So why are you making apps for it? Money? Fun? If all of a sudden everyone was FORCED to use an IPhone, I could still put OS X on a virtual machine if I had to (and, yes, it is possible Michael from San Franciso). If you're getting paid to write IPhone apps, then that's great. You will be provided a MAC to do so. But as a "serious programmer" (and these were my words) it doesn't seem very challenging so it's nothing I would care about on my own time.

Gaining market share? I don't need an IPOD to listen to MP3's. I don't need an IPhone to mobilize useful utilities, and I certainly don't need a MAC to browse the web. Their crap is TOO EXPENSIVE for what it does. They do nothing special. They make trendy, expensive crap for rich morons.

Uhm, Mike from Harrisburg, PA – the core of Mac OSX is based on BSD, not Linux. Two totally different things.

Get educated before trying to argue on a public forum.

Posted By Michael, San Francisco, CA: September 5, 2009 1:40 AM

Thanks for educating me. I'm aware of the differences between BSD and Linux, but UNIX/BSD/LINUX are all part of the "community" I was referring to. Differentiating between them was not necessary to make my point. I didn't know which one Apple chose to borrow (until now) either but it also wasn't necessary to prove my point. So, no, I didn't waste my time educating myself about an operating system I won't ever use. Next you'll say BSD is a "form" of UNIX or you'll say Linux isn't UNIX at all… stop picking apart my comment and try to contribute something.

I don't care as long as I have a working computer. And I know how to identify a virus.

I have read all the comments and I would help to stop everyone and just conclude these things:

1) The difference in OSes are focus… That is a confirmation.. Windows are more about network business environment and Apple is more consumer based. So that different focus determines the security issues and you are really comparing Apple with Orange… Apple restrict the user because it assume the consumer is not "intelligent" and wants safety net so the computer is not compromised.. In comparison, Windows are assumed that an IT department exist to setup group policies and privileges onto the PC.. This is the reason why Apple is starting to increase the consumer market and Apple can't dominate the business market.. So the flaw in Windows is the issue on having the end-user to administrate their own PC. That is the bottom line difference.. To be honest, I think you need some restrictions and some liberty on your PC.. I dealt with it and it all comes down to 3rd party applications..
2) Market share does MAKE A BIG Difference on malware. It is about the $$$.. So I hear everyone saying that viruses existed in the old OS versions in Apple as proof that there is no viruses on OS X because it is secure proof is a poor relational correlation. To be honest, before these couple of years, Apple OS had a bigger market share then than now.. With the recent influx of Apple users, they are finally reach the 80's market share (or exceeding it now).. SO it is driven by market share.. It is not about glory and why most security consultants are formerly Hackers? It is about $$$..
3) Apache and all those webservers are dominate because they are sturdy (and I don't doubt that) but also because the server focus is DIFFERENT FROM WORKSTATIONS.. It is what it is.. One directional (with some bi-directional) session.. It is based more on privileges and permissions on the server and what information could be inputted in and mostly what is spent to the end-user. So it is not like workstation.. So stating that it is more secured.. Of course, you going to restrict your Webserver on what would be run and what apps will be permitted. That is why people don't use a SERVER LIKE A WORKSTATION.. Different OS and purpose.. That don't validate about OS X except that they are UNIX based.. I could say the same thing with Linux but there are viruses and issues based on how you use it..
4) Again, NOTHING IS EVER SECURED.. That is why there are updates even for Apple.. SO to talk me it is more secured is somewhat true but totally? No.. Better written code for OS X? Yes but nothing is perfect.. And with the way the Internet and scripts/apps are changing, there are always potential vulnerabilities
5) The commercial is a bit misleading.. I remember the same things was address with Cisco IOS software.. Ironically, they had updates too.. Is it a good written OS? Yes (with some hesitation), but it ain't perfect and other OS could be better than Cisco (especially with the price tag)..
6) It is all about the end user and their intention.. I concur, if it is just personal and some apps for media purposes, get a MAC! If you need specific applications that would not be available on an Apple (again, the emulation do not work on all Windows applications I have tried specialized software and it won't..), Windows make sense.. But education makes the difference.. I've heard that Apple apps are open? No, they are not.. That is why the developers were mad and the amount of restrictions on the codes makes it not profitable (and why you don't see financial and specialize apps, let alone hardware utilization and compatibility).. It is about $$ and when you restrict, it comes down to $$ and how much you could make.. That was why Apple was in dire strait in the 90s.. That is double edge sword.. I have more control but less acceptance.. And more people accepting it because of consumers but stating that it is open, nowhere close to open development in Windows (again, I didn't all codes but there is a difference)..
7) When a MAC crash, it is as cost burden to get it resolved as a PC.. Again, this is the open community of Apple (or lack of).. If hardware fails, you have to Apple for warranty.. OS installation is not short (I think they are longer than a Windows install in many cases)… So Apple users are assuming that their hardware parts are higher quality (when they are not.. If you think Intel is going to make a better quality part for Apple that is also available to PC manufacturers? I doubt that because quality control like that would make a manufacturing plant to go crazy).. Now, the limitations of Apple, since the OS and parts are efficient utilized, I could say it might have a better chance of not failing (but not guarantee because all Apple stores has an influx of repairs in comparison to marketshare… When you have more PCs, you have a higher percentage chance for failure)..
Do not forget it is all about perception.. In reality, that could change with marketing, economy, and people's attitude to a company.. To be honest, I would get a Solaris over OS X.. That is a far better UNIX based OS than OS X.. The core the same but in reality, each OS is different… Do not forget it is all about education and perception…

The Dumitru article used as authority to argue for better structural security with Unix is from mid 2006, before the Vista kernel was released. The argument pretends that such features as SDL code, hierarchical layering, integrity verification, ASLR, and diminished privileges from user space are not in current Windows. The claim about uncontrolled memory space reflects no awareness of DEP (introduced with XP) and diminished user/application privileges (introduced with Vista). OSX is the one playing catch-up with an incomplete version of ASLR in Snow Leopard. The structural security argument for OSX is dated but still used by "experts" who should know better, as the article so egregiously shows.

“Viruses are something of the past. Their highpoint was in the nineties spreading trough floppies and later e-mail.
Since the millennium the malware landscape is dominated by worms and trojans and classical viruses have become scarce and a generally unimportant malware category.
Making an article on how a relatively new OS is not affected by ancient malware and ignoring the threat caused by current malware is just stupid.”

Well, lucky us, not to be bothered with something called ‘virus’ in the past and the present. Consider that against the millions and billions (and trillions?) of money already spent in the PC-user-world (in those highpoint times) fixing things caused by that same thing. A privilege they had.
I, for one, think that’s worth mentioning. And as always, it won’t be acknowledged by those PC people. Well, it’s always hard to admit that the other side had a better time.

Virusses are something of the past. Their highpoint was in the nineties spreading trough floppies and later email.
Since the milennium the malware landscape is dominated by worms and trojans and classical virusses have become scarse and a generally unimportant malware category.

Making an article on how a relativly new OS is not affected by ancient malware and ignoring the threat caused by current malware is just stupid.

Whether WIllie Sutton actually said it or not, it's still true "Why do you rob banks? Because that's where to money is."

You can certainly argue that BSD is a "more secure" operating system than Windows but malware is an economy and at the moment, the money is in Windows malware.

My advice is to buy the operating system that works best for you and protect whichever one you buy to the best of your ability. Don't beleive any journalist, techowhiz or marketeer who touts a product as "immune" to malware.

As long as software is written by humans (as opposed to super-coding-Ninja-monkeys), it will have vulnerabilities and some of those vulnerabilities will be explotable by malware (whether you call it a virus, a trojan or the money-maker that supports your criminal lifestyle).

Altieres Rohr, IT security columnist for G1:

"I don't even think Mac users need
anti-virus software yet."

That pretty much says it all.

"no serious computer user or programmer gives a crap about apple, that's why there are no viruses."

Completely stupid thing to say. I write software for a living and care a lot about Apple (personally own one of the new Nehalem Mac Pros). In fact, in college I my computer science classes only issued assigned for Linux. Programmers increasingly need to care about Apple and Mac OS X because a.) traditional software is dying and being replaced with web-interfaced software which can be accessed by any computer with a browser, b.) if you wanna write iPhone apps you need to do it on a Mac, and c.) their market share is increasing.

Uhm, Mike from Harrisburg, PA – the core of Mac OSX is based on BSD, not Linux. Two totally different things.

Get educated before trying to argue on a public forum.

SteveS in Ocala,

What's the resale value on those 1/2 price PC's? Once the investment is made in a Mac, the upgrade to a new mac becomes much less. It's an easy transfer of files to the new Mac, and there are plenty of willing buyers on eBay for used Mac hardware.

The value of investing in a Mac pays off in many ways.

"Stop arguing with me."

Yes master.
(Actually, I wasn't arguing with you, I was more joking with you. But I shouldn't do that. My mistake)

"This notion of an 'upfront investment' in an Apple computer is ridiculous"

Although I don't mind difference of opinion, pretending that there isn't a pricing gap (for WHATEVER THE REASON) between PC's & Macs it's incomprehensible to me. As far as hardware is concern you can get a comparable PC for about half the price of a Mac (give or take a $100). Now as far a quality, ease of use, etc., that's a completely different subject. That's like saying "why would you not get the $60K Benz? It has free oil changes". Well that's easy I don't have $60K!!

BTW, XP boots in about 45 seconds, Vista about 1 1/2 mins. I know it's a very long time compared to OSX, but a far cry from 10 mins.

I also realize we're off subject so I'll stop.

This notion of an 'upfront investment' in an Apple computer is ridiculous. It has been demonstrated time and time again that the cost difference of comparably equipped Mac & PC computers are not that great.

I used PC's up until about six years ago. Viruses, Malware, Spyware, Trojan Horses, etc… crippled the computers. Running Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware programs didn't improve the user experience enough to make it worthwhile. It would literally take at least 10 minutes to be able to use the computer after turning it on. The Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware programs had to download their latest lists and do their checks of the computer before I could get anything done. While some might say that the newer operating systems from Windows are more secure, what is the cost of upgrading to new versions Windows to fix problems that we shouldn't have to deal with in the first place?

So, while there may be an 'Apple Tax,' it's still far less than the 'Anti-Virus' tax that must be paid in order to use a Microsoft product.

Without a doubt Mac's file structure and kernel are stronger than windows. But the majority of the reasoning behind why Macs don't have infections is simply market share.

Come on… this article is retarded.

"Exactly: that’s something a serious computer user or programmer would never do: take something good and build on it. No, when you take yourself serious, you have to build things always from scratch. I mean, you must have something to bill the customer."

That was taken out of context. It's wonderful what apple did and made the most sense using the BSD kernel. But, it's "virus-free" because of the Linux infrastucture. You don't need a MAC to get a Linux infrastructure! Also, many virus creators do so to spite Micrsoft/Bill Gates for invading the computer world with a strictly business agenda. Apple is in a way supporting and advertising open source by using the Linux kernel. This takes the cross hairs off of them as far as viruses go. So why not buy a cheap PC and get Linux on it? I'll tell you why, because it's not the "cool" thing to have. Apple is making a name for itself as "upper class" electronics (due to the high price tag). You can get a Linux command prompt on an OS X MAC and use it like Linux. Although functionally it's nothing different or new or special, it just "looks cool" in other words "trendy" so they can charge a ton for it and actually sell it. Linux is free and can be installed on an incredible ammount of hardware configurations, but, it requires the use of your brain. Apple is a great alternative if you have a pile of cash to burn and are lacking in the computer knowledge area. It'll do everything for you. Some people don't like the operating system to determine what they're capable of doing…

Windows on the other hand has many quirks in exchange for hardware freedom and NEAR universal compatibility. Sometimes you can't look passed that.

Stop arguing with me.

There's been a lot of commentary here, much of it partisan, about the distinction between viruses and worms and whether by defining viruses so narrowly I have let Apple off the hook.

I stand by my story; I believe that to equate Windows' malware problem with Mac OS X's is ludicrous.

But in the interest of adding some clarity to the discussion of this fuzzy field, I am reposting below, with permission, the most objective commentary I've read on the matter. It's by Altieres Rohr, IT security columnist for G1, the largest web news portal in Brazil, and was sent by e-mail when I questioned his assertion that a worm is, by definition, a virus.

- – – -

Virus is a generic term, so it is technically avoided. Nowadays these
are called either "classic viruses" or "file infectors". I suggest you
ask a virus researcher so he can explain to you the industry or his
company's standard precisely, but do note that even security companies
aren't always consistent with themselves, much less among themselves.

Your article says a virus

"is executable code that attaches itself to a program or file so that it can spread from one Mac to another"

which is the definition of a file infector. And from Symantec's description we can learn that OSX.Leap.A

Infects the selected files by copying the contents of the data fork to the resource fork of the selected file, and then copying itself to the data fork of the selected file.

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-021614-4006-99&tabid=2

This malware is very buggy, however even a buggy virus is still a virus,
since in its attempt to infect files it will corrupt them
unintentionally. And the worm component is also buggy, as can be read
and in the description as well, yet it's still a 'worm'.

In McAfee's descriptions, "worm" is a subtype of virus, so all worms are
considered "viruses". Since the subtype is more specific, that's what
gets used when possible:

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_138578.htm

Type
Virus
SubType
Internet Worm
[...]
OSX/Leap is an instant messaging *worm*

Further, from the Sophos press release on Leap, which was updated due to
the same debate back in early 2006, when there were no Mac malware and
people were calling it a "trojan"

http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/02/macosxleap.html

it is correct to call OSX/Leap-A a virus or a worm. It is not correct
to call OSX/Leap-A a Trojan horse.

(I disagree with the part which says Mac users have to be "just as
careful" as Windows users, and I don't even think Mac users need
anti-virus software yet. But their definition is still correct.)

An example from the Windows realm is Beagle.M. It also contains
classical virus behavior (not the same as Parite like I've mentioned,
but its own code), yet most call it a worm:
http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-031310-3624-99

W32.Beagle.M@mm is a mass-mailing worm [...]
This variant also contains a file infection routine that infects portable executable files with a .exe extension.

Other examples
http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2005-011016-0318-99
http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?virusid=23152
(not consistent with
http://threatinfo.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?vname=PE_BUGBEAR.B
- note Tanatos is an alias, so it's the same thing, but Kaspersky calls
it an Email-Worm, even though it's also a backdoor, network worm and
file infector ).
http://www.google.com/search?q=worm+%22file+infection+routine%22 – many
others

I've read other articles with similar conclusion to yours on
Apple-focused media outlets, even here in Brazil. Some say viruses are
malware which can use vulnerabilities to spread with no user
interaction, which is why OS X "has no viruses". Such a definition never
existed — most malware using vulnerabilities get to be called worms
(Blaster, Sasser, Conficker, to name three high profile examples), and
not all worms use vulnerabilities. There is currently no definition of a
malware that uses a vulnerability. "Exploit" is often used to describe
code that makes use of a security flaw, not an automated worm that uses it.

