[leicaman]

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Doesn't matter. This Bloomberg analyst says the iPhone will be a failure.
http://www.bloomberg...MAv0&refer=home

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The guy is wrong, just like the same trash talk when the iPod was introduced. The guy has no clue.
Here are some comments, right from MacCentral on the day the iPod was introduced in October 2005:
- "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?"
- "All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off."
- "Better bring that price down or you wont sell any of these babies"

[Rhywun]

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I think it's pretty clear to the general public what we're referring to when we say "Hackers" instead.

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Only because the general public, unsurprisingly, latched onto the most malicious interpretation of the word. Enh, whatever - the battle was lost 20 years ago. At least "crackers" themselves rarely have the gall to call themselves "hackers" any more.

[SeaFox]

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In an e-mail interview, one of the hackers behind the Month of Apple Bugs project, which is disclosing new Apple security vulnerabilities every day for the month of January, said he would love to mess with the iPhone.
If its really going to run OS X, [the iPhone] will bring certain security implications, such as potential misuses of wireless connectivity facilities, [and] deployment of malware in a larger scale, the hacker known as LMH wrote in an e-mail. He declined to provide his real name.
Because the device could include a range of advanced computing features, such as Apples Bonjour service discovery protocol, it could provide many avenues of attack, according to LMH. The possibilities of a worm for smartphones are something to worry about, he wrote. Imagine Bonjour, and all the mess of features that OS X has, concentrated in a highly portable device which relies on wireless connectivity.

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Wow, if that's not a textbook example of FUD-spreading, I don't know what is. And this guy wants us to believe the MOAB is about improving Apple Security, and that he's NOT an Apple-hater?

[Jason Snell]

And we all know that Java-based Symbian phones and Windows CE devices are just solid as a rock.
The MoAB guys are clowns. Clowns with skills, but clowns nonetheless. When you're releasing a cross-platform VLC bug on day three of your event, you've lost all credibility.

[kingarthur]

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These guys, especially the Security Industry (Software and Consultants) whose only form of marketing is FEAR are all Leeches and can only be compared to Theater and Movie Critics.

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Wrong! You must have meant insurance agents for comparison. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
I will say this once again...
hackers or crackers do not care what OS you are running. All they want to do is get into your computer and your information.

[tjustin7]

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Do you know why there are so many attempts on Windows machines and so little to none on MacOS? Market Share. No hacker or malware or virus writer wants to bother with Mac OS X. For one, it would probably take a bit more work that with windows, and second - 3-4% of people "might" be affected.

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This is the stupidest, most poisonously wrongheaded logic -- there were plenty of viruses, worms, etc. for OS9, and there are precisely zero (real ones) for MacOSX. Hackers would love the cachet of breaking the supposedly impenetrable MacOSX -- the real reason is that Apple has a far more solid kernel and is far more responsive (admittedly easier for them, given their control over core hardware). The truth is, the only people who seem to want anyone to be concerned about MacOSX malware are increasingly desperate security-software peddlers and juvenile hackers. Windows was not designed for modern network environments, but unix/OSX was -- unix adapts (40 years of in-use testing and refinement), Apple adapts (changing OS, processor), while Microsoft stagnates with incremental changes and an absolutely fixed processor.

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A platform's security is more than the sum of the current number of exploits.
This is because many of the problems that afflict windows are not ones that are new and unheard of, they are ones where a patch has been out some time -- it's just there is a LARGE base of people who are unpatched.

Right now all the exploits found in OSX aren't meaningful -- yet.
Essentially they are just seeds for a problems down the road. If users maintain everything, those seeds won't grow.
But once you've got too many careless people, suddenly there are major problems for everybody.
A 2007 model car might not have any major problems yet (it might just be making some weird engine noises).... and that's great -- but the real question is what will happen in a few years? Does that minor little noise turn into a something major? Or does it stay a minor noise?
OS9 was around long enough to find out that the squeaky seat did eventually turn into a broken spring, and that "the weird noise" turned out to be the muffler falling off.
OSX is still too shiny & new out of the factory for those minor problems to turn into anything serious -- yet. That doesn't mean they won't, or that the muffler is invulnerable and more secure by design -- it means that it will probably take a few years to find out.
Windows is like the public bus - if the springs in the seat are even the slightest bit bad, they WILL be broken. OSX is like a nice minivan - it's holding up to the careful driver, but what happens once you start loading it up with kids jumping on the seats? What happens when you start putting in people that aren't careful?

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Windows was not designed for modern network environments, but unix/OSX was -- unix adapts (40 years of in-use testing and refinement), Apple adapts (changing OS, processor), while Microsoft stagnates with incremental changes and an absolutely fixed processor.

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This is utter nonsense.
Of all the issues Microsoft has/had, the technical "under the hood features" has NOT been a weak point for Microsoft.
That's in stark contrast to Apple and OS9 - which was a technical disaster.

[mobiustrip]

johnnydo writes:

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I guess you think companies that create cancer fighting drugs also produce cancer causing chemicals!

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Not the best analogy perhaps :-)
(I hope we're not going to get into trying to figure out how many companies that create cancer fighting drugs also produce cancer causing chemicals. That would be even more indeterminate than the virus talk.)
This message was brought to you by Dow Chemicals, producer of fine chemical warfare products like Agent Orange and Napalm, and the good people at DowPharma, working today to cure cancer tomorrow ;-)
(Orange you glad I didn't mention the Bhopal Massacre, WMDs and the 'War of Terror?')

[Steve_S]

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This is utter nonsense.
Of all the issues Microsoft has/had, the technical "under the hood features" has NOT been a weak point for Microsoft.
That's in stark contrast to Apple and OS9 - which was a technical disaster.

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You also need to keep things in the proper perspective. The classic Mac OS is best compared to the first workable version of Windows - (Win 3.1). Windows 95/98/ME were a little better in some respects, but were also a technical disaster under the hood in their own rights.
As for security, things like ActiveX were and to some degree continue to be a disaster. Vista is addressing many of XP's short comings, but they're late to the security awareness party.
Steve

[alphanoir]

I've got to agree with you on that one, WildDenali.
Not only could it be running on PowerPC based architecture, but how do we know that it hasn't been running for quite some time on a more standard cell phone architecture? That would be in sync with when we 'discovered' OS X had been running on Intel for several years in testing while it was on PowerPC based architecture.
These hackers are just really hoping Apple is as dumb as your run of the mill PC Dweeb company.

[MacGeek1955]

I think the number of viruses for OS9 was in the 30s or 40s. Probably half of those were Microsoft viruses that infected Microsoft products that ran on OS9. IE Word Macro Virus. It really didn't do any harm but would infect Mac versions of Word, although the same virus caused some problems in Windows. I do remember a couple of nasty viruses in OS9.
Still compared to the 250,000+ viruses for Windows, OS9 was very safe.
The market share argument that Windows users throw in Mac users face has some truth to it, but the main reason people don't attack Macs is the difficulty of attack and the lesser payoff. Their are places all over the internet where Windows users pick up key loggers that call servers with scripts that collect data on thousands of people. Even sensitive data such as credit card numbers and passwords get picked. On a Mac the payoff might be a Quicktime crash or something minor and the difficulty involved in the hack or virus would not justify the payoff. Ad to that, the smaller number of Macs in the population and Mac attacking is just not very popular. If it were a market share only issue Macs would have 5% of the viruses, or maybe 3%, but they don't get 1/100th of a percent of the viruses.