Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Now that we’ve passed the peak of yet another “virus” that isn’t, the usual security researchers, who seem to be clueless, say the same thing they always say, in essence: Mac users need to wake up and stop thinking they’re invulnerable to malware. That statement makes one big false presumption, that Mac users think they’re invulnerable to malware.

In the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and converse with hundreds of Mac users from all kinds of places and backgrounds. I would consider the cross section of people I’ve encountered a good representative sampling of the user community as a whole, and I can say that not one of those people considers their Mac invulnerable to malware. None. Zero. And having to endure that characterization by outsiders is insulting.

It’s obvious why security researchers and anti-virus creators want Mac OS X to be as vulnerable as other operating systems. It’s childishness, spite, and jealousy that drive users of other operating systems to characterize Mac users as something they are not. The Mac user community understands the situation and they’re proud of the OS that has helped ensure their security, but they’re not delusional and they have no serious preconceptions that they’re immune from malicious elements of our world. We may currently enjoy a trouble-free computing experience with regard to malware, and we may speak happily about that fact, but satisfaction isn’t necessarily the same as complacency.