Right when the Macalope was sending along his take on the recent ComputerWorld editorial calling for the FTC to investigate Apple, Macworld asked me to write a more somber take. Here’s an excerpt:

On May 26, Macworld republished a controversial Computerworld article by Ira Winkler suggesting that Apple is “grossly negligent” when it comes to security, and should be investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising. The author was motivated to write this piece based on Apple’s recent failure to patch a known Java security flaw that was fixed on other platforms nearly six months ago. While the article raises some legitimate issues, it’s filled with hyperbole, inaccurate interpretations, and reaches the wrong conclusions. Here’s what you really need to know about the Java situation, Mac security in general, and the important lesson on how we control Apple’s approach to security.

The real failure of this, and many other, calls for Mac security is that they fail to accurately identify those who are really responsible for Apple’s current security situation. It isn’t security researchers, malicious attackers, or even Apple itself, but Apple’s customers. Apple is an incredibly successful company because it produces products that people purchase. We still buy MacBooks despite the lack of a matte screen, for example. And until we tell Apple that security will affect our buying decisions, there’s little motivation for the company to change direction. Think of it from Apple’s perspective—Macs may be inherently less secure, but they are safer than the competition in the real world, and users aren’t reducing what they spend on Apple because of security problems. There is reasonable coverage of Mac security issues in the mainstream press (Mr. Winkler’s claim to the contrary), but without demonstrable losses it has yet to affect consumer behavior.

Don’t worry- I rip into Apple for their totally irresponsible handling of the Java flaw, but there really isn’t much motivation for Apple to make any major changes to how they handle things, as bad as they often are.

Share: