You seem to be missing the point that the advert aired whilst Bootcamp was not publicly available.
There's no use criticising an ad that's 5 years old and pre-dates the technology available now
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New 'MACDefender' Variant Installs Without Admin Password Requirement
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You seem to be missing the point that the advert aired whilst Bootcamp was not publicly available.
There's no use criticising an ad that's 5 years old and pre-dates the technology available now
You seem to be forgetting that technically, a Mac IS a PC (personal computer). The distinction Mac vs PC is used ONLY when referring to the Mac OS vs Windows. It's not spinning. It's fact. You're trying to rewrite history and the understanding of the world at large. It's not working. Go back and watch the ads. They don't talk about hardware differences, they talk about software differences.
Here's a list to help you out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_a_Mac#North_American_campaign
And what gets the viruses? The hardware or the software?
Please go away. You are bringing this argument down to the lowest level possible. Arguing with you is like arguing with a 5 year old if you bring up stuff like that because clearly you don't understand whats going on.
Your Mac has a virus if it runs Windows which has a "PC Virus" just like a PC has a virus if its Windows install has a virus. If that wasnt the case (in that only software gets viruses) then PCs have no viruses since only Windows has the virus.
See how your argument gets you no where?
Exactly. It's not the hardware that gets viruses; it's the software. The ads are about computers running Windows (referred to in the ads as PC) vs computers running Mac OS X (referred to in the ads as Mac). Surely you're smart enough to see that the ads are about operating system vs operating system, and not hardware maker vs hardware maker. Right?
No they aren't. If it was "hardware" then what would a "linux" be?
Its the OS, plain and simple. Sure, Apple makes some hardware too but when people refer to Mac, Windows, linux, Unix, etc they refer to a machine running the operating system.
Surely I am smart enough to see that they mention hardware (Mac and PC), but really refer to software as that was my original point.
Macs get viruses if PC's get viruses since a Mac is a "PC". herp derp
It was lovely of you to ask politely but no, I'm not going to go anywhere.
I'm merely pointing out how inane your argument is. I've spoken to plenty of people about Windows and Bootcamp on a Mac and they've all grasped the difference very quickly. They understood with no difficulty that if you run a different OS to the one the computer came with, all benefits you get with the original OS that you are not currently running are lost.
These people were students, parents and grandparents that I was advising and none of them struggled...
As I mentioned earlier "If we are being technical"
Way to blow it out of proportion. It was more to laugh at chrono than anything.
You blew this out of proportion long ago.
"If we're being technical" the ad says "last year there were 114,000 viruses for PC's " - that year was 2005, a year that not a single Mac was capable of running Windows.
Wow. You *have* to be joking.
Rubbish. Don't attack other people's understanding when your own is so bad.
There is no difference between UNIX and NT in terms of "fundamental" design with regards to background processes (or "services", if you prefer) running.
The history of UNIX is *littered* with background "services" being exploited, due to their poor design and poor coding. One could make an argument that NT should have learned from those mistakes rather than making its own, but any suggestion there are "fundamental" differences is either gross ignorance or deliberate deception.
No OS "at its core" is designed for "workstation use or remote administration". These are user space level features.
This is a (trivially fixed) application issue, it has nothing to do with the OS.
Fixing it *does* break badly written applications, but it also demonstrates that the OS itself is not the problem.
Where applications are installed is (largely) irrelevant to the privileges they run with. Added to which, UNIX has a fundamentally insecure concept - SUID root - that genuinely does allow any application open slather to the system, regardless of what user runs it (the Classic environment - and by extension any Classic apps - do this).
Also interesting that apparently "historic convention" on the Mac apparently only started in 2000 with OS X, yet apparently for Windows we must go back to the days of Windows 9x, if not 3.x.
I would be happy to lay down $100 that more like 99% of Mac users use an admin account for day to day use.
Nor is there any really compelling reason not to, as the additional security gained from not doing so is relatively insignificant.
Again, the bold print is what is being conveyed. All the fine print doesn't change that the average user's mentality was that Macs are worry free, this is why it's been so successful.
