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January 17, 2005
Mac Mini a disruptive force
The Independent has an interesting article about how the Mac Mini could become a disruptive force by showing up in places such as banks or retail where space is a premium.
The article pointed out, correctly, that the OS X operating system has not been plagued by virus problems like the Windows operating system. What the author of the story did not understand is that OS X is built on BSD Unix. "Macs are, for now at least, not as attractive to virus writers and spammers as Windows machines." This makes the leap that every operating system has hundreds or thousands of security holes that allow a virus writer to take advantage of the operating system. This is not true for Unix, which was built from the beginning with security in mind and the idea that the computers would be interconnected. Windows, on the other hand, is based on DOS and did not have either security or interconnectivity in mind when it started life. It's an interesting misconception that I see regularly.
I was telling someone recently about the Mac Mini and they had a specific person in mind that could benefit from switching their PC to the Mac Mini. It was an elderly lady that used her PC for e-mail and web browsing. Her computer had become so ridden with spyware and viruses that it had almost stopped working. We were even discussing the idea at work that it would be appealing to lots of people that provide technical support to their family to just buy them a Mac Mini and copy of the Missing Manual to reduce their support effort. The Mini could be disruptive indeed.
Posted by michael at January 17, 2005 02:49 AM
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