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Comment by crowell | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty hard to take this article seriously.

The author writes

"I don’t consider Windows good enough. Historically there have been to many ways to compromise a Windows-based computer, and new techniques keep showing up with alarming regularity."

And then later

"I am writing this on my newest computer, a Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook running OS X 10.11 El Capitan"

If you're going to knock Windows on a lack of security, at the very least do as much as you can do to protect yourself on a Mac. Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

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I honestly don't get who upvotes articles like this one. Company supporters? Bots?

I mean, this is front page for several hours now and it's embarrassingly low quality. The only reason it triggered a conversation is because it's highly inconsistent.

I'd hazard a guess that most HN readers are early adopters. This is a perspective from the opposite. If you're making a software product there's a very good chance that 20-60% of your user base is going to come from these self-identified "low end" users. I didn't upvote the OP, but it's valuable to surface this kind of perspective occasionally, if for no reason other than to remind us that the people that consume readers' services may be coming from a different perspective than we do.

Sometimes I favorite threads about bad articles because the threads themselves contain good discussion. I suspect that at least some proportion of undeserved upvotes comes from people favorite-ing the thread without thinking or bothering to unvote.

Yeah, the security track record of post-Vista Windows is far better than OS X.

Only where it doesn't matter. Not in actual affected users.

Anecdotally, I have never had a virus on Mac (that I detected) and neither did any friends, but Windows got infected all the time. This was true going back to Windows 95.

Anecdotally, I've never had a virus on Windows dating back to Win98. But my extended family have had multiple on OSX.

My point is that both are very vulnerable, precautions are what keeps you safe.

>Anecdotally, I've never had a virus on Windows dating back to Win98. But my extended family have had multiple on OSX.

Did they really have viruses (of which for OS X there are very few and far between, to the point of lore) or trojans?

OSX has a more solid track record, but Windows has also undergone a lot of change since the Vista rebuild to address many of it's more trivial exploits.

Anyone remember when you could click Cancel in the login screen and get access to the desktop? Good times. :)

> Anecdotally, I have never had a virus on Mac (that I detected) and neither did any friends, but Windows got infected all the time.

If you're getting infected all the time using Windows, you're doing something stupid. The operating system provides the vulnerabilities, but you might want to reassess how you're using your software.

>If you're getting infected all the time using Windows, you're doing something stupid.

Or, you know, just switch to an OS where you don't.

Where you don't what, exactly? Run software from untrustworthy sources that contains viruses? Okay, but you don't need to change platforms to do that.

Good luck for the average person with Windows, when their laptop might come with spyware, and sometimes even a complete rootkit, directly from the OEM.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/16/06/01/researchers.show.that...

http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-soft...

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...

Eventhough these are bad, they are not viruses and do not fit the anecdote. If you are constantly getting viruses (Note not preinstalled rootkits or other stuff) than you are doing something wrong, I don't think we have to argue about that right?

On a technical level sure there maybe more exploits found for Windows than OSX. I honestly don't know and you haven't provided any sources.

However (1) this isn't realistic since so many issues are found with bloatware installed by vendors which you don't get on a Mac and (2) the severity of the recent mass release of zero-days by Wikileaks has really skewed the landscape.

Microsoft needs to do more to reign in vendors because if a brand new Samsung laptop takes 7 restarts just to update then something is off with the ecosystem.

Which OS did WanaCry effect again? And when has OS X ever had an exploit like that?

> If you're going to knock Windows on a lack of security, at the very least do as much as you can do to protect yourself on a Mac.

If you're behind a firewall and you practice safe computing (adblockers, NoScript, click-to-play Flash and Java or just don't use them at all, don't visit sketchy sites, don't open email from unknown sources, etc.) you can remain just as safe on an older Mac as you can on Windows. Even a 2010 era Mac can still run Sierra and therefore get all the current security updates, just as Windows 10 does.

> Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

The list you shared contains updates for much more than just macOS Sierra, there's Apple TV, iTunes for Windows 7, Apple Watch OS, and so on. Microsoft's list contains 876 entries[1], of which approximately 250 apply to Windows 10 x64 alone, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

[1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletins.aspx

They're both vulnerable. Therefore the author shouldn't criticize Windows for being more vulnerable than Mac, when the Macs he promotes are just as, if not more, vulnerable.

macs are a smaller target. Having more vulnerability in one OS or another is way less a factor vs how many potential target exist for one OS vs another. If a cracker/criminal decides to mass infect, they will choose the bigger "market".

If you are targeted by an individual/funded organization, it doesn't matter which OS you use, because there just needs to be one vuln and you are own'ed.

Therefore, it makes sense to use an OS that has a smaller marketshare. That keeps you safer than anything else.

By that account it is better to use obscure Linux as it is usually harder to find 1 exploit that works on all the distributions, and by that account it would be best to write your own OS.

But in real world, Windows are good enough for a lot of stuff and specifically gaming and office. If kept up2date will be secure enough.

I think talking about security superficially is not really valuable.

> post-Vista Windows is far better than OS X.

> if not more

You could say they're similarly vulnerable, but such emphatic phrasing just makes it sound you (and the GP) are on an agenda.

I'm not saying Windows is more secure than Mac. I'm saying up-to-date Windows is more secure than outdated Mac.

The article refers to El Capitan which is still supported and receiving security updates.

Sorry I don't know much about Mac update schedules, and just took the previous commenter's word that it was outdated, since no one seemed to be claiming otherwise.

But the author also says he runs 10.9 in another partition, and claims to want to run 10.2, although looking closer that appears to be a typo.

there was no point to be made. I wasn't saying that either platform is insecure. Just seems the link wasn't to show anything other than if you care about security, using the latest version of macos is prudent.

Apple publishes security updates for 10.10 and 10.11:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

What's particularly hilarious is that pre-OSX MacOS, which is the starting point for the article and the site, was a virus infested cesspool of malware.

Viruses? Sometimes, yes. They mostly "peaked" in the mid-90s, though, and declined as more users started downloading software online instead of trading it with friends.

Malware? No, not really. Windows spyware only really started ramping up in the early 2000s, by which point classic Mac OS was already on the way out. I'm not aware of any significant malware for the platform.

> * declined as more users started downloading software online instead of trading it with friends.*

Geez, that's counterintuitive.

Most of the common Mac viruses were executable infectors. They spread (past tense) through software sharing -- running an infected application would infect your system, causing it to spread the infection to any applications you launched.

This lifecycle depended on having some way for those infected executables to get run by uninfected users. That was where personal software trading came into the picture.

Anyways, as more users started downloading software instead of trading it, that cycle broke. The big shareware sites like Info-Mac would only accepted software from authors, not from users, and would run virus scans on anything they published anyways.

No so much, software was generally obtained straight from the vendor's site, often legally. Although piracy existed, there was some sort of honor culture around the Mac.

Most of us Mac users can thank lone wolf developer John Norstad for protecting us:

http://www.norstad.org/disinfectant-retire.txt

Of course hilariously enough he retired Disinfectant after the onslaught of Microsoft macro viruses/malware.

>If you're going to knock Windows on a lack of security, at the very least do as much as you can do to protect yourself on a Mac. Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222*
Well, those security fixes don't matter much. There are as many, if not more, for windows for one.
But even more so, what matters is actual number of exploits in the wild. Sure, any OS can be exploited. But in reality, not all are, and Macs have traditionally had far less malware/virus issues (close to zero). Time and again, "OS X viruses" are shown to be just trojan (which you can never get by just practicing software download hygiene). And even at worse, they affect something in the low single digits (or less).
It's not a case of market share either. When Windows had 98% of the market, and Mac OS (pre-OS X) was dwindling to 1-2%, it still had more viruses that it has today with 5-10% of the US market.

10.11 is the latest MacOS version that model supports. (I'm typing this on the same computer, but running Ubuntu MATE.) I assume they are really using 10.11.6.

That's just their opinion though. Most people's opinion on operating system security is wrong anyway.

also on newer machines you get more security features, such as SMAP/SMEP which were introduced in the Broadwell chips (2015 macs?)

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