We’re going to reserve our judgements about Virus Protection applications for a moment, and let you know that VirusBarrier Express is available for free on the Mac App Store, and that it’s also seen huge success over the last month.
According to Intego, VirusBarrier Express has been downloaded 500,000+ times on the Mac App Store in the first month alone. There are two things we can gather from the news. First, the Mac App Store is a bigger success than most of us assumed it would have been out of the gate (for the record, I thought it would be huge). Secondly, the Mac App Store demographic really wants virus protection.
The Intego sales really sums up the fact that the Mac App Store is aimed at the biggest demographic of all—the common consumer. Personally, I haven’t used a virus protection application in ten years (4 of which were running XP…don’t ask), and I’d suspect that a large majority of our readers haven’t either. Intego has faced some scrutiny, however; they’re letting users download the Express application for free, but then they’re charging users for future virus definition updates.
In plain terms, they let you download the app, update the software once, then require you to pay for future updates. So, don’t be shocked when the application starts asking you to pay for an update.
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The bait and switch is devious. At least most of the anti-virus available for Windows OSes tell you up front the differences between their free and paid versions, and the free versions are not only fully free but capable and (except for Avira) nag-free.
Which brings one to the bigger question (intentionally and cleverly skirted at the beginning of the article!): does a person even need Anti-Virus on a Mac?
I would argue that at this point, yes. As few as 5 years ago, I would say no, but OSX is widely deployed by now to make it a reasonable target for malicious parties. OSX isn't inherently safer than Windows for the most part, and Safari for Mac is the most vulnerable of all browsers. What has made it safe to go without Anti-virus in the past is that viruses have specifically targeted Windows and Internet Explorer. As soon as that changes, you need to take proper measures.
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LikeThis is a classic bait-'n'-switch. Sure, this is "free" but future virus definitions will cost you. Just install the free (donations gladly accepted) anti-virus applications ClamXav (http://www.clamxav.com/) and Sophos Anti-Virus (http://www.sophos.com/products/free-tools/free-mac-anti-virus/?utm_source=Magnet&utm_medium=Cross-link&utm_campaign=M-CL-Sitepromo) and you're good to go.
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