Re: Macs in Astronomy Updated; Canon 20D under Mac & Windows

From: Brian Tung (brian_at_isi.edu)
Date: 03/01/05 

Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 23:33:20 +0000 (UTC)

Davoud wrote:
> Here's a piece of emotional bias that confronted me recently:
>
> "At Genentech Inc., a multibillion-dollar biotechnology firm in South
> San Francisco, Mark Jeffries oversees nearly 2,500 Macs... He remembers
> a virus that shut down operations at a couple of his companyıs
> competitors in 2003 because of their total dependency on Windows while
> Genentechıs business continued unaffected. He says the companyıs top
> executives took note of that event, and it reaffirmed their commitment
> to the Mac.

I can't say that I wouldn't have reacted that way if it happened to
me, because I'm human (and I therefore like my choices to be vindicated),
but it is not a logical conclusion to draw. Any virus is unlikely to be
cross-platform; hence, if it affected Windows, it wouldn't affect Macs
in all probability. If it were a Mac virus, the Macs would have been
affected, and not the Windows machines. Would the Mac users then be
justified in jumping ship for Windows?

It could be that in addition, Mac viruses are less common, but that
conclusion can't be drawn from this anecdote.

I mentioned elsewhere in this thread (or a related one, I forget which)
that many computer science researchers do use Macs, especially since
the introduction of OS X. I hasten to point out that this is generally
*not* because of security issues, but because of the user interface,
maintainability, and other concerns that might have bearing on security,
but are not the security issues themselves. OS X helped introduce many
of them to Macs because of their familiarity with FreeBSD.

By the way, I use Linux predominantly, but I have some reasonable amount
of experience with XP, and it's actually pretty good, provided one takes
the minimal amount of time to click an icon every now and then to update
the system. (I do that with Linux, too.) I'm not sure why anyone would
think that OS X is immune from that sort of thing.

> "'The Mac is secure, if not bulletproof,' Jeffries says. Thatıs because
> OS X was developed after the widespread adoption of the Internet, so
> Apple 'designed it to be secure by default.'"

He can say that, but just because it was designed that way does not make
it actually secure. FreeBSD has vulnerabilities; hence, OS X has (most
of) the same vulnerabilities.

> This emotional outburst comes from the same article:
> "Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer for 800 PCs and 250 Macs
> at The Dallas Morning News, acknowledges that Windows has comparable
> applications for the publishing market. But, she says, "those
> applications don't run as robustly on Windows. They're not as fast or
> as seamless as on the Mac. We could not replace Macs for PCs."

I see six of one, half a dozen of the other; I know plenty of users who
find it easier to locate what they want for Windows than for Macs. It's
a reason to prefer one platform over the other for personal use, but it
doesn't support any kind of general, objective superiority.

Brian Tung <brian@isi.edu>
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
  Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
  The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
  My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mac does Windows with Boot Camp OFFICIALLY!
    ... But Macs are also relatively rare targets of attacks, ... Given the fact that I'm in the prepress industry your numbers don't really ... I know many more Mac users than Windows users. ... But I don't mind paying for the sense of security I ...
    (comp.publish.prepress)
  • Re: Apple/Macs for the Army
    ... a former Apple employee who now heads the Army's ... nearly five times as many security flaws in its software over the past ... "I love my Macs, but in terms of security, they're behind the ... curve, compared to Windows," Miller warns." ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • [Full-Disclosure] os x mass mailers
    ... It would be nice to have a little less stress with Windows and let ... Most mac users have never seen the script editor, ... virus or be harmful to your computer and does not default to opening it. ... that, as a practical matter, the 3% using Macs are much safer. ...
    (Full-Disclosure)
  • Re: Windows servers dropping like flies!!
    ... CNN is advising that if you are running Windows 2000 you should immediately shut down your computer and wait for further instructions. ... Probably the worm got on the inside of these networks from laptops that people had connected to less secure networks at home or on the road. ... this just reaffirms what I've said previously about OS X's 'security by obscurity'. ... Macs in those applications have an even smaller percentage of marketshare, and consequently, are a statistically lower profile target. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: spyware on macs ?
    ... Now, the Macs will have to connect with other Macs to spread the virus--the Windows boxes, on the other hand, can pretty much just pick an active address at random and get a viable target. ... Whatever virus they release will spread slowly, and attack a more difficult target in the process. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)