It makes no sense, like I said, to cling to something as old as
classical viruses. They are irrelevant these days, even on the Windows
platform, and most malware that has such routine does not intend to
spread by it, but only make its removal harder — lots of malware like
to infect specific system files like "explorer.exe" that are never
shared but tricky to clean for some security apps. For more, see:
http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=186375095
http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=167434325

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Altieres Rohr
Editor – Linha Defensiva
Colunista – G1/Globo.com
http://www.linhadefensiva.com.br
http://altieresrohr.com.br/

Back in 1986 my boss bought a Mac Plus, upgraded it to 2mb of ram (Dove upgrade), had a 20 mb scsi drive, and with it was able to make the IT wizards at the mortgage company we worked at look like fools and amateurs when we went to a meeting and the IT "pros" made their presentation by scribbling on a white board (from their notes) and my boss blew them all away with a great spiral bound full featured presentation with graphs, charts, flowcharts…well, you get the picture. He had over $10,000 spent on that Mac Plus when you include the s/w, the h/w, the peripherals, the printers (bw & color)…and it more than paid him back in improvements in Salary & promotions.

For anyone to complain today about a $500 difference in the purchase of a machine that can provide creative and superior results for an individual in their everyday worklife (if they have that "spark" to be better) is short sighted.

As far as I'm concerned M$ demonstrated their lack of concern for their customers with their last release of M$ Office and all of it's "improvements".

karl said: "one thing.. the people who say they have used pc's for 20 years and never had so much as ad-aware on there comp are flat out lying.."
Karl – I've never had an STD either. Am I also lying about that?
Simply put, when I say I haven't had any malware on my Windows PC's since the first year I owned one I'm not lying but stating a simple fact. How did I do this? I'm aware; I'm careful; and I stay up on the issue so I know what NOT to do so I can avoid any malware. And I've been on the internet since before most people knew what it was and accessed local BBS's prior to that using the fastest connection equipment available at each point in time.
Once again – buy what you want that will do what you want at the price point you want and stop trying to belittle "the other guy" for doing the same.
Or does that make YOU "feel superior.. like the guy driving the benz to oppose his short comings."

“No serious computer user or programmer gives a crap about apple, that’s why there are no viruses.”

Well, I’m happy that all those serious computer users don’t do that. We’ll leave them on the PC side and keep the nice and happy computer users or programmers over here.

“Another reason Unix/Linux users don’t write viruses for OS X is because Apple adopted their native infrastructure.”

Exactly: that’s something a serious computer user or programmer would never do: take something good and build on it. No, when you take yourself serious, you have to build things always from scratch. I mean, you must have something to bill the customer.

no serious computer user or programmer gives a crap about apple, that's why there are no viruses.

ex ped: So Mike, you're saying that "serious" programmers write viruses and the 18,696 developers who have published iPhone apps are, what, unserious?

They are serious about making money off of a trendy group of rich folks. Serious programmers aren't in it for the money. I would never put "designed iphone app" on my resume and expect a serious job offer. I've written pleny of homemade stuff for various devices, but it's my "serious" projects that make me a programmer. That's all you have to say about my comment? Nice try.

Another reason Unix/Linux users don't write viruses for OS X is because Apple adopted their native infrastructre. Apple admitted they couldn't do it themselves by using a prexisting kernel, in other words, someone elses code. They then put it on their overpriced hardware and sold it as their own. Now they're using open source mentality (the so called 18,696 developers) to only further popularize their iphone because the iphone "trend" is starting to wear off. At least Linux leaves their OS free when everyone else writes code for it! Can you argue that?

LOL so many PC users responding to this article… Based on their comments, they are either clueless about Macs and viruses or maybe they work in IT supporting winblows and just want to spread misinformation.

The bottom line is…

-use UNIX/Linux for quality and stability
-use Windows for global hardware and software compatibility (only because of their large market share)
-use a MAC for an overpriced combination of idiot-proof, hardware and software focused on and limited to useful, yet extrememly unnecessary apps and portable multimedia devices. Everything they make is available in some other form cheaper and better.

The only reason apple is around is because they're kernel is now based on Linux/Unix which means they took something good and put an "apple" on it once again (just like with the common MP3 Player) and make it sound like their creation. They don't create anything, they make trendy versions of everything and sell it like their own. There will always be trendy people so there will always be apple…

no serious computer user or programmer gives a crap about apple, that's why there are no viruses.

ex ped: So Mike, you're saying that "serious" programmers write viruses and the 18,696 developers who have published iPhone apps are, what, unserious?

I have nothing agains Apple, in fact I love Apple. The only reason I don't own one, is the fact that I can't handle the upfront investment. I really can't spend $1,500 on a low to mid-tier Mac. That said, I have to agree with the fact that the whole "Macs get no viruses" campaing is lot the Ally Bank ad with the girl in the red bike; "You can ride the bike, but only inside the red line". To have an add campaing, accusing the competition of getting "thousands of viruses and we get none" (or something like that), is extremely missleading to the general public, current and potential clients. For the average computer user, there is no difference between viruses and spyware. Apple (and it's fans) have always been very vocal about the fact the "it just works" without a lot of technical specs, but now we are getting into academics about what is or isn't a virus? Come on….

OK, so there are plenty of viruses (the new ones), malware, worms, flu’s, bullets, … for the mac or whatever it’s called. Who cares.
Why then is it possible (for already 10 years) that 99% of all the Mac OS X users at home – not using it behind a firewall in a company, just using the damn thing straight out of the box – don’t have AV Software. Nada, niente, rien.
To all those viruses, malware, worms, etc., we all say: come in and have a party – our doors are wide open. But they won’t!!! Now, that’s unpolite behavior

You can’t take away those 10 years, people. Call us silly, dumb of whatever, but they were there.

Is it because off superior design, because of miniscule market share (only 5%), I don’t care.
I only know that all those ‘meany things’ don’t seem to exist for Mac people
9 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
8 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
7 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
6 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
5 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
4 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
3 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
2 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
1 years ago we were told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
now we are told to use AV Software or else hell and damnation
hey, at some point, those people got to be right!

Mad apologists are amusing.

computer worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, spam or any of the other nasty species in the zoology of malware.- Ok so you have laid out the loose definition of virus off limits. Why did you skip your definition of virus in the story? There are many examples of code which runs outside protected space.. and inside protected space on an OSX machine with certain vulnerabilities.

This article doesn't make sense. It says "name a bullet hole in this armor" But it cant be what is traditionally called a bullet by the normal person. No shotgun shell, no rimfires, no subsonic, no dum dum, etc… just my kind of bullet. But then fail to define bullet? And then blame your magic bullet on a wrong interpretation by the forensics expert? Can you fill in that one blank to help make sense? You seem to be offering a challenge, but you dont list the rules.

"hilip, it's me again, the guy silly enough in 2005 to promote the $25,000 vi" – This is a formal complaint asking you to remove this man's request to pay someone to commit a crime. If you read his offer, the virus must get to both macs via the internet and other computers without prior knowledge of their IP. He is asking you to commit several felonies for 25k.

another btw- what you described as a mac virus is actually more traditionally aligned with a worm.

Umm yeah, do you know what a virus is, and what the history of the virus is, and what a 'virus' is now? The reason macs don't get viruses is because we have changed the definition to suit our needs. It used to be anything with the ability to write to memory, the replicate. Now trojans, worms, everything you listed can do that. Now, old virus tactics don't work.

Essentially, Mac's timing gives Apple a free pass to claim VIRUS VIRUS! from the rooftops forever. Nothing will be defined as a virus anymore when it applies to anything but windows. It will be accuratley logged as a trojan etc.

If you read the definition of what an old virus did, how it moved and if a user was involved, you will soon find many unix/mac malwares are the same as former 'viruses' in windows.

This is a label issue, nothing else

I love it when neophytes write articles. Your turgid semantics regarding malware really weaken your arguement. There is malware that will harm users of Macs. You list them yourself. You do stupid people who happen to be Mac users a disservice by inferring that they are bulletproof.

A mac can still carry a virus that will target Windows based PCs. That means that your Boot Camp partition or VM on your mac can be damaged or compromised. It also means that you can get your email server blacklisted for unknowingly forwarding macro-viruses through email. I have had to clean up Mac only environments that this happened to.

The bottom line. If you dont take reasonable precautions to stop the spread of malware you will become a victom or force someone else to be.

The installed Mac OS X base numbers in the millions, probably tens of millions – larger than virtually any single Windows botnet ever save perhaps Conficker — it's thus simply not valid to think that any virus writer or botnet writer wouldn't be salivating at the mouth to be the first to capitalize on that (especially since botnet writers do it for money, and many virus writers for "fame" – and who wouldn't want to get that fame of being the writer of the first major OS X virus ever, hitting millions of machines? Come on, let's not be ridiculous …. 4% is a huge number in absolute terms). No, the incentives are all there; Macs have a, though imperfect, far superior and more secure design that Windows.

No doubt we'll see OS X viruses yet to come. But they will be, and will remain, the *exception* rather than the *rule* as they are on Windows.

one thing.. the people who say they have used pc's for 20 years and never had so much as ad-aware on there comp are flat out lying.. i guess it makes them feel superior.. like the guy driving the benz to oppose his short comings. if you blog and search for anything even being smart and aware to what your clicking on (which is undoubtedly 99% of the problem.) you will encounter some sort of malicious software sooner or later. i have run several websites.. all legit sites.. before i new it i was unwilling distributing a virus i had no idea was hacked into my website.. luckily firefox block my site. then i fixed it and put anti-hacker software on all my sites. in all truth it is possible someone never encountered bad software for 20 years but they probably didn't have the internet connection or if they did it was the 56K. You could stop a virus from loading because it took an hour to get into your system.. just guessing thats a reason i don't know for sure.. sorry if i'm wrong.. i'm only human as most posting here are gods of the tech world

OS X is by design more secure that Any Windows OS, look for the root user in os X vs Admin user in windows, once understand the diference, you will understand why I said the above comment. Now the fact that OS X is safer against virus, will not avoid somebody of hacking yor OS X because you click the link to Trillionary ovenight, so common sense will keep you safe 90% of the time in all OS's, same way common sense will keep you safe from regular mail scams before internet exist. I had use windows and OS X, I have technical background, and I could say that at the end is a matter of public perception and what your personal preferences are, just like cars, but with more technological experience generations coming, Microsoft and Apple will face more picky users, and there is were each company will need to present better products.. we still are not at that point, so for now, get the computer you like or you can pay.. because if you know what you need you will pay for it anyway, if you do not know what to buy, then buy wont matter what you buy then.

If you have windows XP and are using MacAfee or Norton360 or Kaspersky! Insert 1yr Old Existing MAC OS X HDD drive through USB(Portable Drive). Result will be there on your screen.

I agree with "a) Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows machines and b) the only thing that protects them is their miniscule market share."

Here is why. Let us take a look at the process to writing a good virus. And remember that step one is find a hole.

Steps –
1. Identify root exploit security holes. Mac has had several in the past few months that are remotely exlpoitable. You want several for later in the formula. Lets say on this one – DNS, DHCP and Java
2. Create your delivery mechanism – Start with one mac, scan for machines with the known DNS and DHCP hole, use botnet to recruit members with the java exploit
3. So say it is something simple, you add in a ' to a statement at the dns/java/dhcp. So you run that statement and boom you have a root shell on the remote mac. Now you run your rootkit. Hide the processes from the OS
4. Create a few temp files for your keystroke logger, port mapper and network scanner. Start said processes and scan for new targets. Execute payload – say a credit card number spider, that phones home or drops an encrypted torrent file
5. Let the automated process rip in your elevated root shell, now we move to third tier machines and we have a virus.

All easy to do. Documented cases of the hard part, step 1 are available at every security site on the net. Steps 2-5 are trivially easy in any shell. Doesn't have to be windblows, linux, irix, it can be a mac just as easy.

This leaves a baffling question. Why aren't there any Mac viruses? If I can cast a net into a pond or an ocean to catch tuna… I'm going to cast in the ocean.

The other reason you don't see a 'virus' is because it causes too much noise. It alerts the AV vendors too quick. Firewalls and heuristic scans in border hardware pick it up and trace it back to the source. Bad idea. Much easier to move along with trojan dropper. Virus=dumb old school. Everything you seem to list as 'not a threat' is what has real teeth.

For those claiming BSD security- Mac is NOT BSD… It is a warped derivative with the Mach kernel on top. Mach SUCKS. Run a real BSD.

For those claiming they can run without getting owned out of the box – yeah, because you are behind a juniper netscreen or a linksys firewall blocking ALL remote protocols. It is the air gap keeping you safe, not your mac. #2 on that subject – mac doesn't run any real services out of a box… IE can't run 99% of businesses.. Start opening ports and running services. Then feel the pain.

I'm not sure what the trash talk is about here. I'm getting the feeling that the only way to stay employed at a news service is to be an entertainer vs a journalist. Did you really do any homework besides looking up the name of a few trojans and claiming that they are the only ones? Seriously unix viruses don't work on mac? Easy proof of concept. Go to your IT guys and have them show you how to do it.

Some noise is better than none about computer security. Thanks for the article. If it raises eyebrows, you have done everyone a service.

a) Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows machines and b) the only thing that protects them is their miniscule market share.

"And for those still chiming in as per why AV software exists for the mac when no viruses exist- did you get your flu shot? Why? You don't have the flu, do you? The whole point of AV software, like vaccines is to PREVENT or lessen the effects of the offending infection."

Actually, I haven't had a flu shot. That's for people who are at risk of having the flu. I might as well get shots for every possible disease there is but hey, then I'm protected.

RE: Posted By Scott, DC

My roommate has Vista and it was full of virus' after 1 week. He's not experienced. I had to use Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware to get cleaned. He could not go to any websites. I just burned the software to a CDROM from one PC and loaded on his. So Vista is just as vulnerable.

I agree with Don, Albany, NY posted at September 3, 2009 2:02 PM.

I have been using a PC for almost 15 years now. You learn what websites you should not visit, and what emails are scams. We all learn with trail and error, but it comes with experience and common sense. Always keep a back up of your work so if needed, you can restore a PC back to its original installation. This would be for those that don’t have the experience or cannot afford to hire someone.

crazy mac users think they are not gonna get viruses/malware/trojans. you just wait

~korgo
http://www.eightforums.com

While people hate on Vista, I have not had one single virus or even a malware issue using it. The PCs that are possibly vulnerable are xp and prior. Same way old Mac OS version are vulnerable. As pointed out by others, hackers have had no motivation to go after mac users.

