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Comment by Kognito | Hacker News Reader

I've always found it interesting that XProtect is completely invisible to the average user, whereas MS Defender is very much in your face (at least it was last time I used Windows). I suppose it's to quietly reinforce the narrative that Macs "don't get malware".

If they do, but you never know about it before its dealt with, to the average user it's as good as it never having happened. Unless of course, damage has been done/data stolen/etc - in which case I suppose the user never finds out?

I really wouldn't mind a UI for XProtect buried somewhere deep in the settings.

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I would put it more towards Apple’s general philosophy of “the user shouldn’t have to care about that” than trying to uphold an image from a (extremely popular) 15 year old ad campaign.

That said I agree it’s great that it’s there and I like that it doesn’t bother if I don’t need to be involved.

> I would put it more towards Apple’s general philosophy of “the user shouldn’t have to care about that” than trying to uphold an image from a (extremely popular) 15 year old ad campaign.

Apple's general philosophy has always been "the user shouldn't have to care about that", but they've moved more and more recently to "the user shouldn't even be able to do anything about that" (I feel betraying their BSD roots along the way), and this seems to be an instance of that.

> I feel betraying their BSD roots along the way

As a BSD 4.3, BSDi, FreeBSD, and now MacOS user, I'm not finding MacOS shell environment to be crippled in recent releases. If anything, even the ecosystem available to me through brew keeps getting broader as more and more tools add support.

What do you feel Apple has taken away from you at the CLI?

Two come to mind 1. System Integrity Protection breaking sudo (I understand why the trade off is worthwhile but it can be painful sometimes) 2. APFS pulling endless opaque shenanigans when it comes to what uses disk space and which tools report what usage, and where data lives. The permissions model clashes badly with shell usage, and blatantly disrespects sudo.

Not CLI related but here is a petty example of Apple taking something that worked for years and just dropping it. 1080i (interlaced) display support. My home theater tv supports 1080i but not 1080p, and I’ve been happily powering it with a Mac Mini running Kodi. A few years ago I “upgraded” macOS and lo and behold Apple just -decided- that I don’t need 1080i anymore and dropped support. No good reason, just “Fuck you, user. You don’t need this.”

Apple’s recent history is full of these “we know better and you don’t need this” decisions.

I think maybe this was changed quite recently, but for a long time Windows 10/11 would send you periodic notifications that Defender had done a scan and found no threats. Pointless and briefly alarming; I do not expect to get AV notifications unless there's a problem.

I'm glad there's a GUI though, which lets you do a deep scan on boot and other stuff.

I’m on 11 Insider Preview on my work machine and about once a week I get a notification that says something to the effect of Defender not finding anything after scanning five times.

I tend to agree, in Windows 10 I've found I get less Defender notifications than I ever did.

I can't remember the last time I saw the Defender UI

In my experience the narrative that Macs don't get malware doesn't come from Apple themselves. Apple are not dumb, making public such a claim would be waving a giant red flag in front of potential malware writers. It would also be embarrassingly regurgitated if there ever was a serious threat.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V0feR5grSa4

Good call, I stand corrected.

"Malware on Macs does not exist" - 'waving Jedi hand'

Well, technically the kernel is the malware (non-free) in this case...

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