The old Mac vs. PC argument doesn't work anymore

McSpocky started awhile back, Computers & Internet I'm co-admin so can approve right away..let me know

you're in...good thing you stopped by someone else had put in a req to join...musta slipped by me :( so added two.....welcome

Ooh, send me an invite if you don't mind, not that I write much about technology these days. McSpocky has founded around 90% of the groups I'm in, lol :)

just click on join group and I'll add you, tks Matt welcome or you can seed if you find something of interest and there's plenty around :)

Awesome, thanks!

you are now official, love computers! newsvine is getting faster too! took all of five minutes :)

Yeah, some people have been dishing up complaints about the changes we've seen here recently, but I love them now. Publishing is a million times faster and easier, and with more customizing options. The whole site seems more efficient now.

Leafy

We may not see eye to eye in politics but we do see eye to eye here with this one. I cant stand apple products I cant stand the arrogance of Mr blow jobs.

Every try to upgrade a mac? I can run both a mac os and a windows os on my pc Until the advent of osx you could not get pc features on a mac they created osx cause they continued and still do get their ass kicked by pc's I dont care what they claim.

The you cant get a virus on a mac is a bold faced lie and always has been.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/11/24/apple-mac-malware-short-history/

You might find this interesting to bolster your argument.

Now apple has stooped to the lowest of the lowes.

Apple's Sloppy, Fearful Samsung Lawsuit
Apple's lawsuit against Samsung smacks of a panicked, fearful company trying to slow a hard-charging competitor.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383820,00.asp

Best thing that could happen to this company is for bill gates to just flat out bury it.

lol thanx I think we can talk pc shop all day frankly id rather stay out of political debate

they created osx cause they continued and still do get their ass kicked by pc's

OS9 was perhaps the most user-friendly OS of the decade. The decade which ended last year. OSX was a necessary step up to a server environment, and IMO the desktop suffered for a while. Comparing *nix to an OS which is still DOS based after all these years seems like an unfair comparison - for the win box.

Especially when Mac and PC use the same parts (e.g. ASUS, EeePC). I think that it's a complete rip off.

I have a IBM/Lenovo Core i3 desktop and a 32" HDTV monitor for my computer. Total cost after taxes, just under 1k. I also have 6 gigram, 1 terabyte hd, dvdrw, hdmi, usb, front and back side, and am pretty much happy with it.

A Mac 27" all-in-one is way over that.

Too bad Apple refuses to make OS X for all the pc people. They could generate billions more for those that already have a PC and would like to run Mac OS X on them.

When Steve Jobs diues, and he will, that will ultimately be the end of Apple Inc. MS will come in and destroy the company from the inside out.

Oh but, my favorite response to that is: "but Apple products are such good quality"

Yeah. Sure.

If you don't mind defective and yellowed screens, connectivity problems and exploding batteries.

And, of course, anyone who complains is laughed at ("You're holding it wrong").

Oh yeah. Apple products are so worth the extra cost. /s

Kreepy you can run osx on a pc

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-install-mac-os-x-on-a-pc-without-using-a-mac/

True, but then I would have lost my catchy line, lol :D

I'd never buy Apple stock the bubble will burst. I'm thinking next year, the sale of tablets will outpace laptops and there will be all kinds of great competition in that space - that alone will take Apple down a notch.

I agree. You can only shovel the same old iPod and iPhone for so many years before the slow consumers finally catch on and realize they have been rebuying the same old junk with a few tweeks done to them.

I remember to morons that waited for the first iPhone in all those lines, then later that year the porice dropped dramatically and the people were pissed over it. These phones are cheap to make in China (not made in America), this is how Jobs and Appe Inc is making their high profits. They are finally doing what MS and a lot of other companies are doing by sending their jobs overseas to have things made and built for the American consumers that will pay 100X's the amount on what the product actually cost to make.

Stupid Americans, will they ever learn?

The only real difference between now and the mid-80s is Macs don't have their own OS.

