[MarioJP]

Though I will say that magnets can lose their strength very quickly if the following things happens.

1.If magnets gets hot, its lifespan will be reduced very quickly depending how long its been exposed.

2. It does not take a severe shock for the magnetic field to lose its strength (everytime a magnet hits something quite hard like a strong magnet sticking to the refridge that it slams to the surface of the refrigarator. Keep doing this repeatedly and the magnet will get weaker.)

The magsafe on those connector are quite strong and slams itself to be connected on the apple notebook

[WinTard]

MarioJP said:

Though I will say that magnets can lose their strength very quickly if the following things happens.

1.If magnets gets hot, its lifespan will be reduced very quickly depending how long its been exposed.

2. It does not take a severe shock for the magnetic field to lose its strength (everytime a magnet hits something quite hard like a strong magnet sticking to the refridge that it slams to the surface of the refrigarator. Keep doing this repeatedly and the magnet will get weaker.)

The magsafe on those connector are quite strong and slams itself to be connected on the apple notebook

Thus my initial caution about potentially demagnetizing credit cards and other delicate electro-magnetic devices?

You got a rather powerful magnet there. What if you put your wallet in the same bag as your laptop, with that strong magsafe connector? I've had to replace one credit card (less than 1 year old) last month. My fault. I put the wallet into a pocket, but there was a 2.5" HDD just besides. Now that thing will grab a quarter... I'm silly, I should have thought of it, before putting my wallet in that laptop bag pocket parallel against the secondary HDD... (Which contains Windows 7 BTW).

This isn't bashing Apple. This is a public community service, to assist others and helping prevent them the inconvenience of having to replace their credit cards. Thank God only one card got affected, not the others. Or the inconvenience would have been much larger to say the least, when I found out my main card didn't work no more...

[artzy65]

Re 'Mythbusters', that was meant in jest...

Anyway... regarding the show itself, as far as I can see, they first 'go by the book', then if something is disproven (like the water heater thing) they'll have some fun with it; for instance add way more stuff to get bigger explosions and whatnot... just for their own fun, and our entertainment.

[WinTard]

Point well taken. And artzy65, please take my comments with a grain of salt. I am trying to play nice with everybody, and perhaps gave up that ideal in that with with some, a meaningful constructive discussion is impossible? As we're friends, you know where my heart is at. I also try to restrain my words, to take into consideration the feelings of others. I am sure you understand how hard that can be at times...? ;) Which is precisely worthwhile. It is when I want to post the most, that I shouldn't. So I let it go, till the next day, when things look different. With more perspective and serenity.

I find that if we only focus onto facts, meaning what is verifiable out there, good or bad, at least that is fair.

