Saturday, July 08, 2006

the flip side of sophos' mac advice

as many have reported already, sophos is suggesting that home computer users purchase mac computers in the future in order to avoid the huge amount of windows malware out there...

while that's all well and fine, there's a bit of context that is conspicuously absent from the various news accounts - sophos doesn't really deal with the home user market... they're focused on the enterprise market and don't really have a product geared for the home user market... they aren't giving this advice to corporations or anyone they actually do business with...

now, don't get me wrong, i'm not a sophos basher, i think there's plenty of good things to be said about them, but their advice seems a little like patting the home users on the head and saying "there, there"... 'buy a mac' is just about the most hands-off answer you could give to the home computer users looking for a helping hand with their malware problems... at the very least switching to linux or freebsd would be cheaper and more expedient than waiting until one has enough money to go out and buy a whole new computer...

also, if everyone switched to macs, that would include the malware writers... after all, the new generation of malware writers are profit oriented, and if everyone is using a mac then the mac platform is where the malware-related profits will be found...

at best, jumping ship would just be a temporary solution to a persistent problem... it would probably help in the interim, but only for a while and then what happens when it stops working?

i can't help but see their advice, not as the professional endorsement of the mac platform that some consider it, but rather as a glib response to a problem they don't really want any part of...

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