As I work on more in-depth articles to share, I come across some great posts by others. I’ve decided to share some along the way.
As I have mentioned in the podcast, I switched our company to the Mac platform about 18 months ago. Despite being a security professional, my switch was driven by multiple factors (design, look, applications, built on BSD, etc.) including the pricing and anticipated lifetime. Based on my calculations, switching to the Mac cost me about the same if I had stayed with Toshiba.
As an aside: Over the last year, my Toshiba has had to have nearly every component replaced; after dealing with the steadily declining Toshiba Customer Service (if they can honestly call it customer-focused or service), I still have an maintain a windows working environment – but look forward to moving to the Mactels and dual booting (well, probably triple, since I’m interested in going with Ubuntu for a third OS).
So – those of you already using Mac and the rest of you who should seriously be considering a switch, I came across this article explaining the security features that come as part of OSX. It’s a good read and while focused on encouraging others to switch, has value for those who already did.
Key Mac OS X Security Features
http://switchtoamac.com/site/key-mac-os-x-security-features.html
Enjoy – and let me know when you switch.
PS: I’ll make the switch to Mactel Macbook Pro once Verizon makes an express card sized EVDO card (or I can find another EVDO solution for traveling).
Update (7.20 – 16:20p): I also wanted to mention (when I was gently nudged by a friend) that my Powerbook met with an untimely issue; seems that when I upgraded from 10.3 to 10.4 it caused a known issue (or well-reported) with the lower memory slot, causing it to short out. Don’t bother asking me how/why, since I have no clue. Anyway, the laptop was still under warranty and was covered by both AppleCare and ProCare (or whatever it’s called).
The team at the local Apple Store was great, but it still took 4 weeks before my powerbook was returned. 4 weeks! As a business, we cannot afford to be down a laptop for that long– so if Apple is going to continue to build on their market share in the business environment, they are going to have to improve. At the time, I wasn’t too happy with the process.
However, we figure we’ve spent 100 hour on tech support with Toshiba (combined) and needed to have about 7 visits until the laptop was fixed. In that time, it was unusable for about 7 months. By comparision, I was without the Mac for about 4 weeks, but only had to deal with one person… one time.