[jmincey]

No one is berating anyone. It's simply that any ordinary user the least bit fluent in OS X should know when to double click and when not to. Remember, this is someone presuming to write an instructive article on OS X security. The standard should be higher for Mac authors than for others -- don't you think? If not, why do we bother reading articles if we can't expect a level of expertise higher than that of the average OS X user?

[durandal343]

this is someone presuming to write an instructive article on OS X security.
In all fairness, it is an opinion article. I do not believe that it was meant to be instructive in nature.

[mcseufer]

I've been using a Mac since 1988. I'm a Mac professional who's been out of college for a while now and who is currently employed by one of the largest universities in the US.
I have a PC due to the type of work I do that requires cross-platform testing. I find myself getting mixed up sometimes when I switch back and forth between the two systems in terms of keypresses, etc.
While I appreciate some of the comments regarding wanting articles proofread and wanting FUD removed/researched, etc, I think some of you do indeed need to stop nitpicking. It's rather ironic that some of you complaining about erros have errors in your own posts. Even more ironic that some of you who are nitpicking are calling the author a he when in fact the author is female.
What I'm getting at is that this reminds me of that stupid First Post BS that kids were doing on forums a while back.
Banter all you want about what she's writing, but some of you seem to only come here and post just to find something wrong with one of the articles instead of focusing on what the author was trying to say.
As for the article itself, I disagree with her comments about LittleSnitch. I think she needs to learn the app and give it more time. However, she's right, it's not for grandma. Then again, network security and dealing with ports and firewalls aren't concepts that everyday computer users are fluent with either.
Being a former network admin, I appreciate what Little Snitch does and I'm quite happy with the product myself.
Everyone's remarks about her Little Snitch comments are right on.
In the future, it would paint Mac users in a better light if we stopped emulating the Slashdot crowd who only seem to post in order to be funny or b1tch at something.
Like someone else said earlier - people like that need to get a life.

[durandal343]

In the future, it would paint Mac users in a better light if we stopped emulating the Slashdot crowd who only seem to post in order to be funny or b1tch at something.
I was the first poster here and truthfully I was turned off by the error in the article. It affected my opinion of the writing enough that I though it pertinant to post. I have also defended the same article on the basis that it is an opinion and not supposed to be read in the same light as say.. a software review. I was not posting just for the sake of posting nor because I had a bad day and wanted to take it out on someone. I had a valid (in my opinion) comment about the writing.

[jmincey]

"In all fairness, it is an opinion article. I do not believe that it was meant to be instructive in nature."
I think it was meant to be instructive -- depending on how we define this term. Sure, it wasn't a step-by-step tutorial on OS X security configuration, but it was certainly a piece on the misconceptions of OS X security and how best to address security issues for the platform given the landscape of viruses today and the prospects for the future.
Macworld does not publish counsel on such matters by authors which it considers to lack expertise -- fair enough?

[jmincey]

In reply to:

---

I find myself getting mixed up sometimes when I switch back and forth between the two systems in terms of keypresses, etc.

---

Sure, this could happen to anyone -- no matter their level of expertise. But if you were writing and publishing an article on a tech-oriented web site which is intended to give advice and knowledge to its readers, would you not take more care about your clicks, double-clicks, menus, keystrokes, etc?
"It's rather ironic that some of you complaining about erros have errors in your own posts."
Not in the least. User forums are known to be untidy places. I don't apply the same level of proofreading to posts I dash off in a user forum as I do to formal articles. Do you? I see no irony here.
I think you are downplaying the importance of image. People need to have a certain confidence level in the authors who claim some level of expertise and who presume to inform or enlighten the rest of us. Now the standard I wish to apply here is not one of infallibility -- of course not. But one area in which the Windows and OS X UI's agree is that a single-click is all that is necessary in the Task Bar or Dock. Single clicks are used in tool bars, side bars, web browsers, etc.
Sometimes little things are big things -- because they have the potential to undermine a reader's confidence level. If this author referred to the Dock as the Task Bar, would you regard this as inconsequential as well?
Are there bigger issues -- such as Little Snitch? Of course. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect more accuracy from someone who presumes to inform us about an issue -- particularly when she contends that we Mac users are beset by misconceptions or complacency in this regard.

[slambert73]

I also think Little Snitch got a bad rap. If you totally trust a program you should select "any network connection" in the drop down box and then hit the "allow forever" button. That way if you use a program that uses several ports or servers you only have to do this once per program. For example my web browser has been granted this privilage.

As far as the double-click controversy. It was worth posting the correction. I'm sure the author is appropriately chastised by durandal343's original message, but nearly all the rest of the commentary is uneccesary and harsh. If your only evidence as to the quality of the author's work is this one error then you have nothing at all. Mac's are great but don't be a Mac-snob.

[Philip Michaels]

In reply to:

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Macworld does not publish counsel on such matters by authors which it considers to lack expertise

---

For what it's worth, this article originally appeared at the site of our sister publication, PC World. We picked it up because we thought the topic of the article was relevant to our readers and because it's sometimes instructive to see how other publications are covering the Mac universe.
When we originally posted the article, we left out the PC World designation in the byline -- that oversight has since been corrected. And we also try, when reposting such content, to make sure that the terminology is edited to reflect our more Mac-specific readership; obviously, this didn't happen this time. We apologize for any confusion that these initial oversights might have caused.

