Apple's latest Get a Mac commercial targets the recent laptop hunters ads coming from Microsoft. It shows a number of PC characters and Mac, with a woman in between who wants to buy a computer. She mentions a number of features she wants, and the number of PCs becomes ever smaller. Then she says she wants a computer without "viruses, crashes or headaches", which makes all the remaining PCs leave, with only the Mac left standing.
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Member since:2006-01-16
The only anti-virus packages for linux out there which are used by more than 2 people and a cow are for mail servers to strip viruses out of emails before they arrive Windows machines.
Get your facts straight.
This is btw. exactly my point: people start to argue that you have these problems with every platform, but in practice it still is a unique feature of Windows to date. Face it or it will never get properly fixed. Or do you really think in 10 years time we still need/want to fight viruses?
Edited 2009-05-14 13:54 UTC
Member since:2007-03-26
Get your facts straight.
* I stated that Linux and Apple have anti-virus packages and they do.
* You may argue that Linux desktop virus packages aren't used by many people, but that doesn't change the facts that I stated.
* You might choose to completely ignore the point I made about Apple, but that doesn't make it wrong either.
So my facts are straight.
This is btw. exactly my point: people start to argue that you have these problems with every platform, but in practice it still is a unique feature of Windows to date. Face it or it will never get properly fixed. Or do you really think in 10 years time we still need/want to fight viruses?
You do know the first ever viruses weren't on Microsoft platforms?
You do know that Linux webservers have it's fair share of malware due to poorly coded PHP scripts?
Sure, Windows is one of the worst offenders for security, but to argue that malware is a windows specific feature is elitist BS.
And by the way, I'm a Linux and Solaris user. So don't start shrugging off my opinion as narrowminded fanboy talk.
Member since:2008-07-15
I think we'll always need to fight malware, though I certainly imagine it taking different forms ten years from now. NO matter how secure you make it, there will always be someone who will break it. Action and reaction is the way the world of security will always work. No security measure is perfect, or will ever be perfect, and neither are the methods used by malware writers.
That is not to say, of course, that the operating system should make it easy for them and, at the moment both due to its inherant insecurities and its large demographic, malware is mostly configned to the Windows platform.
That doesn't mean, should Linux or OS X become dominant, that you're automatically safe. You're not immune just because it hasn't happened. Once there's a large enough payoff on another platform, it will be targeted, and eventually there will be success on the part of the malware author, no matter how secure by design the system is.
Member since:
2007-03-26
Right on - because Linux and OS X doesn't have anti-virus packages...,.oh hang on, they do. And apple even recommend users install them.
Windows might leave the door wide open, but malware will always exist so long as there are users stupid enough to download and run untrusted software (remember the recent article about the OS X botnet?)