The Mac Was Never Invincible in the First Place

Juan over at The AfterMac asks “Is the Mac Not Invincible Anymore?” To be brutally honest, this is the kind of question that is misleading at best, and naively smug at worst.

The focus of Juan’s article is a Mac OS X trojan that allows its maker to secretly take control of a computer. Estimates place the number of infected Macs at around 20,000, as of last January 21.

To be fair, Juan’s question may have just been a figure of speech, based on the widely-held impression that Apple computers are safer and much more reliable than the PC. As someone who has run pretty demanding applications on a Mac (Premiere and Maya are two examples that come to mind), I can tell you that isn’t always the case.

Ultimately, the Mac is just another computing platform. It has its own share of quirks and limitations, some of which become surprisingly clear when exposed to similar circumstances PCs are used to. I’ve had my share of software failures and random crashes, especially when I’d really push my Mac workstation.

At the same time, while I’ve enjoyed the Mac’s relative freedom from viruses, malware, and all other kinds of virtual badness, I’ve felt constrained by its overall lack of capability compared to a PC. As any avid PC user knows, there are some things you can’t do with a Mac, because the software (or the tool) that does it can’t run on the platform.

You can argue this is also true for the PC, yet I’m hard-pressed to come up with a long list of Mac-only applications that PC users sorely miss. There is a reason why Apple makes Bootcamp available with new Macs: so that its users can run Windows and programs they consider crucial to their operations.

But I digress. Again we return to the Mac’s supposed hassle-free nature, and cite another reason behind this reality: Since they’re not as widespread as the PC, virus and malware makers simply don’t see any incentive to aim for Macs. If you’re a hacker who wanted to gain unauthorized control of as many computers as possible, wouldn’t you orient your attacks toward the PC, which is still a much more popular platform?

The point is this: As more users start using Macs (and I’m sure that this will happen), you can expect more people to program trojans, viruses, and whatever for the Mac OS X. As the user-base grows, so does the incentive to come up with ways to victimize it. More people to abuse means more opportunities for illicit gain.

No matter how supposedly secure a system is, there will always be loopholes that people can exploit to their advantage. And yes, that’s true for even an “invincible” computing platform like a Mac. That’s why I hope that, as Apple serves more customers, it will be ever-vigilant when it comes to resolving any vulnerabilities that become clear. At the same time, I hope future Mac OS X users will practice safe computing, never relying on assumptions that any particular computer is completely safe.

(image from Wikipedia)