Is OS X not an OS? You do realize that "based on BSD" is not the same as "BSD", right? OS X is a distinct OS with some open source components and many proprietary components.

I'm thinking next year, the sale of tablets will outpace laptops and there will be all kinds of great competition in that space - that alone will take Apple down a notch.

Right, because a huge increase in unit sales in a market in which Apple dominates is sure to hurt Apple. I hope you're not an investor because logic like that is unlikely to lead to sound investment choices.

Well all right - you're right about OS X. But - my point really was today, you can buy an Apple computer and run PC software on it. That was not true in Apple 2/ MAC / IBM PC days and that makes the argument very different than back then.

Will Apple dominate the tablet market when those huge increases in unit sales occur and competitors offer great alternatives that don't require paying absurd premiums just to see the little apple on it? After that, Apple won't dominate quite so much if at all. Android tablets are already biting into Apple's lead on the IPad dramatically (from almost nothing to about a quarter of all sales last 3 months) and the tablet market share is rising now.

People have predictions about how long it will take people to adapt to tablets over laptops - my prediction on that is tablets will substantially outsell laptops by June 2012 as well my own experience working in IT is the adaptation will be a lot faster than most are saying now. So it's a critical market. I'd also predict Apple's dominance of this market will be over - maybe if they're good they'll retain the largest market share but they'll be under 50%.

No buying AAPL for me.

Will Apple dominate the tablet market when those huge increases in unit sales occur and competitors offer great alternatives that don't require paying absurd premiums just to see the little apple on it?

You obviously haven't done any research in the tablet market. When the iPad came out it caught all the other companies off guard because it was so cheap. They expected it to cost significantly more, and at least one company actually had to delay their tablet product as a result while they reconsidered how to compete. The iPad was priced extremely aggressively from the beginning, with Apple making only small profits on each one sold. It is only recently that Apple's competition in the tablet market has actually been able to compete on price, and they still struggle to compete on both price and quality. It wouldn't surprise me if some of them are losing money on the deal.

I have no doubt that other tablets will start to eat into the iPad's market share, but so far the competition is still pretty weak, and the app market is the real killer difference. People bought into Android in the phone market in large part due to carrier considerations, and subsidies from phone companies often distort that market and guide people towards certain phones. That's not going to help Android in this market, though. They have to compete on their own merits, and I just don't see it happening so far. It would be nice to have some real competition in the tablet market, but so far it's just not there.

Windows is the real wildcard, though. So far there are zero legitimate Windows tablet competitors, but Microsoft will be demoing a Windows 8 tablet next week that supposedly will release early next year. I'm skeptical that Microsoft has finally figured out the tablet form factor (they've tried several times before and failed utterly), but they have the resources to compete. We'll see.

No buying AAPL for me.

Good luck with that. I've tripled my money in a few years. It's not just hype, either. Their sales have been growing consistently in almost all markets for years, even throughout the recession. While other companies were doing layoffs, Apple was seeing record revenue again and again.

my point really was today, you can buy an Apple computer and run PC software on it

You can also do the same with a windows pc just google hackintosh. I really don't like parallels because it runs like crap if you're doing hardware intensive tasks but bootcamp is fine but you still can't do gaming on any type of Mac and expect to get full options turned on and still get a decent framerate.

I don't like Parallels either, so all of my Macs run pure Windows on Bootcamp. They're all dual-boot systems. As to viruses, I'm in the Army and have access to free AV tools through AKO.

I run VMWare, and most apps run just fine. I don't do video games, though, and I doubt those would work very well. The Unity mode is awesome. It lets you have Windows apps float freely on the Mac desktop without having a giant window encompassing the entire VM. It basically looks like just running Windows apps on a Mac, except they're really running inside the VM. Parallels has the same feature, and I assume it works just as well.

You obviously can't do this with BootCamp. You can, however, boot a BootCamp partition in VMWare, so you can have the best of both worlds.

I don't see how anyone could claim that your options are limited on a Mac these days. They're just not. You can run any Windows app on a Mac. Period.