Why does it seem that Mac users are constantly trying to prove or suggest how awesome the Mac OS is? Maybe they are trying to justify the ridiculously high purchase price. You want a gig of ram? well then, that will be $300. No wonder, apple has a smiley face. It's smiling because they have just shafted you.

This article seems rather contradictory. First it slims down what a "virus" is to technical semantics. (The average joe–which the mac ads are obviously targeting–would most likely consider all of those exclusions listed to be "viruses" even though, by technical definition, they are not.) Then at the end it says viruses are going out of style anyways.Honestly I'm tired of Mac and PC trying to battle it out over who is "better" with technical details when it all just comes down to a personal preference. Use Macs for what they're good for and use PCs for what they're good for. If the line is too fine, use what you're familiar/comfortable with.

"Man – I got about 30+ comments down before someone got the key point behind everything here.

PEOPLE ARE STUPID.

Windows, frankly, just doesn't start out with all-out protection against every known malware. Mac, on the other hand, comes in a box and… well… stays in its own little box.

Why is it that out of my 12+ years of computing (I'm 24) that I've never had a virus (in Windows… had one in an old Mac once)? Because I'm not an idiot."

I know I originally said people were stupid but that was a bit harsh. People are ignorant. It's not their fault. I'm 33 so when I was growing up, the internet and computers in general were just coming into their own and those of us who did a lot with computers, learned how to use them properly so we know how to protect them (I know enough and by no stretch of the imagination consider myself an expert).

The old people (my parents) are totally out of the loop when it comes to computers so I have to do everything for them because they just don't get it and these are the people who fall for the "you are a winner" ads or the emails that say it's vital to update your computer, all they need is your username and password, credit card number etc.

The young kids now are growing into the computer world in full bloom so they have everything at their disposal already so they haven't really had to "learn" how to properly use a computer and even though they know how to pirate music etc, they don't know about avoiding unknown .exes, active X programs etc.

The point is, if you know how to use a pc, you have zero trouble avoiding malware, trojans or the odd virus. The problem is, a small percentage actually know what's going on (which is the majority of the people posting here). Macs are handy for general internet use and some other applications and is just fine for most of the general public. I for one am a gamer so I have absolutely no use for a mac, never have, and in all likelihood never will.

Good luck in the future Mac users. Your ignorance will prove that you are the perfect target and as that market share goes up its gonna be a tough road for you. As many know malicious software is created for financial gains in most cases. Most of the world is running Windows and only in the U.S. do they command a descent market share say 8-9%. People who claim market share have nothing to do with it do not study the matter in depth.

IBM X-Force has shown the OS with the most vulnerabilities to be OSX. Charlie Miller the Pwn2own winner stated that OSX is much easier to compromise and he proved it. ASLR and DEP are not present in current OSX systems which takes away 2 hoops to jump through. Take it as you will, but market share is number one on the block and only the apologists will state otherwise, the experts know better. www-935.ibm.com/services/us/iss/xforce/trendreports/xforce-2008-annual-report.pdf

The author may be on to something here. As stated, there may be Mac OS X based malware, but there are zero viruses. And while people love to do the Windows vs. OS X comparison, let's look at it a different way: here's a list of at least 22 Linux viruses. And Linux has a much smaller marketshare than OS X, by about the same proportion as the Windows:OS X comparison. So why is it that an OS that is 1/100th the marketshare of Windows has so many more viruses than OS X, with 10x the market?

@Phillip and Mr. $25000,

Why keep giving this false sense of security because of the definition of virus? The real threat is from all the others you mentioned. Viruses only exist on winblows boxes that aren't patched. A brand new out of the box mac/fedora/windows box is rootable as soon as it is connected to any network. Look at every single patch note for a brand new OSX 5 install. Read about those at security focus. many are rootable. Did anyone take advantage? No. Could they? Yes. I challenge you to show up at Black hat with an unpatched brand new Mac then prove you were not owned. Seriously, put your money where your mouth is, then write an interesting article about it.

You are making an assertion that OSX is immune to danger without a stupid user driving. You are wrong. You are endangering millions of smart people who use OSX that just aren't that bright when exposed to a cancel or ok box.

You seem to have no idea what you are really talking about. You are spouting marketing crap you read about on the internet. Is OSX vulnerable to the Bind 9 flaw last month? Is OSX the last platform to patch a rootable java exploit? The list goes on and on and on.

While the conditional argument the OS X has no viruses is true; it is also true that malware does exist- though much of it is proof of concepts; ergo not counted. A virus is malware, but malware is not a virus; much like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square.

The argument is also irrelevant. Today, there are no know viruses, and very few known malware programs for Mac OS X. While I have written this, more than a few Windows/Dos viruses and malware programs were created & dispatched to cause chaos.

Apple and MS both try to plan for the future, which is why they are including AV software in their latest OS. Think how much windows users spend on AV software that they could now pay to MS. When a credible malware program comes out, Apple can slow the progress with built-in detection- perhaps that is the real reason why 10.6 is $100 cheaper than 10.5, 10.4, 10.3 or 10.2 (10.1 was a free upgrade from 10.0, whose cost I cannot recall).

And for those still chiming in as per why AV software exists for the mac when no viruses exist- did you get your flu shot? Why? You don't have the flu, do you? The whole point of AV software, like vaccines is to PREVENT or lessen the effects of the offending infection.

Personally, I think that the largest reason for the small/lack of viruses & other malware on the mac is that those who know how have no interest in writing something bad for a system they love. So lets just hope that we don't get any disgruntled-programmers in Cupertino, and that they all stay in Redmont.

Hmm.. so the article is simply stating, that your mac is quite vulnerable… with the exception to the exact text book definition of a "virus".

So besides all of the possibilities that will crash your mac, dont worry it will be "virus" free..

But what we fail to mention, is if you get a trojan horse on your system (which happens) – then your screwed, along with all of the other malware.

What a garbage article, and last time I checked msn.com already published an article stating that the first actual mac os x "viruses" were written back in 2006.

Hopefully the author will correct the glaring incorrect facts in this article. There are no 'PC' viruses in the wild either. *Plenty* of Microsoft Windows viruses tho.

It's really ridiculous how many authors get this simple fact completely wrong. 'PC' does *NOT* equal Microsoft Windows.

Timing, market share, ease, hatred – these are all factors contributing to the ignorance. The fact is that viruses are so yesterday. It's like arguing about 8-tracks.

All those analogies are just that. And at some point, they get infected (oops, did I use an analogy?)!

Just plain simple:
Anyone I know of who uses Mac OS X (could be ten years) has had no viruses.
Keep in mind: not one of them uses AV Software because:
up until now, there are no true viruses
I know 1 guy who has had malware. Of the 2 malwares that exist up until now (that I know of).
Malware: a software-virus that you self choose to install (always tricky).

AV Software for the Mac: why it exists.
Because you should be aware of all the thousands and thousands and thousands of viruses that exist for Windows. And because you don't want to infect your Windows friends.
Because people coming from Windows may be used to have AV Software (feel obliged is the better word I think)
Because some AV Software Companies are very consumer orientated and decided that – although Mac users are just 5% – they should also offer a Mac Version of their software

So – up until now –
± 0 viruses Mac against ± thousands and thousands and thousand of viruses Windows
± 2 Malware Mac against ± thousands and thousands and thousands of Malware Windows
So – up until now – (this keeps coming back: maybe I do have a virus), a Mac is thousands and thousands and thousands time more safe than a PC running Windows

When I come to think of it: maybe, just maybe it's the AV Software who is the culprit.
Just look: all those PC have AV Software but they have also all the viruses where as a Mac … (I don't need to finish that sentence, do I?)

MAYBE, no one hates Apple the way they do the duplicitous hucksters at MSFT, who promise you the world, but deliver only Newark?

"Every Mac and copy of OS X comes with the same professional-grade development kit Apple uses, and plenty of documentation, all at no additional cost."
At no additional cost because you pay for it up front – whether you want it or not.
IMO, everyone should get the machine they want that does what they want at the price point they want and stop worrying about what others may or may not be using or which may or may not be better. This whole "PC vs Mac" debate is juvenile (as are the commercials.)
For me, I've been using DOS/Windows PC's for 25 years and have not had any form of malware since the very first year. And I'm sure I could say the same if it had been a Mac I was using. And I have rarely experienced any sort of breakdown in any PC I have used that was not directly attributable to either a hardware failure or a temporary brain-lock on my part.
Are Macs great PC's (and I use that term in it's original context = PERSONAL COMPUTER)..? YES they Are. Are Windows machines great PC's? YES they are.
So stop the useless quarrels and get back to using your favorite PC.

Apple is doing a huge disservice to their customers, since I way too often hear "I have a Mac I am safe from any computer attack!". The distinction of virus versus other malware is ridiculous, and leads these people to think they are safe.

Perhaps someone should remind Apple that early in the Mac era they had the first attack on desktop computers. This was done by a magazine editor in Canada who gleefully published his info and told people how to put code that would add itself to the system into an existing program. So Apple may be able to claim they have no viruses, but they were the first for malware.

They're not targeted – look at it this way – two years ago my daughter went to college and asked for a Mac as did ALL her friends including engineering majors – that's when I knew Mac was taking over – the school offered an HP laptop with on site support – guess what? – every HP kid had problems and none of the Mac kids did – they're simply not targeted, but will that change?

I think Mac creates 50% of the Pc virus

(at least thru out sourced vendors.)

The "market share" argument is flawed.

Apache is the dominant web server on the planet — over 2/3 of the world's web sites use it to provide web pages. Microsoft IIS and a few other servers cover the other 1/3.

And yet Apache is compromised LESS often than Microsoft IIS.

The point of the analogy is to show that the fact that Macs have a small market share does not necessarily imply that they have less viruses.

Two trojans that you have to download and type your administative userid and password to install. I'm scared now.

I've been repairing computers for years, and I can tell you an uninformed user will destroy a computer regardless of the OS or security measures put in by the OS.

Most people are impatient and don't read. So when they are promoted for their password in mac os x they just type it in or in windows they just hit yes/continue. Before you know it they have ad ware all over their pc/mac and it's wrecked. This is a big problem for the novice computer user.

The more advance computer users know better. I use both PC and Mac myself. I don't run anti-virus on either machine. I do run a virus check about once a month on both and have never had an issue do to a virus, spy-ware, etc… On either OS. When I need to do something shady I just fire up a vm let it get wrecked and roll back to the original snapshot when i'm done. Honestly it's the safest thing you can do.

Jacen is dead-on. It's about money, and the market share (or lack thereof) IS why you don't see effort spent on malware for Macs (and even so, there still is some out there, just not in the virus form).

Once all these kids get their Macs as part of the great "we'll get market share by taking over the school market" plan, then you'll see more malware. It still may not be in virus form, but that's not what is important. Macs ARE vulnerable to various forms of malware, many of which have financial implications.

Some silly bugger responded to a statement about viruses and trojans not being the same thing with this:

That is like saying 'Cancer does not exist. You can't count breast cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, tongue cancer, brain cancer, skin cancer or any of the other cancers that exists in the zoology of viruses.' You are basically eliminating all the other things that still can cause major computer damage and saying it isn't a virus."
————–
My response: Bad analogy, friend. It suffers from being, quite honestly and without malice, illogical. You don't need a formal logic class to understand why.

"Virus" is an instance of the category "malware". You can safely say something is virus free without claiming it is malware free. "Cancer", however, is being used by you as a category for different types of cancer (the instances). You cannot logically claim someone is cancer free and then claim they have a instance of that category. The two propositions are thus not the same—the first is (Virus FALSE/Malware TRUE) is logical; the second (Brain cancer TRUE/Cancer FALSE) is illogical. A true statement is a poor analogy to one that is false.

To make the analogies consistent, you need different referents. As in, DISEASE as the category, and CANCER as the instance. So you can say someone is free of cancer, without also claiming they are disease free. There are other types of disease than cancer (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, etc.)

So I am hearing that being virus free isn't relevant because you can still download a pirated copy of Photoshop, explicitly authenticate its installation (required on the Mac, btw), and then be surprised the app isn't what it says it is, but in fact steals your credit card info. Damn that Adobe for shipping credit-card stealing apps on pirate sites and spreading them with my explicit permission!

So there is no advantage you can't catch a cold or get the flu without first deep tongue kissing? Most of us get these by just breathing; abstaining from tongue kissing with strangers on the street is much easier for me than stopping breathing. If only staying cold/flu virus free worked as well for peoople as it does on the Mac, what a wonderful world it would be.

Is a cure for cancer irrelevant because people can still get heart disease? Is it not worth proclaiming the good news that you can't get any form of cancer because you can still have a heart attack or develop diabetes? My dad is dying of cancer, but has a healthy heart. I think if he was cancer free, it would be a good thing.

Words mean things. The word "virus" has a meaning of its own; don't redefine it because it doesn't fit your agenda. And yes, I'd love to live in a virus free/cancer free world, even if there was still trojans/heart disease in it.

And don't say being logical is being "academic". Reason isn't something only PhDs do but something everyone should do. I'd argue the lack of is at the root of so much of what is wrong in the real world. So much for being just "academic".

I still think a lot more crashes have been caused by memory leaks (bad programming) than by deliberately written viruses.

Who says a user needs to pay to have anti-virus protection? There are free and excellent solutions out there for home users — Avast and AVG are two examples. I use Avast personally, and other than an occasional pop-up to tell me that it updated itself, the program doesn't intrude or slows down my computer in the slightest.

Me, I rather deal with AV software in exchange for the freedom that Windows offers me. Keep your Macs and your smug comments; the fact that I can have a computer the way *I* want it, rather than what Steve "Megalomaniac" Jobs says I should have, is more than a fair trade off to me. And that if a part dies, I can replace it quickly and without paying hundreds of dollars to Apple to fix it.

"Academic proofs of concept and theoretical vulnerabilities don't count. Neither do computer worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, spam or any of the other nasty species in the zoology of malware."

That is like saying "Cancer does not exist. You can't count breast cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, tongue cancer, brain cancer, skin cancer or any of the other cancers that exists in the zoology of viruses." You are basically eliminating all the other things that still can cause major computer damage and saying it isn't a virus.

I understand that spyware isn't a virus, but a worm can delete stuff from your computer, just like a virus."

Viruses are self-replicating. All other malware like a trojan horse, for example, is not. A virus relies on a flaw or weakness in the operating system to replicate and damage your system. Malware like a trojan horse, again for example, relies on tricking the user into allowing it to do it's damage. Get it?

