Apple

Updated 7:45 p.m. PST with expert comment, at 7:20 p.m. PST with context on previous coverage, and at 7:08 p.m. PST with background.

"We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate," Apple spokesperson Bill Evans said.

"The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box," he said. "However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, running antivirus software may offer additional protection."

Apple's previous security message in its KnowledgeBase, which serves as a tutorial for Mac users, was: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."

Security experts, while pleased that Apple would urge Mac users to install antivirus software, had warned that running multiple antivirus products could cause problems and recommended against it.

Apple's antivirus support note was initially published last year and was updated last month, despite reports that it was a new note.

One Apple expert speculated that Apple was merely removing a poorly worded support note and said it probably wasn't ever Apple's intention to tell Mac users they need antivirus.

"I bet you it was a low-level support note and it hadn't gone through the right approvals," said Rich Mogull, security editor of Apple news site TidBITS. "That's my guess."

To some, Apple's latest move will be seen as back-tracking given that it comes one day after those misleading reports circulated. The motive remains unclear, particularly because Apple didn't replace the previously published suggestion with an updated one.

The message that remains is that Mac users don't really need to take additional steps to protect against viruses and other malware. Telling customers they can run antivirus for "additional protection" could be interpreted as a way to protect against any liability.

There are no known viruses in the wild that exploit a vulnerability in the Mac OS, and Windows continues to be the overwhelming preference for malware writers to target their programs. But malware isn't just taking advantage of operating system weaknesses anymore. In fact, the majority of such threats now come from code that targets weaknesses in browsers and other applications that aren't platform specific.

Mogull said he doesn't recommend that the average Mac user install antivirus software because of the low-level of malicious software seen for Macs at this time.

To me, this new Apple statement poses more questions than it answers.

Regardless of the meaning of Apple's latest action, I'm pleased to now have open lines of communication with the company. Over the last few months, I have had an increasingly difficult time getting any response to my e-mails and phone calls. For instance, I got no response to my requests for comment on Monday's article about this topic. However, after talking to several Apple spokespeople on Tuesday about the matter I am confident that the situation has been cleared up.

I also was reminded of how much collective knowledge CNET readers have about Apple and would like to extend an invitation for people to feel free to contact me directly at elinor.mills@cnet.com with any feedback and tips related to Apple security issues.

The iPhone kept smartphone growth alive during the last quarter, according to one analyst.

(Credit: CNET)

One analyst thinks that if it wasn't for the iPhone, smartphone growth would have slowed to a crawl last quarter.

Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company released some data Tuesday, as captured by MacNN, and said he believes that Apple's iPhone accounted for virtually all the sequential growth in the market during the third quarter, which totaled 28.6 percent. That's when Apple launched the iPhone 3G and sold 6.9 million units, putting it in second place among all smartphone vendors with 16.6 percent of the market.

At first glance it seems a bit of a stretch to give Apple sole credit for keeping smartphone growth alive during the period. But market leader Nokia posted a lackluster quarter, and the smartphone market has been growing at a much faster clip than that for some time now. Wolf thinks that had the iPhone 3G not been such a hit, smartphone growth would have slowed to a trickle.

That might not bode well for the current quarter, as Wolf notes that as many as 2 million iPhones sold during the third quarter might have been designated for the channel, and not actually sold to real people until the fourth quarter. That could mean smartphone growth is going to flatline this holiday season or even fall as Apple's carrier partners work through channel inventory and the economy dampens demand. But Wolf thinks Apple and RIM are in decent shape because consumers--especially in the U.S.--are showing a preference for integrated hardware/software phones like the iPhone and BlackBerry.

You can't do much more with Koi Pond than feed the fish, but the mesmerizing virtual pond was the top-selling application in 2008 on the App Store.

(Credit: The Blimp Pilots)

It's clear from the list of top applications downloaded from the App Store this year that iPhone and iPod Touch users are looking for entertainment.

Every year around this time Apple releases the most-downloaded songs and videos on iTunes, and this year is particularly interesting because it's the first year of the App Store. Six of the top 10 paid apps were games, including Apple's Texas Hold-Em and the heavily promoted Super Monkey Ball from Sega, but Koi Pond's mesmerizing virtual aquarium led the way as the top-selling paid application for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

On the free side, Pandora Radio took the top spot, followed by Facebook's iPhone application and Tapulous' Tap Tap Revenge. Other interesting apps that made the top 10 in both categories? iBeer (paid) and Lightsaber Unleashed (free).

