December 5, 2008 by Jay Smith
Remenber on Wednesday when we told you about how Apple were advising Mac users to use not one but two anti-virus programmes via their website, despite the Apple’s marketing department’s continued claims that their products are highly secure. Well, that advice has now been removed.
An Apple spokesman called the deleted support document “old and inaccurate,” despite the fact that the advice had been issued fairly recently. The document’s inclusion on the apple website caused quite a stir in the blogsphere as well as traditional media, which will probably only intensify thanks to its swift removal.
Security experts have long argued that to claim that the Mac OS is immune or very resistant to viruses is irresponsible and that the system has been given an easy ride by malware authors thus far thanks to its relatively limited usage. Now that this is changing and more people are using Apple products, the feeling amongst many is that Apple need to be much more transparent about their system’s susceptibility to viruses.
It could be said that this issue boils down to the conflict between Apple wanting to market its OS as more secure than Windows and its need to service the security needs of its users. It’s an internal problem they are going to have to solve quickly. At least they’re talking about it though, that’s more than they’ve don before.
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