Friday, July 23, 2010

Is Mac OSX unsafe or what?

I had some good laughs reading this article in Ars Technica this morning. Apple the new world leader in software insecurity. That's cool. Never heard that before. Not to mention that these days you can make a big splash as a blogger or industry analyst if you discover something abnormal and against all persisting knowledge about Apple. I've been using Macs for over 20 years now and never had to install any bleedin' antivirus, even for kicks; then all of a sudden I'm learning anno 2010, from an obscure so-called security company that listens to the name 'Secunia', that Apple is on top of all software vulnerabilities on planet Earth! Wow! What a slogan! Wakes up the dead!

Wait a minute... the article specifies that there's nothing wrong with the operating system... vulnerabilities are not to be found there... see, they are actually hidden in Adobe's Reader and Flash, most of the time! Now you are talking! Where did I hear that again about Flash... insecure, slow, battery drainer, proprietary... Oh, yes, el Jobso's open letter to them a few months ago, explaining why he prefers HTML5 instead.

So, we learned something from Secunia today: Apple tops the insecurity list with somebody else's products. I got another buzzer for today's news-lines then: Get rid of Flash and Adobe Reader on your Macs (don't need the Reader to read PDF's, right?) to be able to sleep safe on both your ears, like we use to say here in Belgium.

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