So OS X has no viruses and users are perfectly safe from all other types of malware unless you are an idiot. No operating system is or ever will be idiot proof. Also, proof-of-concept and theoretical don't count because since conceptual and theoretical attacks may or may not work once released into the wild subject to uncontrollable conditions.

Oh no I ticked off the weatherbug users around the world! It was a freaking example of at the time a very popular "freeware" that also installed malicious programs onto your pc. The practice still occurs today in many programs. You know how many pc's I've had to clean / re-image due to Limewire / Kaaza?

And check any security related blog. Adobe is putting out security updates almost as frequentlt as Microsoft to fix IE flaws. Those who wish to exploit go after programs that have wide usage so yes Windows, Adobe PDF and Office flaws are a large portion of things occuring monthly.

Microsoft should do more and as they try and make IE more secure it also breaks a ton of functionality that enterprise has to address so it causes a lot of work to keep internal web based applications / intranet working properly.

And I stand by my comment regarding Mac software – go to any store and Mac has a pathetic handful to select from, most around digital photo / creative production. I've been a Mac user from the days of IIe, Mac IIfx through my current G5 and the software I have bought for each platform is at least 20-1 ratio. Not saying that is wrong but it adds to the fact there is less verticals to attack on the Mac (which is a plus). Mac usage is very specific and the bulk of users likely have never bought any software / downloaded as iLife and OS X offer all they need for their lite usage.

Wow…some of the ignorance in these comments is astounding.

I do believe there was a virus infecting a pirated iWork copy recently. Also didn't Symantec or some other security company recently find the first Mac botnet? Maybe that was one in the same.

You can argue about the file systems and file permissions all you want but both groups are barking up the wrong tree. Since Vista and UAC came out malware/spyware/virus/trojans have been preying on all the non-tech savy people in order to infect a system.

Those non-tech savy people just click continue on UAC because they believe whatever they see on their screen. Hackers could easily do the same with Macs and people would install the stuff for them.

However, most virus writers now are in it for the money. Conficker (which still hasn't done anything) looks more and more like a failed attempt at some type of money making scheme. Trojans normally sit there and collect credit/bank information. The Antivirus XP/2008/2009 scarware is a money making scheme. They latest versions will even encrypt your My Documents folder and hold them for ransom.

If you're in it for the money why would you target a Mac? Conficker is a perfect example of why you don't. Remember the patch for the security hole Conficker used was patched long before Conficker even showed up. Yet at least 10 million computers were infected.

Some of you will disagree and that's fine. I could care less. I don't care you run a PC or a Mac. Both have their place and one isn't superior to the other.

Bottom line is money talks and BS walks.

"Academic proofs of concept and theoretical vulnerabilities don't count. Neither do computer worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, spam or any of the other nasty species in the zoology of malware."

That is like saying "Cancer does not exist. You can't count breast cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, tongue cancer, brain cancer, skin cancer or any of the other cancers that exists in the zoology of viruses." You are basically eliminating all the other things that still can cause major computer damage and saying it isn't a virus.

I understand that spyware isn't a virus, but a worm can delete stuff from your computer, just like a virus."q/"

Viruses are self-replicating. All other malware like a trojan horse, for example, is not. A virus relies on a flaw or weakness in the operating system to replicate and damage your system. Malware like a trojan horse relies on tricking the user into allowing it to do it's damage. Get it?

Mac OS X has no known viruses; as in self-replicating malware that relies on a flaw or weakness in OS X. Windows on the other hand has tens of thousands of viruses that can exploit the operating system without assistance from the user, because Windows security is crap. In other words Windows can catch a cold while OS X cannot.

Although OS X and Windows both have the type of malware you mentioned above, these type of attacks have nothing to do with how secure the operating system is since they require the USER to be tricked into enabling them to do their damage.

So OS X has no viruses and users are perfectly safe from all other types of malware unless you are an idiot. No operating system is or ever will be idiot proof.

If marketshare=Security, then during the 90's when Apple's Marketshare had dipped to 2%. Noone would have written a virus for such a small base of users. Of course we know that the infamous Autostart Worm for Mac OS 7.x was released. It burned it's way around the fledgling internet. It was the last Virus/worm that made it into the wild.

Since OS X shipped there has been no other Virii that made it to the wild to propagate. A bajillion Windows Virii have infected Windows boxes all around the world in that time. None for that little OS X.

I've spent a few hours now reading EVERY comment posted on here. I have to admit I laughed several times at several comments from BOTH sides. I've been doing this since the days of Atari computers…pre DoS, pre Mac…here are some simple truths…

Virus by definition has not been reported for a Mac OS X. You can't simply limit your comment however that mac's don't get virus. Macintosh Computers are capable, just the OS Xs one. The very first viruses found in the wild were Apple II viruses.

Nix based OS ARE capable of virus. Bliss was a virus back in the day that affected Linux distros and Cohen wrote a few experimental viruses for Nix boxes. Granted his were not "wild" but is the question that a OS is not capable of getting a virus, or that an OS doesn't have any in the wild? Not to mention the 2, yes I said 2, serious security vulnerabilities have been reported in the Linux Kernel that would allow a complete comprise and allow code to be executed on the kernel level without user interference.

While true there is a def distinction between a virus, trojan, worm, malware, spyware, etc…the statement from the Mac Commercials which the author has attributed to the arise of this issue, is not directed at those who either know or care about the difference, but to those poor fools who do not nor care not understand there is a difference.

I work with the public on these issues affecting them daily. I'm IT for a public library, so I get patrons coming to use my computers because their's don't work. Half are from viruses, half are from ones that don't work. Guess what, it's an even mix between Mac/PC. PC have a virus, Mac are broke, and the PC's 99.9% are malware that they call a virus.

Just as you can't claim there aren't known "viruses" for the mac because of lack of sales, you can't claim they are because of security either. I have the computers set in such way that you can't sneeze without have my permission. While I haven't gotten a virus on them, I've gotten many malware's.

In your "partial list" of viruses that meet the definition. Perhaps you should have looked to see how many of those are labeled as a trojan, which you state doesn't meet the classification of a virus. Again technical definition versus average user definition.

There is NO secure system, I don't care what it is. Unfortunately in the computer world, if you've been around long enough you know some people who write viruses. I love the statements where its stated that all the glory would goto whoever wrote the first mac virus.

HOW MANY viruses are credited to their author. Viruses ARE NOT wrote for credit or glory…the only ones who know who actually wrote them are the authors, those they work with closely to write viruses, and the few people who they are close enough to tell without the fear of getting into trouble. Which for most of those guys aren't many people. They write them for the enjoyment of making people suffer.

The bottom line is this, you as Mac Users want PC users to get off your back about this…stop stating that your so secure. I run, Mac, Windows, various Nix flavors, and I'm smart enough to know that not a one of them is completely secure. Everything is open to being used and exploited, and while yes the official definition of a virus might exclude the malware, etc at this moment, much like all of language, it will be updated and evolved to include it as we as the users include them in it's definition on a daily basis. Then what will you say in a few years when the definition does include it? Oh, well we claimed it because our understanding at that time said it wasn't. It's time to stop playing tech definitions in a world that no longer belongs to the techies.

Philip, it's me again, the guy silly enough in 2005 to promote the $25,000 virus challenge.

Just wanted to hop back in and exclaim over the furor your little article set off here. Amazing how such a simple, irrefutably true flat statement can be twisted and mangled and bent into so many irrelevant shapes to promote argument and steer the discussion off course, isn't it?

Here is the iron-clad irrefutable statement:

No malware of any kind can be injected over a network connection into a modern Mac OS X computer that is running in its factory shipped configuration without the user specifically enabling it to happen by ignoring and overriding the Mac's efforts to stop them from doing so. Period. It is impossible. Not 'difficult,' not 'tricky,' not 'not done so far because of low market share.' Just technologically impossible.

That's just a flat fact, not open to disagreement or counterpoint. And, it drives many hard core Windows advocates into an emotional frenzy.

If it were not potentially illegal to do so under a ambiguously written federal law, I would instantly offer the $25,000 again today to prove that statement wrong.

Forgot one thing … PDF files??? Come on. That replaced the fax. That – and Adobe – are somehow now a looming crisis for our world? Come'on Frank

Unbelievable. Frank Castle – you are so 1990's. Get your facts straight. The witch hunt is over, so don't generalize and drag good Windows app names (and download categories!) through the mud to make a point. Be not a purveyor of Internet apocrypha on steroids. Case in point: you go after Weatherbug. They got nailed because of some idiot spyware-sales mongers years ago, but since have been "revealed" to be clean all along. Weatherbug is in my kid's school, on the 10pm news, and on my Verizon phone (I live by it and it's why I have an unlimited data plan). It's on on my wife's Sprint phone. Why she insists on that phone is another story, but I digress. My Mother in law got a chirp-ish alert from that WeatherBug widget that you drag through the mud like a dumb dog, which saved her life. Tornado serious, dude. Basement serious. Don't be "crazy post" man. Post, but be responsible. Be a techie that knows what's up. Be a man and check your facts – welcome to the 21st century. Don't go on a witch hunt. Don't be Don Quijote. Be real.

Please.
Bryan Olson

WIndows is a crap leaking ship OS.

For the no Macs running the Internet statement… the majority of the web is ran on Apache. One of the built-in items of MacOSX, from it's UNIX heritage. The vast majority of the entire Web / Internt IS ran on UNIX/Linux/Mac OSX. If you don't want to affect the most users, just program a virus for Windows. They're the little guys! Enough FUD from the fanbois! I love how Windows fanbois love to say how Mac users are "smug" or whatever else. Just remember that the Mac guys have been taking crap from every angle from less than knowledgable Windows users for decades, even though they have always had the far better year to year product. It's not smugness or fanboism when the retarded bird keeps cackling in your ear as you fix their PC for them for years and you finally tell them to shut their yap and give them some of the truth!
There is no 100% secure system, but the way teh Mac ( and the UNIX) underpinnings work make it very hard for these things to propagate on a Mac compared to a PC. I've ran, built, coded and hacked PCs since day one. Tried Mac in 1997, and still use every flavor of OS today for different things (UNIX/BSD/Linux/Mac/Windows), and anyone who tells you different is either 1) ignorant, or 2) lying flat out. Tell me this, how does your Windows machine wake up from sleep? A basic fundamental of computing around since the dark ages on a Mac, Windows STILL can't do today. (Well about 3 out of 10 tries).
Quit the flaming and just use what you use, and stop the "viruses are coming to the Mac" FUD! It's getting old.

I've used PC's for over 20 years and have never hasd a virus. I've also had MAC's and have had no trouble either. Ask yourselves this: Are there more parts available for a Ford Focus or a Lambo? Then ask why. It's the same for PC vs. MAC.

Talk about splitting hairs. Worms and Trojans can be just has harmful as viruses, the reason Apple highlights "virus" so much is beause the average consumer doesn't know that much about malware, all they know is "virus" sounds bad and don't even know the difference between viruses and trojans and worms. Virus in fact with the way Apple use it seems to be a all-encompassing term of everything bad that can get into a computer which is dishonest. So if viruses can't infect the Mac but worms and trojans can its ok?

Any actual decent point you might make is overshadowed by the fact that this is a pro-Apple blog and you pretty much sound like a Apple mouthpiece. When does a fanblog ever give a honest assessment of anything?

MAC doesn't run over 1/2 the worlds websites such as IIS. There's no reason to write a virus for a MAC. …however, inherently, because of the flexibility and functionality in windows (pre-vista) it was easy to exploit. Those same exploits remain to the uninformed/educated user. …but in the hands of a security expert, WINDOWS IS EXTREMELY SECURE which is why most businesses, including financial firms use their products.

So, if you hand the keys to your 18 wheeler to a 12 year old and bad things happen, well, inexperienced PC users are the same.

Why do you suppose Mac added AV software to Snow Leopard?

Posted By Eric Lawrence, Seattle, WA: September 2, 2009 11:16 AM

Sorry Eric… I'm not sure where you got your info, but there is no AV software in Snow Leopard.

OS X is more secure out of the box with no security software installed – the same goes for any Unix system – than a Windows PC with security software installed, period.

I run the free ClamXav for OS X and am yet to find anything on my systems. I've also run AV software from other commercial vendors (the usual suspects) from time to time with the same result.

There are no in the wild viruses for OS X because of the extreme difficulty (but not impossibility I'm sure) of writing self-replicating code on Unix systems. There were viruses for Mac OS 9, which had a much smaller market share than OS X today, because it was comparatively easy to write viruses for that system.

It might happen one day, but we're 10 years and counting for OS X (and much, much longer for its BSD foundations) and nothing to report yet.

Does that mean OS X is immune from other malware? Of course not. In any system, the greatest security threat exists between the keyboard and chair. Mac users are vulnerable to trojans and phishing as they rely on people doing patently stupid things, such as authorising software obtained from a dubious source or clicking on a link in a dodgy email.

So to stay safe in OS X:
1. Don't steal software or music.
2. Don't trust unsolicited emails from people or organisations you don't know.
3. Keep you system up to date.
4. Install AV software from a trusted vendor and run it occasionally (just in case).

Follow these four rules and you will have very little to worry about.

You can keep your Gates and Windows. I'll stick with the more secure, stable, reliable, powerful and user friendly system thank you very much.

Very entertaining stuff! I think the reason Win users try to bash the mac users so much is that they are so high on their horses. The win users don't try to say that windows is more secure, they just want the fanboys to stop acting so dam* superior.

The argument that non-virus malware is less dangerous because you have to be in a sleaze zone and acknowledge the install doesn't sit well with me. I got SOMETHING (I don't really care what it was, all I know is that it killed my XP install) while looking for guitar chords (not even sleazy guitar chords).

Second point on this, I've gotten so used to clicking on OK to install stuff, I probably wouldn't notice if OSX warned me that it was something downloaded from the internet. EVERYTHING is downloaded from the internet these days!!!

One more thing. I'm a windows user since 2.0. I bought a Mac recently. Nice picture. Kind of looks like windows but a little different. I certainly didn't faint or even swoon. Guess what? Freezes up as much as my XP box. Maybe slightly less than my Ubuntu laptop USB install (have to admit, that's pretty cool…was a win box until the harddrive crashed…after 5 or so years). I've added a lot of inexpensive 3rd party HD's, swapped mobo's, added sound cards to my PC's…nice and pretty easy.

The mac was expensive…hope my power cord doesn't go like that other guy… my daughter's ipod battery died about a month after the warranty expired and they wanted $59 to replace it. Ha! Oh no wait, they're laughing because I did a cost/benefit and bought an ipod touch for her for her birthday.

