im a mac. what i generally find peoples gripes with apple being is price. but if these people take the time to do the math they would find that you spend more money fixing a PC than you do on a mac. i go for quality. if that means i pay more that's fine cuz i know it works, people want simplicity and seamless integration and that's what apple sells.

at the end of the day, PC's are old tech and are light years behind Apple. you can't be a leader in the game if your following, making sub-par imitations of the leaders products, and playing catch up.

to each their own..... *Kanye Shrug*

 

iMac, iPad, iPhone4....

 

I'm on my second MacBook, spilled water on my last one and just got my MacBook Pro about a year ago. From my experience, after owning a windows computer for a year they usually tend to slow down big time and then I end up having to get another one.

I was on my 5th windows computer within 6 years, and that's with virus software. I don't use any virus protection on my MacBook and its been over a year since I got it, still runs like the day I bought it.

2 macbooks, 3 iPhone4s. have been using the iPhones since they came out, they're awesome.

 

Less of a fanboy and more of a Mac-using professional (interaction, motion, and sound design). Mac user since 1989, inheriting a Powerbook 100 as my first Mac. I've owned two towers, three laptops, two iPhones, and an iPad. They've run MacOS and/or Windows over the years. Even all my co-workers and friends who are hard-core Windows developers still run Mac hardware, to say nothing of the entirely-Mac graphics and design community...

As a professional interface designer, I think that the MINI is strikingly similar to the MacOS relative to Other Cars and Other OS's, repsectively. Both have their own way of doing things that are pretty different, both are frustratingly proprietary at times, but both are very consistent in how they do things differently.

 

Whoops

 

New MacBook Pros at $1800 are the fastest laptops on the planet right now so what four laptops at $450 each are you going to get that beat them?

BTW I can get 3 Hyundai Accents that would outperform a JCW for the price .... Whoops, Oh never mind.

I just wish my MINI was as reliable as my Macs have been.

 

i like apple's style, but when it comes to customization with building computers, windows is key for me. More user friends programs and such with overclocking and such.

With that said, i own an ipad which is mounted in my car when driving.

 

iPhone 3G, 4G
iPod Nano
Power Book G4 (old school)
Ipad
24" Cinema display
Mac Mini
Magic Mouse

 

2 Imacs, 2 iphone 4's, 1 Ipad, 1 Ipod Touch in the house....

 

I'd say about 4/10 minis at my college campus has an apple sticker on it.

 

hey we got a forum similar to this on the r56 one

 

ipad
imac
iphone 4
macbook pro

 

Long time Mac user starting with a Classic - this fall my old powermac CRT screen gave out - bought a hp flat screen, which would not work with the old 10.29 operating system. So I shocked most of my family, went to Walmart and picked up a n ( e machine ) 500gb hard drive and 4gb ram running windows 7 for less than $300 . I must say how pleasantly surprised I was and still am, first thing I did was changed the name of the recycle bin to trash, I removed all of the MS works and replaced them with Open Office, picked up some good antivirus and malware programs everything works great, extremely fast and not a crash in 6 months.

 

I have an iPhone 3GS and wanted to put it to good use in the MINI. Picked up the Tom-Tom car kit for iPhone and it works out pretty awesome. Keeps the iPhone charged and has its own stronger GPS receiver built in. Works with lots of different iPhone GPS software (I use Navigon) and the iPhone has a nice big screen for maps. It also plays music through the MINI stereo via the aux input and mutes the tunes for spoken directions or whenever a phone call comes in on its built in bluetooth handsfree phone.

It was a little expensive at $100 but considering what it does I'm pretty happy.

 

It's not true that Apple computers don't get viruses. There are thousands of viruses written for Apple computers and there will be many more, as Apple gets more popular. There are antivirus programs available for Apple computers and every Apple user should have one installed on their computer.

Dave

 

Where did you get that idea? Consumer Reports? There has NEVER been a virus for Mac OSX found in the wild and damn few proof of concept examples in the lab. Most all of those required physical access to the machine and some even needed an administrator password.

Popularity of the OS also isn't as significant a factor here as the Windows apologists would have us believe. There have already been multiple viruses for Android phones and there are far less of them out there then there are iPhones.

