This topic came up at our Southern Maryland Mac Users Group Meeting. As
of now, no virus has yet been effective against a Macintosh computer.
There were two incidents which are called virus but one of them was a user
who got upset with his Mac because it wouldn't automatically play a CD
when he put it into his drive he wrote a short piece of code and somehow
it got onto the internet. It was so popular though with other Mac users
at that time it spread like a virus. That code was later purchased by
Apple and if I'm not much mistaken it's been added to Tiger and Leopard as
part of how Apple handles playing of CD's and DVD's. If you choose the
right option that code will play CD's and DVD's for you when you put them
in your drive automatically. The other incident loosely described as a
virus was a company that had written a virus and then announced it but
never released it onto the internet in order to sell their antivirus
package. The Federal Government connected with that Company and made the
company cough up $2.5 million for their misbehaviour. Not for one moment
claiming Mac's are virus-proof and will remain virus-proof into the
future, but this is to the best of my knowledge the only two times virus
and Macintosh could be barely ligitimately associated to date. Apple as a
corporation very likely will be what provides virus defense and prevention
software to its users in future should such software be needed you'll
likely have it downloaded by software update. Packages possibly
vulnerable to viruses are being upgraded and released as flaws get found
and corrected. Generally, packages either get released with new
capabilities or bug fixes. The virus writers on the Windows side of the
aisle have actually done the screen reader industry a huge favor though.
The resources Microsoft has to use to apply patches on top of patches
can't be used at the same time to add any new features to their offerings,
so the screen reader industry has more time to perfect their new
innovations against an already existing code base. The one true danger to
the screen reader industry will be if Microsoft ever goes and closes all
of those unterminated loops in whatever version of windows is in use at
the time. A tremendous performance improvement will then happen along
with a huge memory requirement decrease windows xp can probably run in
640K of memory if that ever gets done, then all those programmers who
worked on patches for all of those years will be back innovating new
features again. Such a move were it to ever happen would make life for
virus writers lots harder and also bankrupt Intel along with other chip
manufacturers because computers could get lots lighter in terms of memory
than they've grown over the years.
On Fri, 30 May 2008, Dave Wright wrote:
Hi there all,
I'm not sure whether or not this topic has been discussed on this list, but I'm
wondering if I should invest in a virus removal program for the mac? I did see
that Norton Antivirus does make a version for mac OSX, however I didn't know if
anyone out there had a preference? Any info would be much appreciated.
Best Regards,
David Wright
Mobile: (832)518-0707
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.knfbreader.com
