jjmarcus tech solutions

What specs should I choose for my new iMac?

We are choosing a new iMac, and don’t know what processor to pick: do we just go for the 3.1MHz i5 or the i7, or…? And how much memory?

First off, everyone should buy a new Mac with 8GB of RAM (memory). You can also buy it after-market for a bit less, from http://macsales.com/ among others, but you want to get it pretty soon after purchasing the machine.

And with regard to screen size, if you do photos or videos, or just want to increase productivity by having a few windows visible simultaneously, certainly you want the 27″ screen. Then it’s just about the processor, and here’s the scoop: For most operations, you wouldn’t notice a difference between the i5 and the i7. But once you start in on iPhoto or iMovie, the i7 will be noticeably faster. And the faster machine will have a bit longer lifetime, accepting new upgrades to OS X farther into the future. I say “a bit,” because for some people, the extra cost won’t be justified by that extra longevity. If you went for the i5, go for the speedier version (e.g. 3.1 MHz is faster than 2.7). Thanks for inspiring this post!

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

No full-screen Finder

HappyMacOriginal

I’ve got Lion. I’m in Finder. I look for “full-screen.” Computer says no.

Apple has made a whole lotta hoopla about all the full-screeniness of Lion. But no love for Finder. What’s the deal?

EarlyMacStartup

I’m trying to work out something about that Finder icon, that innocuous cubist grin that was the face of Mac for 18 years.

When Apple got rid of the Happy Mac at startup, it caused such a fuss. The amount of reverence inspired by that Happy Mac is stunning. Why?

Macheads had for decades relied on that smile to tell us, “Whatever else might be wrong, your Mac is healthy and ready to go.” And once everything had started up, we would see the Happy Mac throughout the system — inviting, reassuring.

ClassicStartup

Then, with the arrival of OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002, the Happy Mac was gone. The only remnant on the system is the Finder icon in the dock.

MadeforMac
Is this, or isn’t this, the face of the Mac?

The irony is that, since the very beginning, the Finder has been the single worst, most uninspiring, most gripe-attractive application ever written for the Macintosh. (All due respect to the creators, who giveth homes to all good documents.) Apple has made OS X the most advanced and stable OS on the planet, replete with security and useful eye candy and productivity enhancers… but Finder has just never evolved. To this day, so many of the people we work with, as comfortable as they have gotten with their Macs, don’t have any solid idea where their stuff lives on their computer.

FinderWindow

Perhaps in Lion, Apple made the biggest changes ever, moving the hard drive and other devices to the bottom of the Finder sidebar, and leaving volumes off the desktop by default. These items were cues to confusion: a user saw them, and was immediately reminded of how much they don’t know about their computer. What the heck is a “Macintosh HD”? Why does it say “Macintosh” when I own a “Mac”? What does the “HD” stand for? And when I open “Macintosh HD,” what the hell is a “System” or a “Library”? (Coincidentally, Microsoft’s own file browser has had an even more ugly lifecycle, made no better by the recently announced Windows 8.)

WinExp
Ewww.

Apple has given priority to showing people their “Places,” a name I have issues with because it further abstracts the situation. My Places are in my Home but when I want a new Place, I go to File > New Folder? Shouldn’t that be New Place? And is a File a Document?

So why don’t they just lose Finder altogether? I don’t know if it’s out of neglect, nonchalance, or fear.

Or loyalty. It could be loyalty. A tiny acknowledgement of the devotées who recognized, from Day 1, the personality and love that went into Apple products.

Needlepoint

Maybe Apple feels that files and folders are an arcane idea. The iPhone and iPad are successful because their users don’t have to think in files. They think in contexts, locations: “I go there, to get to that.”

But the laptop and desktop computers that Steve Jobs called “trucks” still work in the old file-and-folder mode, no matter how much Apple is trying to friendly that mode up. Perhaps that Happy Mac still works on people. “Don’t worry about what you don’t know. I’m your friend. We’ll get through this together.” (It is funny that the new iPhones have a voice that actually responds to you in a tone that, while helpful, is not exactly friendly.)

Without question, if they took Finder away right now, I’d be way ticked off. But I’m starting to think that maybe they should be honest with us. Apple doesn’t want to be your friend, and they don’t want the Mac to be your friend. They want you to have an assistant to help you get things done.

