I just now shifted from a PC to a Mac and the first piece that popped into my leader when I go online be, 'Don't I requirement to install firewall, antivirus, spybot, etc. first?' This might be adjectives sense to long-time Mac users, but after person a long-term, troubled PC user for 12 years, I'm used to the certainty that computers have need of 'protection' up to that time they're network to the world.
Answers:
LOL, I thought like peas in a pod when I first get my Mac. I bought and installed an AV and tried a trial Anti-Spyware program, for the time I have and run them they both detected nil, nada, fastener. I eventually uninstalled them because they be lately using up CPU and RAM resources for nil. Now adjectives I am using is the built in firewall along beside my wireless routers firewall and my Mac is doing fine.
I'm not axiom that Macs are virus free, it's of late that in attendance aren't any surrounded by the undomesticated that will affect Mac OS however. If you want to use/try them, shift ahead. Just don't install any Norton products on your Mac. They will do more impair than devout.
Little word of push for...adjectives computers entail antivirus. Mac or PC, Networked or Not, Internet Access or Not, they adjectives obligation it.
Macs own virus too. Not as several as the PC, but still ample to variety your director spin. NEVER hold a computer of any category minus antivirus. PERIOD.
No they do not. mostly because virus are so tricky to create for the Mac, that most nation wont waist their time to create them.
All cpu's requirement an antivirus
Not adjectives computers requirement anti-virus software. Not even adjectives Windows computers obligation anti-virus software. I run XP SP2 short anti-virus, because I detestation how bloated most AV products near on-access protection are. The final Windows box I run that get infected by a virus be spinal column when I be running 98.
If you're a savvy PC user, nearby's not really any requirement for anti-virus software, especially AV software that sits contained by memory examining every database you access or repress. Viruses can't magically materialise on your computer. If you sit at the back a fully clad hardware firewall and are practical roughly speaking the notes that make its channel onto your box, you disable unnecessary services and save your OS up to date, in that's virtually no opening of person infected. An occasional sweep beside something similar to ClamWin and examining the traffic to and from your box is more than satisfactory protection.
Well, firstly, near respect to the firewall, a simple, underlying step to do is to jump to System Preferences, and after lower than Sharing, turn everything rotten except the firewall which should be on.
Secondly, technically, yes, it is probably a accurate model to own anti-virus software and such installed on your Mac. Viruses can and do exist for the Mac and motive twist.
However, to be frank and honest, it's not of matching fundamental hurry. For one entity, Macs do hold some shelter and design advantages over Windows machines here nouns, which while by no routine making Macs invulnerable, formulate them somewhat harder target, and give a hand to shorten the break done by holes contained by the OS's indemnity. I do not know how hulking of an ascendancy this is, but it is nearby.
Another item is that Macs, by uprightness of their relatively small marketplace share, are not the primary target. A virus/worm/adware/etc writer probably will know how to extract more benefit by writing malware that attacks Windows machines than Macs. Even beside the recent resurgence of Mac sale, they are still a small cut of the bazaar, and are even smaller surrounded by some push button areas of use (e.g. ample businesses, which hold lots of money and may depend heavily on their machines and the information on them, and hence are voluminous, profitable target for those malware authors who any are after bigger fish or are aligned more closely beside organized crime). So, in attendance is a relative paucity of malware for machines running Mac OS X. As a character of analogy, what's the point of carrying around a rifle in suitcase of a tolerate or other frantic animal attack within the middle of a city where on earth in that really aren't uninhibited animals. That's not to influence that bear will never run into a city (or escape from the Zoo), and at some point in the adjectives near could be various bear contained by the city for some function, but at the moment near's not much point.