http://www.macworld.com/article/140063/2009/04/applerespond.html?lsrc=rss_main

In response to the adverts by Microsoft in which an actor Lauren was given $1000 to spend on a laptop of her choosing, with the precondition that she only consider laptops with 17 inch screens. Her conclusion at the end is that there are no Mac laptops in her price range and she clearly “just not cool enough to be a Mac person.” 

The response runs as follows

"Millions of people have switched to Mac because they love the security, stability and power that comes with world-class hardware and amazing software that just works, right out of the box," Apple spokesman Bill Evans, told Macworld. "A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want. The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool; with its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price."

- Apple Spokesman Bill Evans

How can the hardware be uniquely "world-class" when it uses the same physical motherboard, CPU, graphics and every other component? The only thing in the way of PCs running Mac OS X just as well as Mac does is Apple itself.

And, for the software, your security and stability comes from your UNIX/BSD foundation. Apple themselves have done everything possible to sabotage that in the name of usability. Real BSD and other UNIX-likes are much more secure - they have to be since they run most of the internet. Your "power" is there - except you can do every task you can on a Mac on a PC or Unix-like OS. It just won't be so pretty while you do it.

The existence of the Apple premium is indisputable. Whether you think it's worth it is a personal choice and can't really be changed by advertising.

I believe the 'world class hardware' comment was to make two points

Obviously, the cheapest windows PC's are much cheaper than the cheapest Apple computers, and this is because Apple does not really offer a low end model, not because of some sort of Apple tax. that is why the test to find a 17 inch laptop for less than $1000 came up in the favour of windows.

The second point is build quality. Obviously, if you buy a brand such as Acer, and match specs with a Mac, you will pay less, but this is again not a 'Mac tax' issue, but simply if you want high build quality, you have to pay for it, whether windows or mac.

As for your software point, you are right to a certain extent, the main reason Mac OSX is more secure than XP is more to do with a lack of internet explorer and most virus's targeting windows. Vista is less secure obviously due to the whole windows defender thing. Stability arguably could be due to simple bug testing of Apple programs, but I don't really know enough to comment.

And no, I dispute that there is any noticeable Mac tax, when you take into the following.
1) Match specs, and only consider people who want a reasonably powerful computer
2) Match Build quality - I don't want you to compare a PC that will break after a year or two with a Mac, which has been shown in various studies to last longer than most PC's
3) PC's must be bought through regular retail channels, and must not be assembled from components. Obviously it is cheapest to build your own computer and run xubuntu. Whilst that is good for some, not many people are actually capable of this, and even then, there are issues such as a lack of customer service if you cock it up, potential compatability issues between hardware, the amount of time it takes to do everything.

Apple Macbook (13") - £929

2.0GHz Core 2 Duo CPU
2GB DDR3
Geforce 9400M graphics
160GB HDD

Dell Inspiron (15.6") - £538

2.0GHz Core 2 Duo CPU
2GB DDR2
Radeon Mobility HD4330 graphics
160GB HDD

--

CPU: Same.

Memory: Now, DDR2 vs. DDR3 won't make very much difference at the low-end. Same within 1-2%.

Graphics: Checking various websites and doing ballpark figures with the specs, the HD4330 is around the same as the 9400M. Essentially, the 9400M is 1/8 of a (desktop) 9800GT, and the HD4330 is 1/10 of a (desktop) HD4850. The HD4850 is about 25% faster than a 9800GT, so the two cards are roughly the same. Any advantage the 9400M may have is wiped out by it being integrated and thus having terrible memory latency and speed, as well as using up some of that 2GB RAM.

Screen: Dell wins.

HDD: Same.

Price: Dell is 60% of the price.

Result: Dell.

---------------------------------------------

Oh, a powerful computer? How about a full gaming desktop? Let's say you'll dual-boot OS X and Windows to get the full Mac experience but Windows gaming, and I'll throw in Windows on that Mac for free.

Mac Pro - £1899 or £2058 (Higher price is reasonable GFX card)

2.66GHz Core i7-equivalent CPU

3GB DDR3

640GB HDD

GT 120 graphics (pitiful, wouldn't run any game) or HD4870 (+£150)

Dell Studio XPS - £679 or £789 (Higher price is reasonable GFX card)

2.66GHz Core i7 CPU

3GB DDR3

640GB HDD

HD4850 graphics

CPU, RAM, HDD: Same.

Graphics: HD4850 is within 10% of an HD4870. Apple wins by a small margin here. Oh, if I used the GT 120 graphics the Mac would lose heavily even to HD3650.

Price: Dell is 40% of the cost of a Mac.

First off, matching specs seems foolish being that most people's needs would be met by a $300 Intel-Atom based untra-portable PC, the build quality of Apple products is not dramatically better than any other major manufacturer (after all, they are using the same hardware and assembling it in the same Chineese factories), and I don't think I have known anyone to have a hardware compatibility problem in at least 5 years (and for the 10 years prior to that it was pretty rare) ... Beyond that, the average user will adapt to Linux, Windows or Mac OS within a couple of hours because their needs are not that complicated and most of the functionality they use is very similar across all operating systems.

With that said, an Apple PC is very similar to Sony TVs ... Although they are very expenisve compared to what most people buy this isn't (necessarily) because their prices are outrageous as much as it is because they don't have products at a lower price range because the margins aren't any good.

Shut up Apple.

When I was searching for a laptop in NZ I certainly noticed that Apple charged a premium for their brandname/software. Not that they are the only company to do so however, Alienware is probably worse for it.

I'm a recovering Mac zealot, to be honest; I switched to Linux some years ago. But while I may be disillusioned with Apple, the guy's got a good point here about the one remaining advantage Macs really have: they Just Work in ways that the other platforms simply don't.