I’m reminded of the movie Dave, when Dave meets his lookalike, the American president, who tells him, “Just get rid of that grin. You look like a schmuck.”

So maybe it’s time to say goodbye to my old nemesis Finder, and likewise to my dear old friend the Happy Mac. Apple could give us a new starting point for productivity. And it should probably have full-screen mode.

HappyMacNails

Are Macs compatible with PCs?

Have you ever had trouble with compatibility between your Mac and PCs? I work with Word a lot. Will I have to use Windows? I have learned that you can use it and Mac’s own operating system.

We Mac nerds have been fielding those concerns for a long time, but it wasn’t until 2006 that we could completely, confidently, and unreservedly say, not only that a Mac can now do anything a PC can do — because a Mac can become a PC — but that a Mac can do even more than a PC, because it can actually run Windows at the same time it’s being a Mac! It really opened up our digital world. And by now, it’s so smooth as to be easy and smooth for any user of any experience. I have dozens of clients using it every day, for QuickBooks and other software that doesn’t have a good analogue on the Mac.

But much, much better than that: there is very little you can’t do on the Mac itself. There’s a wealth of software out there, almost always designed better and with more care than its PC counterparts. And it’s all really easy to get to. Apple recently built an App Store into the Mac that works just like the one on the iPhone: tons and tons of apps, many very cheap or free, that install with a click. Updates are also a snap.

Finally, to address your specific need, all one need know is this: Microsoft wrote Word and Excel for the Mac long before it had versions for Windows. The Mac versions have always been able to share docs with Windows. We have not one single client running Windows on the Mac to use Office.

But I want to put a new thought in your head: Microsoft Office is history. The future is in online software such as Google Docs. If you haven’t seen it, when you are next in your Gmail, look up at the top of the page for the Documents link. Click it, and… Welcome to the Evolution. You can create word processing docs, spreadsheets, and presentations; access them from any computers; and collaborate on them with multiple other people simultaneously.

Once you start using Google Docs and its ilk, working on files that are imprisoned on your computer will start to feel limiting, and maybe even archaic. It has its own strengths and limitations — I may download a doc to my Mac to take it into Apple’s Pages or Numbers to pretty it up if that’s appropriate. But 99+% of my docs live on Google’s servers.

In case you were wondering, this is an example of what some folks now call “working in the cloud.” Fly the friendly skies!

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

The big move: Lion, iOS 5, iCloud: all at once?

I overheard someone telling her story of the upgrade and how long it took, etc. One of her pieces of advice wast to upgrade the devices first and the computer last. That doesn’t sound right to me. What say you? Is the upgrade process pretty straightforward? I am proceeding cautiously after my experience with upgrading my last phone and have it slow down to mud.

You can upgrade the phones just by updating your iTunes and then plugging in the phones, but to get the full benefit of iCloud, etc., I would do upgrades in this order: Lion > iTunes & iPhoto > iPhone & iPad.

The upgrading is really as easy as I sketched out in the newsletter, but if you’re sketchy about it, I can give you some guidance as you go through. Just make sure you have a backup of your Mac. It will backup the mobile devices before upgrading to iOS 5.

All reports are that iOS 5 works just great on phones going back to the iPhone 3GS, so it’s unlikely that your device will get sluggish, but we can troubleshoot after the fact.

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

J2 News: Buy, Sell, or Hold

What a fantastic bunch of new toys and tools to talk about! Since Lion, iPhone 4S, iOS 5, and iCloud have come out, we have some recommendations to make. Here goes:

iOS 5: Go get it!

The free update to iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches is nothing but awesome. Better notifications, better messaging, faster camera access, readable web pages in Safari, and location-based reminders… Whew. I’m really pleased by the whole lot of features. Run, don’t walk, to update your iTunes to 10.5, and then plug in your iPad or iPhone (3GS or later).

notifications

You’ll be invited to begin updating your device to iOS 5.0. Agree to the license, yadda yadda, and it will start downloading. Might take a while, depending on your internet speed, and then iTunes will start applying the update to your gadget.

The entire process can take between 30 minutes and an hour, depending on how much stuff you keep on your phone or tablet, so set it running when you can be without your little digital lifeline for a bit. (I know. I get the shakes too, sometimes.)

iPhone 4S: Can I have mine now, please?

4sphoto

The camera: Best-in-class.
Performace: Darn right I want two processor cores in my pocket.
That voice control thing. Magic.