How many viruses will you get in the meantime while you're waiting for your smug friend to get one? Think about that for a bit.

There is nothing to think about. The answer is none, same as it's always been. I'm smug as well, but the difference is, as noted above, I back it up with knowledge, experience and a bit of damned common sense. Think about that for awhile longer.

I have had a Windows computer with all available updates installed and an up-to-date virus checker running still manage to get a virus. If you go years without getting a virus ever then it's not because you're smarter. It's because you're lucky. Think back to the days of the RPC worms which required nothing more than hooking a PC up to the network for about 10 seconds to get infected. Those things spread like wildfire before the patch even came out, and I remember having to go to a patched machine to burn the patches onto a CD just so I could patch another machine before attaching it to the network.

Ah yes, no one can be smarter than you., Pfft.

I've gone 20 plus years without getting a virus and with people intent on slamming me with packet data unable to get through. I've gone 5 years with the PCs running nonstop, hooked to the net.

I don't have to think back to the days. I lived through them all, from the first days of BBS hackers through today. Still safe, still smart. Still not getting hit with anything, even when that malware was loaded into the banner ads on *this* site. So, no, make that claim elsewhere. I'm not biting.

I didn't say I was smarter. I just said that not getting a virus on Windows doesn't make you smart. The fact is OS X users aren't smarter for not getting viruses either. They're also lucky. They just don't need as much luck.

I think Adam is the kind of guy who would disable the UAC then blame the OS for the viruses he gets.

Actually, I'm the kind of guy who tells people to please, for the love of god, do not ever disable UAC. UAC is basically the same kind of security that other OSes (including OS X) have been doing for years, and the response most Windows users had to it was "oh hell no, turn that @!$%# off". When our build system initially required running as admin I insisted that they fix that rather than giving up and disabling UAC. I wish Microsoft had not even made disabling it an option. That was shortsighted.

I'm not saying Windows security has not improved. It has improved a lot. It's incredible how much it has improved. But to claim that if you're smart enough you will never get a virus on Windows is just naive at best.

Any OS has vulnerabilities. That's a given. Windows does. OS X does. Linux does. All of them are prone to some form of attack which circumvents their built-in security. Deny that at your own peril.

If you're smart enough to acknowledge that basic fact, then you should also be smart enough to acknowledge that Windows (being the dominant platform by far) is targeted way more than any other OS. Thus it is a given that there can and will be malware out there for Windows which totally circumvents all built-in security. You can be very smart and perhaps limit the damage, but no matter how smart you are you cannot possibly guarantee that you won't get infected. It cannot be done, on any OS.

Look back in the history of Windows. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that there have been multiple viruses for Windows which required nothing more than hooking the computer up to a network. No clicks. No password. No lack of virus software. Hook the PC up to the network and you're infected within 10 seconds. Those vulnerabilities were patched (even a month before the worms started spreading), but can you guarantee there are no other equally dangerous vulnerabilities? No. You can't. Nor can I make the same guarantee for OS X.

Software has bugs, and those bugs include security holes, and we all know that there are people out there actively looking to exploit those, especially on Windows. We're all lucky when we don't get viruses. Some just need more luck than others.

Just to add more fuel to the fire, take a look at this article, which explains that the recent MacDefender scam is linked to a similar malware threat for Windows. Not only does this same exact piece of malware exist on Windows, but according to this article it was detected and removed from over 600,000 Windows PCs in Q4 2010. However, this was only the third most popular form of fake anti-virus malware for Windows (i.e., there were two even more common variants for Windows which don't exist for OS X).

In other words, even when you finally find a piece of malware for OS X (which in this case had to be installed by a gullible user) you still have to face the fact that it's far more common on Windows than OS X. If you think Windows users are better off (either through better security or better preparedness) than OS X users than you are just plain deluded.

I quoted what you said. Here it is again:

While we PC users are definitely more vulnerable to viruses, by almost 100-1 ratio (new viruses)...

