|
One of the reasons I don't like to use Microsoft Windows is because it has so many viruses. Toal to any avid Windows user and they'll defend this by saying that the reason Windows has so many viruses is because it's the dominant platform. It has the most of everything, programs, games, and viruses. They smile at you knowingly as if it simply couldn't be any different. In short, it could be a lot different. And I'm not going to argue about how many viruses the Macintosh could have if it had the same market dominance that Windows has currently, because there's no way to prove anything and I don't care about the answer. I think the computing world would benefit from not having a clear monopoly leader. If people actually thought about platform when they were purchasing a computer then there would be more healthy competition in operating systems and the consumer would benefit. The major loser in a market with no clear monopoly leader is Mr. Virus. There there, don't take it so hard... And my reasoning comes from observations of the organic world. It is common knowledge that too much similarity among a large (and even worse, dense) population affords disease an opportuinty to totally ravage a breed. If you have diversity then viruses that are very well tuned to attack one animal aren't particuarly good at attacking another. Right now the computing world is a monoculture of Windows desktops. And there are "comptuer viruses" everywhere. I hate the term computer virus. There isn't a computer virus out there right now, there are only viruses that attack operating systems and scripting languages, and office suites. Viruses don't attack the hardware of a specific computer, let alone all computers. By and large, when people say "computer virus" what they actually mean is "Windows virus." There aren't currently any macintosh viruses. Although there are a couple of competing products producing MacOS virus prevention products, I have trouble telling you if they are any good at doing that since there's nothing on Mac OS X with which to test them. Recently there has been a lot of uproar about Macintosh viruses being on the rise. As far as I can tell 0 isn't any more this year than it was last year. And even if the number 1 comes out, and it's an infinitely larger number than 0, I'm still not going to be terribly concerned about viruses proliferating on the Macintosh. Because it doesn't have good monoculture properties. And I don't ever want it to. While I don't at all believe that the Mac OS is inherently as susceptible to virus attacks as Windows and all it lacks is the market share, I don't wish ti find out. I do think that Windows would do at least marginally better against viruses if it lost some market share, and that's something I very much want to have proven. In the meantime, until there actually is a Mac OS X virus, I wouldn't recommend spending money on any software that can't be proven helpful but can demonstrably slow down your computer on a regular basis. I could sell you a text file and say that it cures Macintosh cancer, it'd be just as useful for you and cause you less pain. Best security practices like using good passwords that you don't give out and keeping your machine behind a firewall with its services off are still excellent ideas. But don't get talked out of your money by a snake oil salesman, or a macintosh antivirus vendor, or anyone trying to sell you a software calculator that obviously must be better than anything you could get for free or have already. |