With Macs getting more popular and Apple recently announcing that 50% of people buying from an Apple Store are buying their first Mac, there’s great opportunity for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) over whether the Mac OS is a safer platform than Windows. I have lost count of the number of people who cannot believe Macs aren’t plagued with spyware and viruses.

To me, that sounds like a great opportunity for companies to prey on that FUD and sell overpriced products that cannot compensate for bad human behavior such as opening email attachments and visiting “dodgy” websites (e.g. porn, piracy, gambling and serial-number providing ones).

Yes, the Mac’s inbuilt firewall is crap but does that mean we need to spend loads on a third party software firewall? Maybe, if you are often out and about and therefore not being protected by an encrypted wireless network, but otherwise a hardware firewall such as a router is what you should be using anyway.

Do we really need to spend money protecting from Mac viruses and spyware when there are none? We have a couple of trojan horses out there, but remembering to only download from reputable sites and not running as admin will protect us from them.

This subject has sprung to my mind because of the release of SubRosaSoft’s FileDefense. Maybe we need this type of product but with their website linking to “relevant press articles” such as CNet’s “OS X security just not there yet” and the Washington Post’s “Anti-Virus On A Mac?” I get the strong impression they are just feeding on people’s FUD.

Your thoughts?