Your Mac Has a Virus
What will you do the first time you read that sentence? Scream in terror? Pass out in fright? Cry yourself to sleep at the sheer inhumanity of it all? What? And all Mac users must prepare for that day because it will happen eventually. Yes, even a die hard, frothing at the mouth Mac head like myself can admit that the chances of OS X never getting infected with a virus, in the long run, are kind of slim. It may not happen today, it may not happentomorrow (or even 10 years from now) but assuming it does happen what will the Mac community do? Every other major operating system out there has had its share of viruses except OS X. Now, that is due in large part to its Unix underpinnings and the very talented programmers who work in Cupertino. But every party has to end eventually. . .
So, assuming someone managed to actually write a virus for OS X, what would you do? Buy a virus checker from Norton or McAffe? Or would you rather have Apple release its own virus/malware protection software? (kind of like Microsoft is doing now) Perhaps you would just chalk it up to “one of those things” and do nothing differently? And what about everyone else, how will they react?
Can you imagine Jobs standing up in front of everyone at a Mac Expo and saying “ladies and gentlemen, they finally did it. the score is now 693,902 Windows viruses to 1 Apple virus.” No, I don’t really see that happening either. Oh, and let me be clear that when I say a virus, I don’t mean a proof of a virus, I don’t mean a script, developer tool, root kit or anything else. I am talking about an actual computer virus, that’s the only thing that counts.
Whatever the IT related damage it does that will be nothing compared to the physiological and marketing fallout that will occur. It will certainly put a dent in the pride of your average Mac fanatic. Likewise the marketing arm over at Apple will have to change things to “almost” perfect. Anyway, I don’t see this happening anytime soon but I suppose, like death and taxes, it is inevitable.
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In reference to my comment that most mac users don’t know that there aren’t any viruses for the mac I don’t have any statistical survey that would show this (although I must say it would be pretty hard core of me if I did). I know quite a few people that use/have macs. Most of these (since they are not “techies”) are not aware that there are ZERO viruses for the mac. A lot of recent switchers are not aware of this, because they choose macs for other reasons (take your pick). My comment was in reference to these people. I don’t see how you could be exposed to the no-virus information unless you visited mac sites like this one. Nevertheless, the Mac platform probably has a much higher percentage of tech-savy people than Windows because it is a smaller player and thus tends to attract those who know computers. Therefore, perhaps “most” should be changed to “some”. Next time I’ll try to be more selective in my choice of words
alexpasch: What called my attention about your comment is that if a switcher does any research on the net he is likely to read that there are no virus for the Mac. Then again, maybe some don’t do much research, or they have used Macs for a long time and don’t need to or are not interested in visitng Mac websites.
Where I say “they have used Macs for a long time” I am of course not refering to switchers as I was in the previous part of the sentence. (Didn’t want to start another confussion war
)
Skipping right ahead… Roger Wong, when you enter an admin password in OS X, essentially running a sudo command, you’re leaving the system open for access for 5 minutes. This can be changed (for example, mine times out immediately), however. That said, a virus can keep trying to run until that window of opportunity (someone typing in an admin password) happens and then walk right in, so to speak.
Ohh, trying to think back, which was it, System 6.6. or 6.7 something or other which came with a virus on the install floppies hehe. Funny thinking back, damn annoying at the time though.