AntiVirus for Macs?

D

danoistheman

Registered
I have just ordered a MacBook Pro, I know this is a long running issue but will i need to buy Antivirus for my apple?
I will not be connected to a work network with other PCs and i am tech wise about not opening unknown files in emails etc.
Will programs like Sophos/Norton be a waste of my money and computer resources, or are they a good purchase just to be on the safe side?
Your advice would be greatly appreciated
 
You don't need anti-virus for your MacBook Pro. However, if you want to protect your friends from PC virii, you may chose to install an anti-virus programme. This might prevent you unwittingly passing on a virus, which wouldn't harm your Mac, but might harm their PCs.

ClamXav is good and is free.

There have been numerous other posts in this forum on this subject.
 
I use a virus scanner on my Mac (better safe than sorry).
I heard issues about Norton (any product) running on newer versions of OS X.
McAfee as a scanner called Virex but you can get the free ClamAV.

So to answer your question, get the FREE ClamAV and stay protected.
 
and of course, Stay Away From Norton. i don't think anyone will stress that enough. it is widely known to cause more problems than it claims to solve.
 
Norton Utilities for the Macintosh did nothing useful and reputedly did some measure of harm. This is why Symantec discontinued the product as well as the SystemWorks bundle. However, I know of no credible reports of harm done by Norton Antivirus for the Macintosh. My take is that people heard "Norton" and understood "Norton Antivirus." I am a Norton Antivirus user and have never had any problems with it. If you want to go "naked," that is your choice. If you want to use a competing product, that is also your choice. However, you are ill-served by making choices based on misinformation.
 
The "Stay away from Norton/Symantec on the Mac" has a looooooong history. And while it's true that there don't seem to be many problems with their antivirus tool, you have to see this in a more political context. About 10 years ago (!!!), these problems with Norton Utilities started to become a big problem. And as long as people bought applications from them, they went on to produce newer versions of their products. It was a very long fight to persuade Mac users to stay away from Norton products altogether, but it finally bore fruit, and now their Mac product line looks better, because they killed their main faulty product. However: For me it's been too long a fight and to hard a fight to ever support another Norton/Symantec product on the Mac. I'll keep on stating that the _first_ rule of Mac support is to remove *ANY* software from Norton/Symantec, and that rule has never done any harm, really.

So: Stay the *heck* away from those products. There are enough other vendors around.
 
fryke said:
The "Stay away from Norton/Symantec on the Mac" has a looooooong history. ...
Click to expand...
As a Mac user since 1989 and a Symantec user since 1990, I consider myself diehard Mac user and fairly well-informed one, to boot. In 1996, I subscribed to MacWorld, MacUser, and MacWeek. I frequented the Mac forums on CompuServe and AOL. I also had access to the Internet. Yet, this is the first time I have heard of this long campaign against Norton. Even now, lo these many years later, you are being awfully cryptic. Would you care to elaborate on the issues involved in that political fight?
 
Don't take this the wrong way, fryke, but you once scolded me on a now-forgotten thread for recommending Mac Garden to someone seeking free games. I accept the rebuke entirely on the grounds of the highly questionable licence status of some of the games to be found on the Mac Garden site.
But it seems a tad contrary to stand up for fair commercial practice one minute and then basically libel Norton the next. They are running a business and deserve a fair hearing among those who have not had the bad experiences with them you appear to have had.
I've had my run-ins with them too, and wouldn't bother with their products, but does that mean they are universally bad?
 
I'm all for ClamXAV... free.. open source and trust worthy. It's saved my friend's windows machine from crap i pick up on my linux servers from keeping their file backups! (ClamAV is for Linux.. its basically the same thing but w/o a GUI)
 
And those users who had great experience with Norton software will state so, too. So I have to elaborate...

Back in the days, Norton Utilities often had the following problem: You install them on your computer (System 7.x and up) and they work well. Then Apple updates the system, compatibility breaks and files and whole harddisk structures are lost. Of course the educated user could have waited a month or two before there would be a Norton update, but that's not how the average users work. They want the system update and insall them. They continue to use their tools, and quite often Norton Utilities had _heavy_ problems. I was working in a graphics shop, and over the weekend, a colleague had the bright idea to defragment all harddrives we had. I came back on Monday to find out that _all_ our data was gone. Gladly, he didn't have a key to the server room. So we still had the backups. But it cost us longer to set up the machines and data again, than it took him to kill the drives, of course.

This story went on through the years. Again and again, Norton Utilities had these problems, and while once-burnt users got wiser and either got rid of the tools or waited for updates for them before updating the system, there were always new cases.