Apple separates the top applications list into several categories on the iTunes Store, such as entertainment, utilities, social networking, and music. The full list (iTunes link) is worth a look if you've been searching for new applications to add to your iPhone. I added Recorder (ninth overall in the paid category) this morning as a way of finally putting my old digital recorder out of its misery. And check out these graphs from O'Reilly's Radar that take a look at certain stats such as the changing percentage of paid versus free applications.

Updated 10:50 a.m. PST December 2 to correct that Apple previously recommended antivirus software to Mac users, and at 1:50 p.m. PST with call back from Apple and link to 2002 Apple anti-virus item. A follow-up blog will be posted that goes into more detail about the coverage.

Apple is recommending that Mac users install antivirus software.

But don't read this as an admission that the Mac operating system is suddenly insecure. It's more a recognition that Mac users are vulnerable to Web application exploits, which have replaced operating system vulnerabilities as the bigger threat to computer users.

On November 21 Apple updated a technical note on its Support Web site that says: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."

The item offers three software suggestions: Intego VirusBarrier X5 and Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh, both available from the Apple Online Store, and McAfee VirusScan for Mac.

MacDailyNews unearthed the same note posted by Apple in June 2007 and published it on Tuesday,a long with a link to a March 2002 note from Apple urging people to use an anti-virus program.

Apple representatives did not respond to e-mails seeking comment on Monday, but did return a call on Tuesday. A spokesman said he would look into the matter.

Brian Krebs, who first reported on the Apple antivirus recommendation Monday in his Security Fix blog at The Washington Post, said an Apple store employee told him he didn't need antivirus software when he purchased a MacBook three months ago.

Apple urges Mac customers to use antivirus software.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple didn't cut prices as much as some had expected on Black Friday, but it didn't seem to matter to consumers.

(Credit: CNET)

Few analysts were prepared to call Apple's Black Friday performance a blowout, but in general they thought consumers responded well to Apple's products and pricing last week.

Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers, and Maynard Um of UBS have weighed in with their thoughts on Apple's sales during the first official shopping day of the holiday season. Expectations had been muted going into the weekend, which many had thought would be dismal given the economic environment.

But the overall picture wasn't as bad as some had feared. And despite sticking with its historical Black Friday discount strategy rather than rolling out aggressive price cuts, Apple fared well, according to Munster. Checks at various Apple retail stores indicated that "Mac sales were better than expected" and iPhone sales were about in line with expectations, he wrote in a research note Monday.

Kaufman's Wu wrote, "Despite modest 5 percent-10 percent discounts by AAPL itself through its retail stores and website, our distributor and retail checks indicate strong foot traffic at AAPL stores and that iPods and Macs did fairly well, helped by bigger promotions by third-party retailers and unadvertised price matching by AAPL." There had been reports that Apple was planning to discount its products more steeply than in the past in response to concerns over the health of the economy, but the company stood pat.

UBS' Um also noted that Apple resellers, such as Best Buy and MacMall, were willing to discount prices more aggressively than Apple as well as apply discounts to products that Apple wouldn't touch in its own stores, such as the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

Apple and Homer Simpson hooked up earlier this year at Macworld 2008.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

The only thing they forgot was a desperate attempt by old Gil to sell an iPod Hi-Fi.

Springfield got its first Apple store during Sunday night's episode of The Simpsons, allowing the show's writers to devote a good chunk of the show to satirizing Apple (Mapple), CEO Steve Jobs (Mobs), and "myPods." The show makes several tongue-in-cheek references to Apple cultural touch-points like the Power Mac Cube, the "Braniac Bar," and the famous 1984 commercial in a scene featuring Comic Book Guy, who is definitely a Mac user.

You can find the episode on Fox.com and Hulu, but the Fox lawyers seem to have placed a call to the YouTube people already.

It's not the funniest Simpsons parody ever, but that show lost its fastball a long time ago. Apple references have been popping up in The Simpsons for years; perhaps the most famous one came when one of Springfield Elementary's bullies tried to take a memo on his Apple Newton to "Beat up Martin," which the quirky handwriting recognition software translated to "Eat up Martha," prompting the bully to just chuck the thing at Martin.