Maybe you meant to say something else, but that wording certainly sounds like the likelihood is 100-1. Now you're saying that just the number of vulnerabilities is 100-1, but you think the odds are lower? That's even more delusional.

How many Mac infections of this one piece of malware do you think there have been total? This article quotes an estimate of 60,000 to 125,000. Look at those numbers I quoted above in #13.1 for Windows, for the same kind of scam. This particular one infected 10 times as many Windows PCs in a single quarter, and it was only the third most common kind of fake virus checker malware for Windows. These things are rampant on Windows.

Let's put it another way. The closest I've gotten to the number of Mac users is about 15 million. Let's just round way down and say 10 million. Let's also use the higher estimate of the number of infections (125,000). That gives an infection percentage of 1.25%. As I quoted above, about 5% of Windows computers are infected, and that is only from a subset of users who proactively downloaded the Microsoft software for scanning for infections (i.e., those people who are smart enough to know they might have an infection). I think the real number is way higher.

Still think Mac users are more likely to be infected? The numbers don't back you up.

I am going to get zero viruses waiting for my friends to get one, mainly because many of them have already gotten one and I, being a smart user with a little common sense, know to avoid websites that could give me one and not open emails that look suspicious without confirming that it is real by the sender.

You are going to avoid most viruses this way (good for you), but there have been many viruses affecting Windows which required zero user interaction. Hooking the PC up to a network was enough to get infected. What makes you think those days over over for good?

Adam

There is an old saying that goes you catch more flies with honey then you do with vinegar.

But in your case its more like piss and vinegar.

Sorry but your attacks on leafy lead me to believe your a mac fan boy in disguise. is that you Mr Jobs?

Sorry leafy seems to me to be more castigations or perhaps how he/she comes across you know what i mean?

No, no, it's highly accurate. The specific issue given has been related tiredly to me for many, many years. It is, as the article points out, no longer true. Perhaps that is your issue with it. Or maybe you're just a tad upset at being deleted, for whatever reason that was. Either way, article voted up as good.

Really?

Name 1 virus for Mac OS/X. Name one.
Prove that for every 100 Windows virus there is a Mac Virus. Show me how that is a true statement.
The article is inaccurate.

Which leads me to my next point. While we PC users are definitely more vulnerable to viruses, by a 100-1 ratio of new virus threats.

From the seed itself. Now you change it to malware.
So there are NOT 1 Mac virus for every 100 Windows viruses. You have yet to name 1 Mac virus.

MacDefender is not a virus and your seed is still inaccurate. It is Malware but it takes positive action on a users part to even get it.

As far as the deleted comment goes, this seed is FUD, pure and simple. The seed is inaccurate like the point of my deleted post.

Here's one it's called macarena, though it is a proof of concept virus. They do exist just not in large quantities, or wide distribution.

Again, good article Leafy. Sorry I can't vote it up but once.

A "proof of concept"? That's what you come up with? A proof of concept?

How's this for a proof of concept?. Our alien overlords will be here tomorrow. Be prepared for your doom.

This thing can't even infect other machines, which is a key component of a computer virus.

That gets into a purely semantic argument. Is a virus still a virus if it has no network connectivity?

Yes, it is semantics, but I question why you would even bother citing the existence of a virus which is not only not in the wild, but not even a malicious piece of code to begin with. When the topic is the relative safety of two OSes and one of those OSes has thousands of known viruses and worms while the other has very nearly zero it doesn't help your argument to point to a "virus" which isn't even in the wild. That's just a pointless argument.

While I understand you being upset, I wouldn't worry about it too much. One or two who report as inaccurate, which it isn't, would matter not a bit in the scheme of things here at the Vine. Not a serious issue, nut one resorted to by a disgruntled poster, IMO.

For the record, though, flagging as inaccurate does not in any way have anything to do with the COH. The COH is for the comments and how we react to others. There is verbiage within the UA that requires certain things, and I have flagged an article for violating them (plagiarism, etc.). Flagging as inaccurate is a very specific thing, one which I have used several times over the years, but not that frequently. Many users avoid the possibility of that by tagging all their articles as opinion. A recently departed member used that tactic although they were certainly not alone. Just food for thought.

