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hermitdev

They probably also don't want to expose it to users at all because of marketing.

Anyone remember those old ads of PC vs Mac and Mac not getting viruses? Because, I do...

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> They probably also don't want to expose it to users at all because of marketing.

It's incredibly intellectually lazy to suggest 'marketing'.

Apple's ideology has always been that regular, everyday computer users shouldn't have to concern themselves with low-level details of system administration in order to write a book or edit a video or whatever it is they're doing.

In addition, unless they have some breakthrough, elegant or innovative way of addressing stuff, they leave it to 3rd-party developers.

It's also myopic to complain about something as low-level as malware remediation while glossing over the fact that Apple enabled end-to-end encryption for iCloud [1] and gave users who aren't system administrators or security experts the ability to protect themselves if they are the target of a state level attacker [2].

Addressing security/privacy at this level is a very Apple thing to do.

In my opinion, it should be a no-brainer: end-to-end encryption and protection from state-level attackers vs a widget that alerts me the OS zapped a malware download.

As far as malware on macOS goes, having the operating system deal with this unbeknown to the user is actually a good thing for those everyday, regular users, who would probably screw things up worse if they had to play some direct role in this.

BUT for system administrators, developers and power users, the APIs and command line tools are there for them to get into the weeds of malware remediation if they want to.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-advances-user-s...

[2]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/07/apple-expands-commitm...

Being infected with malware is, hopefully, a rare event. I think it's reasonable to alert the user they've got it, even a non techy user knows roughly what those are. If they know about it they may have an idea of how they got it (they may have let someone else use their laptop or maybe received an email from someone new), which can be useful so they don't get more malware.

If you really want an innovative way of doing it is trying to give the user a good track record so they know exactly where that came from.

I'm glad that they don't. Otherwise I would have my 75 year old father-in-law on the phone panicking every five minutes. He insists on having his own computer and after five years of dealing with his constant issues I convinced him to move to a Mac. Now I only get the calls a couple of times a year.

> I'm glad that they don't. Otherwise I would have my 75 year old father-in-law on the phone panicking every five minutes.

Exactly! Since there’s nothing the average everyday user can do about the malware, there’s really no need to alert them.

There’s a lot of stuff in system logs that would worry none-technical users if they knew about them.

They can stop opening sites and emails that give them malware. If the person who sent it to them in the first place was a friend, they can also tell it to their friend. You don't have to be a seasoned software engineer to understand that.

Exactly!

> Addressing security/privacy at this level is a very Apple thing to do.

So the user can sleep well when Pegasus gets all his data. Charming. /s

Here they are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0feR5grSa4 (32 second spot) / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEVjILqU3pU (apparently the UK version of the same commercial).

There is a difference between virus and malware no?

Colloquially? I don't think so.

When asked about that by the colloquial layman my answer is generally :

Virus can self execute, replicate and spread (like biological ones) while malware (layman also refer to troyans) need user actions and unawareness to execute.

Am I totally wrong?

Malware also broadly refers to software unwanted by and malicious to the user. So it includes pre-installed auto-executing OEM adware, spyware, and grayware (colloquially also known as bloat).

Interesting so yeah while distinction between virus and trojan can hold, I guess that virus enter the broad malware definition and thus the OP is right.

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