You're certainly welcome.

Welcome to the Mac community, and come to the forums if you have any other questions...someone here always knows the answer ;)

I think the chances are me being the first to get a virus are pretty slim.

I agree. But that would seem to be an argument for not running an AV program at all - until you hear of the existence of an OS X virus.

I guess that what running an AV program does for you is that it relieves you from the need of keeping up on OS X news (but you probably do that anyway!) since the AV program's automatic update feature would find out about the existence of an OS X virus. So that's an arguably good reason to have an AV program installed now - in advance of any OS X viruses.

But if that is the only feature that you need, it should be possible to configure the AV program to not bother running any scans until an update tells it that an OS X virus now exists. In fact, it should be possible to only install the update feature and avoid all the other downsides of AV programs.

Well, I can tell you I'm not going to run around installing AV software on 250+ Macs when it happens. :)

But that's the whole point I, at least, have been trying to make.

You won't have to.

Every virus ever written has taken advantage of a programming error--a bug. Many of the bugs have been design flaws rather than ``oops'' errors, but they're bugs nonetheless.

The solution to stopping viruses isn't to run antivirus software to catch viruses in the act or after the fact. The solution is to write well-designed and well-written code in the first place (which Apple, largely, has already done) and to promptly fix bugs as they're discovered (which Apple has a very good record of doing).

It's all but guaranteed that, in as much time as--if not substantially less than--it takes the AV people to come up with a signature file for the first Mac virus, Apple will have released a patch that fixed the bug that the virus relies upon.

So, really, it's fair to say that OS X ships with anti-virus software pre-installed (the well-written code that makes infection in the first place infeasible) and they offer, free with every Mac, an anti-virus update service (Software Update) that's pre-configured to check for new viruses and install active defenses regularly and nearly automatically.

Cheers,

b&

*DING* We have a winner.

Remember that Windows was written 15 years ago when no PC connected to the internet and it was assumed that all users could be trusted. There are features (like the recent WMF vulnerability issue) that have existed in Windows since then.

In other words, the code was written with CONVENIENCE in mind but not security. Patching that up is just about impossible. What MS should do is what Apple did--scrap it all and start over. That's the only way to be secure.

Yes, but then they lose their one and only advantage, since a system designed that way wouldn't run most of the software available for current Windoze variants, let alone legacy systems. They're really in a bind, and I don't mind admitting that I'm loving it. :D It couldn't happen to a nicer company.

Of course. It would prompt people to look at alternatives. That's why they won't do it. Simple and cheap, that's the American consumer's choice.

Regardless.. I'm STILL going to ****ing run AV software on all these boxes. Call it paranoia, I don't care. It's running and will remain so.

On reason to keep the AV software running, is let's say someone does create and release a virus for OS-X. Once it's out there and found out about, the AV company is going to get hot on updating their def's to beat it, and there's a decent chance that the def's will be updated before Yellow's company gets hit with the virus.

I'll bet that Apple patches before the definitions are available.

I am pretty confident there's a response plan at Apple for such a thing which includes all-night coding as needed. Think of the headlines it would make when it takes up to a month or more to patch some Windows vulnerabilities and Apple does it overnight.