Macs and Viruses: Myths Debunked

Most peo­ple state that Mac users do not get infected with viruses because Mac users are “smarter” or because Mac com­put­ers only make up a frac­tion of the per­sonal com­puter mar­ket, and there­fore it would not be a prof­itable mar­ket for virus writers.

How­ever, Macs are not eas­ily infected because it is a vari­ant of Linux, which means that Mac appli­ca­tions are self-contained, and does not have to hold it set­tings in a cen­tral repos­i­tory, such as the Win­dows Registry.

There are peo­ple who have writ­ten virus code for the Mac OS oper­at­ing sys­tem, but viruses are much less effec­tive, and much eas­ier to remove that their Win­dows counterpart.

If Microsoft wanted to really make their oper­at­ing sys­tem more secure they could release an oper­at­ing sys­tem that does not use a reg­istry, but instead uses XML files. This move alone would ren­der cur­rent viruses ineffective.

Secur­ing Win­dows might make since to the user, but it means a lot of lost income to the likes of Syman­tec, McAfee, Com­puter Asso­ciates, Best Buy, AT&T, and oth­ers who either attempt to keep viruses at bay or sup­port you in your virus removal efforts once you have been infected.