The names "Mac" and "PC" in the commercial refer to "Mac OS X" and "Windows". Only in a handful of the 60+ commercials even mentioned hardware, such as the MagSafe power cord or the iSight camera. One even mentioned that Mac hardware and software come from the same company, where PC hardware and the OS come from different companies. One ad did focus on "The fastest Windows Vista notebook we tested this year is a Mac." The rest of the ads were either about software or support.Surely I am smart enough to see that they mention hardware (Mac and PC), but really refer to software as that was my original point.
Macs get viruses if PC's get viruses since a Mac is a "PC". herp derp
Macs (all of which come with Mac OS X) do NOT get viruses. If you run a different operating system, then it's a Mac in hardware only, not where it counts, in the OS. You can talk in circles as long as you want, but you're not convincing anyone. Either you can't understand this simple fact (which I doubt), or you're deliberately being obtuse to prolong an argument, which is childish and pointless.
I was intending to install Flow, I was on google images. I had just clicked on the Flow img file and with the browser minimized up popped the MacDefender installer box. I clicked install just as I saw it wasn't Flow. I wasn't looking up pornographic images either, I was looking for wallpaper of Beagles. It was a coincidence. I just wanted to point out that it can get people easy.
Sort of. I had just clicked the .img for the program Flow and had minimized the google image search I was doing when a box different from the one you show here opened. Had I not just clicked on the Flow .img it would have raised a red flag. It was just a coincidence.
No paying attention doesn't make you a fanboy. Attacking people and calling them stupid in an effort to ostracize people who point out weaknesses in the Mac or otherwise not follow lock step with the Jobs is God paradigm are.
Safari has implemented Google Safe Browsing, File Quarantine, and Xprotect to achieve that same effect for a while now.
These types of systems will never be 100% on any OS.
These types of security mitigations shouldn't be overly relied upon to maintain online safety regardless of the OS or other security software in use.
There is no point in pretending or believing that kind of security mitigation isn't just a band-aid, at least most of the time, to make unknowledgeable users feel confident about using the internet to make transactions online.
Many users want to rely on software solutions. It is a sad part of reality that malware developers use toward financial gain.
People make money off the internet. E-commerce websites are everywhere. Even companies in the computer business are making money off the internet. Last time I checked, Apple made money from iTunes.
Any marketing from any source is full of sophistry to motivate customers toward the goal of advertising; that goal being to make money.
That is a HUGE security problem for Apple -- Allows normal users to have admin privileges. They need to force people not to do that by perhaps not letting "normal" software run in an admin account For example all the iLife programs and Safrai would check and refuse to run if launched from an admin account.
Yes you can say "Stupid users, why are they running there day to day work in an admin account?" But really is should be "Stupid Apple, why do they allow it?"
Yes you can say "Stupid users, why are they running there day to day work in an admin account?" But really is should be "Stupid Apple, why do they allow it?"
How is this a weakness in the Mac, though? It's just doing exactly what you told it to do.
I don't really think that running as a normal account would make much practical difference. All the stuff you care about - email, pictures, documents, etc., etc. - is fully accessible to normal accounts.
I'm a Mac guy but I love to see other Mac guys trying to rephrase/change words/do anything so this thing looks different than what plagues PCs.
And the truth is it is the same, sorry. And yes, any virus is malware.
I was laughed at when I installed an AV app (a real one
) on my Mac some time ago. I felt embarrassed so I deleted it eventually. Shame on me Having admin privileges is not a huge security problem. In this situation, there is no need for the malware to install itself in /Applications. It could happily install all of its software in a user directory without a password. It would still run at login and be just as damaging.
Any app could do a 'rm * -rf' in a user directory without limitation, admin account or not. It is not the same as running as the root user - which really is a bad idea. There really is little benefit to running as a non-admin user. It's more for stopping your kids activating FileVault and forgetting the password than anything else
Yes, any virus is malware, but not all malware are viruses. It's not the same at all.
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Yeah thats it.
Yeah thats it.
No it doesn't.
Admin accounts really aren't that special. The additional risk from using an admin account day to day is practically zero.