A new front has opened in the ongoing arms race between Apple and iPhone hackers, with one hacker group making the iPhone boot with a Linux 2.6 kernel.

The announcement of the successful kernel porting was made on the Linux on the iPhone blog, complete with instructions and source code.

Although a bootloader, kernel and a Busybox terminal are able to be loaded -- many features of the iPhone remain unimplemented: touchscreen, sound, accelerometer, networking. Input to the terminal must be made via a USB interface from another device that the iPhone is attached to (humorously summed up by Geek Hero Comic).

The group that ported the kernel is derived from the iPhone DevTeam group that has been responsible for jailbreaking previous iPhone software.

iPhone Linux Demonstration Video from planetbeing on Vimeo.

How many iPhone apps does it take to make 10,000? It all depends on how you do the counting.

(Credit: 148Apps)

Apple watchers this weekend have been ruminating on the overall tally and on the counting methods following a report on 148Apps, a site that keeps tabs on iPhone applications, seen here in its entirety:

In just 142 days, the iPhone OS app store has added over 10,000 apps! An amazing feat for any platform. To commemorate this we've put up a special page. More on this after the weekend.

10,000 apps!

(We'll hazard a guess that there are actually on the order of 10K mini icons on that "10,000 apps!" special page. A listing to the right side of all those icons gives the total number of apps as 10,091.)

MacRumors.com, meanwhile, quibbles with the overall number, even as it says the actual 10,000 active app mark should be reached "in the next few days":

While several sites have reported that 10,000 iPhone Apps have been released into the App Store, the actual number of active iPhone apps that can be downloaded is about 9,676 as of today's count. The discrepancy comes from the fact that many apps have been removed from the App Store for various reasons (trademark infringement, discontinued apps, pulled and released).

The biggest category of iPhone apps, according to 148Apps, is games (2,333), followed by entertainment (1,122), utilities (1,015), education (737), and productivity (517). The average cost of the apps is listed at $3.12; about one-quarter are free of charge, while one is listed at $899.99.

Apple rolled out a QuickTime update Tuesday night that should alleviate some of the concern over the addition of some copy-protection technology to the new MacBooks.

Apple customers who bought one of the company's new MacBooks or MacBook Pros introduced in October were annoyed to discover that the Mini DisplayPort on those systems uses a copy-protection technology called HDCP. That technology is supposed to prevent those owners from playing HD movies purchased from the iTunes store on external projectors that don't also support HDCP technology. But several owners reported that standard-definition movies were also declared off-limits by their new systems.

The QuickTime update should allow standard-definition movies obtained from Apple to play on those older projectors, but HD movies will still need an HDCP-compliant projector to be shown anywhere but the laptop screen. The update hasn't shown up on Apple's site yet, but it should be popping up in Software Update if you own one of the new systems, according to AppleInsider.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned another iPhone ad after consumers complained it exaggerated the speed of the device.

A recent TV ad for the iPhone 3G stated: "So what's so great about 3G? It's what helps you get the news, really fast. Find your way, really fast. And download pretty much anything, really fast. The new iPhone 3G. The Internet, you guessed it, really fast."

But how fast is it, really?

(Credit: Apple)

The ad showed a close-up of the phone being used to surf a news Web page, view the Google maps service, and download a file -- and all the actions had waiting times of only a fraction of a second.

Seventeen people complained to the ASA that the ad was misleading because it exaggerated the speed of the iPhone -- a judgment upheld by the watchdog, which said an on-screen text disclaimer stating "network performance will vary by location" was not enough to dispel the impression that the device actually operated at or near to the speeds shown in the ad.

The ASA failed to be convinced by Apple's counterargument that the claims made in the ad were relative rather than absolute -- and that it was intending to demonstrate the 3G iPhone allowed downloads and Internet access that was "really fast" by comparison to the previous Edge device.

The ASA said in its adjudication: "Although we acknowledged that the majority of viewers would be familiar with mobile telephones, we considered that many might not be fully aware of the technical differences between the different types of technology. We also noted the ad did not give an explicit indication of a comparison with the older 2G iPhone."

The ASA has ruled the ad must not appear again in its current form.

This is not the first time Apple has been scolded over iPhone ads. In August the ASA banned another advert for the iPhone -- which promised users access to "all parts of the Internet" on their Apple device, despite the phone's inability to display Flash or Java web content.

Natasha Lomas of Silicon.com reported from London.