And a FR sent.

You are in the wrong. You make a false claim about there being viruses on the Mac OS when there are not any viruses on the Mac OS.

You want me to do research? You are so lazy you take a current story (your claim) about some malware that in and of itself isn't that dangerous (you do have to take positive steps to even have it be a problem) and you delete my comment because I call you on your FUD.

Your seed is inaccurate. There are no viruses in the classical sense of the word for the Mac. There is 1 instance of Malware in the wild and you present it as gloom and doom.

IT IS NOT GLOOM AND DOOM. It is a call for all computer users to not install programs from an unknown source. Standard procedure for all users whether they use Windows or Mac OS.

Windows users are not more advance than Mac users. If they were, when I ask a user to open Windows Explorer to assist them, they wouldn't ask me what URL to type in or repeatedly apologize for the slow response on their computer from the viruses and malware they have on their computer.

By the way. From what I can tell you are a generation "Y" individual. I looked at your profile. I was selling computers and being a technical resource before you were a gleam in your dads eye. Yes, I bought my first PC in 1977 and started selling them in 1980. I've been dealing with this since then. I know the difference in threats and I know the reality of the threats. I know the difference between malware and a virus.

By the way, hemphill. Words matter.

You are in the wrong. You make a false claim about there being viruses on the Mac OS when there are not any viruses on the Mac OS.-

Well - we have this article from 2006 "First ever virus for Mac OS-X discovered" in which they discuss the OSX/Leap-A virus. They question whether or not it is a true virus and conclude:

"Therefore, it is correct to call OSX/Leap-A a virus or a worm. It is not correct to call OSX/Leap-A a Trojan horse."

They also have a section called "MacVirus timeline" where they mention the Elk Cloner virus, the nVIR virus, the MDEF virus, and others.

Apparently, the iron-clad definition of 'virus' also has evolved. We have this article where we read:

3. Are there any real Mac viruses out there? Some try to answer this question literally, based on the strict definition of 'virus' - i.e. malicious software that infects other files. But the term 'virus' is used much more loosely these days and in that context refers to malicious software in general (or what the industry terms 'malware'). The answer also depends on the version of the Mac operating system (OS) in question. While Windows tends to be essentially the same "under the hood", the various flavors of the Macintosh OS vary widely. Thus the answer to the question is Yes, there are real Mac viruses out there. But whether you are vulnerable or not depends on the OS. As for malware in general, it's an even stronger Yes.

So - according to Mac persons who no doubt know more about these things that I do - there are Mac viruses. Further, the term 'virus' seems to have evolved to include malware - at least among those who have evolved with the technology.

Is a virus still a virus if it has no network connectivity?

Network connectivity is not a characteristic of a virus. The ability to replicate itself is. There were viruses long before networking personal computers was common.

Mac Defender is a trojan horse, not a virus. It cannot replicate itself.

@rls8r

You point to a press release? A press release from a company selling anti-virus software!

You point to a press release? A press release from a company selling anti-virus software!

Well - here's a history of Mac viruses on what appears to be a web blog called Mac Password. The Mac Password article was linked to in an article about Mac viruses by Macworld. So - if the information was good enough for Macworld to reference it - who am I to question it?

Besides - what better source for information about viruses than the folks that work to protect against them on a day-to-day basis? Are you saying that the viruses listed on Sophos' web site are made up by Sophos to scare folks into buying anti-virus software? Are they wrong? Have they put one over on the folks at Macworld? Do you maintain that none of the viruses listed on the Sophos list ever existed?

Oops! Sorry - the reference to the Sophos history was in a comment to the Macworld article - not by the Macworld folk. Nevertheless - my question about the viruses listed on the Sophos list still stands. Do they (did they) exist?

