There is something unnatural about having anti-virus protection on OS X. I dont want a background process taking up system resources however small it is. Some suites on Windows can choke a machine and bombard you with pop-ups, notifications, and updates, and that would drive me insane.I have two things to say about this.Mac users are very complacent regarding the safety of their computer. Deep down we all know our beloved machines arent impenetrable but we also know that OS X with its Unix/BSD base is built in such a way that makes it very hard to get to.
These days the "BSD Unix" defense is not worth as much as it once was. And you know, Swordmaker, that I am a Unix-head at heart, and believe that it is the strongest operating system in common use, bar none.
As a System Admin, I see malware emails blocked every few minutes in my corporate firewall. Very few are the old-style direct attacks on an OS. They're almost all attacks on the users.
HUMAN OPERATORS can -- and DO -- compromise any operating system, no matter how intrinsically strong. I'm not sure I like the author's cavalier attitude regarding the real vectors in use these days -- particularly phishing and spear phishing attacks, never mind things like leaving a few infected USB flash drives in the company parking lot for employees to pick up and carry inside...
> I don't bother with anti-virus on my Macs either. But I'm extraordinarily careful where I go on the internet, what I click on, and what I open in email.
I believe strongly in disaster recovery preventative measures. On my Macs, I use Time Machine religiously.
And I do a complete TM backup every so often IN ADDITION to the normal incremental one, as a total snapshot of my system in case the TM archive gets eaten or corrupted.
And I use a variety of separate media -- no point having all your backup eggs in one basket.
And my main archive is a mirrored RAID-1.
Belt, suspenders, and a skyhook.