Given that Macs have increased drastically in popularity, I have to presume they have also increased drastically in vulnerability. What's a good antivirus/antispyware/etc. package for my Macs?
10.5.8 is close to falling off the back of the security update conveyor -- upgrading any Intel macs you have is strongly recommended.
You need to be running 10.6.8 before you can get Lion, because Lion is a download from the App store. You pay $20 just once and then can download it on any other Mac you've registered with your App store account. A copy of Snow Leopard ... you should be able to buy a DVD with it for about $30, I think.
But Lion is the one where they went to town on security, rolling out a buttload of important upgrades like ASLR and sandboxing.
Note: 10.6 and up will not run on PowerPC Macs. 10.7 will not run PowerPC apps, either -- it's pure Intel architecture.
Not close... unless you mean off the end. Apple actively supports only two major versions of MacOS: whatever is currently shipping and the one before it. Those are 10.7 and 10.6 respectively. Version 10.5 is past its official end of life.
Regarding anti-virus, 99.995% or thereabouts of the viruses that the Mac scanners scan for are Windows viruses. They don't execute on Macintosh, of course, but if they are embedded in mail messages and Word documents and PDF files then they can be transmitted to Windows compies where they can do their damage. If you have a corporate policy that requires anti-virus then get ClamXav and set it to watch your downloads and documents folders and maybe your mail cache folder.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-20 05:36 pm (UTC)You need to be running 10.6.8 before you can get Lion, because Lion is a download from the App store. You pay $20 just once and then can download it on any other Mac you've registered with your App store account. A copy of Snow Leopard ... you should be able to buy a DVD with it for about $30, I think.
But Lion is the one where they went to town on security, rolling out a buttload of important upgrades like ASLR and sandboxing.
Note: 10.6 and up will not run on PowerPC Macs. 10.7 will not run PowerPC apps, either -- it's pure Intel architecture.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-23 12:41 am (UTC)Regarding anti-virus, 99.995% or thereabouts of the viruses that the Mac scanners scan for are Windows viruses. They don't execute on Macintosh, of course, but if they are embedded in mail messages and Word documents and PDF files then they can be transmitted to Windows compies where they can do their damage. If you have a corporate policy that requires anti-virus then get ClamXav and set it to watch your downloads and documents folders and maybe your mail cache folder.