Yes, it is semantics, but I question why you would even bother citing the existence of a virus which is not only not in the wild, but not even a malicious piece of code to begin with. When the topic is the relative safety of two OSes and one of those OSes has thousands of known viruses and worms while the other has very nearly zero it doesn't help your argument to point to a "virus" which isn't even in the wild. That's just a pointless argument.

When the argument is mac vs pc, the argument is pointless from the get go. I wasn't making any argument at all. Guy asked for one instance of a mac virus, I found one. Just answering a question that was asked.

By the way, hemphill. Words matter.

Then perhaps you should use yours. You asked for a virus, I showed you one. Perhaps you were really looking for something other than 'Name 1 virus for Mac OS/X.'

On a side note, bad @!$%# does occasionally happen to osx users as well.

Please, a press release form 2006? Seriously?

Just because I am not acting hysterically doesn't make my comments any less valid.

There are several variants to the viruses released and there may have been a few left out but the history of viruses on the Mac is fairly short. With the introduction of OSX most of the viruses only spread when users executed something they were not entirely familiar with from a source that may have been less than trustworthy. That doesn't mean that threats are not present, there is still a chance a flaw can be exploited and your computer could become infected.

Fairly short and the key phrase.. "With the introduction of OSX most of the viruses only spread when users executed something they were not entirely familiar with from a source that may have been less than trustworthy."

So the danger is I might do something stupid. Really.

That is a far cry from the platform being insecure.

I'm not the one making the false and misleading claims and I can't prove a negative.

You are in the wrong. You make a false claim about there being viruses on the Mac OS when there are not any viruses on the Mac OS. - CitizenX, Comment # 16.13

I'm not the one making the false and misleading claims and I can't prove a negative. - CitizenX, Comment # 16.24

CitizenX - You make the claim that there are not any viruses on the Mac OS. I provide a link to a list of Mac viruses. You dismiss that list out of hand by claiming that it is a press release. Nowhere do you present any information that the Mac viruses mentioned in the press release is inaccurate. A simple Internet search provides additional descriptions of those viruses by non-press release sources (including Wikipedia and Macworld).

I've given you proof that your claim is false. I'll present additional proof:

See here for a discussion of the recent (2010) OSX/HellRTS.AA virus. It's on a site called "Mac Virus - The Official Mac Virus blogsite".

No, you cannot disprove a negative, but it only takes one positive to disprove an absolute and unqualified claim such as yours. I've done that. All you've done is claim that my source is a press release (but you don't mention that it's a press release by a well-respected anti-virus company), and say that my article is old. Nowhere do you say (or prove) that the information is inaccurate or downright wrong.

Now - it seems that you are the one making false and misleading claims.

Citizenx

Let me help you out. I cant name one i can name at least 5

In 1982, 15-year-old student Rich Skrenta wrote the Elk Cloner virus, capable of infecting the boot sector of Apple II computers.

On every 50th boot the Elk Cloner virus would display a short poem:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes, it's Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!

What may surprise some Apple fans is that the Elk Cloner boot sector virus predates IBM PC viruses by some years.

1987
The nVIR virus began to infect Macs, spreading mainly by floppy disk. Source code was later made available, causing a rash of variants.

1988
HyperCard viruses emerged that could run on early versions of Apple's Mac OS. One HyperCard virus showed the message "Dukakis for President" before self-destructing.

1990
The MDEF virus (aka Garfield) emerged, infecting application and system files on the Mac.

1995
Microsoft accidentally shipped the first ever Word macro virus, Concept, on CD ROM. It infected both Macs and PCs. Thousands of macro viruses followed, many affecting Microsoft Office for Mac.

2004
The Renepo script worm attempted to disable Mac OS X security, downloaded hacking tools to affected computers, and gave criminals admin rights to the Apple Macintosh.

Dont let the door hit you on the ass on the way out

Macs were never immune. They simply weren't worth the bother of writing a virus for them. There weren't enough of them in existence to draw a hackers/virus writers attention.

That was my understanding. Can see what you're saying about ipads, and iphones for that matter.