The Apple platform has always been secondary to me in my business. I don’t know if it’s because there are less of them out there or because they never break. I personally think its the former, having repaired (for much less money and way less attitude than the Apple Geniuses) many an Apple computer. The Apple Computer is pretty much a Mac now anyway, with Intel chips, SATA drives and DDR3 memory. The only thing Macs lag behind PCs on are security.
For the longest time, Mac users have felt they were immune to viruses and spyware. Not the case. The Elk Cloner, the first Virus to ever be written, was on the Apple platform as a practical joke that got out of control. Since then, Apple has taken a lot of steps to beef up their security, including taking on a Linux-based underlying architecture with their OS X. The plus side of Linux adoption is that the average user does not have administrative rights, meaning that they cannot break their computer: they don’t have the ability to. Actually they do have the ability to, but it takes a very purposeful ignoring of obvious messages like, “This program came from the internet, are you sure you want to run it?” or “This program will break your computer, you definitely aren’t responsible enough to own a Mac.”
This need for user rights elevation was adopted by Microsoft in Vista and Windows 7, but has been in the Unix/Linux world for quite some time. This is what rooting your Android phone is, also. It just means that you have admin rights to break your device now.
So Macs have been secure for a long time, but now I’ve heard recent reports about how macs are getting targeted more frequently for virus and malware attacks, now that they are getting more market share. One way to avoid a lot of this is with Sophos’s free Mac Antivirus. It actually works quite well and catches a lot of junk that you may not know you have, since if you’re a Mac user, you probably don’t have antivirus.
Greater risk to your Mac is possible if you torrent illegal music or software. One of the worst viruses in 2009 was a bootleg copy of iWorks ’09 that went around on the torrent sites. Know that whether you have a Mac or a PC, downloading software or music is illegal, and beside carrying RIAA penalties, can also expose you to viruses.
Another good practice, as with PCs, is to run the System Update program for your Mac. Apple is good to release security patches, as is Microsoft, but you have to download and install them. Also, you should have a good password that you change frequently. If you follow this advice, you should be protected from viruses on your Mac.
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