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freakboy2 · Apr 12, 2005, 07:10 AM

Ok, so i recently let my .mac account expire, and last night i get a phone call from some guy at apple who says he has info about it.

I sort of wouldn't mind having a mail forwarding from that account so i call him back.

voicemail

then he calls me back and he starts explaining to me how Virex was a free service with my .mac account and how it will protect my Mac from VIRUSes.. I point out to him that there ARENT any viruses on the mac and then he tells me that it can protect me against macro viruses that my friends might send me.

So I tell him I don't use Microsoft SW (which I do actually, but I have macros disabled) and say ask him if they do mail forwarding from the .mac account. "No." Oh ok.. ****ing useless bastards.

So here is the point of all this. APPLE IS TRYING TO SELL .MAC ACCOUNTS TO PROTECT MACS AGAINST VIRUSES THAT DON'T EXIST. Doesn't anyone else seem kind of weirded out by this? They go out of their way to tell us how secure and virus free the platform is, and then they go and make the major selling point of .mac accounts the fact that you get virus protection.

WT F Gives?!?

Anyway, i see this as one of those business practices that is truly unfortunate. Lying to your customers outright to try and get them to subscribe to something that is completely useless.

Maybe someone can clue me in here: I've ran virex for like 2 years on my macs.. It has yet to find anything. Has anyone else ever had it do anything?

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theolein · Apr 12, 2005, 07:54 AM

That does suck. Period. The reason Apple is doing it might be because .mac could be highly unprofitable and they are throwing advertising resources at it in order to get some suckers to buy it. I think Apple is one of those companies that only does a lot of marketing when they need to either launch a product or save it from oblivion.

I've never had .Mac because it's simply too expensive for what it offers to me. And the problem isn't getting any smaller for Apple with places like Gmail offering a GigaByte or more of mail space free. Granted, apple offers WebDav (iDisk), Synchronisation services, Webspace and the crappy Virex additionally to mail but it's questionable as to whether all of that is worth the price.

I think .Mac is the one place where Apple really shows how mean they can be when it comes to cost/value.

Randman · Apr 12, 2005, 07:57 AM

Macs don't have viruses but for many people with a peecee (or have to deal with a peecee environment), Macs can pass on a peecee virus.

It's the least-important selling point of .Mac, but it is bad form to pass viruses onto your peecee-using friends (or even worse, clients).

CaptainHaddock · Apr 12, 2005, 01:45 PM

Originally posted by Randman:
Macs don't have viruses but for many people with a peecee (or have to deal with a peecee environment), Macs can pass on a peecee virus.

It's the least-important selling point of .Mac, but it is bad form to pass viruses onto your peecee-using friends (or even worse, clients).

I'm not sure how that can happen, unless you like forwarding those stupid joke.exe emails to your co-workers.

brapper · Apr 12, 2005, 03:20 PM

Weird thing, I have .mac and Virex running in the background. The other day I was procrastinating and reading funny spam when I accidentally clicked a link. Safari went throught a bunch of page-forwarding before stopping on a blank page.
For the first time ever, the background monitor of Virex popped up saying something about a virus that it had taken care fo for me.

Don't know what it was, but it's good to know that Virex is keeping an eye on my computer for me, so that I can be careless now and again.

Chuckit · Apr 12, 2005, 03:28 PM

I highly doubt it actually infected your computer. You probably just downloaded a virus file, which would proceed to sit harmlessly on your desktop until you deleted it.

CatOne · Apr 12, 2005, 04:46 PM

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
I'm not sure how that can happen, unless you like forwarding those stupid joke.exe emails to your co-workers.

Macs can pass along macro viruses in Microsoft documents. I've seen a group who was all running Macs get an infected spreadsheet from a customer, exchange it, and then all of them were sending out infected Excel spreadsheets to customers.

The customers were then complaining about the infected documents.

The Macs weren't affected in any way, but they can be "Typhoid Mary" with things like Office macro viruses, which can be a bad thing. Symantec Anti Virus caught the problems and cleaned them right up.

I wouldn't run something like that POS on my machine (it's total intrusion-ware), but don't think Macs are 100% perfect citizens -- they can harbor viruses without the user knowing or being infected. Sure it's a Microsoft problem in the end, but anti-virus software on the Mac would catch the problem.

analogika · Apr 12, 2005, 07:48 PM

Originally posted by Randman:
it is bad form to pass viruses onto your peecee-using friends (or even worse, clients).

