>OK, I've stayed out of this, but misinformation and outright wrong
>statements like this cannot go unchallenged.
>
> > 1. no virus problem
>
>Not true. There are mac viruses. There would be many more if the marketshare
>was higher. What's the point of bothering if you're a virus writer? The Mac
>is not inherently more secure, nor is Linux. Just read some of the security
>periodicals.
Well, sorry, I don't think it is that simple.
There have been Mac viruses in the late eighties
- early nineties, during System 6 times; all
easily defeated, but yes, antivirus software was
useful at that time. Viruses never were that
numerous because you had to be able to write
Pascal code to create them.
But not a single virus for several years - the
last I encountered personnally was in 1988. The
so-called viruses that made the news recently
were only Mac OS X _vulnerabilities_ that were
discovered, quickly fixed, and _never exploited_.
Not the hundreds of real viruses spread each
month on Windows.
Look up John Gruber's article at
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/broken_windows :
"Windows apologists have long argued that the
only reason the Mac has been so strikingly free
of security exploits is that it has such a
smaller market share than Windows. This argument
ignores numerous facts, such as that the Mac¹s
share of viruses is effectively zero; no matter
how you peg the Mac¹s overall market share, its
share of viruses/worms/Trojans is significantly
disproportionate.
(...)
Or that, despite the Mac¹s relatively small
market share, a successful virus/worm/Trojan
attack against Mac OS X would likely garner
significantly more notoriety and fame;
considering the recent publicity given to
non-exploited Mac OS X vulnerabilities, it¹s
reasonable to expect that an outright exploit
would result in an avalanche of tech media
hysteria.
"
As for the Mac vs. Windows larger discussion... I
agree with whoever (Chris?) said that either you
"get" the Mac, or you don't. Personnally I do,
and everytime I have to work on a Wintel box I
feel "offended" by the ugliness of it all, and
not only esthetically. But that's a personal
feeling. Let everyone work in whatever is best
suited to his/her tastes.
But I digress..... ;-)
bernard
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|