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Drank the Kool-Aid did I make a mistake?
- Thread starter dansmac
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It's not pointless when it comes to selecting the proper defense for them.
There may be varied opinions and misinterpretations, but there is only one factual definition of what a virus is.
Name such a source that claims there are even 100 malware threats to Mac OS X. It's certainly not credible.
I would contend that most people who come on here asking 'Do I need anti-virus?' do not know or differentiate between viruses, worms, trojans or anything else, they use the term (admittedly incorrectly) interchangeably. The fact that they've asked the wrong question doesn't mean they shouldn't be given broader good advice.
This is the same point; there is a widely accepted definition of the term virus, but most people do not distinguish and viruses are not the main threat these days, there is a lot more risk from other malware than from viruses even in the Windows world.
McAfee, Symantec, Sophos and others, you can claim that they have an agenda and I'd agree, but you can't claim they aren't credible.
Just about every respectable security consulting company will recommend endpoint protection; in banking and finance circles it's a regulatory requirement in some jurisdictions; in government it is usually mandated.
Even the bastion of security that is the Linux community has been forced to eat humble pie this week as both kernel.org and linux.com have fallen victim to a security breach. There is no such thing as invulnerable.
I expect that most people running an endpoint protection product will never see it do anything regardless of the platform it runs on, in the same way as most people who have house insurance will never be burgled or have their house burned down, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to cancel your house insurance; the cost is balanced to the risk.
As I said on my previous post, this is not a Windows vs. Mac thing it's a criminals vs. RoTW thing. People are of course free to do as they please, but I would suggest that any normal punter using a computer for common activities would be well advised to use some form of endpoint protection, after all, it's about £30/year, compared to what you paid for the computer, your software and what you pay each month for your internet connection it's trivial and if we all did it then the malware industry would probably go away (at least for a while) and we'd all be happier.
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It is almost impossible to cause a CRASH at will. It does not happen very often. Maybe once every third session and each session I do is about 1,000 images and 20 hours of work.
1. SSD: Not needed and would not help. I don’t care if PS takes a few seconds to load. Once loaded it will remain active for days at a time while I work away on a client’s images.
2. SSD: Not needed for scratch and would not help. Loading of an image from disk takes a second or two. All PS CS5 and filters fit and run in main memory. I confirmed with Activity Monitor. No disk activity while working on these images.
3. 32-bit mode vs. 64-bit mode. 64 all the way. More important that I get as much memory for PS to work than anything else. 24G of memory seem to work the best. 32-bit mode limits to around 2G and will not work.
BUT I can cause a FAILURE of these PS CS5 filters at will that occur on the MAC but not on the DELL same configuration:
STEP1: Convert RAW image using ADOBE RAW 6.1. Vignette and adjust color temperature, and other parameters that are best done with a RAW photo file:
STEP2: Apply several OnOne Filters using a bulk batch Action that I created:
STEP3: Apply several NIK Filters:
STEP4: Apply several NIK Black & White Filters:
STEP5: Result: NONE of the NIK actions filters worked.
If I perform the SAME EXACT Sequence on the DELL - all works fine. Both OnOne and NIK have been informed and working on a solution.
I’m sure this will be fixed soon (I hope). I believe all the thread statements about software vendors paying much more attention to the MS Windows market seem to be true.
That said the latest numbers of MAC market share should be an indicator that these companies need to move the MAC platform up the priority list a bit!
Dan
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I do not use OnOne filters, but work with NIK plugins everyday (have all of them). No single crash.
I do all bulk operations in Lightroom, most of the plugins work there (with exception of some 32bit Imagenomic). That is the most efficient workload for me and most importantly very stable - no crashes.
I cannot comment on the fact how much attention these third party software developers pay to the OSX development compare to Win. Nevertheless all the NIK plugins work flawlessly under OSX for me.
I do also suggest to integrate Lightroom in your workflow. You can skip Photoshop and Bridge in this step, which should give you more speed AND stability.
I do all bulk operations in Lightroom, most of the plugins work there (with exception of some 32bit Imagenomic). That is the most efficient workload for me and most importantly very stable - no crashes.
I cannot comment on the fact how much attention these third party software developers pay to the OSX development compare to Win. Nevertheless all the NIK plugins work flawlessly under OSX for me.
I do also suggest to integrate Lightroom in your workflow. You can skip Photoshop and Bridge in this step, which should give you more speed AND stability.
As a developer, everyone saw it coming. Apple cutting Carbon after promising it was kind of lame, but it wasn't targeted at Adobe. In fact, FCP was a Carbon app, which is why it had to be recoded. So Apple did a lot of harm to themselves as well.
But seriously. Apple told Adobe back in 1998 that Cocoa was the way forward. Adobe even had a version of Photoshop running in Cocoa that they claimed they had an intern do. It was a hard decision for Apple too, given that all of Apple's pro apps were Carbon.
