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> Apple's perceived superiority on the security front Still one of the biggest lies that Apple ever told. The very first I'm Mac I'm PC was 100% about how the

• ralfd 9y ago
  How was that a lie when the ad aired? The ad also doesn't make the claim, just that Mac can't get infected by thousands of Windows viruses.
  • baldfat 9y ago
    It doesn't say that it just says it's not an issue with Mac.
• digi_owl 9y ago
  Funny thing is that it may have been more true back before OSX than afterwards. According to Woz the early Mac's held so much of the OS in ROM that a malware could not get a solid foothold. That said, i have found Apple to be more of a marketing company dabbling in consumer electronics, than a computer company.
  • scottmf 9y ago
    You say that as though they don't make some of the best laptops out there.
  • Angostura 9y ago
    Absolutely not. I worked in publishing during the 90s and virtually every Mac disk that came into us from a freelancer had a Mac virus on it. Luckily an excellent free bit of Software called 'Disinfectant' spotted and sorted it. It was eventually retired by its author sadly when Office Macro Viruses started running amuck and were too difficult to track. By the time it was retired, I seem to recall it acted on nearly 200 viruses and worms.
  • duskwuff 9y ago
    > According to Woz the early Mac's held so much of the OS in ROM that a malware could not get a solid foothold. Might have been true for the really early Macintosh computers. Definitely not later on, though. Later systems stored an increasing amount of the System on the hard drive, and the NewWorld PowerPC Macs (iMac and later) moved the remnants of the ROM to the hard disk.
    • savoytruffle 9y ago
      That's a strange claim since even with Old World ROM, any Extension in the startup chain could replace any part of the ROM without limit. System 7 and beyond were essentially cobbled together that way.
      • duskwuff 9y ago
        Right, I meant the really early systems like the Macintosh 128K -- well before extensions were even a thing. Some infrequently used system components, like disk formatting ("PACK 2"), were stored on the boot disk, but the vast majority of the system was in ROM.
  • astrodust 9y ago
    Are you kidding? Classic MacOS was riddled with viruses and it was made worse by the fact that they were used by designers who, as a matter of habit and necessity, would exchange disks with random people and use them in random computers. In the 1990s visiting a copy shop with Macs was like going to a sketchy by Thai standards brothel. You were almost guaranteed to come back with some new infection. You'd reasonably quarantine anything that came back from your print shop until you could scan it. The temptation to hold your Syquest disk with rubber tongs was there. Switching the processor PowerPC made many of the viruses incompatible, but they weren't fully eliminated until the switch to OS X was complete.
    • savoytruffle 9y ago
      Switching from 68k to PPC, the emulator was good enough to emulate mixed sections of the actual operating system. Viruses weren't foiled that way.
      • astrodust 9y ago
        Not many, but some that were from the early days of the 68K line were finally put out of their misery.
  • megablast 9y ago
    > That said, i have found Apple to be more of a marketing company dabbling in consumer electronics, than a computer company. One of the more ridiculous statements bought up about Apple.