So i finally dove into the world of macs and got a nice little 2.8g macbook pro. is there anything I should be worried about with torrents and a mac? I know pc's have adware and other sorts of crap.... what threats are out there for macs, if any?
Generally no... You might lose some sleep over the parts you could have bought for your car with the money though...
Mac's are just as susceptible to virus's as any other computer. The biggest positive on this front is the lack of market share for Apple, thus keeping Mac OS under the radar for most of the mainstream virus's. Like all computers, your best bet is to be careful what you download, and be sure to regularly update your Adobe products (Acrobat, Flash, etc), Apple products (the OS, Quicktime, etc), and any other web plugins including your browser, as most current virus's come through infected web pages and unpatched "plugin" software. There are virus protection software packages available for Apple, here's a review page google pointed me to.
well i figured there would be some dangers and such... I just didn't know how prevelent*(sp) they are. I realyl wanted to check out some dj software for it, and i don't wanna dump 699.99 on the software unless it meets my needs. (yes I will buy it if it does... I have to)
hey i have build a few studios. my word of advice. go to the website for the software and see what system they say to go with. i built a basement studio where we used a laptop so we could be mobile. that was a major fail because the 002 Rack for Pro Tools needed a different set up. We ended up going with the Mbox until we were able to build a super comptuer for the studio. my advice: Don't buy a computer from apple/PC/Store for music. Build a PC for music. This is coming from someone who has dropped over 20K on music studios. Just like a car, you can buy mods that work... but don't work for the final plan... therefor you have to sell them down the road to buy what you should have done in the first place.
I know in the past that a combination of Safari and Quicktime = owned but those were targeted attacks.
You don't really need an anti-virus on a mac unless you plan to torrent a bunch of pron and/or have windows machines on local network that you could pass the viruses onto. I personally use a firewall instead, called Little Snitch, its very nice and light. Highly recommend to get that.
little snitch is good I run it myself, but it doesn't prevent the execution of a downloaded virus. Bullwinkle is on the money, there's plenty of mac viruses out there, there just aren't as many and they just don't spread as quickly as Win viruses because of the small market share. If you choose to go with out virus protection, backup your stuff frequently.
word... thanks guys. As for the music making / pc idea. I apreciate the advice. I have a power house of a pc for making my tracks, video and photo editing.... There really isn't anything I could throw at the pc to knock it down for that. I'm looking at live show software, and there is no way i'm hauling my person pc out with me. I'm pretty sure a 2.8g macbook pro with dual video cards, 4 gig ram should take lot to bring that thing to its knees as well... but again i'm using the laptop for school, and maybe some live music programs like traktor scratch pro or serato scratch. I guess the rule of thumb is just to be carefull as always. thanks for the tips on the virus protection. I really just want a form of a scanner so after I download it I can scan it so I can just delete it if its dirty..
Do a bit of searching around for ClamAV - they are a free, on-demand only scanning (no real-time scanning slowing your stuff down) that should be a good fit for just scanning downloaded files. There is a Mac port of this app. As long as you keep your stuff patched (mostly Flash, web browser, and OS) and scan any executable you should theoretically be OK.
A studio for 20K is gonna pretty wholly fall under the mods that don't work in the end for pro level audio. A good Pro HD system will probably cost a user a solid 10K minimum before any extra plug-ins, preamps, outboard gear, or a console. LE is not studio quality, it's Home studio quality, and the gap between the 2 is as wide as the gap between a corolla and a 911 GT3. I don't want to derail this thread to far into the music realm though. Macs are less susceptible to viruses, and the market share thing is a myth. 10% is a substantial portion, enough to warrant malware. There are viruses out there, but as long as you avoid high risk places (say illegal porn, and other truly shady areas of the internet) then your at a very low risk for them.
Well, I would consider only having 10% of the market a large hurdle. If I was writing maleware code, I'd write it for a PC so I'd hit the larger number of users...wouldn't you? Anyway, from a technical standpoint, I would consider Macs and PCs equal in terms of "susceptibility to maleware/viruses," as Microsoft made leaps and bounds with their implementation of a dual login token with User Account Control in Vista.
yeah well this is a total over 5 years and does not include fees for shows, road, etc. we weren't running HD but we were running LE with a sweet set up. as well we had a 4 time Grammy winning sound engineer doing the work on the machines. my point was that over 5 years i sunk a lot of money into stuff that i could have saved a lot of money on had I known more about music in the long run.
No. I would write it for mac, because it's a less exploited market. If I was trying to say, steal logins for bank accounts or paypal or some sutch. I could either A) put my PC version out there, but its likely that the persons computer is gonna have other malware on it so I may be competing for that account. Or B) I could make it for mac and have cornered the market (in a twisted sort of way) I'd expect about 10% of malware to be for mac, but the number is much lower, more like .01%-.001% I guess it really depends on what area of security you mean in the end. I think overall macs are a better platform that can be made more secure, but they do have downfalls. As far as home systems are concerned though the vast majority of end users have no idea what can lurk in the background, and act accordingly. -OOPS- ofspunk7, lets continue this Via PM, just isn't the thread for it here. I am always interested in others sound related endeavors.
My silly opinion: Macs have security through obscurity. --this has been stated. However; the Macintosh OS is now just (essentially) Linux/Unix with a pretty front end.
like said before, as long as you avoid the shady depths of the interwebs you should be fine. I have never used anything in the past 5 years and have never ran into any problems on my macs
The fact that OSX/Unix has fewer viruses has to do with who codes those and simple math. Malware comes from Russia and China for the most part, kids who write it grew up using PC's and people who order it (marketers, spam operators) would rather hit 9 out of 10 computers than 1 out of 10. Pretty simple really.
Correct. I was speaking in terms of viruses. My old Powerbook G4 ran incredibly hot to the point where it burnt the finish off my wood table. So far my new unibody macbook pro runs beautifully cool and extremely quiet
The old power PC chipsets produced a lot of heat, plus apple liked at that point to really lay on the thermal transfer stuff thick which made the laptops burn laps. I never had any huge issues with mine, but I had a 17 incher which meant more surface area to cool it via. mplspilot you make a good point, most of the low level spyware/malware comes from the poorer computerised nations. Just as those "Nigerian prince" scams happen, well, in Nigeria.