(Many of you already have Siri Assistant on your phones, because we put it there, starting about two years ago. As of today, that older version is defunct.)

I chose not to pre-order my iPhone 4S, because I remember the 3GS+MobileMe debacle two years ago. As eager as I can get for the latest-and-greatest, I don’t need it badly enough to justify downtime. But anyone ordering from now on will receive the phone long after iCloud is in full swing, thus enabling some very cool features, including photo sync between devices.

It’s so worth mentioning that iPhones, even older ones, bring a great price on Craigslist, and newer ones can be easily sold to Gazelle.com, an incredibly easy place to unload your old gadgets.

Lion: Hold Til Ready

OS X 10.7 “Lion” is lovely. A tasty chocolate coating around a very solid, nutritious walnut of a system that was 10.6 Snow Leopard.

They called me Coleridge in pre-school.

Lion

Most people will want to upgrade to Lion, and will be very happy with the new system. Installing is easy: If you have Snow Leopard, and you keep up with Software Updates, you can buy Lion for $29 from the Mac App Store in your Dock. It will install itself right in place, restarting when it needs to.

Many features in Lion are refreshing, especially the full-screen modes available in many apps. Schedule us at j2mac.com and we’ll show you how to use multi-touch gestures, recover auto-saved versions of your documents, and organize your workspaces!

Auto-resume of apps and documents after a reboot is easy to get used to. Scooting around your workspace with a trackpad instead of a mouse is the wave of the future. Apple has reduced visual clutter, and aimed at keeping their users productive. (Some of the prettiness in Lion I can do without. A lot of it I turn off, grateful there’s a switch.)

But Lion is still young, and a bit wobbly. We’ve found instabilities in iChat and elsewhere, and some things just don’t seem to work like they should. A second update, 10.7.2, just hit on October 12, and we are hoping it will clear up some of the inconsistencies.

Another issue affecting long-time Mac users is that programs written before 2006 won’t run on Lion. At all. This includes Microsoft Office 2004 and Internet Explorer. Good riddance and all, for sure; but a lot of you don’t have Office 2008 or 2011, and at least one office still needs IE for the Mac for time tracking.

We’ll look at iCloud in a sec. It’s very slick… and it requires Lion. I’ve upgraded my MobileMe to iCloud, so because I can’t live without Address Book syncing between all my computers, I am going to have to upgrade my second laptop this weekend. I just have to go through my applications and figure out what I need to export from those older programs. Most newer Mac users won’t have to deal with this process at all, but we are happy to help those who do.

Organizations with a bunch of Macs should hold off for now, until a hardware or software upgrade requires them to move forward. For businesses using a Mac server, I’m also officially recommending against upgrading to Lion Server until at least 10.7.3.

iCloud: The point is moot, the cloud is yours

iCloud is the very worthy successor to MobileMe. If you are using MobileMe, you will transition to iCloud services by June 2012. If you have a new iPhone or iPad, or you update to iOS 5, you’ll be living in the iCloud.

When it launched, iCloud had some trouble, and I couldn’t sign up until a day later. But everything seems clear now, and I am so far very pleased by iCloud’s function: Photo Stream syncs your photos from iPhone to iPad to iPhone. The Find My Mac feature could recover your computer from theft.

It does appear that all your MobileMe configurations will continue to work until next year, so if you are hanging onto older phones and computers for a bit, you don’t have to be rushed about making the move. Give us a call at 210-787-2709 or email our new Help Desk! at help@j2mac.com and we’ll make sure it all goes smoothly.

In memoriam

Jobs

Steve Jobs is directly responsible for my livelihood, my passion for technology, and even many of my hobbies and pastimes. Even for this 1984-baptized Mac geek, computers were clunky, nearly pointless contraptions until Steve returned to Apple in 1997. (Perhaps the internet helped a little.) I may no longer be the Apple fanboy that I once was, but I’m awed to have witnessed this fundamental change in our civilization that this one guy helped usher in.

“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

Your man in the cloud,

Jonathan

Switching to iCloud

Are you going to send out a general ‘move to icloud’ info sheet? Before I move I sure would like to know how to handle the things that no longer sync, what to utilize, etc.

I’m trying to change over myself, but they’re blocking everyone at the moment. As soon as I am able to do it, I’ll know what it looks like. Apple has a FAQ, by which we know that the transition should be mostly transparent, at least until June of next year: http://www.apple.com/mobileme/transition.html

When we know more, I’ll post something.

