People seemed to get into a tizzy about Apple posting an announcement recommending Anti-Virus software for Macs. Even though it was retracted, I do think that Apple priming Mac users for the eventuality of widespread malware is a good idea. People who believe that the fundamental design of Macs will prevent them from being an attractive target for viruses are dead wrong.

Several reporters and bloggers jumped on the apparition that graced Apple’s knowledge base stating that Mac users needed to run multiple anti-virus packages. While the KB article turned out to be bogus, it does not mean that Apple users are safe from malware forever. I have said many times before and I will say it again: given the constant of end-user gullibility and a monetized malware underground, the emergence of Mac malware is a function of market share and anti-virus effectiveness on the dominant platform. You don’t even have to depend upon verbal arguments, as I provide a game theory analysis as well.  Macs are gaining market share, and hackers are getting interested in creating viruses that will attack the Mac base. Which is the reason why PC are being targeted right now. The difference is that Mac users are not ready for these attacks.

The fact that the announcement was made and pulled seemed to give some bloggers, including Joe Wilcox, fuel for their argument that Macs don’t have malware because they are fundamentally more secure.

The reality is that mass market malware writers don’t care about novel attack code anymore. They also don’t care about who is running the most vulnerable services. They do care about writing programs that look like legitimate applications that will trick the end user into voluntarily installing them. When the bad guy’s target is the human being at the console, then his only decision becomes what is the size of the target to go after.

The fundamental fallacy in Joe’s argument is that operating system security is equivalent to malware security. It isn’t. No level of system architecture can prevent users from harming themselves. Malware writers are just waiting until there are enough victims to make their switch profitable.
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First, let me just say that the Air is an extremely impressive piece of technology. The miniaturization, the optimization of space, the blatant disregard for current standards — it’s everything a revolutionary machine should be. Except it isn’t one. It’s a flight of Apple vanity that is completely impractical for anyone who needs to do more than the most basic functions with their computer. Find out why inside.

Let’s start with the obvious: no optical drive. I don’t think I need to list the many things that are available in spinning disc format exclusively, and the idea that you should pack around an extra drive (however compact) or piggyback on someone else’s kind of defeats the purpose of having an “ultraportable” notebook. I don’t use my drive that much, but in fact it’s indispensable even when I have enough USB drives to fill all my pockets.

Next, the processor. It’s fantastic that they’ve managed to micro-size the Core2 Duo, but for any kind of serious work — video and audio editing, watching HD video, playing games or emulating Vista for work — even my MacBook Pro is barely pulling it, and it’s got the Air under its thumb processor-wise. Not to mention that RAM is totally un-expandable; serious Photoshoppers will spend a lot of time waiting while they use that nifty multi-touch to zoom into their 400MB uncompressed PSDs.

And the inputs. One USB, one Franken-DVI. Hope you like plugging and unplugging things! It says it’s built for the wireless world - yeah, okay, but that world is make-believe right now. Sure, you could bring a hub along, but this goes along with the earlier complaint: what’s the point of a mega-portable laptop if you have to bring along a whole support team? It’s like a ditzy model-actress’s entourage: you just want to take the girl out, but she has to have her make-up guy, her photographer, her PA, and she’s totally incapable of doing anything on her own.

And lastly, let’s be honest: did we really need things to get that much thinner? My MBP is a great size, not too heavy, and it’s thin enough that there’s quite a lot of leftover room in the laptop compartment of my bag. The Air is whisper-thin but it does still weigh three pounds and its not like you can fold it up and put it in your pocket. What is losing that last half an inch doing aside from attracting stares?

There’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of people will buy this laptop, but its capabilities are really more in line with the Eee PC than a MacBook, and the Eee costs thousands less and actually is ultraportable. The price point is so far removed from this machine’s potential that it makes the iPhone look like a bargain. I’m glad Apple is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with current PC tech, but right now this computer looks like a bit of a lemon. A sexy lemon, though.

The MacBook Air is not a subnotebook. The Eee and Everex, and Redfly are subnotebooks. They are tiny, basic, and are designed from the ground up to be micro-sized and limited. The Air is trying to be a regular notebook but failing - what Apple has done is take a regular notebook and flatten it (very well I might add), while simultaneously crippling it. Everything about it is a compromise except the width, and even the width doesn’t make it small; a real subnotebook is more than thin, it’s small in the other ways too. It may be thin, but with a 13.3-in. screen it’s not going in any cargo pockets. Look, it’s a sexy little thing but at that price it’s an atrocity and it is not a subnotebook or ultraportable. Sorry, but size, price, and hardware put it in budget laptop territory, and it’s simply not competitive there except in sex appeel. (Sexy lemon — get it)

 

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By Larry Dignan

 The year 2007 has been an interesting year that brought us improved security with Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard (10.5).   But to get some perspective of how many publicly known holes found in these two operating systems, I’ve compiled all the security flaws in Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista and placed them side by side.  This is significant because it shows a trend that can give us a good estimate for how many flaws we can expect to find in the coming months.  The more monthly flaws there are in the historical trend, the more likely it is that someone will find a hole to exploit in the future.  For example back in April of this year, hackers took over a fully patched Macbook and won $10,000 plus the Macbook they hacked.