It is even worse form to expect me to spend money on protecting them from their own bad judgement.

discotronic · Apr 12, 2005, 08:10 PM

Originally posted by analogika:
It is even worse form to expect me to spend money on protecting them from their own bad judgement.

The Stupid Post of the Day Award goes to analogika!!!

How can you blame the person on the other end when they get a virus? If you are the one who sent the virus you are more to blame than the person using a PC. I really think you need to educate yourself in good computing practices.

Randman · Apr 12, 2005, 10:37 PM

There's plenty of other reasons to have .Mac, but Virex isn't a bad freebie. And it's even worse form to expect to be paid by someone in full after hosing them by forwarding a virus, regardless of their judgment.

OptimusG4 · Apr 12, 2005, 10:53 PM

You have to realize, the people calling you are outsourced and therefore, more than likely have no knowledge of the Mac other than the training they may have gone through. They prob have a script they read to everyone so it sounds like they are somewhat intelligent.

iDriveX · Apr 12, 2005, 11:01 PM

I have a hard time still believing the whole .mac isn't worth $8.33/mo. In my opinion .mac is worth more than 4 cups of coffee a month. I wonder if Apple would sell more .mac if they made it $9/mo. with monthly billing or $100/yr.

Chuckit · Apr 13, 2005, 12:35 AM

Doubt it. For the same price (or less, actually), I can get a complete Web hosting package complete with my own e-mail address at my own domain name if I feel like it.

Randman · Apr 13, 2005, 01:16 AM

There are those who think .mac is over-priced and they'll use the same comments as chuck above.

But for others, the value is there. More than there, actually.

RonnieoftheRose · Apr 13, 2005, 01:41 AM

When employees earn commission they'll say anything to make the sale.

Big Mac · Apr 13, 2005, 02:57 AM

The best feature for me is the email address, simply because I like having an @mac.com address, and I have been using it long enough as a primary address in order to make it an essential service. iDisk is the second best feature, and it does come in handy at times. I wish Apple would provide more space and some other useful features, but I can justify the cost. And lest anyone think too wishfully, there will undoubtedly be OS X viruses at some point in the not-to-distant future.

Chuckit · Apr 13, 2005, 03:04 AM

Originally posted by Big Mac:
And lest anyone think too wishfully, there will undoubtedly be OS X viruses at some point in the not-to-distant future.

So they've been saying for, oh, four years now.

chris v · Apr 13, 2005, 07:14 AM

Originally posted by Chuckit:
Doubt it. For the same price (or less, actually), I can get a complete Web hosting package complete with my own e-mail address at my own domain name if I feel like it.

I use it to synch 3 macs. That makes it more than worth it for me. Bookmark something at work, add a contact to address book-- go hame four hours later, and there they are at home, too. Nice.

iDriveX · Apr 13, 2005, 09:49 AM

The e-mail's great, but it's nothing special. iDisk is really great. I use that almost nightly, if I'm chatting with friends or just want to show someone something really quick, I just drop a file into my sites folder. I purchased the idrivex.com domain from DirecNIC and have autoforwarding set up to my .mac, as soon as I drop the file in the sites folder, I just tell them to check out idrivex.com/file.jpg. It's a lot easier than e-mail for all my retarded friends that are still on AOL and barely know how to use a computer. Also, .mac syncing is essential in my life as I sync three computers as well.

analogika · Apr 13, 2005, 04:38 PM

Originally posted by discotronic:
The Stupid Post of the Day Award goes to analogika!!!

How can you blame the person on the other end when they get a virus? If you are the one who sent the virus you are more to blame than the person using a PC. I really think you need to educate yourself in good computing practices.

I think you need to pull the stick out of your arse and look up "hyperbole" in a dictionary.

I do consider my point valid at heart, though.

Using a system highly susceptible to viruses without adequately securing it is bad judgement. Blaming me for this is as lame as sending me Powerpoint documents, thus assuming that I have spent $500 on software I don't need.

In principle, that is.

In practice, you do have a point, of course.

Should I ever be in a position where I could be putting a client at risk, virus software wil be considered. As it is, I don't send Office documents, nor do I forward stuff I get from Windows users.

Case closed.

-s*

OptimusG4 · Apr 13, 2005, 04:52 PM

How can you blame a mac user for sending a virus? Its not our responsibility to make sure the other user doesn't get it. If they choose Windows, fine by me, but they damn well better have virus protection to go with it. I never forward messages to anyone anyway, or even send word documents unless I created them myself, such as a resume. If I did send a forward, its not like I'm the original one that sent the message, therefore, I don't notice/care if there is a virus attached.