The Mac Sucks!

It had to happen
eventually, and it has.  Apparently Apple has gotten enough
attention from the iPhone, iPod, and Mac that someone has decided to
write and release into the wild some OS X malware.  According to
the article “Mac OS malware targets porn surfers ” by Tom
Krazit of CNET News.com, “Intego, a Mac security software company,
issued an alert Wednesday warning Mac users of the OSX.RSPlug.A malware,
which it describes as a Trojan horse.”

The malware
“changes your DNS settings to hijack web traffic and redirect it to
phishing sites or ads for porn” according to Krazit.

Before
I’m accused of overhyping this Trojan, I should explain that you
won’t fall victim to it just by surfing an infected site.  As
CNET points out, “to get infected with the malware, you have to
accept the invitation to download ‘new version of codec,’ open
up the .dmg file, click the installer.pkg file, and enter your
administrator’s password, according to
Intego.”  

But this Trojan is significant more for
what it represents than what it actually does, though what it does is
clearly not good.  This is a Trojan found “in the wild”
rather than in the lab.  It’s not a proof of concept
demonstration but an actual working piece of malware for OS X.  Its
mere existence implies that perhaps the Mac and iPhone have received a
“critical mass” of installed systems that it’s now
profitable for malware writers to target OS X.  If that’s the
case, it’s the beginning of a new chapter for Mac users.  No
longer will they be able to sneer at their Windows counterparts and brag
that there is no malware for the Mac.  No longer will they be able
to operate with default settings and without antivirus
software.

If you’re still one of the Mac Faithful, and
you’re technically savvy enough to know how to combat malware,
Trojans, viruses, and the like, I’d encourage you to start educating
your less-knowledgeable brethren about those things.  It would
appear that malware writers are switching to the Mac, too.

On October 3, the nullstream.com weblog
posted an article entitled “Experiment: XP” which (oddly) talks about the
author’s experiences switching to the Mac at home. The author claims
also to have picked up an iPhone and an Airport Extreme wireless
networking device.

For all of Apple’s posturing about
its “things just work” philosophy, the author tells us
“It hasn’t been completely trouble free, and I find myself
wondering if I shouldn’t go back to my old set up: Mac OS X for my
laptop and Windows for my desktop. What caused me to start doubting my
switch? There are a lot of little things that irritate me when using a
Mac.” The article then goes on to explain how the Mac’s window
focus, key mappings, the top-of-the-screen menus, application
performance, the closed nature of OS X, blurrier fonts, Apple’s
arrogant way of acting as though it knows what’s best for the user,
and the lack of games all factor into the decision.

I want you
to read the article for yourself. I
think the author does a good job of objectively explaining why, in his
particular circumstances, OS X is a poor fit for him. He’s not
putting OS X down, not saying it’s a piece of crap (like Mac users
typically say Windows or Linux is), just pointing out where it’s not
an efficient, effective work environment for him. And I happen to think,
given his needs, that he is absolutely right. He should be looking at
Windows XP or Linux. OS X is a poor fit for that particular set of
needs. (That doesn’t mean it’s a poor fit for YOURS, unless
yours happen to match up exactly to his.)

I give the
author credit for making appropriate criticisms and backing them up. I
also give him a great deal of credit for being intelligent and rational
enough to recognize that he’s using a platform that isn’t
meeting his needs. His is the sort of mindset that this site is
attempting to cultivate… That is, just because it’s from Apple
doesn’t mean it’s always the best, and just because it’s not
from Apple doesn’t mean it’s garbage. We want people to use
“the right tool for the right job” even if it’s a Mac. We
aren’t, as Fake Steve Jobs suggested, funded by Microsoft here.