[jdb8167]

In reply to:

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We picked it up because we thought the topic of the article was relevant to our readers and because it's sometimes instructive to see how other publications are covering the Mac universe.

---

So it is a PC World article written by someone who shows a lack of knowledge of OS X and recommends that Mac users buy third party security software.
That is pretty disturbing actually.

[stephenrea]

In reply to:

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No one is berating anyone. It's simply that any ordinary user the least bit fluent in OS X should know when to double click and when not to.

---

I've seen people that have been using computers for years (both Windows and Mac) who don't know when to click vs. double click. And many Windows users that start blankly when you say right-click. Many keep clicking away until something happens, and then often end up clicking the new button that came up. So many people never understood control-click on the Mac, that Apple made it a menu. Microsoft even created a workaround on the Windows desktop where you can make every icon a single click to open.

[jmincey]

In reply to:

---

I've seen people that have been using computers for years (both Windows and Mac) who don't know when to click vs. double click. And many Windows users that start blankly when you say right-click. Many keep clicking away until something happens, and then often end up clicking the new button that came up.

---

And are they writing articles for computer journals?

[minderbinder]

Based on this article...it looks like they are!

[jofallon]

Little Snitch only gives an alert when you are hitting a site for the first time. Once you approve the site, that's it. It only gets tricky when a site uses an IP address rather than a url; and those are the sorts of things I like to see, as that's when things may be going wrong.
The author must not use Zone Alarm much from the sound of it, or have disabled most alerts. Having set up Zone Alarm in various versions on a dozen or so PC's, it puts out far more alerts than Little Snitch

[techNotes]

Apple and the Mac User community should learn from the attacks on Windows. Simply believing that OS X is invulnerable doesn't mean that it is. If OS X is so invulnerable then why does Apple release security patches on a fairly regular basis? Just because there aren't widespread attacks doesn't mean that there aren't vulnerabilities.
The prudent position whether you're running OS X or Windows is to assume that your system is vulnerable. Keep it locked down as tightly as possible. Use antivirus filtering especially on email and downloads. Apply security patches as soon as possible (this is critical).

Those are the main facts. First, it is much more difficult to write a virus or other malware against a rock-solid Unix OS like Mac OS X versus hole-filled Windows. But second, even if a virus is written, it will not spread in the wild to other users like in the Windows World. Not even to other users of the same computer. In Windows, any virus can go to all users of the same computer and to all computers out there.
Those aren't facts! If you act on those statements you will make your computer vulnerable to any virus that targets OS X.
Although there are kernel attacks, a significant number of viruses target specific application weaknesses like Internet Explorer, Outlook and even itunes. Once an application is compromised, the account running it is compromised. So, if you're running an email program and you download and run an attachment with a virus, it's possible for the virus to read your address book and forward itself to everyone listed. This doesn't have to be a priviledged account and it can happen on Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris or any other operating system. It gets much worse if you're running as an Administrator account on Windows (way too many people do this without knowing it) because then the entire OS can be compromised. The similar exploit on Unix systems is to target the root account but many (hopefully most) Unix systems disable the root account and heavily restrict operating as "root".
Some attacks target vulnerabilities in libraries that are used by applications. Common code (for things like pictures stored as JPEG files) is often kept in a library and all the applications that process it use the code in the library (so a web browser, email, photo editing might use the same code). A library vulnerability can compromise all the programs that use it. Once again, compromising a program compromises the account it's running in. You can try to look at a jpeg file in your browser and suddenly there's a virus forwarding itself to everyone in your address book.
There are a few basic things that make Windows vulnerable to attacks:

[*]Shoddy system setup and administration comes from the belief that nothing's going to happen; things like you don't need to scan for viruses and it's okay to run as a priviledged Administrator account

[*]Failure to install security updates as soon as they're available places a system at incredible risk; when Microsoft releases a Security Patch, it's immediately reverse engineered by virus writers who try to target all the systems that don't have the patch installed.

[*]The huge number of Windows systems makes it very easy and profitable for virus writers to target them; why go after Macs when there could be 100 Windows systems for every Mac system out there?

[*]The virus writers have far more experience exploiting vulnerabilities on Windows than other systems; a vulnerability is only valuable when there's an exploit for it.

[/list]
Look at that list and ask yourself if there's anything genuinely specific to Windows about it. If (unfortunately probably when), someone decides to attack OS X, they'll go look at the security patches and target Safari, Mac Mail, Image/sound processing, etc.
OS X is incredibly successful. How long will that success be ignored before someone decides to go after it for either malice or greed? The Mac is the premier platform for media work. How valuable is all the work that's done on Macs? How profitable would it be to steal the images, sounds, music and videos that are created on a Mac?
Still think you don't need antivirus protection?
That was a very good editorial. It would be a tragedy for OS X to be compromised by the same complacency that has compromised Windows. BTW, I don't work for an antivirus company but I have worked on operating system development for over twenty years including Unix and Windows. As much as I like OS X, I've seen nothing that makes it inherently more secure than Windows, Linux, Solaris, etc. Like all things Apple, it's just so much easier to setup that way. Designing computers for people to use... what a concept!