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

How Can I Access My Files on a Different Computer?

I’m out if town, and need to access my documents on my home iMac from the laptop I have with me. How can I do that?

Mac on Mac action

1) File Sharing: You can easily get to files on the iMac when you are at home with your laptop. All you do is, on the iMac, make sure File Sharing is on: Apple menu > System Preferences > Sharing. Then, on the MacBook Pro, go to Finder > File menu > New Finder Window > left sidebar > Shared section. Click on the iMac, and to the right, click Connect As… Enter the user name and password you use on the iMac (it’s nice to standardize these on all computers). Here’s Apple’s more complete tutorial on File Sharing.

Mac File Sharing

Also, you can turn on Screen Sharing in that same System Preferences pane, and then the button Share Screen… will appear next to Connect As…

2) Back to My Mac: You may have the Back to My Mac part of the MobileMe service set up in System Preferences > MobileMe > Back to My Mac. If that’s working, your iMac will appear on your laptop, in that same Shared section of the left sidebar of your Finder windows, even when you’re not in the house. Note: Back to My Mac is notoriously finicky about routers; unsurprisingly, it plays very smoothly with Apple Airport devices. See item (1) for getting to your stuff once you’ve found your Back-to-My-Mac-enabled Mac.

3) iCloud: This fall, Apple will evolve the MobileMe service into iCloud The cost will change to free, and syncing files and photos between your computers will be one of the flagship features. One can look online for some previews of how iCloud will work.

4) Dropbox: This to me is the winner. Until iCloud appears, and perhaps even after, my favorite way to see my files everywhere is called Dropbox. There are other services almost exactly like Dropbox, but they don’t have its simplicity, accessibility, and widespread adoption. I use Dropbox to synchronize not just my documents, but also my secure databases, shopping and task lists, and frequently used text snippets. Some of our clients share and sync their QuickBooks company files with their bookkeepers.

Dropbox illustration

Dropbox’s pricing is either free for 2GB storage, $10/month for 50GB, or $20/month for 100GB. (That’s a referral link: you and I each get an extra 250MB of storage, up to a 10GB limit!) The iPhone/iPad app is free, and the iPhone word processor I’m typing this on now is $5, and syncs with Dropbox.

5) LogMeIn: Finally, the best free service for remote screen-sharing is LogMeIn. It has a good, albeit $30-pricey, iOS app, and I use it and the web app all the time to help clients. Until this year, LogMeIn Free only offered screen control of your remote computers, but recently they added the awesome feature of being able to access and download files from a remote machine, even to your iPad. This is not sync à la Dropbox, but very useful nonetheless.

Any of these solutions is easy and cheap to implement. I keep Dropbox and LogMeIn going all the time. Call me if you would like further guidance.

Quick fix: If you can’t see server files

If you can’t see server files or log into a workstation with a network account, here’s a troubleshooting decision tree:

Can you browse the web on the server?

If no, check all network connections in the back of the server, make sure other computers are on the Internet, and possibly reboot the router.

If yes…

Can you see your main data drive(s) on the server desktop?

If no, call a pro.

If yes…

Try this:

Open Server Admin in the Dock.
Under the server’s name in the left sidebar, click on AFP.
Down below, click Stop Service.
Then count to 10, and click Start Service.

Once you’ve restarted AFP (it means “apple file protocol”; you are just toggling file sharing), try logging into a workstation.

If no dice, call a pro.

If you have to do this more than twice a year, and everything else is working — you don’t have regular power outages, for example — it would be good to get your server checked out.

Posted via email from J2 Tech Blog

J2 News: Prevent Someone From Becoming You

If you got my last newsletter, you know that this is the year when we all — the whole internet-using universe — become targets for bad hackers. We’ve already learned how they will try to get at our Macs. Now we need to look at how our online accounts and identities are vulnerable. Please at least read the first section, on passwords.

Got GSP? Picking a Good, Strong Password

You know how, recently, you might see a spate of emails from a friend that you know are junk — invitations to off-shore pharmacies and the like? And then that same friend emails everyone in his or her address book, to the effect of, “Sorry, someone hijacked my email!”?

Well, that happened because your friend had a password that was too simple, too easy to crack, and someone cracked it and took control of the mailbox.

