Viruses and the Mac, again

May 20, 2003

Eric expanded on my recent entry regarding viruses on Macintosh computers, particularly running OS X. Anyway, like Eric I haven’t installed any anti-virus software on my computers. Am I living dangerously? Maybe. But not a single person anywhere that I’ve heard of has gotten a virus on a Mac running OS X (those running Virtual PC don’t count). I do get some Word files from clients, but Microsoft Office has its own built-in protection scheme to let you know if a file has a macro so why do I need protection on top of that from something that’s a rare occurrence to begin with? Eventually, someone is going to create a Mac virus just to knock us Apple-lovers off our high horse. It will probably be paid by Symantec or the folks who make Virex.

What drives me crazy on the Mac lists are folks who fret about virus software but never backup their drives. Hello!?! For a Mac user, regular and reliable backups are more important than any virus protection software. I back up my important files religiously both to external drives (every hour) and CD-Rs (once every few weeks or when a job is done, whichever comes first). What’s the worst that can happen? I get the first Mac OS X virus floating around, I reformat my drive, reload my applications and files from backup and buy virus protection software. Big deal. Until then, the virus software available for the Mac is more trouble than it’s worth. It’s known to have bugs, it takes RAM and CPU cycles that can be better used elsewhere and has to be updated often. And no one can prove that they really work or do anything because there’s nothing to test it with. Just not worth it. Yet.

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