Why macs aren’t susceptible to viruses

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Anyone who knows a Mac owner normally knows all about how they don’t really get viruses on them. As a Mac owner myself I can’t help but mention it everytime I come across a Windows user suffering a virus which I’m sure just pisses them off and doesn’t help the situation at all.

As a Mac evangelist something I do often get from PC fans is the argument about the reasons why Macs have their immunity

Their argument is that Macs have such a small market share so no one would make any money writing viruses for them. This is argument is invalid.

In the days before OS X (10) there was OS 9 and that was absolutely riddled with viruses. Mac OS 9 also had very small market share, around 1%. OS X has around 10% market share. This completely debunks the whole market share myth. I also believe that if Macs were susceptible to viruses and I was a hacker/scriptkiddy type I would love to have the glory of being the creator of the “Mac virus” that screwed all the Mac users over and there wouldn’t need to be a financial motive behind me, just the glory.

So why are Macs running OS X less susceptible?

During the birth of the internet and the dot com boom came a lot of security issues. Microsoft and Apples solution came in the form of 3rd party peices of software to try and cover the many holes and flaws in their operating systems. This sparked the beginning of the massive antivirus/security market that PCs have today.

During this time at Apple, Steve Jobs (Co founder of Apple) got forced out for being to controlling of people in the company. When he left he took 6 Apple employees with him and founded a new company called “Next“. Because they were starting out at a time when PCs were constantly connected to the internet they wrote their new OS (NextStep) with security in mind, unlike Microsofts Windows and Apples OS 9 which were having security issues left right and center.  NextStep was loosely based on the Unix specification which helped make it highly secure.

After Jobs announcing NextStep Apple tried suing the company claiming they would have inside information from Jobs time at Apple. Steve has been quoted to have said “It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans”. The case was thrown out of court.

Fast forward a couple of years and Apple are in trouble having an outdated OS that would take far too long to be re-written securely. They were desperate and needed to find a company they could buy with a more modern OS that they could work from. Apple eventually decided to buy Next and use their NextStep OS as the foundation of the next Mac OS.

To this day OS X has been mainly virus free apart from one or two that popped up in the early days and a couple of “proof of concept” viruses that never really caused a threat.

There are a few rumours of Microsoft writing a new secure OS from scratch but it sounds a very long time away and I honestly believe that with the PC security market place being so big that Microsoft would have a lot of security firms to awnser to if they did start over with a secure OS.

I cant guarantee that all the information in this article is 100% spot on but I have tried my best to keep the information pretty factual. If there are any inaccuracies in the article please feel free to let me know.

The Defamation of Strickland Banks

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Wow! This album is absolutely amazing!

The album is laid out as a story in a similar fashion to “A grand don’t come for free” by the Streets. Ben Drew A.K.A. ‘Plan B‘ has always been a grimy rap artist with rather explicit and controversial lyrics. The album is a refreshing change from that. Ben sings his way through the whole album throwing a few rap verses in a couple of the songs. The music is heavily influenced by Motown and Northern Soul, although it is refreshing that this is new music and not just resampled soul classics like a lot of rap artists tend to use.

My favourite songs from the album are She said (currently in the charts), Welcome to Hell, The Recluse and Prayin, although all the tracks are quality ones.

Rating: ★★★★★

Check out the album on iTunes and Amazon.

Update: Now No.1 in the iTunes album charts!

Steam 4 Mac!

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Happy with news that Steam are creating a Mac client for their online games distribution service! Normally Macs are left out in the cold only receiving a bit of love from Blizzard along with the terrible ports from Aspyr.

I do hope they do a version of Left4Dead for the Mac as I bought the PC version but dont really play it often because of the tediousness of closing all my macs apps and booting windows.

We got our Hulu

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The difference being that ours isn’t called Hulu, its SeeSaw. Quite a clever name. I’ve been doing some testing of SeeSaw this morning and I’m quite impressed by it. Its populated by content from the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5. The video quality isn’t as good as BBC iPlayer but its good enough for catching up on things you’ve not seen, I watched Skins series 3 and didn’t experience and buffering issues.

I recommend giving the service a try at seesaw.com.

PC World recommendations (continued)

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I made another trip to PC World today to get my broken camera replaced as it was under warranty. It had developed a habit of turning off and on again every time I wanted to use it, which of course didn’t happen when I tried to recreate the the problem for ‘The Tech Guys’.

We met our helpful friend from my previous post who was more than helpful. After apologising for not having the model I wanted in stock he knocked 10% off a camera that had been on display. Considering that I only had the broken camera on my person with no cables or reciept I can honestly say I was very impressed by the service. I may not like 90% of the stock sold in the store but I am happy with the way I was looked after.

I swapped a Kodak M1022 for a Sony Cybershot DSC-W210. This means that the resolution has gone from 10 megapixel to 12 and my video recording quality has been bumped up from 720p to 1080i. Well worth a visit to PC World in my eyes.

Edit: Upon further inspection turns out the camera doesn’t do HD video at all. The big HD 1080i sticker refers to it outputting pictures to a HD TV. Pretty gutted, definitely wouldn’t have got this camera if id have known. Cant really take it back now :(

Car drivers and their responsibility to bikers

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Since my scooter accident I have been thinking alot about not the safety of scooters themselves but the safety of some car drivers on the roads. Alot of collisions that involve 2 wheeled vehicles are often not the fault of the biker.

Some MPs suggest that bikes are dangerous and should be banned. I think this is rubbish. That  is not the solution to the problem. I agree with the argument that if I stick to driving cars I will generally be safer but I do think its wrong to say I shouldn’t be able to ride a vehicle I enjoy substantially more because some car drivers don’t take enough care on the road. We could use the same argument for pedestrians and cars. I could say that too many pedestrians are killed per year by cars deeming them not safe. Of course this is a stupid argument but it is equally as stupid as the banning bikes one.

So whats my suggested solution?

Well I think that if all car drivers were made to pass a bike test before they could pass a car test the roads would be a much safer place for everyone. They would know what its like to be on the smaller, more exposed vehicles and would be more considerate to these road users. This would be a good all round solution for congestion too as I believe if more people had experience on a bike there would be more of them around, which means less cars which take significantly more space on the road.

Of course I know that this law will never be written but I can dream. Im sure alot of people reading this will think its wrong but if they looked at the bigger picture I’m sure they’d understand the good it would do.