Spy Software on Macs?

[Craig R]

Is spy software a problem for macs? If so, what software can I purchase to ensure my hardrive is clean?

Second question, if I use my mac for video editing should I not use the internet on my machine? I heard that using the internet on my dedicated video machine could slow it up? Should I be concerned with internet usage?

Thanks,

 

[King Cobra]

From what I've heard, there is no such thing as spymac software. There was a discussion about this over at FunMac.com. So stand up and throw a party. (Then sit back down again.)

The video/internet usage issue is not something that I've heard of. I'm implying that you have a high-speed connection. (If not, then simply stay disconnected while you do your video editing.) The only other way I can see internet + video editing to be a problem is if you're combining activities from either or, such as downloading Eclipse (70MB to 80MB) and rendering a file that takes 6 more hours to complete. Your rendering might take longer because of other activities, but after that your computer should run at normal speed.

 

[Craig R]

Spy

I'm actually questioning the general use of the internet. With the issues of huge Cache, history, and other strange files that the internet places on the hard drive, will my mac's performace be compromised due to these files??? (Perhaps dedicate a partition for my OS?)

And what are your feelings about viruses in general? How easy is it for my mac to get infected? If spyware isn't an issue, what other things should I watch out for?

 

[King Cobra]

How easy is it for my mac to get infected?

This is the only OS X virus out there that you need to worry about.

Also, unless you're running Windows 2000 or XP, you can't get infected by using the internet (at least for a while). Of course, if you open attachments with wierd extentions, etc., there is a slight possibility that you could damage some resources, but highly unlikely otherwise.

 

[Doctor Q]

I'm actually questioning the general use of the internet. With the issues of huge Cache, history, and other strange files that the internet places on the hard drive, will my mac's performace be compromised due to these files??? (Perhaps dedicate a partition for my OS?)

There are two reasons that other uses of your Mac could interfere with your video work: delays in using the CPU and delays from disk accesses.

The first is easy to deal with: To get the most CPU performance during video editing, don't run other programs at the same time, whether they access the Internet or not. Having other programs launched isn't really a problem, but having them doing something (like checking your e-mail or playing music) competes for CPU time.

For disk accesses, the concern you heard mention of is probably the fragmentation that results from storing hundreds or thousands of files of all sizes, including lots of temporary files, on the same disk that you use for your video files. It's not a huge problem, but if you are concerned about this you are correct that using a dedicated partition for video files can help. That's what I do.

 

[Craig R]

Partition

I have a separate hard drive dedicated to my video files. But what I was wondering is should I partition the portion of my main hard drive to separate my OS from the thousands of "internet" files that happen to be saved on the hard drive? Will this allow my system to be more efficient?
Thanks

 

[FattyMembrane]

i've partitioned my hd so that i have a 10gig space for "scratch". this is what i use as the scratch disk for photoshop etc. and i've also symlinked my ~/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches folders there. I do this pretty much just to keep my system partition as plain vanilla as possible, but not doing it really shouldn't cause a problem. the os defragments all files under 20mb anyway, and the system shouldn't slow down because of them.

as far as viruses are concerned, there are no viruses for osx yet. there was the whole mp3 trojan fiasco, but what intego described does not actually exist and has not been proven to work. they claimed that you could stick executable data into the id3 tags of a normal mp3 file. their demonstration of this was just an application with the extension changed from .app to .mp3 - two completely separate things. there's a similar trick floating around p2p services that's packaged as a microsoft office demo. as far as i understand it, this was just a shell script disguised as an installer. i made a little security demo a few months back that did the same thing by sticking a shell script inside an rtfd file and attaching a pretty picture that says "click me". if you're foolish enough to download software from limewire, you should expect this. if you're paranoid about this minor threat, you can attach this script as a folder action to all of your download folders and it will tell you if someone's renamed an application as an mp3, gif, etc. as far as i know, there's no real spyware for osx, and by spyware i mean software that places hidden apps on your computer to monitor your traffic and give you zillions of pop-ups.