Will they stop running the "infected PC" ads now?

My, how things change. Apple has gotten much advertising mileage out of its “Virus” ad where the fat PC guy has a cold and the cool-looking Mac guy says he doesn’t get viruses. I haven’t seen that ad in a few weeks; I wonder if they’ve pulled it. If not, they should; it was not only inaccurate, it seemed like foolish inducement to ramp up the hack-the-Mac movement.

And sure enough…

The following was posted yesterday by the Internet Storm Center, one of the global watchdogs for emerging malware and network attacks:

Mac OS X patches
Published: 2007-03-14,Last Updated: 2007-03-14 22:47:42 UTCby Daniel Wesemann (Version: 1)
Well, looks like this month we get more Apple fixes than Windows patches for a change. Mac OS X 10.4.9 is out, and according to US-CERT, this is an upgrade that plugs "arbitrary code execution and SYSTEM level access" type of vulnerabilities. Sounds like a fix even Apple fanboys with lots of faith into the unbreakable nature of their system should consider applying real soon. The same fix covering only the security portion but leaving out the functionality upgrade is also available as Security Update 2007-003, and installs on 10.3.9. More information on both can be found on the Apple Docpage.

Imagine that: A month when there are there are more Apple fixes than Windows fixes. I wonder if that’s going to show up in Apple PR releases. I suppose Apple is learning the hard way that if you wave a red flag in front of a bull, the bull will do exactly as expected.

As a Mac user this trend troubles me, and one can only hope that humility will temper hubris in Cupertino.

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Of interest: A good Wikipedia article on the Mac/PC ad series, and you can view all the ads (in Quicktime format, of course) at the Apple “Get a Mac” site. The British versions of these ads are significantly different, including different actors. You can see them at the Apple UK “Get a Mac” site.