Loved the comment from the guy telling the Mac users to go out and explore your prison cell…LOL!!!

Apple's cool and all, but for the money, DIY repairs (yes apple hardware fails too), and scads of cheap software, I'll take my wintel and AV medicine.

….So here I was wondering who has time to write such long diatribes! oops.

"Mac is more secure as there is barely any software available and I'd wager the majority of Mac users have no need for any additional software as all they use is the core apps and iLife. The other large portion of Mac users are media professionals (Logic, Final Cut, PhotoShop etc) that use Mac for specific functions and not as a PC."

This is just outrageously goofy. There's an absurd amount of software for the Mac, more in any category besides games than anyone could wish for.

And yes, it is the prefered choice of media professionals, but most of us use our pro machine as our office machine and our screwing-off-on-the-internet machine as well. And most of us choose Macs at home, for all that home computer stuff, including porn, warez, forwarding chain letters, and other old fashioned wastes of time.

In short, Macs get used for everything PCs get used for, even they get used a bit more for some things than for others.

This article makes a point that's often overlooked: there WERE a handful of viruses in the wild for OS 9 … and OS 9 had lower market share than OSX does today. This is a pretty straightforward debunking of the "security through obscurity" theory.

Protection against viruses comes from the underlying architecture. OSX is close to bombproof; OS 9 was not and Windows, at least through XP, was not.

Tom in Portland said, Windows is more vulnerable because it is more open to software development – which is why there's a HUGE number of programs written for it, vs a tiny percentage for Mac.

Every Mac and copy of OS X comes with the same professional-grade development kit Apple uses, and plenty of documentation, all at no additional cost. Anyone who uses a Mac could potentially write Mac software. Every Mac is an open door, inviting developers to come in and discover great tools and API's to write great software they could potentially sell for profit. Or was that not the definition of "open" you had in mind?

Of all the answers below, I like this one the most:

"WIN PC's are designed for IT to have full control over your machine so hackers can pretend to be your IT department. Macs are designed to be controlled bythe END USER – why IT generally dislikes Macs and why Macs are liked much better by end users because it was actually designed for YOUR use as a personal computer and NOT as a terminal that IT can access from anywhere. That is the philospphical, design and esthetic DIFFERENCE.

It's not that WIN PC cannot add these additional layers of protection, MS does not want to make it more difficult for THEIR customers – the IT department."

For my taste, this is a huge part of the explanation. The "PC" really isn't a personal computer. It is a 'DT': a drone terminal.

You put all your corporate/gubment drones in large boxes, and in front of each drone you put a data box. The drone puts data into the box, and then the IT department sucks the data towards a central data depository.

The drone doesn't take the data box home. Maybe the drone buys a cheap data box to play games, but that is a different item. It is not a computer, as such.

So I agree, the mac is designed to ask the user for protection, and for the user to check every application that gets installed.

drone terminals, by contrast, are designed so that remote applications can visit the machine and do stuff regardless of the opinion of the user. So all a virus has to do is mimick the other programs that are sent to the drones computer.

If you changed that about the PC, you'd need to train vastly more folks to understand what they are doing with their computers. Instead, all you need is someone who can punch data into a spreadsheet, and bob is banging your aunty.

But there is also the technical aspect of the OS language structure, and this is also related to the network characteristics of the PC. As someone else remarked, Linux and Mac OSX and both Unix based. Microsoft windows is not. This means that each application that runs on the mac (or on a linux machine) operates inside what is called a "SHELL".

Now this "shell" has what is called a "run loop". This is like a flow chart that loops back on itself every time the user calls a command. So a run loop might have the user open a window, then the programs "waits". So call this waiting point the bottom of the "run loop". When the user clicks a mouse to choose a colour from a selector, the run loop starts, and the code inside the SHELL does its thing. Then, when whatever has been done, the program reaches the bottom of the run loop again, and waits for instructions.

Now the thing about this unix "shell" is that it keeps the run loop inside a confined area of memory. If the memory leaks and cause the run loop to stall before it completes its tasks, the program "hangs". Essentially, you never get to the wait point, the bottom of your run loop. Mac users know all about hanging applications. I haven;t had one for a while, but they were quite common in tiger and previously. But because the application is running within a SHELL of memory, the user can exit that hung shell and go back to the desktop, known as FINDER. Finder is an application too, and sometimes, with beta releases, it will hang. The cool thing about unix shells is that you can force quit them, and that is like rebooting, but only for that application.

Now windows, by contrast, uses a different system, based on an archaic language called DOS: "disk operating system". Back in the day, the operating system was an application that read data from a disk and wrote data to a disk pretty much every time you did something. This was because back in the day folks had very, very little RAM, and so the disk was used far more frequently than it is now. RAM is the memory that the computer can use without reading from or writing to disk. To give you an idea how little RAM was available, 64KB used to be a huge amount. Now we have literally millions of times that amount.

Now with DOS, the application you were running was actually the only "application" your computer was running at the time. Instead of having a unix shell running finder in the background, the windows OS would launch an application, which would then use the resources of the computer as if it were the only thing on it. When it finished, it would give those resources back to the desktop application. But if it hung….. well then you had a crash. A system crash. So think about what that means, in terms of the reputation of the OS.

For Apple running on Unix shells, applications might crash but the system would not. For PC's, every time an application crashed, the OS got the blame. "My computer crashed!!!" folks would yell. But it wasn't DOS, it was the faulty application.

And it is my suspicion that a very large percentage of "viruses" were not viruses at all, but rather badly written programs with massive memory leaks everywhere, that caused applications to hang. I suspect this to be true, because i write iphone applications that are also have leaks, and they also crash. And like DOS, the iphone only runs one thing at a time, so the effect is similar to the old PC's.

Why would people call these badly written programs "viruses"? Simple, it is called passing the blame to unknown persons. What else are you going to say? The software you just bought is badly designed and I couldn't be naffed fixing it?

There is one more factor that has to be considered when trying to understand the difference between windows and Mac: Apple always spent a huge amount of time making sure a core suit of useful applications worked really well. They had control over the code, and most of all they had control over the components the code would run on. If Apple had problems wit a certain chip or circuit, they would look for one that worked, and use it instead. they could marry their code to components that played nicely, and were designed to play nicely with their code.

Microsoft had a totally different business model. If Apple applications were happily married to arranged component partners, Microsoft was a whore who slept with anybody who wanted a go. That was deliberate. Microsoft didn;t build PC's, and all they knew was that huge numbers of wildly different components would need to use their code…. MORE OR LESS.

And that margin for saddness between components and code caused quite a few crashes and problems that were also, like the badly written apps, eagerly described as "viruses" by people selling and fixing the machines.

Again, what do you expect them to have said? "I sold you junk. You machine was made by the lowest bidder, in fact by twenty three lowest bidders on twenty three different components, and none of those low bidders know anything about each other."

So that is my two cents. I don't speak of "viruses", because I have written far too many programs that leak memory and hang, and I know what it is to get bored and leave the program in a half finished state. Likewise, even thought Apple software almost never hangs, if my mac had crashed every time a 3rd party application hung and i got the spinning wheel of death, I'd probably think viruses were infecting my machine.

Put these factors together with the fact the drone terminals are designed to be operated from remote locations, and are therefore designed to load foreign applications without asking the user if he or she intends to do that, and i believe you have all the explanation you need to account for the two systems.

One thing is for certain: I have used macs for twenty five years and have never, ever lost data. For about twenty of those years, every time I used a PC i was in fear of losing my sessions work. I will still never use a windows based machine, because I am not a drone and don;t do data entry. If i ever employ a bunch of drones, however, to do data entry for my gigantic firm, I will for sure be buying them PC's. But I will be pretty careful who I buy them from. I know IBM take care about their components, and I know Dell is a screaming lunatic who sticks crap together with tape and fencing wire.

Computer Xperts who recommend Windows for HOME users: How can you sleep at night? Or are you just laughing all the way to the bank?

I've never had a virus on any of my dozens of windows machines. They may be out there but I've never seen one. I hear about them all the time. But I've never observed one. Here end my statements of facts. Here begins speculation and opinion.
Is it possible that viruses are just a myth dreamed up by Apple Zealots?
What I do find interesting is that the "Anti-virus" people are constantly claiming to be analyzing "viruses" (read: malware for this article's usage) that aren't in "the wild" yet. Seems to me that is proof that those guys are the source of the malware. Apple just pays them not to write viruses. All of the above is as useful as the distinction between a virus and other malware.
If you like your Mac, more power to you. Me, I like to write programs quick and easy. I like to be able to play games. I use GIS. I use a variety of other technical software. I like to thinker with hardware and build custom systems. All of these make the Mac a non-starter for me.

@Jake

Only recently, with Tiger, did OS X gain the ability to use ACLs. Seems it is OS X that was doing the catch up

How exactly does an OS with no self-replicating virus problem (OSX) "catch up" as you say to an OS (Windows) that has been plagued by thousands of self-replicating viruses, many of which were once written by 12-year olds with text editors (script kiddies)? As security train wreck Windows wins hands down.

To Brian in Atlanta: This is not a "narrow definition" of the term "computer virus." It the only definition. Many reporters confuse viruses with trojans and worms because they are uninformed–even in professional publications that should know better, and especially if they are shills. The reporter for Fortune, amazingly, got it right. He is not, as you suggest, playing semantic games.

I took my AV software off of my MAC a few years ago. At home it is not really needed.
I have worked with both for quite a while. Even though Mac is easier to use, it's controls a lot of times are not as granular as the Windows gui. Some of the fixs for Mac are done in terminal windows.
What really causes the Windows grief is what they are good for:Enterprise Computing.when you need to administer 16,000 machines at once, I think the Windows infrastructure is easier to manage. I don't really know if the Mac's are designed to be worked on in that large a fashion. unfortunately, that means that there is an underlying ability to deploy to multiple machines at once and that can get them infected quickly.Both Vista and Windows 7 are supposed to protect the system kernal from user processes so maybe Windows 7 will do better. We will see.Companies with thousands of computers are simply not going to dump them out for macs, and Linux is not userfriendly enough for general deployment either.

I am currently disinfecting a friend's Vista laptop. His teen daughter has no idea what she did, but she caught a trojan. The computer is extremely slow, antivirus software has been deactivated and when booting, several .dll error messages pop up. This is the third time this year, on this laptop alone. And this is typical for a Windows-running family with children, teens, young adults and others with limited awareness about malware (practically vast majority of consumers out there).

Trojans are extremely effective with Windows people, and there are tons of them out there. As of today, there are exactly two trojans for Mac OS X that have been seen in the wild, and updates to Mac OS X will block them.

We can debate the reasons for total lack of trojans (and viruses) for Mac OS X forever, but at the end of the day, if you buy a Mac today, you won't have to run AV software and you won't see malware in the course of the useful life of that Mac. No debate will change that fact.

It still amazes me that after almost 10 years, Windows users still think that OS X is more vulnerable to viruses than Windows. Not saying that one won't come along, but no question that the fight on this issue has been long won.
Microsoft has many stellar products (Exchange, Visio, Sharepoint and others), but ironically Windows has not been one of them. When most linux products can easily outshine Microsoft in the area of security, I think Windows users need to be reminded that maybe not everything in Windows is "super".
Ironically the first day OS X gets a virus most will be quick to say "Ah HA!!!", though they themselves have been living with tens of thousands of them for decades…
I use windows all the time at work and am fine with it, but I run OS X at home. Just personal preference, but in my experience those that seem to be the most fanatic about their choice are those on the Windows side since the vast majority have never used a Mac system outside a few minutes at an Apple store (if at all) while the majority of Mac users use both Windows and Mac and just prefer the latter — it is that direct comparison/use for everyday tasks that allow them to compare the two more accurately instead of just spouting out ridiculous assertions.

It always seems like the debate is more religeous than practical. MAC users love their computers and like to think that it's superior technology. This article is somewhat misleading. Excluding worms and Trojans misses the greatest threat to computer networks. The Chinese and the Russian Business Network don't use viruses. They use Trojans and worms and they control millions of computers worldwide which they collect keystrokes, send spam and launch denial of service attacks. So I'll grant you that there may be no viable viruses for OSX. So what? Are you defending Apple and your selection of their technology on this point? I own a computer network security company with over 1,000 customers in 20 states. We run our business on Microsoft Technology. As you can guess, we haven't had a virus, worm, etc. since day one. That's because it's avoidable. We chose Microsoft because it provides us technology and choices that don't exist on Apple products and does what we need at a fraction of the cost. There are many reasons why Apple owns less than 10% of the market even after 20+ years. Ask most business people and they will explain it. As for the author of this article and every other article that appears on CNN/Fortune, it's always slanted towards Apple. I don't recall any time in 10 years where there was an op-ed complimenting Microsoft. Coincidence? Don't think so.

Is anyone even writing viruses anymore? Everything has moved to SPAM / Malware.

Seeing the bulk of Malware is either obtained through ActiveX exploits or users installing "free" screensavers, poker games, weather bug, torrent, P2P etc you need to let go of the notion that a "virus" a la 1990's is going to infect your PC. 95% is user self inflicted.

Mac is more secure as there is barely any software available and I'd wager the majority of Mac users have no need for any additional software as all they use is the core apps and iLife. The other large portion of Mac users are media professionals (Logic, Final Cut, PhotoShop etc) that use Mac for specific functions and not as a PC.

I'd also wager Mac users do not consume as much P2P/Torrent as they enjoy spending money via iTunes.

The real issue that is unsecure is the internet in general. Adobe PDF has many exploits as PDF is a popular file format.

And lastly which users consume more adult content? I'm thinking PC users and that is sure way to obtain said Active X malware.

"Academic proofs of concept and theoretical vulnerabilities don't count. Neither do computer worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, spam or any of the other nasty species in the zoology of malware."

That is like saying "Cancer does not exist. You can't count breast cancer, lung cancer, throat cancer, tongue cancer, brain cancer, skin cancer or any of the other cancers that exists in the zoology of viruses." You are basically eliminating all the other things that still can cause major computer damage and saying it isn't a virus.

I understand that spyware isn't a virus, but a worm can delete stuff from your computer, just like a virus.

The other point which is abundantly clear: as users move away from "local" processing and do more online, the vulnerability changes from local viruses to online malware like trojans and spyware. Before long, it won't matter which OS you use – the browser / email client becomes the weak point.

This why I reccommend Macs to people.

How are emails are displayed on our Lap Top is screwed up.
XXXX spent the greater part of last evening on the phone first with Verizon and then with Dell regarding our ability to log on. Sum and substance is we need a new machine.

Today I was able to get on fairly easily.

