Comments on: PC Killer: The $500 Mac mini

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 15:44:16 +0000

I thought MS sold XP as the most secure OS they every made. How or why would anyone trust them?

By: Jeff Parks

Jeff Parks — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 07:09:35 +0000

No viruses yet on Mac OS X. I think what you are thinking of was a trojan horse, which are not "contagious" like viruses are. http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/T/Trojan_horse.html

By: Blowhard

Blowhard — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 01:23:30 +0000

Great take on the Mini. People think I’m using scare tactics to sell Macs when I talk about IE, viruses, spyware, etc…and suggest the Mac as an alternative. What they don’t know (but are beginning to realize as attention grows) is that Macs "just work." Sure, I could list a dozen issues I have with the current iteration of OS X, but they are nothing compared with what I faced as an XP user a few years back. And now, it’s much worse, with PC users becoming infected and bloated with crap software forced down their throats from just connecting to the Internet.

The wave is coming. Enjoy the ride!

By: jbelkin

jbelkin — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 23:20:04 +0000

Good comments and yes, it is pretty amazing about all the "ghost" web servers … it should be noted that there have been reported "vulnerabilities" regarding the Mac, browsers or even iTunes, but they all have been theoritical and fairly improbable even for savvy users (for instance, one major alarm was based on a possible trojan horse but the ONLY way to install it required someone to be physically in front of your machine but if you allow a hacker to sit down in front of your machine, I think you have bigger problems … many other possible threats involved running Apache on your Mac but the average user is not going to wake up one day and decide to start running Apache and a personal web server … though you can turn on the personal web server and the firewall is already active … ) but in all cases so far – everything reported is a theory and no one has ever actually stepped forward to report actually being infected … though, of course, Macs can pass along email-based PC infections.

I’m not saying there won’t ever be an infection of some kind but it’s better to have a machine already innoculated and so far so good – and 14+ million "healthy" users is not exactly a tiny target.

By: Aphelion

Aphelion — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 22:36:32 +0000

The Mac mini represents a Paradigm Shift at Apple and Sea Change in the personal computer landscape. There are legions of dissatisfied Windows users who will jump on the Mac mini. I can hear the sounds of many thousands of PeeCee boxes hitting the dumpster as their users rip them from under their desks, to replace them with Mac minis.