Apple thinks Mac OS X users should use antivirus utilities -- and has been giving the same advice for years

Jordan Golson — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:37:55 -0800

A number of tech news blogs have noted today that Apple has a new support page that urges users to install antivirus software to protect themselves. The company recommends the "widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities". The reasoning is simple: when "virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent... the whole virus writing process [becomes] more difficult."

This is a very poorly written statement, and has been misread by many in the blogosphere. Apple is not recommending that individual users have more than one antivirus program on their computers. Rather, the company feels that the platform as a whole should have more than one antivirus solution, so that virus makers have more challenges when writing their applications.

The excited rantings of the tech blogosphere over a single Apple Knowledge Base article is a tempest in a teapot. This advice isn't new, as Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac points out. Apple gave a similar suggestion in April 2008 and advocated antivirus software as far back as 2002.

On top of that, Apple used to include McAfee's Virex antivirus software with its DotMac (now MobileMe) product. It is true that Apple generally states -- correctly -- that the Mac OS is much hardier against virii than other operating systems. However, the company never stated that antivirus wasn't necessary.

It is worth noting that a new proof-of-concept trojan was recently discovered for Mac OS X. However, it requires a number of steps to activate, making it highly unlikely that any users would run into any problem with it.

For what it's worth, I've been using Macs for more than 15 years and I have never used antivirus software and I have never had any problems. Your mileage may vary.

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Apple thinks Mac OS X users should use antivirus utilities -- and has been giving the same advice for years