 

You really have drunk the cool aid.

Before jumping down my throat, just Google, "Apple Viruses", there are millions of pages, talking about them. Even Apple has admited that they are vulnerable.

http://www.switched.com/2009/09/01/a...s-get-viruses/

Sheesh!

Dave

 

iPhone is nearly impossible develop a virus for. For one, there is no true multi-tasking, something a virus has to have to run. but MAC, is another story. There just isn't enough money in Mac viruses right now, not with PC viruses racking in tons of cash for their creators (mostly based in former Soviet union states).

 

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Ap...ontest-619577/

 

I assure you I am not jumping down your throat and I am anything but a zealot. The blog link you provided is somewhat misleading however.

It uses virus and malware interchangeably when they are not at all the same thing. It is true that Apple has said that no system is immune from viruses as they would be crazy to say otherwise, so would I. They never stated that OSX had ever been infected with a virus because it hasn't. The "Anti-Malware" tool is of course now included but if you do a little research you will see that the third party Mac anti-virus software you mention primarily detects PC viruses before they are passed on as attachments.

So a virus, a true virus is one that can replicate itself across a network or across the internet and infect other computers without the intervention of a user. None exist yet for OSX to my knowledge. If you have a legitimate link to a specific virus found in the wild please post it.

Now this is not to say that vulnerabilities have not been discovered because they certainly have and Apple is not always the fastest to address them either. A ticking time bomb? Probably but a true self replicating virus is far more difficult to pull off for OSX so the risk will always be less. As a matter of fact they called most PC virus writers "script kiddies" because in the pre-Vista days it was trivial to write a PC virus. It is getting better however.

Finally there is no cool aid involved. I am not a Windows hater nor a Linux hater. I just like to stay unemotionally informed. I am however a MINI lover.

 

I love following the Pwn2Own contest myself and do so every year. This is probably not the forum to be discussing this in but there is no big surprise here. Browser vulnerabilities are distinctly separate from OS vulnerabilities and are quite common. In this case clicking on a maliciously crafted link enabled the exploiter to access non-protected data in a single user environment when the user was logged on and had full access to that data anyway. I'm not saying it isn't something to be concerned about but it is not the same thing as a virus.

Now find a way to craft a similar link that attacks the OS itself. Like give me a link that bypasses iOS's security layer and installs tethering software without jail breaking the phone. That would be a neat trick.

 

I think the Pwn2Own exploit could be used to do what you are saying about bypassing the iOS security layer if the exploit were to fall into the hands of the wrong person/group. As they noted in the article, once you are in, you are in.

No doubt any of the *nix architectures are going to be harder to attack.

For end users though, should they ever get attacked, I don't think they are really going to care about the differences between viruses, trojans, malware, etc. All they'll know is something isn't working properly.

Here is an interesting article (a bit dated): http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/...o-mac-viruses/

My experience has been that users who do stupid stuff will bring disaster upon themselves no matter how many safeguards are in place on any platform. Those who practice "safe" computing rarely have a problem.

 

You are correct that most people won't know or care about the differences but that is part of the problem. There will never be a defense on any platform to protect against social engineering exploits or new Trojans for example. You download a program which purpotedly helps to pick winning lottery numbers and run it but it actually scans your disk for strings that look like credit card numbers and sends them off to Dr Evil. You downloaded it, installed it, and executed it. You just didn't excercise due diligence in checking the source.

Understanding how the various exploits work and using that knowledge to practice informed hygienic computing is what ultimately lowers your risk on ANY platform.

 

Just to clarify, Pwn2Own is a hacking event, not a virus making event. Everything can be Hacked, its a matter of time. On the other hand, creating a Virus that can get into the listed devices with no interaction from thier creator is a different story.

 

I have nothing against Apple, but they do not stand out in a crowd. I can count on one hand the people I know that DON'T have an iPhone/iPad. They may have started out as a hip niche product, but now they are omnipresent.

I won't wade into the apple v. pc v. *nix debate, to each their own. I'm a PC guy but it doesn't define my identity. I have a netbook at home for internet usage and connected via HDMI to my HDTV, so it's primarily a media machine.

I also have an iPod touch, which is a handy pocket pc and media player, but it's not my religion.