As for myth busters being entertaining just for fun? That you bet it is!

~~~~~~~~~~
Anyone can buy a good house, but good neighbors are priceless.
{Chinese Proverb}

A person of his own mind, but a man for others?
{Jesuit Principle}

The benefit comes from being seen to be considerate.
~ Anonymous

[artzy65]

something like that... i just removed your photo from my earlier post, in case you want privacy.

[wildman279]

@emperordarius



1. "Macs do offer a trouble free, malware free experience" No. While I do not personally own a mac (because I have better things to spend my money on) I would be troubled by things like a lack of compatibility for my existing software. Sure I could use a VM and run windows, but then I might as well just have a PC. And I do enjoy my PC's built in memory card reader, and I am troubled that no mac has one. I also enjoy being able to back up my data on to BDs, especially since a normal backup for me consists of 30-40GB, and burning all of that to DVDs is quite troubling. As far as malware goes, macs are not impervoius to it like all of you fanboys like to say. Thething is, hackers could make just as much malware for a mac as they do for PCs, but they don't, do you know why? Because compared to the number of windows users out there, there are very few mac fanboys (I say fanboy here because I know no mac user who is not also a fanboy), and so since hackers want to target as large of a number of people as possible, they would go for windows. And I bet that as the number of mac users grows, so will the number of viruses for macs. And you are in NO way impervoius to any sort of phishing scams, because the internet is the same. In fact, I have had ONE malware problem in my entire life with PCs.

2. "The only case when Macs crash is because of faulty hardware OR some buggy software" Ummm excuse me? That is the only reason ANYTHING crashes, even outside of the computer world. And by the way, an operating system is just a very large and complex piece of software, so therefore OSX making the computer crash is the same as software making the computer crash. And if I have some piece of faulty hardware, I can go to the store and buy a new, possibily better part and install it ON MY OWN for way cheaper.

<example>

A few weeks ago, a wire in my friend's laptop's display cable broke, making the picture all weird. (note that this is a physical part problem and has nothing to do with windows) I took it apart (he's not to tech savy) and found the part number for the broken display cable. He managed to find it on ebay and a week later (only because of shipping) I was able to fix his computer completely for UNDER $20 (the part was $13 something) Could you do that with a mac, or would you have to take it to apple and pay them hundreds of dollars.




</eample>




3. Oh really? Because I haven't had any significant problems with windows itself in several months, just a few minor annoyances, and my windows XP computer hasn't crashed in over a year. I've had a few glitches with applications on my computer, but that's nothing windows related, that's the fault of the software developers.




So really, get it out of your head that macs are so perfect and can never do anything wrong and that anything that isn't a mac is a piece of crap, because that would make you a liar. Also, I'm not a little windows fanboy, I'm a user. I have windows and it works very well for me, and I do way more than just e-mail and the internet and stuff, but I'm not in love with I'm just sick and tired of all of these long slurs against PCs with no real base behind them.
Message was edited by: smax013

[MarioJP]

same here. You are right about third party application not working properly. I can tell you from this one app which is myspace im. Before i updated it it was working flawlessly. But ever since i updated and after its been running for awhile for some odd reason it stops responding and it has to be terminated unexpectedly. Funny how the previous version never did that. Yes i know developers makes mistakes and we are only human but applications that are poorly written are those out there trying to make a quick buck. Those you stay away from. I find it ironic that free open source application works better than these trying to get a quick buck apps. Of course there are also good commercial software out there that is better than the free stuff. It all depends what your needs are.

As far as free anti virus programs vs paid ones goes??. Don't get me started on that, not even in comparison lol. Norton sucks Macafee sucks.

So far the three best ones that does a well good job is

1.AVG (Free)

2.Spybot Search & Destroy (Again free.)

3.Malware Bytes. (And it is also free again.)

They work the best.

and you pay $0 meaning at no cost to you.

[artzy65]

I've had a lot of experience on various mac os versions and have had plenty of freezes and crashes, at least pre-osx. In fact one of my most dog-eared books was 'Sad Macs, Bombs and Other Disasters'. OSX is way more stable... but Safari has been giving me the 'spinning beach ball' lately. Not really a problem,though...at least I don't have to reboot like the bad old days.

I've heard others say NortonAV sucks... I've always used it and have no way of knowing how good or bad it is... how do you know this? I hear Clam AV is really good for mac.

One great app for mac is 'Little Snitch' which catches other apps trying to 'phone home'... I wouldn't be without it!

[BGG001]

A smart mac user who doesnt think his system is invulnerable like most. IMO NotonAV sucks for Windows so I don't see how a cross-platform version would be much better.

[artzy65]

ClamX looks promising for mac users, and it's free:
http://www.macdevcen.../19/clamav.html
In fact Apple bundled it with their OSX 10.4 server (the above info is from 2005)

However, this site says avoid ClamX:
http://machouse.mhvt.net/?p=1175
They recommend sticking with reputable companies like symantec.
(This info is from last August)

Yet more info:
http://www.applelink...hp/more/clamxav105freeviruscheckerformacosxsharewarebeat/
Here's an excerpt from this url, a little advice for mac users:

"Back in the days before OS X, the number of viruses which attacked Macintosh users totalled somewhere between about 60 and 80. Today, the number of viruses actively attacking OS X users is...NONE! However, this doesn't mean we should get complacent about checking incoming email attachments or web downloads, for two reasons. Firstly, there's no guarantee that we Mac users will continue to enjoy the status quo, but more importantly, the majority of the computing world use machines running MS Windows, for which an enormous quantity of viruses exist, so we must be vigilant in checking the files we pass on to our friends and colleagues etc. For example, if you're a wise person and you've turned MS Office's macro support off then you're not going to notice that virus which is hiding inside this month's edition of Extreme Ironing.doc which your friend sent you. If you then forward that document to a less wise person who has not turned off the macro support, then you have most likely just sent him a shiny new Pandora's Box with a sign saying "Open this end"!

Message was edited by: artzy65

[jregooden]

I'm sitting here with my friend Eric who's my company's IT Manager. We both read your post and laughed. He feels that you are uninformed about Mac OS and the Mac in general. More importantly, he deals with thousands of PCs and Macs on the company's netwok everyday. Last year there were four calls for Mac and thousands of calls for the PCs. He wishes the company would just get rid of the PCs in favor of the Macs. He describes patching holes, dealing with security issues, blocking viruses on the PC like closing the windows and doors on the Titanic. I'm sure you keep your AV software up to date. Mac users really don't need AV and practically no Mac user uses it. Continue to enjoy your PC experience while lasts. There are more conflickers out there waiting to be unleashed and it won't be the Mac that's in it's site.

[artzy65]

You may remember the 'Maytag Man' ads from years ago... a guy in a maytag uniform at their repair shop complaining that he never had any work... sounds like your workplace situation re macs.

[BGG001]

jregooden said:

I'm sitting here with my friend Eric who's my company's IT Manager. We both read your post and laughed. He feels that you are uninformed about Mac OS and the Mac in general. More importantly, he deals with thousands of PCs and Macs on the company's netwok everyday. Last year there were four calls for Mac and thousands of calls for the PCs. He wishes the company would just get rid of the PCs in favor of the Macs. He describes patching holes, dealing with security issues, blocking viruses on the PC like closing the windows and doors on the Titanic. I'm sure you keep your AV software up to date. Mac users really don't need AV and practically no Mac user uses it. Continue to enjoy your PC experience while lasts. There are more conflickers out there waiting to be unleashed and it won't be the Mac that's in it's site.

That's funny because my friend is a manager of a local computer company. They handle issues with Macs and PCs (Windows and Linux alike) and he claims the issues with Mac are less often (about 5 times less), but theyre much harder to fix, if they can at all, than PC issues. He owns an iPhone, uses Windows XP/Vista/7, Ubuntu 9, and OS X Leopard, so he's pretty versatile and knows his way around OS's. He claims that the hardware in a mac simply isn't worth it because you can't have as much power in a PC, although he doesn't badmouth the OS. Claims that OSX, if available for PC, would be good.

If/When your macs get into circulation, prepare for a onslaught of viruses. Every mac user without an AV (which is probably 90%+) will be infected and screwed. Ignorance of the fact that something can go wrong, means something will go wrong.

[danield]

We Mac users will continue to laugh at those of you PC fans that that do not understand software design. Unix is not Windows. Do some research please. After you do, you will be better for it. It will prevent you from looking like a fool. Any flavor of Unix is much harder to attack than windows. I am not saying that it is impervious but the facts speak for themselves. Currently there are roughly 15-20 million Mac users and growing. Add to that the other millions of Unix boxes and then you'll see why your statement about more circulation of Mac OS X is just a pipe dream. There have been ZERO viruses for Mac OS X out in the wild since 2001. There are some vulnerabilities and proof of concepts that exist but still only a very good blackhat would be able to do damage. The damage would be minimal too because propagating viruses on Unix is very difficult. We're talking onsies and twosies and attackers would really not get much for the effort. Windows is a different story. Real easy to catch the flu using that Windows. I'll wait for your story about how you've never had a virus or malware on your PC. You may be knowledgeable enough to protect your PC but many are not and do not keep their systems up to date. Windows was never designed with security in mind because it wasn't intended to be a networked computer with multiple users. A history lesson is probably in order. BTW, the old Mac OS 9 was not multi user either and was therefore weak security wise.

http://www.rixstep.com/2/20090515,00.shtml

[WinTard]

Laugh all you want. Who cares?

[WinTard]

See above...

[artzy65]

Are you sure there's only 15-20 million mac users... way back in the '90s the numbers always reported 25 million. Anyway I read the other day that total personal computer numbers?that is, computers in use worldwide? were set to reach one billion this year. That would translate into roughly 100 million users for apple.

[jregooden]

You've nailed it. My fellow designers and I breath easy knowing that the email warnings about viruses don't affect us.

[artzy65]

Another layer of email protection would be POPMonitor (Mac only) a nifty email app that lets you eyeball, read and delete/accept your email right at server level?before you download. I've used it since way back in my OS 8.1 days, and still use it on my OS 8.6 Power Mac?also on my OSX Macs. You can run the free trial indefinitely, although you get only 3 'trusted sender' accounts; if you buy the app you get an unlimited amount, and tons of filters. It's $25, and you pay through Kagi... I've bought through them for years?you can use any payment method.

http://www.popmonitor.com

[artzy65]

I guess I'm in the 10 percentile... let the blackhatted little bastards try get through my router firewall, my DSL modem firewall and the firewalls on each of my 4 networked macs.

Let the games begin!