Is it time for a Mac?

[Brian Elfert]

I simply prefer the ease of use with programs. Macs prove far more intuitive for my little feeble mind. It's no fun trying to become a computer programmer to figure out what needs accomplished. I'll pay the fee in order to save sanity and time. Right now a basic Mac is about $1100. What's the cost of a basic type of PC?

You can get a decent home use PC for $400 to $500. Sometimes you can even get a monitor bundled in for that price.

I administer Windows servers and Linux/Unix servers for a living. Personally, I wouldn't even consider Linux for my home use. Good as a server, not so good as a desktop. I like some of what OSX has to offer, but I don't like the prices and inflexibility of the hardware. I also have three programs that only run on Windows. Not only would I need to spend twice as much on a Mac I would also need to buy Parallels and a copy of Windows 7.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Well we're going to have to respectfully disagree with that, because the big difference between a default Mac and a default Windows install is the privileges with which a user runs.

Phil,
I understand that & I'm still going to stick by what I said.
*ix is every bit as susceptible to an attack that can elevate privileges.

SQL injection is one such attack. (and I'm not about to go off and spend the rest of my day looking up all the other exploits just to prove a point. Why? Because I just simply don't care which OS is more secure. I stand by my statement that any OS can be as vulnerable as any other - - all it takes is for someone to crack it)
Nearly everyone hears SQL and immediately dismisses it because of Microsoft SQL.

In reality, SQL is just short for Structured Query Language and there's a number of different flavors of it going around.
I believe this forum uses MySQL on a Linux server.
I could be wrong though - but -it really doesn't matter since there's a bunch of Linux based servers that got hacked via SQL injection.

[Greg Peterson]

State sponsored and criminal enterprises want as great of a ROI as possible. The most common OS will garner the lions share of the attention. It's all about scale and order of magnitude. OS X is less prone to exploits simply because of the relatively small number of installs.

I would guess the most profitable types of exploits are the ones that capture login credentials for web sites where credit card and banking information is stored or used. These exploits are independent of ones hardware/software platform. I can just as easily surrender my credit card or banking information on a Mac, Android or Windows device.

If you're online, rules generally do not apply, or at least are meant to be broken.

[Phil Thien]

State sponsored and criminal enterprises want as great of a ROI as possible. The most common OS will garner the lions share of the attention. It's all about scale and order of magnitude. OS X is less prone to exploits simply because of the relatively small number of installs.

It is more complicated than that.

First, much of this code is released from parts of the world where until recently, the Mac had not penetrated into the masses due to cost. That has changed, more hackers probably have Macs now than at any point in the past.

Second, you have to multiply the lower # of Macs by a somewhat higher risk factor because nobody has any antivirus on their Mac, and there is little experience cleaning viruses from Macs.

There will ne a D-Day for viruses on the Mac, and it will be ugly. I know people have been predicting this for a long time, it will come though.

[Jim Koepke]

When I bought my last HP laptop, an equivalent Mac was more than three times as expensive.....what a penalty.

When you bought your last HP laptop, an equivalent Mac had likely already been in use for a few years.

Here is just one simple function of the Mac OS:

Picture 3.png

This image was captured on the fly while typing this post.

My PC guru friend doesn't think of it as that big of a deal and besides, he can likely find third party software to do the same thing.

There are a lot of "simple functions of the Mac OS" that there is likely third party software someplace to make a PC able to perform.

I used to work in a PC only environments. Often times for some of the heavy lifting I would do it at home on my Mac and then take it to work on a disk or later on a USB memory stick.

You can spend time working on you PC or you can spend time getting work done on a Mac.

jtk

[John Huds0n]

Ya, in Windows - they call that the "snipping tool" which comes with the OS since Win7....

[John McClanahan]

Easy screen capture and screen zoom are 2 of the many things I love about my Mac. (The 27" display is another)

John

[Keith Outten]

Count me as an Apple fan. I have an iMac, Mac Pro, iPad and an iPhone. I recently installed two of the Airport Time Capsule Routers in my network, they are pretty slick with 2 and 3 terabyte hard drives.

I still have three Windows XP machines. One runs my CNC Router and my Laser Engraver in the shop. The other two are used for design work using software for the shop machines. I NEVER connect my Windows machines to the Internet or use them for email.