When OS X came along, some "bright" users found that while there were no defragmentation tools for OS X, you could boot from Norton Utilities and use that to defragment. Guess what happened...?

There's a reason why people tend to say to stay away from Norton. The reason is that it's better to warn than to hear the whining of Norton-burnt people.

easterhay: That Mac Garden thing, imho, had nothing to do with what we're talking about here. My concern back then, if I remember correctly, was that files there could be considered software piracy, and we have a policy on macosx.com against that.

My feelings towards Norton software are personal, of course. But they're from professional experience. You may not share my views, I may not share yours - but I'm telling what I saw, heard and had to work through myself.

I have simple rules about Mac maintenance, and they work well:

1.) Always have backups of what's important.
2.) Use Apple's tools for maintenance. They come with OS X. Disk Utility, the Terminal.
3.) If those tools can't help, re-install OS X and use the backups to set up the machine. Often, reinstalling is *much* quicker than trying to find the fault for a problem, it's much safer than using 3rd party disk tools that might or might not be incompatible with the particular OS version, firmware version or hardware you're using it on and overall, it's just not worth the pain.
 
I was just reminded that at one time, a false positive made Norton Antivirus delete a user's whole mailbox in OS X Panther... (i.e. Norton Antivirus thought it had found a virus in an E-Mail message, and since back then mailboxes didn't consist of single E-Mail message files but were one big file themselves, it got moved to the trash...) - so AntiVirus wasn't _always_ clean, either.

My main gripe is that _all_ of Symantec's apps claim to give you more security. Be it their disk tools, their internet tools or the antivirus tool: They all try to make users feel more secure. But if it's _these_ tools which create havoc in the first place...
 
Norton was screwy enough when i still used it on my
windows pc - i won't even allow a norton product
to be in the same room as my macs!
 
MisterMe said:
As a Mac user since 1989 and a Symantec user since 1990, I consider myself diehard Mac user and fairly well-informed one, to boot. In 1996, I subscribed to MacWorld, MacUser, and MacWeek. I frequented the Mac forums on CompuServe and AOL. I also had access to the Internet. Yet, this is the first time I have heard of this long campaign against Norton. Even now, lo these many years later, you are being awfully cryptic. Would you care to elaborate on the issues involved in that political fight?
Click to expand...
I am a first time mac user. I put norton on my computer and had nothing but trouble. Stuck with it a month but caused havoc. Never again. Now use NetBarrier and it's antivirus software...no problems. I have to say I had similar problems with nortons on pc's.
 
so i went to the clam av site. and as usual anything free or for the mac is written with the expectation that you know what is going on. I obviously don't.
this is a stupid question, and I am sure that no one will bother to answer me, just like no has bother to answer some of my other questions that they must have thought were too stupid(still can't network my pc desktop to my therefore practically useless ibook)(thanks btw)

but is the macosx a unix system?

and why is freeware always in such geeky nerdy language. why can't it just say ... download.. you know like everyone else does?

which one am i supposed to choose?
clamav-0.88.tar.gz 4564473 80380 Platform-Independent Source .gz
or

clamav-0.88.tar.gz.sig 65 8378 Other text

seriously, why wouldn't they explain which one is for a mac?
or is that even the difference?
ah. As sexy and cool as the mac is, I wasn't really looking to adopt a whole lifestyle just to get things done. I am in school full time and I work full time. I don't really have the time to learn so much about this operating system. I have this useless ibook, My Word program stopped working completely unexpectedly, can't figure out why it wont open. oh sure i asked for help here, but as u can guess, no help. the (scoff) appleworks program or should i say half a program erased my complete essay, with absolutely no way of retrieving it. That was helpful!
mac support site- jeez they are sooo helpful.
dunno, i love the mac, but i don't think i would advise anyone to switch unless they were a computer whiz, in which case they would know already.
for all it's crappiness, I still wonder if i would have been happier with a pc laptop, at least there is a lot of help for people who don't want to make theiir OS their life.

sorry 'bout the bitch session, but what the hell, I hardly come here anymore, I certainly stopped looking for responses to my questions. those threads are dead.
not really expecting anyone to help me wih this one.
maybe if i re-register with a new name and pretend i am thinking about buying a mac again....
 
morning said:
so i went to the clam av site. and as usual anything free or for the mac is written with the expectation that you know what is going on. I obviously don't.
this is a stupid question, and I am sure that no one will bother to answer me, just like no has bother to answer some of my other questions that they must have thought were too stupid(still can't network my pc desktop to my therefore practically useless ibook)(thanks btw)

but is the macosx a unix system?