Apple has yet to have to embrace application security standards and such dure to market share.  Because of this their systems are more vulnerable.  But, users are safer because their is no money to be made from creating exploits to Macs due to user base.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pwn2own-mac-hack,2254.html

Interview with guy who won the pwn2own contest.  So he knows what he is talking about.

Alan: How much of your work today is focused on securing Macs vs. PC vs. Linux? Who is your typical customer?

Charlie: At work, I mostly look at application-level security. Most of this is really independent of operating system. For example, source code reviews or reverse engineering binaries doesn't depend much on the operating system. I've spent a lot of my research time on Macs because I like them and they also happen to be pretty easy to break!

Alan: I hadn’t realized that Pwn2Own was one of the few contests to employ real software. I completely agree--if you’re intentionally placing bugs, it’s nothing more than a Where’s Waldo puzzle. With enough teams trying, someone will guess the bug that’s been added. Historically, most of the criticism behind “hacking contests” was that it did not reflect realistic conditions. Company XYZ would claim “our firewall is 100% secure. We’ll give $100 to anyone who can crack our system as Trade Show ABC.” Of course, by the time the trade show was over, the system wasn’t cracked. Obviously, the company will fail to mention that no one tried because the $100 reward wasn’t worth the effort.

Charlie: Right. That is true at Pwn2Own partially too. Mac bugs aren’t really valuable, but while $5,000 is a lot of money, it’s really not that much when you consider what a bad guy could make with an exploit for an unknown vulnerability in, say, IE 8 running on Vista. The one thing other contests do test that Pwn2Own doesn’t is speed. I could have written my exploit in a day or a week or even a month. At other contests, you have to be ready to go non-stop for three days or whatever. I really never work more than eight hours a day.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2009/03/more_from_pwn2own_winner_charl.html

Q: Should Mac users be worried?

A: They should definitely be a little worried. Any security expert knows 
that Mac OS X is less secure than Windows. The question is which is SAFER. Because Mac OS X is still relatively rare, it is actually a
little safer. But it has nothing to do with it being more secure, but 
rather, that bad guys are entirely focused on Windows at the moment 
due to the overwhelming market share Windows has. At this time, I 
still don't recommend anti-virus for Mac OS X users, because there 
simply isn't much malware for that platform. However, if Mac OS X 
market share ever goes up, there will be a landslide of exploits and 
malware.

Q: When you say "landslide of 
 exploits," does that include self-replicating viruses such as those that plague Windows and spread around the globe within hours? That's not supposed to be possible on OS X, so they say. Could someone get control of my Mac at home, which is behind a router with a firewall 
(but sans commercial AV software)?

A: Yes, it is built upon UNIX. However, there is a ton of Apple 
developed software running in Mac OS X, so that is mostly irrelevant. 
Being based on BSD, there probably isn't a remote root in the TCP 
stack, but it doesn't affect whether there is a bug in Safari of Mail 
or how exploitation would fail. So yes, a BSD box is very secure. A 
BSD box with Safari, Mail, mDNSResponder, iChat, etc is as likely to have bugs as any other operating system.

As for a worm, I could imagine a bug in Mail being wormable, as an exploit could mail itself to all the people who have sent you mail, etc. You are protected from server side attacks from your router, but
then again, so is your Windows PC.

Q: I understand one common objective is to 
take control of a PC to use it as a spam-sending zombie. Is that the kind of thing that could happen to Macs?

A: Yes, everything you could do on a Windows machine: turn it into a 
"bot,” send spam, perform DDOS [distributed denial of service], etc. can be done from a compromised Mac.

Q: If it is indeed so easy to hack OS X, shouldn't we have seen at least a few examples of malware in the wild by now? The Mac's share has been growing in the past two years, especially among the
group least likely to protect themselves: consumers.

A: I think the reason is economics. Hackers don't do things for fame 
anymore; it’s a business. It simply isn't profitable to try to make a 
botnet of Mac OS X machines when there are so many more Windows 
machines. I like to say that if 90% of computers are Windows 
machines, bad guys will spend 100% of their time on Windows, not 90%.

Q: Is Windows, at its core, more secure than Mac OS X? And why is the iPhone less vulnerable?

A: Yes. It’s not about the bugs, but rather the technologies which make it difficult to go from a bug/vulnerability to a bad guy running code
on your system. Windows has it, OS X doesn't. The two technologies 
that Windows has that Mac OS X lacks, specifically, are Address Space 
Layout Randomization (ASLR) and a non-executable heap. These two 
things make it very hard to write exploits (the code that gains 
control of your computer) in Windows.

IPhone is more secure than OS X because it has a smaller attack 
surface (Mobile Safari doesn't try to do everything in the world) and
it has some anti-exploitation technologies built into it (specifically 
a non-executable heap).

http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/2009/03/21/charlie-miller-on-the-lack-of-security-o

"Why Safari? Why didn't you go after IE or [Firefox]?

It's really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don't do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don't have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you'd find in Windows.

It's more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn't have anti-exploit stuff built into it.

With my Safari exploit, I put the code into a process and I know exactly where it's going to be. There's no randomization. I know when I jump there, the code is there and I can execute it there. On Windows, the code might show up but I don't know where it is. Even if I get to the code, it's not executable. Those are two hurdles that Macs don't have.

It's clear that all three browsers (Safari, IE and Firefox) have bugs. Code execution holes everywhere. But that's only half the equation. The other half is exploiting it. There's almost no hurdle to jump through on Mac OS X."

 

 

Macs suck for 1 reason. They are in between Windows and Linux. Has downfalls of both and none of the benefits. Completely useless and utterly shitty. It neither has the software lbrary my WIndows does, yet it's nowhere near as open as my Linux boot. Quite fail really....