I feel the MS-Windows Environment is getting too complicated for most Americans. The neighbor above is pretty savy. But, you should need to be windows certified to run your PC.

I have a MAC at home owned it a year. No issues with viruses what so ever. Reliable as a light switch. I had to spend my sunday removing viruses from our PC

Just to reiterate my original point:
Nobody writes viruses for Macs because it's such a hassle to write ANYTHING for a Mac…
Windows is easy to write for, which explains the higher virus count AND the higher selection of software available for PC's.

I cannot comment on whether Mac viruses _do_ exist in the wild as I am not willing to pay twice as much for the same hardware, but the market share has no bearing whatsoever in whether a virus exists.

Hackers do not write viruses to go after the average internet user. They write viruses to attack servers. Most servers run either Windows or Linux, and it just so happens to be dramatically easier to infect a Windows machine, thus most viruses are for Windows. Lesser malware, with the intention of tying together a botnet, would be targeted to average users, thus it is more likely to exist for a Mac than a true "virus."

All that said, it'll still make more sense to write malicious code for Windows to post online as it can infect a user's computer and then piggyback onto a thumb drive (or other device) to eventually land on a server containing valuable data.

For what it's worth, I'm a Linux user on my personal machines. Password-protected superuser account, FTW.

Good Job with the research buddy. Have you tried searching on McAfee's Threat Center for OSX? Get a lot of hits? Yeah.. you should at least attempt to research something before blindly repeating Apple advertisements. I mean, you are a journalist right?

ex ped: Are you talking about the McAfee study that predicted that once Apple switched to Intel chips the Mac would become "the new Apple of Malware's eye?" That might have sounded like a good reason to buy McAfee VirusScan for Mac, Brad, but it didn't exactly come true, did it?

I'm a Mac user who used to run AV software (Norton, McAfee, etc.) back on OS 8 and OS 9. Never had a Mac virus. The only malware I received was a Mac Word Macro virus (OS 9,), which didn't do anything, and Windows viruses.

I got tired of AV software bogging down my Mac and taking up time scanning everything in sight. I don't forward attachments without knowing what they are, and no viruses affect my Mac, so I don't pay for the AV crapware that's out there.

It's much more difficult to write a Mac virus that actually works. If it wasn't, there would be a few. Heck, a major bank in Japan (Softbank?) switched to all Macs, don't you think some hacker would be salivating at the potential to create a virus or other malware which would take out a huge bank?

Macs are more secure because they're designed to let you work (including installing apps, etc.) without exposing core OS functions to the end user. Windows doesn't do that.

I find it rather ironic that Microsoft is so concerned about preserving legacy code in Windows so that old software can continue to run. This has been a problem for the last several major Windows upgraded. I doubt those companies which have old software which would not work on say, Vista or Win7, are upgrading anyway. Heck, look at all the people who still demand WinXP!

Microsoft would probably sell more copies of Windows and Office if it would do like Apple – drop support for old legacy code and move on. Those who don't like it don't need to upgrade, but I bet many, many more Windows licenses would be sold to companies who have put off upgrading for years and who now have to.

Man – I got about 30+ comments down before someone got the key point behind everything here.

PEOPLE ARE STUPID.

Windows, frankly, just doesn't start out with all-out protection against every known malware. Mac, on the other hand, comes in a box and… well… stays in its own little box.

Why is it that out of my 12+ years of computing (I'm 24) that I've never had a virus (in Windows… had one in an old Mac once)? Because I'm not an idiot.

Nothing just goes around on the internet and says – "hey, this looks nice" and infects your computer because it wants to; the user lets it in.

Also, Phil, you left out the backwards compatability issue. Windows big selling point is the fact that your programs generally don't become obsolete version to version which leads viral programmers to apply a patch to their creation just as an OS provider would try and correct a problem. Given that no one cared (or still actually cares) about Apple's OS in the past, there are heritage programmers with their own lists of viruses that they just keep updating and flowing through the networks.

Bought my first mac this June. With VM software, I can run vista side by side for the ONE application (mapping software related to my business) I could not get on the OS X OS.

So owning a mac for me is "NOT A PRISON." And I will continue to enjoy it for years.

Plus if that slow, always updating, clunky, sputtering, freezing Vista does get a virus I just remove it then reinstall.

I used to balk at the mac "know it all" types in my life. I wished I would have listened sooner before malicious codes blue screened my last two PCs.

I get malware and other problems on my mac os x sometimes. I have had to redo my operating system a few times on my Tiger. Jim Cyr

Hi Philip,

I'm the guy who promoted the $25,000 OS X virus challenge in 2005. I was thoroughly trounced by one and all as an evil, irresponsible criminal for having the guts to publicly say the technological truth about how the Unix frameworks of OS X and the as-shipped system configuration of Macs effectively eliminated any risk of non-user enabled entry trajectories for viruses.

Four years later the in-the-wild virus count I cited then is still exactly the same: zero.

And, four years later, due to extremely clever media manipulation and advertising designed to instill fear into less knowledgeable Mac users, Symantec and others have profited many millions of dollars.

So, I ask, who is evil in this tale? Me, the guy trying to bolding promote the truth and save millions of Mac users pointless expense and worry? Or, the anti-virus software guys doing the opposite?

Thanks for the great article.

ex ped: Thanks for stopping by!

I'm surprised (actually, not really) at some of the comments in this thread. I have a few comments.

1. People need to understand that a Trojan is not the same as a Virus. A Trojan is a social engineering attack, not a security deficiency. That is, I can write a very dangerous script. If you (the user) are dumb enough to execute it, then you get what you deserve. With XP, everyone ran as administrator, so no authentication was required. That's why XP was/is thoroughly abused by Trojans and why some dummies here think it's the same as a virus. Vista/Win7/OS X at least alert you and ask for some form of authentication.

2. People also need to understand the difference between proof of concept and "in the wild". A quick Google search will yield a few OS X virus threats. However, these scares are produced by "security" companies that are happy to sell you their "solutions". When each of these OS X would be virus threats have been examined, none were able to spread in the while due to technical / security obstacles. If you do the research, that would become clear.

3. The "security through obscurity" is always mentioned as if it were the only defense for OS X. That's simply untrue. Sure, OS X is less of a target as there is less financial motivation to create a Mac Virus. However, as others have noted, Apple had similar marketshare in the "classic" Mac days and there were viruses for the legacy Mac platform. The number of viruses were proportionally less than Windows, but they did exist. Whereas for OS X, there have been nothing but unsuccessful attempts. Why is that?

4. Finally, there is the "time will tell" argument. This is thrown out as if OS X were brand new. Well, it's been almost 10 years now. I think it's fair to say that it has been a reasonable amount of time for us to know by now. Clearly, anything is possible in the future, but we have to admit that chances are low.

5. There are fewer vectors of attack with OS X. Things like ActiveX controls just don't exist on the Mac platform and for good reason. Vista and Windows 7 put the Windows platform on much better ground as compared to previous Windows operating systems, but it's not there yet. The fact remains, anti-virus software is required on all Windows platforms. OTOH, nobody on the Mac platform even bothers with such nonsense. Why is that?

I use Windows a lot and it does work OK. On the other hand it is the most poorly behaved and annoying software tool that I have to use. For the money its seems like a bad deal to me. If you like it then good for you but if this is what your emotional energy is going into then you should either get out more. I guess it should make me laugh when I hear people raving about Windows but it's just depressing. Its like listening to someone rave about their Yugo or their Chevy Vega. It moves forward most of the time, it stops most of the time, the doors work. Good enough. Move on. Cheap PC hardware is just that, cheap and if you are bragging about your cheap PC and how cheap it is then again I think that you should find other things to think about or do. If you want a good PC with good support then it will usually cost a good bit of money.

No way Windows 7 will be any more secure than any other swiss cheeze OS.

Microsoft WRITES FOR the virus companies and the IT people that (of course) have to be called in to remove them.

When viruses are announced, they make it sound like all computers are infected. In reality, about 99.9% of the time, it's only tjhe clowns running windows who are even remotely affected.

The reason Macs get other Malware and not viruses is that other malware depends on the user. Users aren't perfect. Neither is Mac OS, but it's too difficult to write a virus for it, or so far it has been. Windoze? It's a cakewalk, obviously.

Your average person might not care about the differences between different types of malware, but they certainly know that Macs are more secure than your 2nd rate windows. That is not a fallacy, it's a fact. BTW, Windows is only 2nd rate because there really is no other brand out there, Microsoft was able to run all other competitors out of business entirely. Linux doesn't count to the average person, who wants a consumer oriented system.

Don wrote, "Yeah, because the guy who made the first PC virus is a household name.
Posted By Don, Albany, NY: September 2, 2009 3:10 PM"

He is! Bill Gates is a "household name".

It's not just smaller market share generally, it that Mac's market share in the enterprise world is vanishingly small. What would be the point of writing a virus for Macs?

Mac's may or may not be technologically superior when it comes to safety, but my money is still on the market share explanation.

"If computer viruses were insect pests:

Living with Windows is like living in a house that you have to fumigate every week to keep the cockroaches out of the cupboards.

Living with Mac OS X is like living in a house where you might find one dead gnat on the window sill every five years."

Or you could learn how to use the barrier around your house that keeps the bugs out to begin with instead of letting them in and then worrying about it. And I totally agree, people who have that guy's line of logic should be mac owners.

Eric Lawrence said"
"Trojans are just as dangerous as viruses, and the distinctions are basically academic."

No, they are not. Any malware that propagates without your knowledge or control is worst that you accidently letting a Trojan onto your system. The former is apt to greatly out number the latter, since you will learn to be more careful.

"Why do you suppose Mac added AV software to Snow Leopard?"

It was because hackers used a porn site and a BitTorrent copy of iWorks 2009 to enter a trojan horse. The problem was that no one was notified that the Trojan was there. It was easy to fix in the Terminal App once you knew.

Apple's new system will, at least, warn you that there is a malware problem so you won't install it.

Snow Leopard sand-boxes all applications so it can't infect the system or propagate itself to other computers. If an app or process misbehaves, delete it and start again.

A good comment regarding this post on another thread:

"Technically, Mac users should be the easier target. No Mac users are using anti-virus, so why not go for a target that is not protected?"

and another one:

"When people ask me if I can get rid of a virus on their PC, I only shrug and tell them to get a Mac. If you are not computer savvy enough to keep your antivirus software up to date, and the procedure to clean a problem, you should get a Mac. Then you just use your computer."

and still another:

"None on OS X. None on Linux. None on FreeBSD. None on OpenBSD. None on NetBSD. None on Solaris. What do all these have in common? They are all Unix or Unix-like OS's. What OS is not built on a Unix architecture? Windows."

This goes back to the early days of PCs and Unix. Unix has a super-user (SU) and, if administered correctly, could only be compromised if the SU password was compromised. Of course, any user could damage his own space but no one else's.

The PC O/Ss tried to live with only one class of user (because it was a PC!). But as soon as PCs were connected to a network, this was going to be — and still is — a problem. PCs would have to adopt the Unix multi-user class model (like Apple did) in order to solve the security problem.

Bill Gates used to joke that other CS people did not have the mental bandwidth to work for Microsoft. But regarding security, it is the Microsoft engineers that lack the mental bandwidth to understand the fundamental O/S concepts developed by the Bell Labs Unix gurus.

"Small market share? Well, what about the 30 million Mac users? The first moron/hacker to create a virus which can live and replicate in the wild will be world famous overnight."

Yeah, because the guy who made the first PC virus is a household name.

I would rather read spam email sent to me by windows zombies than reading the garbage that the mac fanboys come up with.

The fact that it only has 4% market share says it all. If they were so good, after 25 years they would have more than a 4% market share. You can keep having the "virus" debate for the next 25 years and you can also keep that 4% market share too. The Ipod and Iphone have sold more Macs, not the Macs features.

Brian. "Using a mac, you are not allowed to obtain install or execute any binary that is not provided via apples draconian channels.

Oh-Oh! can't wait to execute one of those binary thingies.
Or a draconian.

"St. Louis…that is such a terrible point to make. It's like saying "anyone who owns a BMW is rich."

Not sure why that's a terrible point. Not saying that everyone who owns a Mac is rich. I'm certainly not rich. But my point is that, and this is documented, that Mac users have a higher average income. And if you can buy ID's for $1.00 wouldn't you want ID's of people that earn more and might have more to steal?

The key point, and Forbes gets it, is that since Mac went to OS X, they are infinitely more secure than Windows. And unless you download something from a questionable or illegal site and then are dumb enough to use your administrator password to install it, your chances of getting a virus are pretty close to zero.

Don't cloud the main issue and point of the article. All of the excuses as to why Macs don't get viruses are just that. Excuses.

And if you have to run Windows because there is something not available for the Mac, you can do it on a Mac.

All of you PC users can deal with all of the security issues. I'll stick with Macs. And let me know when there is a virus for the Mac in the wild that installs itself without any user assistance.

@ ex ped: James, I just ran a search for "perfectly safe" in the comment stream. In 29,795 comments, the only two to use that phrase were yours.

OMG are you serious? Yes, no one has used the exact words "perfectly safe", but comments like this:

"I have been running a mac network for 14 years. I admit I don't know anything about computers, but I have had no viruses, no worms or spyware. The machines are more expensive, but I have never paid a consultant, and never purchased anti virus software. One day I have to learn what that right click, left click thing is for on a PC, but until then, I'll just spend my time running my business.
Posted By Steve, Elmhurst, IL: September 2, 2009 1:04 PM"

That comment says they think they are perfectly safe because they are using Mac OS X. If you just read comments on most mac articles on sites like TG Daily, engadget, even here, you will here things like i run no protection because macs don't get viruses, worms, or spy-ware.

I don't understand why you are arguing with me anyway. I'm not saying mac os x is or isn't more secure then any other OS. All I was trying to point out was the general mac (or pc) user isn't going to understand the difference between safe from viruses and safe from other forms of exploration, such as a trojan or security flaw and said users should have some kind of protection.

UNIX versus WINDOWS
That is really all that needs to be said.

If computer viruses were insect pests:

Living with Windows is like living in a house that you have to fumigate every week to keep the cockroaches out of the cupboards.

Living with Mac OS X is like living in a house where you might find one dead gnat on the window sill every five years.

Isn't it interesting, that so many in the Windows user community, cannot wrap their heads around the idea that someone could create a better more secure operating system than Microsoft. As if Microsoft has earned the reputation of being the end all be all of excellent software design. At what point did they ever have that reputation? they have always been second rate at best. Popularity doesn't equal quality – it never has and probably never will.

The reason why Mac has little viruses and PC has a lot is because the Mac users are the ones writing the viruses and infecting the PC's.