and why is freeware always in such geeky nerdy language. why can't it just say ... download.. you know like everyone else does?

which one am i supposed to choose?
clamav-0.88.tar.gz 4564473 80380 Platform-Independent Source .gz
or

clamav-0.88.tar.gz.sig 65 8378 Other text

seriously, why wouldn't they explain which one is for a mac?
or is that even the difference?
ah. As sexy and cool as the mac is, I wasn't really looking to adopt a whole lifestyle just to get things done. I am in school full time and I work full time. I don't really have the time to learn so much about this operating system. I have this useless ibook, My Word program stopped working completely unexpectedly, can't figure out why it wont open. oh sure i asked for help here, but as u can guess, no help. the (scoff) appleworks program or should i say half a program erased my complete essay, with absolutely no way of retrieving it. That was helpful!
mac support site- jeez they are sooo helpful.
dunno, i love the mac, but i don't think i would advise anyone to switch unless they were a computer whiz, in which case they would know already.
for all it's crappiness, I still wonder if i would have been happier with a pc laptop, at least there is a lot of help for people who don't want to make theiir OS their life.

sorry 'bout the bitch session, but what the hell, I hardly come here anymore, I certainly stopped looking for responses to my questions. those threads are dead.
not really expecting anyone to help me wih this one.
maybe if i re-register with a new name and pretend i am thinking about buying a mac again....
Click to expand...

Why are you killing yourself with that version of ClamAV?? There is a port for Mac OS X and it's been around for a while now.

http://www.clamxav.com/

As far as Mac OS X being Unix, yes and no. It's a Unix in that it functions like UNIX at the core, but it's not "UNIX." The UNIX name is a trademark of the Open Group and it refers to the original UNIX operating system. To be considered a UNIX operating system, it has to be approved by the Open Group to be so. Mac OS X, while it is considered a Unix operating system, doesn't meet the requirements for approval as a UNIX operating system (note the differences between the two names).

Regarding the freeware apps, when you say download what exactly are you referring to? I use free and open source software all the time and haven't had any problems downloading any of them, whether it's on Linux or Mac OS X or even Windows.

The problem here seems to be that you don't want to open yourself to the way things are done on the Mac. If you're expecting a Windows experience, you're going to be very frustrated and you are going to remain rigid about it, you might as well just use Windows. There's nothing wrong with that. Not every OS is for every person. My wife prefers Windows and I prefer using Mac OS X and Linux. That's just the way it is. But if you really like the Mac, don't fight its way of doing things. You had to learn how to use Windows on its terms, not on your own. Same with any other operating system and the same goes for the Mac OS. It's this rigidity in people that prevent them from even considering using a computer at all since they are expecting the computer to do it the way THEY want instead of the way it's designed to do the task. It's a matter of opening yourself up to another way of working and thinking, that's all.

It also seems to me that you are somewhat new to computing in general. Computing nowadays isn't like it was some years ago. Lots of things have changed even in the short time of our new millenium. Best thing you can do is get a computing book that's for beginners and novices that will help you out with things like networking and operating system usage, even some power user tricks to get the most out of your computing experience. This way it will be easier for you to troubleshoot a problem and you'll have the information to share with someone else who needs the help.
 
Oh God! I just purchased Norton Antivirus for Mac last night, and I feel really shitty about it! I got it because my computer was acting up and my Virex was doing nothing to make me feel like things were clear. Thankfully no virus found on my computer, but now I am stuck with this Norton Antivirus for a year. Is it really that bad? When I used it on my old PC, it was fine. I actually did not care for Virex at all. This seemed like the logical place to go. I guess I'll have to wait and see...
 
Manchita said:
Oh God! I just purchased Norton Antivirus for Mac last night, and I feel really shitty about it! I got it because my computer was acting up and my Virex was doing nothing to make me feel like things were clear. Thankfully no virus found on my computer, but now I am stuck with this Norton Antivirus for a year. Is it really that bad? When I used it on my old PC, it was fine. I actually did not care for Virex at all. This seemed like the logical place to go. I guess I'll have to wait and see...
Click to expand...

You may have no problems.. I found within a week or two it began to interefere with some of my programs. You may be more lucky.
 
I think that it is a software program that has far too many problems and very little support from the company. It seems to weave itself thru the very fabric of the OS. Experience has taught me that it a software program best left alone. There are far too many complaints re nortons for mac to be swept under the carpet.
 
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