4 ms·

Perceived security? How many hundred thousand new pieces of malware for the mac this year again?

• raganwald 18y ago
  An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. Scottish sheep are black." "No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears black from here." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke
  • Hexstream 18y ago
    I was referencing effective security (what your chances are of contracting something bad), not theoretical security (how inherently secure the system is or isn't). You're effectively safer on a mac than Windows regardless of the design and architecture. It's just a fact that you have orders of magnitude less malware on the mac. So saying macs have "perceivably" better (effective) security than Windows is a bit like saying white is perceivably brighter than black. Technically true, but it sounds a tad dishonest to me (or maybe he was just talking about theoretical security).
    • ensignavenger 18y ago
      Yes, but you should still take the SAME basic security precautions on both platforms. And if you do so, you are probably just as safe on Vista, and maybe safer. The biggest security risk on the MAC is a false sense of security. I don't know how many people have told me, "I have a Mac, I can't possibly get anything bad!"