That's why they come here, to ask questions and get answers. Teaching them the proper terminology and how it affects their defense choices IS good advice.
Provide a link to a list of 100+ Mac OS X malware threats.
Just some thoughts:
Adobe Bridge is 32bit but LightRoom is 64bit - LightRoom is a far better workflow IMHO.
A SSD can be utilized for more than Apps you could use it for Camera Raw cache settings. ~It flies or You could also RAID0 three 7200rpm HDD with software raid if you want to avoid a SSD.
Up your memory to 32GB so you can have head room PSD can certainly use beyond 24GB of RAM
In Activity Monitor you need to check your System Memory Tab to see what programs are running 32bit or 64bit and the Real Memory being used Also get an idea if your getting any "Pages Outs" prior to these crashes.
ADOBE RAW 6.1? check for updates I think its up to
Camera Raw 6.4.1 Update
May 24, 2011
This new version of the Camera Raw plug-in replaces the original one that was installed with Adobe Photoshop CS5, Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Adobe Premiere Elements 9 software.
Good Luck
I'll look into the RAW updates and maybe another memory upgrade is due. As far as Lightroom and PS I don't have the time to switch between applications. I do a lot of image touch up that cannot be done in Lighroom besides the basic filter stuff. We focus on weddings an average of two per week with each having about 1,000 images to process.
Bridge has not posed any issues. It's just there as a compatible browser so I can select and launch into the RAW converter. No speed issues or other problems with Bridge.
And I agree NIK be itself is very stable. Only when I execute and OnOne filter first will NIK fail. Don't know who is the culprit.
Thanks for the advice....Dan
Those are not viruses or other malware those are vulnerabilities, not to mention most are probably patched.
I'm still waiting. Many items on that list don't even relate to Mac OS X, but rather to the iOS used in the iPhone. In addition, most, if not all of those vulnerabilities have been patched. That is not a list of malware at all.
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How about Sophos then, they seem to think they've found quite a few:
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/search-results.aspx?refine=1a1e9ea6979a493dba64e1b2ced03044&search=os+x
383 references on their list (no doubt there are some duplicates among them though, so probably fewer than 383, but a fair few)
Current Symantec EndPoint for Mac lists 22 OS X specific viruses, another 24 MacOS viruses that it considers worth looking out for under OS X and many cross-platform macro viruses (I didn't count them). That doesn't include any generic threats that are covered too. Since June this year it had detected 37 network/browser borne attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on a system used by a non-technical user.
I accept that there is no doubt some element of the product making efforts to make itself seem important and making the user feel safer, however, I also suspect that if these threats were made up and non-existent then the security industry would have exposed them by now, and yet most security companies and independant consultants continue to recommend such products.
Also:
Have none of the vulnerabilities listed by NIST ever been exploited?
Will none of them ever be exploited?
Does everyone patch their system right up to date at all times?
Are patches issued the moment a vulnerability is discovered?
Has there has never been any such thing as a zero-day exploit?
Can I just say that this has gone way off topic now, I wasn't trying to stir up an argument on this subject, I know people get heated about it and I really don't want to cause any conflict. It was just a passing comment that I felt I needed endpoint protection on any system I used for daily internet facing activity, that I would recommend the same to anyone else and that in doing so I would be in the company of most independent security experts and companies. Others feel differently and choose not to have any protection, that's fine, it's there prerogative. People can take or leave whatever advice they wish, they've read both sides of the argument now and they can make up their own minds. People have made their point that the risk to OS X is small and I don't disagree with that, but the risk is not zero.
If I'm wrong then those who follow my advice will end up paying around £30 a year unnecessarily to the likes of McAfee, Symantec, whoever, and in doing so will help to reduce the prevalence of malware on Windows systems by not transmitting it to them.
If I'm right, then they stand less chance of having their credit card details or other personal data stolen (I fully accept that nothing can offer complete protection, it merely reduces the risk).
I choose to take a chance on spending £30 a year unnecessarily is all I'm saying.
Finding them and making big news is their business. They have been called out before for outlandish "end of days" scenarios that never come to pass. In the wild is the operative word. Still nada. Self replicating and infective virus also being the correct reference to "Virus". Trojans don't count as they usually attack 3rd party mechanisms that all OS's have (ie Flash, Acrobat, Java) Even though they ring the Virus bell loudly, I like their AV offerings and run them all over the place when legal/ security department requires it.
That includes Windows malware, so it is not exclusively Mac OS X. Another ploy used by firms like Sophos is to list every variation of a threat's name as a separate threat. So for MacDefender, they would list MacDefender, MacProtector, MacSecurity, MacGuard and every other variant of the name as a separate threat, which is misleading, as it's the same threat with a different name. Also, some antivirus firms have their own name for a threat, so 3 different firms call the same threat by 3 different names.