The "security through obscurity" argument doesn't work. Just to make the argument, you have to know about Apple. That means they aren't obscure to you. If you talk about a Mac to a supergeek, the kind that has the ability to write viruses, you never get the puzzled response, "What's a Mac? Never heard of it." (The word "obscure" means "generally not known" not "having a small market share." Apple is very well known.) Finally, anyone who could successfully write the first Mac virus would have instant fame among hackers and the satisfaction of embarrassing a major corporation. There's plenty of motivation, even if there isn't a huge financial return.

I don't think there are zero viruses for OS X because Apple is special, but because UNIX is special. OS X is certified UNIX 03. Anyone who could write a virus to attack a Mac could easily modify it, if that's even necessary, to attack HP-UX, AIX, Solaris 10, and probably also the Linuxes.

There are two Mac viruses:

OSX.MachArena.A, and OSX/Oomp-A or Leap.A.

Neither are very widespread, but both are in the wild. A bit of searching Wikipedia and the journalist would have found this out himself…

ex ped: Wrong and wrong. Leap.A has already been offered up as a counter example. According to Wikipedia, it's a worm, not a virus. There is no Wikipedia entry for OSX.MachArena.A (sic) or OSX.Macarena.A, but according to Symantec's write-up, OSX.Macarena.A is a proof of concept virus, not a virus found in the wild. (See here.)

I have 3 Macs… one is an 8-year old PowerMac running 10.4 Tiger (two-generations-old OS), is directly connected to the 'net serving web sites (it's my test machine), and has no add-on security software. Rock-solid. Mac OS X is secure.

>>> If MAC OS X doens't have viruses, why do AV ISVS like Symantec, McAfee, and Sophos make AV software for them?

>>ex ped: Excellent question!

There is only one reason why it is a good idea to run anti-virus software on the Mac and why it exists for OS X in the first place: so a Mac user doesn't inadvertently spread a Windows virus to a PC. While there are ZERO viruses for OS X, that does not mean that a Mac user can't be a carrier of a virus for a Windows PC. Example: You receive an email with a Windows virus attached and you innocently forward the email to someone running Windows. You have now just emailed them a virus (even though it didn't originate from you). That would be reason enough for Mac-based businesses to run virus protection software, if they are constantly emailing Windows users.

That is why in a forum debate over OS X versus Windows, I am irritated by the obligatory comment from a poster who appears to be rising about the fray but who is really uninformed when he writes: "It doesn't matter which operating system you use. Mac and Windows are different tools. Use the one you are more comfortable with. Let's just all try to get along."

The problem is that it does matter to me which operating system you use. I receive spam email in my multitude of email inboxes daily. Why do I receive so much spam? Because of zombie PCs that have been overtaken by Windows viruses to be bots for email spamming. Yes, it does matter to me which operating system you use, because users choice to run insecure Windows is infecting all of the internet.

And with my opening example I gave — that a responsible Mac business might run virus protection software only if it is emailing users who run Windows, why should I sandbag the performance of my secure OS X with resource-hogging anti-virus software just because of Windows? Yes, it does matter to me which operating system you use.

All I can say is, I love my iMac. I use it a lot, it is easy to use, it is reliable, and it does wonderful things for me.

The real difference between a virus and a trojan is the difference between software engineering and social engineering. Security failure on a computer running OSX requires a user to actually approve the installation of the malevolent software; where as the PC just has to be turned on and connected to the internet.

The Apple OS is just better by design. Windows is really just a series of bandaids holding together one big piece of shotty code. If it were any other industry in the world, there would be a class action lawsuit against Microsoft for selling a defective product.

I think I get it, by this narrow definition of a virus, macs dont have any because: You must execute a binary (exe) to activate a virus of this definition. Using a mac, you are not allowed to obtain install or execute any binary that is not provided via apples draconian channels. Yes, you are safe because you have no freedom. Go forth and enjoy the safety of your prison cell.

Even if you count trojans, the Mac as a platform is not attacked in great numbers. The smaller market share alone cannot explain this, as the number of installed Macs is in the 50 millions — which would make a helluva botnet.

One thing that is often overlooked in attempts to explain this: Infecting a single computer — yours, mine, my co-workers — is NOT the goal of malware writers. It is merely a first step. The follow-up actions of the virus are what malware writers need — infecting other computers, sending out spam etc. So if you have a small market share platform on which it is much harder to achieve this second, more important goal, as a malware writer you don't chose this platform to attack.

In order to get Macs attacked, one of two things need to happen: 1, Macs become the pre-dominant platform (not likely, as Apple is not at all interested in achieving that), or, 2, Windows gets as hard as Mac OS X to prevent the further, important actions of malware (which, in my humble opinion, Microsoft cannot do without massively disrupting legacy compatibility from it's paying business customers. Keep in mind that most end-users and private users of Windows are not the big money-makers for Microsoft — when was the last time you bought a copy of Windows without it being installed on a new computer?).

And to add insult to injury, the Mac OS has its Firewall turned off by default. It has been doing that for at least two years. Let me see a PC do that and not get something nasty!

@ St Louis MO

"They are more secure, period"

LOL

"Take any Apple installer package, e.g. Thunderbird. In most cases an installer package on Mac is a .dmg file, that represents an installation disk image. Now, when you open such a file under Mac, the OS will never display any information about if this file is somehow signed (e.g. by who) or not. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s never signed. What you end up with, is a .dmg file that you just downloaded over plaintext HTTP and you have absolutely no way of verifying if it is the original file the vendor really published. And you’re just about to grant admin privileges to the installer program that is inside this file — after all it’s an installer, so must got root privileges, right (well, not quite maybe)? Beautiful…"

it's a fact that Mac users are more affluent

St. Louis…that is such a terrible point to make. It's like saying "anyone who owns a BMW is rich." Mac computers are more of a trendy thing to own, not a luxury of the rich. Its always funny to see the general population of "Mac users" group up and proclaim "we have Macs, we're rich and trendy and we only go to expensive coffee shops…etc, etc."

Macs are more secure. I agree. Market share in computing, hacking and scamming is about large numbers, not idividuals. The average ID is sold for around $1, so the more you get, the better. No one steals IDs over the internet by targetting "only rich people."

I think St. Louis, MO says it best….

"They are more secure, period. And while I am sure that many hackers like doing mega-damage on as many machines as possible, don't you think there might be just one hacker that would like the honor of succeeding with a Mac virus?"

I've asked the same question many times.

Tony asks "I'm stunned. Apple still makes computers??? Where are they?"

An obvious attempt to trivialize Apple's growing market share. I personally know at least 8 people who have switched from Windows to Mac in the last 3 years.

I've used both Mac and Windows since 1990. NONE of my Macs have ever suffered from a virus and I have not installed ANY third party protection.

Virii is not a word. It sounds posh but the word is viruses.

Small market share? Well, what about the 30 million Mac users? The first moron/hacker to create a virus which can live and replicate in the wild will be world famous overnight.

The "security through obscurity" argument also ignores the fact that there are a number of Linux viruses.

This whole debate boils down to one fact:

People are stupid.

You give a person a pc and they have no idea what to do with it or how to protect themselves. They all use administrative accounts for everyday use and a lot of them actually believe that they "are a winner!" (I know, I didn't believe it at first but people actually click on those).

It's like having a kid and not teaching him to not go outside in the winter without appropriate attire. What would any reasonable person think is going to happen? So the logical resolution of this problem? Protect the kids from the bad parents by giving them fool-proof kids who are resistant to illness because the parents are too stupid to take care of them. They don't need the kid to have an IQ of 160, 100 is good enough cause they'd never notice anyway. And me for one would like my kid to not just play baseball, I want my kid to play every sport and play every instrument in the symphony orchestra too, just because they can and that's why I buy PC. And I know to send my kid out in the snow with a hat and coat.

The market share argument is nonsense. OS 8 and OS 9, with much smaller market shares, had many viruses, and Apple used to include antivirus software with Macs.

A virus IS different from other malware. A phishing scam or a Trojan, which depend on user error, CAN affect Macs, but they will damage only your Mac, but a virus is self-replicating. A deasly disease is much less of a public health risk than a deadly contagious disease.

OS X, and Linux, and Vista/7 with User Zccount Control set to maximum, are orders of magnitude more secure than XP, or Vista/7 with UAC turned off, for technical reasons which have nothing to do with market share.

Geez, all of the excuses for why Macs don't get hit with viruses. They are more secure, period. And while I am sure that many hackers like doing mega-damage on as many machines as possible, don't you think there might be just one hacker that would like the honor of succeeding with a Mac virus? And if money is their object, it's a fact that Mac users are more affluent, so it would be a target rich audience. The fact is that Mac OS X is more secure. They started from the ground up when the ditched OS 9. Until Windows is scrapped and a new OS is developed, it's still got the ancient spaghetti code underpinnings that make it so easy to crack. And as far as why do Symantec and others make anti-virus programs for the Mac. Because there are some suspenders and belt types that think they need them. I have not used any for the past 5 years. No problems.

BTW, R, Boston, though I never bought AV software I did occasionally scan the Macs manually with software for detecting viruses. Never found one!

@ ex ped: "To say you perfectly safe because mac os x has no viruses is just flat out wrong." Straw horse alert! Did anybody here say that?

Yes, every mac owner who doesn't have a clue says this. Just read some of the comments here…

ex ped: James, I just ran a search for "perfectly safe" in the comment stream. In 29,795 comments, the only two to use that phrase were yours.

Jim, Atlanta, GA asked:" If MAC OS X doens't have viruses, why do AV ISVS like Symantec, McAfee, and Sophos make AV software for them?

Sure they write AV software that will run on OS X. The thought of a virus to the untrained PC or Mac user scares them. And it's about making a profit through each scare tactic sale. There are a few OS X proof of concepts that they look for. However, if you look into the database of viruses for these AV applications you'll find that 99.9% of what is search for are Windows based viruses that could be attached to files received by the Mac that could be passed on to another Windows machine. It has very little to nothing to do with protecting the Mac.

Mac user and Apple system manager since 1984 – Never used AV software and never got a virus!

I love how those making the case that OS X is better architected to be secure can never say how exactly. They invariably fall back on its "Unix roots", which is funny since one of the inventors of Unix wrote an article on how bad its security was.

I'm stunned. Apple still makes computers??? Where are they?

Its nice to see comments that are logical, informative and flame free, for once.

I own an iMac g5 and have had Linux and Windows PCs. Once thing I have noticed about OS X is that my computer runs exactly as fast as it did when I bought it three or four years ago. When I had Windows, I had to reload it annually to clear out the accumulated crud that slowly sapped performance.

Also, Macs and Linux don't seem to have viruses (worms or trojans or whatever) that spread themselves, using RPC hacks or vulnerabilities like the Hallmark virus that swept through my company last year. Isn't that due to the unix kernel security model?

I've heard, from pessimists mind you, that Windows 7 is as much better than XP as XP was to ME. I sure hope so.

One thing that is troubling to me is how man Mac users, say "I've never bought a piece of anti-virus software" and also say "i've never had a virus, a piece of spyware or mal-ware." Because that makes me ask the question: How do you know?

Not all mal-ware or virus is going to make your computer crash and die. Spy-ware by definition won't do that (that would defeat the purpose). And just because you're computer hasn't slowed to a crawl well before it's time also doesn't mean you don't have one. So I find that argument to be rather meaningless because if you've never owned a piece of anti-virus software and never run a scan on your computer for viruses then how can you say you haven't had any?

I've been a PC user for about 20 years and have never had a virus. I have never used anti-virus software. never.
I owned a Mac for about a year before the whole thing was considered trash – according to the "apple-care" technicians. (they would not replace it since my warranty had expired.)
seems pretty simple to me.

John from Troy, MI:

What are you smoking and would you mind sharing some of it with the other Fortune.com readers? My wife's work Mac went down earlier this summer because the power cable connector went bad. She was forced to send it in to Apple to get it fixed. It took them THREE WEEKS to get the computer back to her so she could begin working with it again. Do you know what I would have done with it had it been a PC? I'd have walked 1/2 a mile from our home to the PC store in our small town (6000 residents) and bought a new PSU for ~$50 and installed it in about 10 minutes. Total down time: maybe 1 hour. But because it was a Mac, we had to utilize Mac's "warranty" service to get it fixed, and even then they tried to stick us with the $800 bill (Yes, $800 for replacing the power cable connector). I'll never own another Apple product in my life.

I switcheded to Mac OS X 10 a MacBook about nine months ago. I wish i had done it earlier. It is like switching from cheap stale wine to smooth palette enhancing wine.

I also installed Parallels for the occasional app that i need under Windows. Most apps run with Mac. Never had the the Mac crash on me even when running Windows with Parallels.

I recd a Mac and if you really think you going to need some Windows apps install Parallels and Windows XP. Believe me you will never look back.

Here's my view. You say PCs are cheaper, but how much do you charge for a days work? Well, when your PC goes down for the day because of problems & down for another day to do a complete OS install, don't forget to add this to the cost. Don't forget the extra programs you have to buy as well. So, there you go, now the PC cost more than a Mac.

The marketshare argument is a red herring made by defensive Windows users (I own both Macs and PCs btw). Apple has always had crap marketshare, even when PC users were using DOS and trashtalking a GUI and mouse as just a toy. But in the pre-OS X days, there were indeed viruses. That's with very low marketshare. Some of the first viruses were on a Mac. While I mourn the loss of some of the ease of use of the Classic Mac OS, OS X is so stable, so reliable and free from virii it isn't funny. Wish the XP box I am using right now was so fortunate. I can only dream.

I also think virii and trojans are completely different beasts, one far scarier than the other.

Without explicit protection, you just can't protect yourself from a virus. Get rid of your internet connection, you can get one from a CD just by sticking it in. Yikes. You don't need to do much of anything to "get sick", like catching the flu. Common sense is a poor defense.

Trojans affect everyone, clearly. They are programs that lie to you about what they are. Much harder to spread—you have to install them…and then they can harm you. It is much easier to protect yourself against these: download from trusted sites, buy software on CD/DVDs, avoid pirate sites, etc. Most of this is common sense, which is normally quite effective against trojans.

Both Apple and MS have kicked up their defense against trojans — apps that are meant to deceive. But like selling on Craigslist, your best defense will always be common sense and skepticism that the Somali prince wanting to buy your ripped up old couches in your basement for twice their value is too good to be true, and not to send your bank routing info to him. Similarly, reconsider installing that copy of Photoshop 3000 you downloaded for free off a P2P network. It's ugly out there.

But in the balance, it is much easier to defend yourself against deception than the swine flu. That is a key difference between trojans and virii.