If “Paul” at nullstream.com does switch back to
XP, he does so with our blessing and respect. Likewise, if he decides to
stick with OS X after all, he does that with our blessing, too, because
we know he made a considered choice based on his personal
requirements… By definition, that’s a good decision whether we
agree with it or not… and whether you agree with it or not, Mac
fans…

Earlier today, Slashdot ran an article entitled
“Run Mac OS X Apps on Linux?” in which reader
“Anthony Baby” mentioned that he had the urge to commit his Core 2 Duo
iMac to Linux. There were a few Mac apps, like iTunes, that he wanted to
still be able to run on Linux and wondered if a compatibility layer
similar to WINE (which allows Linux to run some Windows applications)
existed for OS X.

In addition to the expected flaming from
the Mac Fanboy community, telling him he’s trading in his Mac “Mercedes”
for a Linux “rebuilt Chevy” and the like, he was asked one thoughtful
question about the switch, which was “Why?”. His answer is summarized
below:

1. Portability
OS X runs on Apple
Hardware, and (illegally) hacked to run on non-Apple systems. With
Linux, there is a much wider choice of hardware vendors and options.

2. Flexibility
Linux gives more control over the
OS. A kernel can be custom compiled with the options the user needs,
apps can be recompiled, the user interface re-themed, etc., in ways that
aren’t possible with OS X.

3. Security
As
the author notes “OS X is pretty good, but I’m a little worried at
Apple’s highly negative response to security concerns…” The Linux
market is perceived as more responsive to security issues.

4. Software Ecosystem
While OS X offers some great
software, Linux offers much more choice. The Linux choices are also more
configurable to a user’s needs than OS X’s “one size fits all” design.
The author says “I find that good GNOME or KDE apps perform most, if not
all, the functionality I care about in OS X, while being beer free, and
offering me more choices”.

5. Usability
The
author finds OS X’s GUI to be “broken” for how he uses the system. The
window management is frustrating, the Dock is limited, there is no
decent application launching and management, and in general he finds
Linux more usable than OS X.

There are some lovely quotes
in the comments below the article, showing the rather rabid nature of
Mac fandom (as well as just some interesting insights), such as:

“Running Windows on a Mac makes the Baby Jesus cry; running Linux
exclusively gives him slight heartburn.”

“It would be
possible I guess to do Carbon and Cocoa on Linux, re-implement the APIs,
but for the amount of applications that there are on Mac that aren’t on
Windows, there isn’t much point.”

“I’ve been a GNU/Linux
user for over ten years. I also used Mac OS X for a couple of years.
Eventually I got frustrated with it and installed Linux on my iBook.
I’ve never looked back…GNU/Linux does have some definite advantages
over OS X. Just throwing down a few: more customizability, easier
maintenance (given a decent package manager, such as apt-get), better
compatibility with open source software, and several possible advantages
that depend on your choices: lower memory usage, lower latency, lower
disk usage.”

“Unfortunately, Apple don’t want you to run
their precious OS in a virtual container. They want to force you to do
everything else in a virtual container instead. They won’t sell you a
license to their OS for use in a virtual environment, and they won’t
permit you to run a license you own in a virtual environment even on
their own hardware…[snip]… As such, you will have to run anything
else you want to use under VMWare/Parallels, dual boot, or endure
Apple’s rather unpleasant X11 support.”

“I put Ubuntu on
my MacBook recently and was seriously impressed. Really looks up to
scratch for the desktop. First off, pretty much everything worked
without too much googling…[snip]… It was the responsiveness that
really got me though, Ubuntu was far snappier than OS X (and I’ve 2GB of
memory) – Mac apps like to think about things for a while sometimes (and
they’re not using the CPU to think, whatever the hell they’re doing).”

“My advise (sic) is go lay down until the ‘urge’ goes
away. Unless you’ve got some compelling reason to take a shiny 24″ iMac
and turn it into a piece of crap by removing OS X. Which I
doubt…[snip]…well I’m trying to be fair here but the only word I can
find for it is ’stupid’. It’s stupid.”

If you want the
rest of the story, click the link in the first line of the article and
read the comments yourself.