This intrusion is not just an inconvenience to your friend and the people in their inbox. If someone has your email password, they can get passwords to ALL of your other online accounts, including possibly banking. And hackers make money — more than you might think — by acquiring access to things like passwords, online accounts, credit card numbers, etc. (Hackers commit other kinds of crimes, too, but let’s continue.)

How do they do it? I’m not a hacker, but I can abstract it: The bad guys have their computers scan the internet for, say, @gmail.com addresses. Then they point other software at the Gmail servers, and run software to try to log in to known accounts by guessing all the possible password permutations. Unless you’re famous and being specifically targeted, they’re not researching the names of your kids and pets. They just run through the dictionary, and common names, and number sequences (e.g., “1234”), and their bots work really fast. If your password is more simple than what I’ve outlined below, they can guess it.

Here’s a real disconcerting site, which I found by googling “crack gmail password.” There are others.

So, I’ve already posted this, but it’s well worth restating:
Please — as in, umm, now — please create a Good, Strong Password for your email and any other important online accounts.

A Good, Strong Password contains:

at least 10 characters of both letters and numbers
at least 1 capital letter, preferably in the middle
at least one non-alphanumeric character, preferably in the middle
no recognizable names or words.

Microsoft words their recommendations slightly differently, and offers one tip for creating a password. I like their suggestion of choosing a memorable phrase and building the password from there. I even think that choosing a full sentence with capitals and punctuation might be a good way to remember the password; a bunch of recognizable words would be safe-ish. I also like passwords that are easy to type, as long as they don’t contain keys in order, such as “fghj.” Here are some other tips.

I have met every different kind of personality when it comes to creating and remembering passwords. And believe me, I have every sympathy for people who feel they have more important things to do with their brains. Unfortunately, we have come to a time when, from here on out, you either keep your digital stuff locked tight, or you get your life messed with.

Keeping Track

The natural question that follows is, how do I keep up with all my passwords? Fortunately, your Mac has an excellent built-in device for this, called the keychain. Several software packages are also available for Macs and PCs. Check out my full write-up on the keychain and other options.

Do the It’s-Really-Me Two-Step

There is another method to lock your ID even tighter. It’s called “two-factor” or “two-step” authentication. Not every service offers it, and I won’t lie and say it ain’t for those who like to keep technology simple. But Google has rolled it out, even to their free accounts, and it is as smooth as I could expect something like this to be.

You dance the Google two-step like this: When you sign into a new computer — or every 30 days on your usual computers — besides accepting your password, Google sends you a text message with a code. You have to enter that code on the Google web site to continue.

Google two-step verification

Also, for all your other apps that access your account, such as an email or calendar program, Google will generate a single-use “application” password that you only have to enter once; it will get stored by your computer or phone, and if said device gets stolen, you can revoke permission.

“Gosh, this sounds like fun!” you’re saying. You can’t wait for us to come over and show you this awesome new computery thing. Just wait! There’s more…

Google offers a couple of backup verification methods in case you can’t get a text: You can receive a voicemail with the code, or your phone can run an app that generates a code for you, or you can carry a piece of paper with 10 “backup” codes on it. Really, I’m not kidding.

They also will do a retinal scan and test your DNA against a sample they keep in a cryo-vault… OK, that time I was kidding.

Enabling Two-Step Verification for your Google account is in your Account Settings. It’s a bit of a process, and I recommend reading carefully each step of the way.

Facebook also does this login two-step now, which is good because 750,000,000 accounts are a terrifically big honey pot, and we all know someone whose account got hacked. Go to the Account Security section in Account Settings, and make it look like this:

Facebook Account Security settings

Facebook should already know your cell number, and will text you a code to enter.

I dearly wish more services were doing the two-step. Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Apple iTunes — they should all get on this bandwagon. But the smart ones are at least starting to require Good, Strong Passwords.

Welcome to the Age of the Hack. Don’t shoot the messenger.

J2 News: Hell Is for Hackers, or Shields Up!

Hackers poster I hope y’all won’t mind if I say that I consider information in this and my next newsletter really important. It doesn’t matter where you learn how to protect yourself from hackers, but I hope you do take a few minutes to do so.

Because this is it. This is the year your Mac might get hacked. I’ve promised over the years that I would tell you when it happened, and now I’m telling you: It can happen, and unless you’re careful, it will happen to you.

