I am buying a MacPro for my photography studio next week. I have read here and elsewhere that there really is no need for anti-virus or anti-spyware software. I would rather be safe than sorry and need to ask this here. I hate Norton as I had it on a PC a few years back and it was a pain to get rid of when I switched to Trend (which is wonderful). Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I will not be running Windows on the Mac. I still have my Vaio PC for that.

I suppose sooner or later you'll probably need one So will Linux eventually. AVG is said to be developing a program for OS X. Here's some reading:
http://www.macosxhints.com/polls/index.php...irus&aid=-1
Mark

Thanks. The anti-virus issue for macs seems to be all over the place. Again, thank you for your response. I think I will be better off safe than sorry.

There are no virus for a Mac in the wild.....yet. Eventually one of these days there will be one successfully written and the person who does write it will become famous or infamous.

If you really want an AV for your Mac, ClamXav is free and the one you should install on your Mac. It's mainly used so you don't inadvertently transfer Windows virus or MS macros to a Windows user. Other AV programs are not worth the system resources or money, especially Norton or Symantec products. I've read that the can do more harm to a Mac than good.

My new Mac works well, no virus so far

Exploit: OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse
Discovered: October 30, 2007
Risk: Critical
Description: A malicious Trojan Horse has been found on several pornography web sites, claiming to install a video codec necessary to view free pornographic videos on Macs. A great deal of spam has been posted to many Mac forums, in an attempt to lead users to these sites. When the users arrive on one of the web sites, they see still photos from reputed porn videos, and if they click on the stills, thinking they can view the videos, they arrive on a web page that says the following:
Quicktime Player is unable to play movie file.?Please click here to download new version of codec.
After the page loads, a disk image (.dmg) file automatically downloads to the user’s Mac. If the user has checked Open “Safe” Files After Downloading in Safari’s General preferences (or similar settings in other browsers), the disk image will mount, and the installer package it contains will launch Installer. If not, and the user wishes to install this codec, they double-click the disk image to mount it, then double-click the package file, named install.pkg.
If the user then proceeds with installation, the Trojan horse installs; installation requires an administrator’s password, which grants the Trojan horse full root privileges. No video codec is installed, and if the user returns to the web site, they will simply come to the same page and receive a new download.
Link for entire article.
http://www.intego.com/news/ism0705.asp

Also here;

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/10/31/trojan/index.php

How to detect and remove OSX.RSPlug.A

1. In the Finder, navigate to /Library -> Internet Plug-Ins, and delete the file named plugins.settings. Empty the trash. This deletes the tool that sets the rogue DNS Server information.
2. In Terminal, type sudo crontab -r and provide your admin password when asked. This deletes the root cron job that checks the DNS Server settings. You can prove it worked by typing sudo crontab -l; you should see the message crontab: no crontab for root.
3. Open your Network System Preferences panel, go to the DNS Server box, and copy the entries you can see to a Stickies note, TextEdit document, or memorize them. Now retype those same values in the box, then click Apply.
4. Reboot your Mac.
The only people who should be infected today are those who have broken the number one rule of internet computing: don't download and install programs (especially those that are (a) package installers that ( request your admin password) from untrusted sources.

link for more info;

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...071031114140862

31 variants and counting.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001312.html

Macscan is charging it's paying costomers more money for the fix.
I use Clamxav and Virusbarrier.
But I'm paranoid.

I just ordered the MacPro this morning and am interested in the differences between Linux and Unix. What is are the differences in construct? I am not overly familiar with either but am a curious person. There is a huge difference between chemical developing and a PhotoShop treatment to get the same or similar result. Same, I would guess, in linux and unix. Any thoughts or is this Mac resurgent photographer off base?