Apple Removes Poorly-Worded Anti-Virus Support Page

Jim Dalrymple:

A support page on Apple’s Web site recommending users purchase antivirus software for their Macs received a lot of attention over the past couple of days, but on Tuesday Apple removed the page from its Web site.

“We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans, told Macworld. “The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box.”

The support document in question read, “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple anti-virus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.” Yes, that could be interpreted as meaning they recommend that Mac users install multiple anti-virus packages. No, that is not what they meant.

★ Wednesday, 3 December 2008