I thought Macs always had a virus. Most of the time I used one some beach ball would start spinning in the middle of the screen and the mac would lock up.
Someone told me it was the mac beach ball of death virus but then a mac lover told me they never get a virus.
So confused. I was thinking of spending way more for a mac than a PC but if it can get a virus then why would I want to pay more for a computer.
Yup
Apparently Macs.Just.Do.Not.Work like the zealots would lead you to believe.
Stick with the other 90% of the worlds population and go with the PC.
That's because you have unfortunately been given some bad info.
The spinning beach ball is equivalent to Windows hourglass -- it's just a "busy" indicator.
There are some situations on OS-X where the beachball goes on forever -- it means the application has locked up. What you do is go to the "Force Quit" menu and kill the errant application. No virus is involved. Just a misbehaving program.
While there is a small amount of malware out for Macs, I am unaware of any "virus" as such. The Mac malware is all "Trojans" meaning that at some level it requires user intervention to either download it, or to authorize its installation, or both. A true virus can self-replicate to other machines, and to the best of my knowledge no such thing exists for the Mac at this time. It's not impossible for someone to develop such a thing, but it hasn't happened yet.
Many such malware programs exist for Windows. However, the latest release, Windows 7, is quite robust and its security is on a par with the level OS-X reached a few years ago. These days I consider them roughly equivalent.
> I was thinking of spending way more for a mac than a PC but if it can get a virus then why would I want to pay more for a computer.
I suggest you choose your computer and operating system based on what you want or need to DO with it, rather than perception of malware resistance. Both Mac OS-X and Windows 7 are excellent in that regard. Choose based on what you want to do, and which platform supports those activities best. IMHO.
“I was thinking of spending way more for a mac than a PC but if it can get a virus then why would I want to pay more for a computer.”
Nice troll, I’ll bite.
Mac prices are quite competitive with Windows boxes, _for comparable quality machines_.
When you consider the added value of the OS and bundled applications, Macs are a great buy.