[glenn bradley]

BUT, if what I understand is right???, I can switch to a Mac and not have all the virus threats, updates and such?

One of our worst attacks on campus was through a MAC. Any popular operating system will be tickled by the ne're-do-wells; even network and telephone switching hardware get hacked. I am pretty OS agnostic; I use MAC, Linux, HP-UX and Windows at work, Windows and Linux at home. Choose your poison ;-)

[William Adams]

A successful attack requires one of the following:

- persuading a user to enter their password
- an unpatched exploit which grants access/control w/o that.

The number of the latter is far greater on Windows than Mac OS X, and the window is far smaller since Apple is far more likely to issue a patch w/o waiting for a "patch Tuesday" to roll around.

[David Weaver]

You can spend time working on you PC or you can spend time getting work done on a Mac.

jtk

I don't know, Jim. I don't spend any part of the year working on my PC. I do spend about half an hour a year because my wife does something goofy on her PC and I have to fix it. As it stands right now, she has the search conduit spyware, and I'll probably spend 5 minutes getting rid of it.

I can screen capture or window capture on PC, (or use the snip tool) but it's not something I generally find useful unless I'm sending a request for sofware service on proprietary software at work. It's sort of like advertising the virtues of a car by selling the retracting antenna.

People mistake the idea that something is easier to do on one platform or the other in general just because it's easier for them.

[Jim Koepke]

One quibble I have with Apple is that once they move beyond a piece of hardware or software, they stop supporting it and you have to suck it up and move on; no backwards compatibility for Apple!

I know about that. I have a lot of Appleworks files. The OS on my machine is getting a little outdated. It is the last one to support Appleworks. I understand there is a translator available.

Heck, I still have some old Clarisworks files.

Not sure if I could maintain the old OS on an external drive and upgrade the OS to the latest my old machine will support. It would likely give me another 5 or 6 years of use at least.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Ya, in Windows - they call that the "snipping tool" which comes with the OS since Win7....

Thanks John, glad to hear they finally got around to it.

I can screen capture or window capture on PC, (or use the snip tool) but it's not something I generally find useful unless I'm sending a request for sofware service on proprietary software at work.

I use it all the time when I want to include an image in an email or file. It can be a cut and paste operation or it will create a file depending on the key strokes used. The file type can be set by the user.

Another feature is the image zoom function. Very handy for viewing images or small text.

To each there own. One of my friends occasionally extolls the virtues of the eight dot three naming protocol for naming files. He misses DOS.

jtk

[Rich Engelhardt]

The number of the latter is far greater on Windows than Mac OS X, and the window is far smaller since Apple is far more likely to issue a patch w/o waiting for a "patch Tuesday" to roll around

That's another one of those myths that may have been true once upon a time, but, it won't die no matter how many times the truth is told.

Microsoft responds to a critical threat just as fast as anyone else responds to one.

IIRC, Microsoft calls it an "out of band update".

As far as numbers go, feel free to peruse the archives at Us-Cert and Cert and note how many Mac threats vs Microsoft threats there have been over the years.
Yes - Microsoft has had more, but, as the Apple presence has grown over the last few years, so have the number of and severity of the threats.

Apple has always done a more than stellar job of having all their devices "talk" to each other. (LOL! They sometimes had huge problems talking to anything else though(AppleTalk)!).
It just a matter of time before some exploit rides in on an I-phone and takes out every Mac and I-whatever in the building - or beyond.

A very smart ex co-worker of mine once told me, "You can have security or you can have communication. As one goes up, the other goes down".

[Phil Thien]

I know about that. I have a lot of Appleworks files. The OS on my machine is getting a little outdated. It is the last one to support Appleworks. I understand there is a translator available.

Heck, I still have some old Clarisworks files.

Not sure if I could maintain the old OS on an external drive and upgrade the OS to the latest my old machine will support. It would likely give me another 5 or 6 years of use at least.

jtk

In a way, the backwards compatibility of Windows has been the Achilles Heel. You end up with new versions of operating systems with things called "thunk layers" and such, just to remain backwards compatible with old apps. Eventually you do have to tell people their 1980's 16-bit app can't run, and they've finally done so with 64-bit versions of Win7 and 8. But it should have probably come sooner.