Oh, hey, while I’m being all Mr. Sunshine, guess what? Your email password is gonna get hacked, too.

Damn.

But that’s not to say you can’t protect yourself. I’ll deal with securing your online identity in another email. Right now, let’s talk Mac.

Malware has come to the Mac. It has appeared with several names — MacDefender, MacGuard, MacProtector, MacSecurity — and it looks like this:

MacDefender malware fake alert screen

It enters your life as a browser pop-up window, so far mostly frequently on pages resulting from Google Image searches. Then the malware gets you two ways:

By warning you that your Mac computer is infected, it entices you to buy the advertised software, which doesn’t exist and is only a decoy to sucker you into divulging your credit card.
Meanwhile, it installs a background application that shows you material of questionable taste to make you think your computer is infected, which hey, now it is!

It does not do some of the other horrors perpetrated by its more skeevy cousins, such as hijacking your mail program to spam your contacts, or reporting all your keystrokes back to its masters.

Golly, isn’t humanity awesome? All this because we wanted to see other people’s cats playing piano.

I’m not going to go into the differences between viruses, trojans, and other malwares. But since I just had to look it up, I’ll share that this nastiness is not a “virus,” in that does not replicate itself. Call it a hybrid, scareware with a trojan horse back. A pretend threat that relies on human nature and user action.

Speaking of user action, stopping this stuff is, at the moment, still really easy, using the same basic best practices all computer users should follow. Windows users have had lots of time to learn to ignore such nonsense. Now the Mac community gets to learn the stop-drop-‘n’-roll and the duck-‘n’-cover. Shall we?

Don’t Click the @%#$! Button!

I know, that “Cleanup” button, however ungrammatical, is tempting. Don’t. Just don’t. Simply close the window with the usual small, round, red button at the top left.

Ummm… Don’t Give Your Money to Just Anyone

‘Nuff said.

Don’t Enter Your Password Unless You Know Why

When you want to install software or make a change to the Mac system, you are asked for your password. Even if you never chose a password on your Mac (and you should do so), you’ll still get the dialog box asking for one. This, I think is one of the primary reasons the Mac is still the safer system. Any aspiring malware that wanted to corrupt your machine completely would have to request your password. Microsoft could make Windows much more secure by adopting this feature.

That said, some variants of this recent menace do not need to ask for your password to install themselves. They can’t get past your own user folder into the root of your system, but they can still be a pain.

The Mac message “[This thing you just downloaded] is a file downloaded from the Internet” is also a layer of protection. Windows has similar warnings. Error messages are worth reading. Don’t be afraid you won’t understand them. Apple is pretty good at speaking them plainly.

Tell Safari Not to Be So Trusting

Open Safari.
Click on the Safari menu by the Apple, and click Preferences…
Click the General button in the toolbar.
Turn off the option called ”Open ‘safe’ files after downloading.” As it says, “‘Safe’ files… include disk images and other archives,” and these can contain application installers.
Close the Preferences window.

Run Software Update

If your Mac is running Snow Leopard, you’ll get Security Update 2011-003 with your next software update, which you can run manually from the Apple menu.

The Security Update is Apple’s first foray into malware-removal. It is almost entirely transparent: It updates its database in the background, learning about and blocking new annoyances on the fly. It depends on Apple to keep abreast of current threats.

Side note: If you don’t have Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and your Mac is newer than 2006, for $29 it’s well worth it! Even with 10.7 Lion coming out this month, you’ll have to have 10.6 to have the Mac App Store from which to download 10.7. So you might as well.

Kill It If You Got It

If you do end up contracting a bug like this, you can follow these instructions from Apple to remove it.

Moving Forward

Finally, I gotta include the obligatory Mac fanboy defensive-sounding junk here at the end. In truth, malware has appeared on Macs before, especially before OS X. Also, there has been at least one virus. But for reasons mentioned above, they were never able to propagate. (I have never bought into the “security through obscurity” theory that too few Macs exist to make worthy, valuable targets. Shouldn’t 5% of all computers be infected with around 5% of all malware?)

This recent scare was a new breed. It was designed to look like Mac software. And it caught a lot of people. It didn’t do a ton of damage, though I’m sure many folks got their cards ripped off. For now, I reaffirm my belief that we don’t need anti-virus software running on the Mac. But this recent baddie is insidious, and obnoxious, and I doubt it’s the last of its kind.