I used vulnerability statistics from an impartial third party vendor Secunia and I broke them down by Windows XP flaws, Vista flaws, and Mac OS X flaws.  Since Secunia doesn’t offer individual numbers for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.4, I merged the XP and Vista vulnerabilities so that we can compare Vista + XP flaws to Mac OS X.  In case you’re wondering how 19 plus 12 could equal 23, this is because there are many overlapping flaws that is shared between XP and Vista so those don’t get counted twice just as I don’t count something that affects Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 twice.

Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007
	XP	Vista	XP + Vista	Mac OS X
Total extremely critical	3	1	4	0
Total highly critical	19	12	23	234
Total moderately critical	2	1	3	2
Total less critical	3	1	4	7
Total flaws	34	20	44	243
Average flaws per month	2.83	1.67	3.67	20.25

X Extremely critical
 H Highly critical
 M Moderately critical
 L Less critical

So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious.  Clearly this goes against conventional wisdom because the numbers show just the opposite and it isn’t even close.

Also noteworthy is that while Windows Vista shows fewer flaws than Windows XP and has more mitigating factors against exploitation, the addition of Windows Defender and Sidebar added 4 highly critical flaws to Vista that weren’t present in Windows XP.  Sidebar accounted for three of those additional vulnerabilities and it’s something I am glad I don’t use.  The lone Defender critical vulnerability that was supposed to defend Windows Vista was ironically the first critical vulnerability for Windows Vista.

 

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I Recently read a blog entry that was pushing the Mac again as most of the Apple religious fanatics do constantly.

I Don't LIKE APPLE except the one I buy from Ralph. full on idea that looks/design is everything over being functional - the silly one button mouse that they perservered with for years or even the silly two button one now - a cheap Logitech or Microsoft mouse works a million times easier (but of course doesn’t look as pretty). I don’t like Apples adverts, most are exaggerations and half truths but , I guess, it sells products. I don’t like the fact the Apple took ages (6 months after Vista was released) to make iTunes work on Vista and wrote on their site it was Microsofts fault.

I don't like Apple Bragging about the Iphone, to find out that they copied the LG Prada, they did not invente the mouse or the GUI for the most part as they claim they did. I know I haven’t explained properly but here is a prime example of over the top Apple showing how smug (or stupid) they are. The new updated OSX that has just been released a few days ago. The icon they use for Windows computers (and for that matter, I have read, lots of Linux and other Unix machines show up as Samba file shares, meaning they’ll be presented as unstable blue-screening machines, despite the fact that they’re likely more stable than OS X) is an old CRT monitor showing a Blue Screen fault. It is like little kids fighting and teasing in a playground - really. (read Smug Ugly and and the icon fix here )

Its true that most of the people who use mac are not really computer savvy 

Maybe what I really hate is the blind fans that think Apple is almost a religion and Steve Jobs is god. I remember talking to a blind Apple fan about that I need Windows because I need certain applications. He insisted that I could get all the application I ever need for the Mac - the apps I need are specially written for us at work they are not off the shelf things - why would we get these re-written for OSx or bother with running Windows on Apple hardware when a cheap PC does it anyway? He didn’t believe me!

I hear from folks that OSX is very pretty and has lots of nice wallpapers. I've seen it. Yes, it's very shiny and sparkling. Folks claim it's very stable, and I have to agree; FreeBSD has always been a very solid OS. But is Apple now much different than M$? They take other peoples technology and re-package it. It doesn't work very well, but it's "more stable" than the previous version. It's locked up like a drum, but should somehow magically be comatible with stuff that shows up a year or two from now.

Apple/Mac, they just smoke more pot and spend more on fancy billboards on the 101.

 

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Sometime Technology is like Rap music. You hear this new song on the radio with a great beat and you are like whoa! nice how did they come up with this beat? what great creativity! Then the next week you are at your parent's house and you hear the same beat that was created 20 years ago and which everybody forgot about. Oh I see they sampled the song.... 

LG Electronics has claimed the IPhone 's design was copied from the LG Prada. Woo-Young Kwak, head of LG Mobile Handset R&D Center, said at a press conference, “We consider that Apple copied the Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006.”^[4][5]

LG later claimed that Apple stole both the ideas and concept of the Prada phone. A lawsuit by LG had been rumored prior to this announcement; ^[4] however, LG has remained silent on whether or not they will file a lawsuit.

Now of course the Prada does not have all the IPhone features, but that is because it came before!

 

 
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