Correction: None of the lists include a single Mac OS X virus. None have ever existed in the wild.
In the vast majority of (if not all) cases, a vulnerability is recognized and patched before an exploit is ever developed or released into the wild.
They can't be exploited if the door has already closed through a patch.
No, but vulnerabilities aren't immediately exploited as soon as they're discovered, either. To this day, there are millions of Mac users who will never encounter any Mac malware during their normal computer usage. There simply isn't enough out there for the average user to encounter.
Are exploits released into the wild the moment a vulnerability is discovered?
I don't know. Has there ever been a zero-day exploit of Mac OS X?
I agree that everyone should be aware of their options and are free to use protection if they so choose. My disagreement was solely with the false and misleading suggestion that there are Mac OS X viruses in the wild... there aren't, and with the suggestion that Mac OS X malware threats are numbered in the hundreds or more, which is also false.
I realize you don't have time to switch programs "right now" however I would strongly suggest you start moving away from Adobe Bridge and move towards LR or Aperture. Bridge is by far the weakest link in your work flow and I am wondering if there is a conflict within bridge and photoshop on the Mac. I don't use Bridge at all.
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This.
Bridge has always been known to cause problems in the past ever since it was introduced. Aperture or Lightroom is highly recommended. When I switched to LR back when it first came out my workflow sped up tremendously.
I have since switched to Aperture just last year as I like its tools better and I prefer its organizational structure but both programs will give you the same results if you know how to use both. They are enormous timesavers and your plugins are most likely available for them.
I have edited my original comments to be more specific, I wouldn't want to be thought of as misleading
Exactly. Bridge has always been weakest point for me. My workflow is much more efficient since I switched to Lightroom and also much more stable. Most of the plugins work with LR (NIK software, AlienSkin, OnOne, Imagenomic, etc.), obviously except those 32bit.
OnOne plug-in crashes
Well here's my 2 cents: any/all of the OnOne plug-ins (with the exception of Fractals/Perfect Resize) have crashed my machines (MacPro 5,1, 2009 UMBP) repeatedly, so I uninstalled them from all my machines--again, with the exception of Perfect Resize. And it will go, too if/when it misbehaves. The last straw was Remask 3...and I keep getting emails from them saying that they haven't been able to find a solution to the Remask PS Mac crashes. There isn't even a workaround, according to their blog.
So, after researching and watching all the demos at Photoshop World last week, I decided to go with Nik Software products. Just got Color Effects Pro 3 (with an upgrade to version 4), and I will install it this weekend. They _appear_ to be better engineered plugins, so we'll see...I certainly was not impressed with OnOne products. They had some big glitch with their activation process back when Leopard came out, and they apparently haven't gotten it straight yet. Perhaps your problems are with plugins rather than Adobe or Apple; that seems to be my case.
Well here's my 2 cents: any/all of the OnOne plug-ins (with the exception of Fractals/Perfect Resize) have crashed my machines (MacPro 5,1, 2009 UMBP) repeatedly, so I uninstalled them from all my machines--again, with the exception of Perfect Resize. And it will go, too if/when it misbehaves. The last straw was Remask 3...and I keep getting emails from them saying that they haven't been able to find a solution to the Remask PS Mac crashes. There isn't even a workaround, according to their blog.
So, after researching and watching all the demos at Photoshop World last week, I decided to go with Nik Software products. Just got Color Effects Pro 3 (with an upgrade to version 4), and I will install it this weekend. They _appear_ to be better engineered plugins, so we'll see...I certainly was not impressed with OnOne products. They had some big glitch with their activation process back when Leopard came out, and they apparently haven't gotten it straight yet. Perhaps your problems are with plugins rather than Adobe or Apple; that seems to be my case.
I don't care how awesome your hardware is, poorly written software can bring it to its knees. Sounds like most of your 3rd party software was written for PC with Mac as an afterthought so it is not surprising it ran slow and crashed a lot.
Mac is amazing if you are running software that focuses on it, but it won't magically make bad code run well. If your workflow is based on PC software then I would stick to PCs instead of trying to shoehorn in Macs
Mac is amazing if you are running software that focuses on it, but it won't magically make bad code run well. If your workflow is based on PC software then I would stick to PCs instead of trying to shoehorn in Macs
getting the best from CS5 and MacPro
If you haven't already, there is lots of information that will make PS fly on Lloyd Chamber's excellent website.
Essentially, as much RAM as possible and SSDs are your friend.
http://macperformanceguide.com/
http://diglloyd.com/
If you haven't already, there is lots of information that will make PS fly on Lloyd Chamber's excellent website.
Essentially, as much RAM as possible and SSDs are your friend.
http://macperformanceguide.com/
http://diglloyd.com/
I think the fact that software originally written on one platform and crossed over to another, just does not seem to work as well.
I see the same thing happen when mac software is crossed over to windows, like itunes for instance.