As to the folks who say why there is a Mac market for virus programs, I will add I don't use them on my Macs; never had a problem either, except back in the Classic days. One very old machine I have that still has some virus protection on it has seriously outdated virus definitions (3 years old)…hey, whatever. Main reason I have ever used them on Macs is keep my PCs clean…really. Symantec Antivirus cleans harmless PC virii from Macs…so you don't act as a Typhoid Mary…and in a mixed environment with PCs, that's just being neighborly.

Two important things to note here:

1. OS 9 has endless viruses. OS X has none. This points to the improved security of UNIX in OS X.
2. I think everybody has the hacker incentive thing backwards. Sure, having a large target (windows) is great. But many hackers are motivated by something else entirely: glory. They take extreme pride in their "work" and compete among one another to display their skill. This incentive cannot be overstated. In such cases, what could possibly be a greater honor than being first to write an OS X virus? And yet, it hasn't happened in all these years.

A great idea for a PC commercial – show the Mac and PC avatars discussing viruses:

Mac: We don't have viruses.
PC: What about the Oompa Loompa Virus?
Mac: That's a worm, doesn't count.
PC: What about trojan horses?
Mac: Doesn't count.
PC: What about spyware or adware?
Mac: Doesn't count.
PC: Then why do you have anti-virus software?
Mac: Ummm….

The definition of virus in an end user's mind is much broader than the technical definition given here. People want to be safe from malicious programs, and it is irresponsible of Apple to use a technical definition of "virus" just to sell more machines. A more responsible thing to do is to educate Mac users on staying and keeping the Mac community safe.

I have been running a mac network for 14 years. I admit I don't know anything about computers, but I have had no viruses, no worms or spyware. The machines are more expensive, but I have never paid a consultant, and never purchased anti virus software. One day I have to learn what that right click, left click thing is for on a PC, but until then, I'll just spend my time running my business.

The answer is simple FOLKS, Market share and Price. You can get a PC for 1/4th the price of a Mac and thats why they have 95% of market share. To a Hacker it is most prestigious to write viruses which will affect more number of systems than a fewer systems. I am not surprised if Apple is paying hackers to write such viruses.

There are things equally damaging to user security than viruses. Worms, Trojans, and OS security holes (open ports for example) are just as dangerous to user security as a virus. In fact most viruses are harmless personal security wise, they are very damaging to the users computer but most don't record info about what your doing like most trojans do.

To say you perfectly safe because mac os x has no viruses is just flat out wrong. Every computer hooked to the network should A) Some kind of firewall and B) Some kind of defense from Worms, Trojans, etc…

I like to look at it this way, you could drive the safest car in the world, but if your not wearing a seat belt there is a good chance that you will die in a car crash. Even Macs need seat belts.

ex ped: "To say you perfectly safe because mac os x has no viruses is just flat out wrong." Straw horse alert! Did anybody here say that?

"Obscurity" thing is another PC user myth … there are 70 million OSX users while there are WIN servers that number in 200,000 range that get their own infections.

It's very simple.

How to infect a WIN PC:
Turn it on.

How to infect a MAC (in theory):
Turn on Mac.
Launch browser.
Go to Porn Site/Malware Site.
Ignore browser warning.
Download malware/spyware.
Launch malware/spyware.
Click on OKAY after reading warning that this was downloaded from internet.
Type in ADMIN password to launcher installer app.
Ignore or Click on SECOND warning this app was downloaded from internet.
Install app.
Launch app.

THAT IS the difference. WIN PC's are designed for IT to have full control over your machine so hackers can pretend to be your IT department. Macs are designed to be controlled bythe END USER – why IT generally dislikes Macs and why Macs are liked much better by end users because it was actually designed for YOUR use as a personal computer and NOT as a terminal that IT can access from anywhere. That is the philospphical, design and esthetic DIFFERENCE.

It's not that WIN PC cannot add these additional layers of protection, MS does not want to make it more difficult for THEIR customers – the IT department. Consumers are third class citizens as MS points out in their ads – as long as it has a keyboard, a screen and under $700 dollars, (and running WINDOWS), what's the difference?

EXACTLY.

As many others have pointed out, a virus is only one of many aspects of malware, and is rapidly becoming a dated category – worms are much better able to make money and spread. MacOS makes it easy to write malware (see the comments by the winner of the CanSec West conference) because it is relatively immature in terms of preventing programming flaws from turning into exploits. The reason there is less malware is the same reason there's less of everything – games, you name it – people writing malware want bang/buck.

Your comment that Windows allows users to run code outside of a protected space shows that you don't understand it. All current operating systems have roughly the same capabilities and flaws. There's no advantage or disadvantage to running on BSD/Windows/Linux/etc. It's all software, all software has flaws, and some flaws are exploitable.

Where there can be a difference is the maturity of the development process with respect to security. OpenBSD has long had an aggressive appraoch to security and does well (but at a cost of app compat). Microsoft does well at this, largely because they're under constant attack. Apple's approach is relatively immature, and they handle vulnerabilities poorly – look at the huge number of flaws in Safari. Linux does well in some areas, to some extent depending on the distribution.

OSX doesn't have viruses because of the Unix permissions used on files. Permissions were in OSX since day 1, whereas windows only got proper permissions recently.

If by recently you mean 2001 then the yes you would be correct. I'll ignore the fact that the foundation upon which modern consumer versions of Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7) are built had stronger file permissions (in the form of ACLs) back in 1993 with the release of Windows NT 3.1. Thus making your argument about 17 years wrong.

Only recently, with Tiger, did OS X gain the ability to use ACLs. Seems it is OS X that was doing the catch up.

Since when is a Trojan not considered a virus? Changing semantics is like putting lipstick on a pig.

Also, if you are writing a virus or a great piece of software, you want it to run on the greatest number of computers possible – market share is key. New software (and viruses) unually hit the PC market first.

Who cares that it doesn't have viruses when it has other forms of malware. To artificially limit it down to one type of malware is disingenuous. Someone who has had their bank account drained isn't going to take comfort that it happend because of a trojan as opposed to a virus. And I don't think you would either.

It's primarily market share plain and simple. We have a well respected security researcher, the very one you mention in your article, that states OS X is less secure than Windows. If OS X is less secure and it's not market share then what, in your opinion, has kept the Mac from being compromised?

ex ped: Can you name one person whose bank account was drained because of a Mac trojan? For that matter, can you name one Mac OS X trojan that made into the wild?

@Anonymous:

OSX.Leap.A is a *worm* that targets installs of Macintosh OS X (v.10.4) and spreads via iChat Instant Messenger program.

Took me less than a minute to find out that OSX.Leap.A is a worm, not a virus, and it only affects Mac OS 10.4 which is two versions of OS X ago.

What else you got?

I have been a PC user all of my life. I never liked the Mac System. At least the older systems. Now, with Mac, you can completely emulate windows and all of its functions on a Mac which makes it much safer, friendly and extreme security. I am seriously concidering tossing my pc's and getting macs just for the reasons of security. Windows is a joke. They made it with holes so that 3rd party companies can sell their products to keep windows "somewhat" secure, and of course microsoft gets their kickbacks from the 3rd party companies. Talk about another Madoff! Microsoft, Get your head out of your rump and do something right for once!

Let's level the playing field here – if you "rule out" all those categories, the number of PC malware goes down quite a bit too. Not counting any browser (IE) vulnerabilities must cut it in half.

As for Apple pounding on this one issue – it's all they have left. PC's win on hardware and cost comparisons, and the OS has gotten much more stable and reliable – the Windows 95 days of daily reboots are over, XP can go weeks or even months.

Windows is more vulnerable because it is more open to software development – which is why there's a HUGE number of programs written for it, vs a tiny percentage for Mac. If you can live your life inside that tiny percentage, then Macs are the superior option. But if you want wider horizons, Windows wins.

OSX doesn't have viruses because of the Unix permissions used on files. Permissions were in OSX since day 1, whereas windows only got proper permissions recently. The difference is that on OSX, you cannot infect a system because everything is owned by root (the master account), but run by the user. So if you do get a virus, it can't install itself into your system. Additionally the Unix startup sequence uses a variety of different accounts, so that one rogue service does not get control of/modify another. The only infection vector is the user account, because Unix is so open and understood, it is useless to infect. Windows on the other hand has a lot of voodoo – the registry, batch files, etc, which all conspire to add layers to the onion. Sorting through these is no small task, even for me. You just can't hide a virus on Unix.

One of the easiest ways to shut the argument down is to simply say that whether the reason for the lack of viruses in OS X is due to smaller market share, a more robust OS architecture, or a hamster on a treadmill in Steve Jobs' office, the fact remains that OS X does NOT have any viruses and all versions of Windows do.

The future? Who knows? But in the here and now-which is all we have at the moment- you can forget the theorectical. On a day to day basis, the evidence is clear that OS X is more secure than any version of Windows.

If MAC OS X doens't have viruses, why do AV ISVS like Symantec, McAfee, and Sophos make AV software for them?

ex ped: Excellent question!

Took me about 3 seconds to locate a MAC virus:
Leap.A aka Oompa-Loompa virus

If I can find out about one so quickly, there must be more out there.

ex ped: Nice try, but that's an iChat worm, not a virus. Doesn't count.

OK, MAC OS X is based on BSD Unix… therefore… if there haven't been any viruses for BSD in the last 30 years… then there is more than likely that will not be viruses for Mac OS X… as long as Apple behaves

I believe that Mac people tend to be artistic types and rebellious, just like hackers. They are generally avoided by hackers because they both cohort with the same people, go to the same bars, and listen to the same music – they may even be roommates.

Cops, as brethren, generally don't give other cops traffic tickets, and the hackers have an off limits policy towards the artistic community.

I will say, if Windows 7 is anything like other versions of windows, we still will have a ton of security problems. Windows 7 "claims" to have built in anti virus, well… Knowing that, who's to say how reliable it really is?

As a owner of a computer company, (bestcpu.net) I always suggest anti virus and off site backup of my clients. We all know there are more "holes" in windows then Mac OS. Either if you use the internet or not on your computer, it is best to use an antivirus program AND a anti trojan/malware program.

Here are some facts:

It has nothing to do with marketshare, the older OS9 or Classic Macs had around 60 Viruses with a MUCH smaller marketshare, and before the age of the Internet.

It primarily related to OSX being based on BSD Unix. Most people don't realize it's a NETWORK OS that has decades more battle testing on world wide networks compared to Windows of any version.

The way Admin is fully separated from "root" simply doesn't allow a Virus to move freely from machine to machine, yes, that is Unix related, but how Apple did it is clever.

Apple provides ALL security IN THE OS, they don't rely on 3rd parties like Microsoft, thus Apple is faster to fix structural problems IN THE OS so security is continuously tightened.

Lastly, the Apple Community itself doesn't allow for that type of behavior. It's very much similar to the scourge of "Graffiti". Most cities in the USA simply won't let graffiti propagate, and Apple is one of the cleanest "cities" in the world since it's not allowed, plus if a breach is found, it is fixed rapidly since the Apple Community is so tightly bound.

So overall, Apple and its users are far more tech savvy so they have engineered security issues out of the OS… which is a nice feature of Macs since you never have to worry about it… it's transparent like it should be.

It's because the people who write the viruses all use Macs!

@ Steve Harper

"Viruses can be taken care of with a $20/year investment"

So you pay protection money to run something you own eh?
I know MS are including some AV protection in 7 – leaves the Mac as the market for all these companies to move to. Not one article about Mac Viruses (apart from this one) has been produced without a quote from anyone except those whose business depends on supplying this protection to your machine.

@Cliff

"Time will tell what will be !"

You know what, people have been saying that for years!!!

The difference between viruses and trojans is not 'academic' as someone has cleverly stated. Viruses propagate without user knowledge or intervention. They quietly go about their business until/unless, for reasons of their own, they suddenly activate into something noticeable. Trojans happen when you do something stupid on your computer, like download or run software from unknown sources.

An analogy: A virus is like, well, a virus (like the flu). A Trojan is like eating steak tatare in a dirty restaurant. You can take precautions against the former, but unless there's a vaccine, you may get it anyway. If you get sick in the latter case, it's 'cause you're a giant idiot; it was completely avoidable.

I have used Macs since the 80's.
Viruses were common in the old Mac days but were rare after System 7 and I have OS9 computers still in use that have not had a virus or a need to reinstall any software since I bought them.
In my mind, the early proliferation of Mac specific viruses in the 80's militates against the market share issue.

Off Topic – How much of a sea-change has the iPhone created? The depth of the change is perhaps best exemplified by Nokia's recent decision to manufacture a laptop computer, the Booklet 3G. Per Reuters, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said: "Nokia had to do it. You see more and more PC guys getting into the mobile operators' shelves. It's kind of the counterattack, it's not just defensive."

The industry is finally waking up to the revolutionary nature of the iPhone, which is that it's a "pocket computer" with a built-in phone .

And that means they need to move into the computer world, or, in the long run, go out of business.

Good luck with that, Nokia.

The computer world would be a much safer place for all of us if it included ten OSes with Apple's market share, rather than one Windows monopoly. Look, for example, at the cellphone marketplace. The Windows "monoculture" is the problem, pure and simple.

As the article points out, it is the design of the OS that is the key. I have always thought of MS windows as an OS that is built on the fly. Not designed using sound software design processes. I feel this leaves vunerabilities through out the system. Maybe Windows 7 fixes this. We shall see.

Neal said, "The market-share argument has always been bogus in my opinion. There would be huge bragging rights awarded to the first person to bring down a network of Macs."

Most modern malicious software is targeted at financial gain, not "bragging rights".

Or maybe Mac users are also more cautious. I have had a Windows laptop running without A-V software for 3 years. I have had perhaps one virus (not sure if it was really a virus or trojan; I got it when I downloaded some software from a supposedly reputable website).

So PC's can be kept safe with minimal (or no) protection. If Mac users take fewer risks, then Mac's don't catch viruses.

Time will tell what will be !

Viruses can be taken care of with a $20/year investment in antivirus software and a bit of personal responsibility. It's pathetic that Apple doesn't have any better arguments.

@Eric – Strongly disagree that Trojans are 'just' as dangerous. The difference is that for a trojan to run, _I_ as the user of the computer, need to do something. With a virus, that 'something' happens whether I am using the computer or not. The trojan might be just as dangerous to _ME_ if I run it, but it isn't going to spread to the rest of the computers on my network…

Apple added (some form of) AV/Anti-Trojan to Snow Leopard because they are constantly improving how they protect their users from infection…

The market-share argument has always been bogus in my opinion. There would be huge bragging rights awarded to the first person to bring down a network of Macs.

Trojans are just as dangerous as viruses, and the distinctions are basically academic.

Why do you suppose Mac added AV software to Snow Leopard?