Apple Mac security is “a decade behind Microsoft”

According to an expert who wants to sell antivirus packages to mac owners. I'm not saying he's wrong, but let's just acknowledge that there may be a teensy-weensie bit of self-interest involved here.
 
clasqm said:
According to an expert who wants to sell antivirus packages to mac owners. I'm not saying he's wrong, but let's just acknowledge that there may be a teensy-weensie bit of self-interest involved here.
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Fair, but no one else will tell us this. Least of all God.

Edit: I meant Apple.
 
clasqm said:
According to an expert who wants to sell antivirus packages to mac owners. I'm not saying he's wrong, but let's just acknowledge that there may be a teensy-weensie bit of self-interest involved here.
Click to expand...

After flashback you would think that there would be mutual interest between AV vendors and consumers :D
 
He's not wrong though. "Security" doesn't stop at the code. Apple is slow as molasses at patching vulnerabilities. The Java vulnerability that Flashback exploited was patched by Oracle in February. And if you don't know anything about Oracle, they take forever to release patches. Apple took a nother two months to ship that update. That's simply not good enough.

That fact that there have been so little malware targeting OSX historically has more to do with market share than technical superiority. But Apple's market share is growing rapidly and it's becoming worth the bad guys' time to target the platform.
 
I wonder why some people find it difficult to believe that an OS X machine can in be infected. Just because not so many virus are not written for it doesn't mean they are immune. It just means they are not a target of fury, well for now. Soon the future will be here and they will be rudely awaken! I were them, I'd prepare for armagerdon (sic).
 
Aqua_lung said:
This would apply to all unix based OSs then?
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Very few "unix based" OSs are closed source. Most are FOSS and have their code combed through by many people regularly. When there is a security issue its normally patched within 24 hours. This is one of the advantages of FOSS over closed source code. So its not the same.
 
ghoti said:
Very few "unix based" OSs are closed source. Most are FOSS and have their code combed through by many people regularly. When there is a security issue its normally patched within 24 hours. This is one of the advantages of FOSS over closed source code. So its not the same.
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False sense of security. Security issues are usually fixed withing a day or two of it being disclosed to the vendor/maintainer/creator. There's a growing industry in trading exploits for undisclosed vulnerabilities.

And then there's the issue of configuration. Your software can be as secure as they come, if you screw up your configuration, you're just as vulnerable.
 
Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?
 
qriffin said:
Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?
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if that is true, thats not good for all of us, including the mobile operators who by the way are claiming that Apple is dictating to them on its products.
 
qriffin said:
Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?
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No most certainly not, assuming these corporations don't have special voting shares {which I'm sure they all do and which arn't traded on the open market} then the only other option {I think} is to buy out 51% of the company, now I am not entirely sure of how the system works but microsoft has a market cap of 268.66 Billion US Dollars so to buy the company out I assume apple would need at least half of that which is about 134 Billion US Dollars just to aquire half the the shares but as mentioned in the post above a move in the market to purchase that many shares would push the value of the shares far far higher massively inflating the value of the shares.

Last I heard apple had about 100 Billion US Dollars in ready Cash and could probably obtain more by issuing bonds but as they have no credit rating at the moment {since they have never sold bonds} it's unsure how much they could raise, on the other hand Microsoft is one of four publically traded {non-financial} companies with a AAA credit ratings {Higher than the US goverment's} so they could potentially obtain more cash since thier credit worthiness is already established.

So in short I would say no, I sincerely doubt {at this point at least} apple could even buy microsoft out let alone the other companies listed, Intel also has a market cap around around 140 Billion US Dollars {Which is massive}.

Links: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT#

http://www.google.com/finance?q=Intel#

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/b...a-rarity-in-business.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
 
Never ask a Windows expert or AV employee about Macs; I beg to differ that a Unix base is 10 years behind... Have had a Macs for a long time and never had any issues... Don't / won't use AV ever... Setup your firewall properly, install Little Snitch and never run your primary account under admin privileges and you'll be safer than most Windows users..

For added security get rid of the biggest threats on Mac (3rd party extensions) I.e. flash, adobe reader, java, ...
 
qriffin said:
Is it true that Apple has over enough cash to buy Microsoft, Intel, Facebook & Nvidia together?
Click to expand...

No. They are worth more, but do not have the cash to buy even just Microsoft.

Apple are sitting on a record 100 billion dollar warchest. They could possibly buy Facebook. Microsoft is worth about 258 billion dollars.

Some people think that these large corps are not hoarding cash. Wonder how Apple got its 100 billion dollar warchest then.
 
Over the weekend I read an interesting article about how Apple has set up an office in Reno, Nevada 200 miles away from California to get away paying 0% company tax rate. In California they would've paid 8.84%
 
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