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There's no such thing as a "Windows" media format or a "Mac" media format.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983
T h e R o a d L e s s T r a v e l e d
Why Macs are inherently safer, whether the horrible 'phishing' bug is a problem on the Mac, and other topics
Feb. 4, 2004
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard
Time to catch up on the mail.
I heard from dozens of readers who wanted to know why I thought the current Macintosh operating system, OS X, was safer from viruses than Windows PCs are. Some tried to point out that virus writers take aim at Windows because there are so many Windows PCs, but, these readers insisted, if there were as many Macs as PCs there would surely be as many Mac viruses.
Wrong. Modern Macs are Unix computers and don't have the range of security flaws that Windows has. You already know that each time you install an application under Mac OS X, you have to give the operating system permission to do that. (You're told to type a password. Without the correct password, nothing can be installed.) Furthermore, Microsoft's Windows code is documented poorly and is very difficult to fix when there are new security problems, whereas the Unix code in OS X is open to inspection and easy to change.
Another reader asked what a Mac OS X user needs to do to save an entire Web site. I save Web pages by turing them into PDF documents. Open the File menu and choose Print, then save the document as a PDF. (Early versions of OS X did this from the Print Preview window; newer versions have the option in the Print window.) You can do this for an entire site. The PDFs you save can be e-mailed easily, too.
Another asks if the OS X version of Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer, suffers from the abysmally bad programming in the Windows version. Specifically, does the OS X version have the "phishing" bug?
That bug allows anyone to create a Web page or an e-mail that hides an actual Web address, leading you to assume that your browser is taking you to an address such as www.ebay.com when it's actually taking you to a "phishing" site that looks like the real thing. ("Phishing" is a way of making fake documents in hopes that you will be naive enough to type your passwords, account numbers and other personal data.)
I checked both Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac OS X and Safari 1.1.1, the default OS X Web browser. Neither one had the Microsoft bug. You can check your browser's behavior at www.millersmiles.co.uk. Tell your Windows friends about this bug, too; it's one of the most dangerous programming errors I've seen. (My Windows guru, Paul Thurrott, reminds me that this is not simply an Internet Explorer bug. Other Windows browsers apparently have it, too. And so, in yet another example, I'm happy to shout out an obvious example of why we Mac users should be glad we are not running Windows.)
I often hear from readers who don't realize what's happened to the Macintosh lately. They tell me they're used Macs in previous years and didn't like them for one reason or another, so how could I be so much of a Macintosh fan? What these readers don't know is that Mac OS X, the current operating system, is completely different from the old Mac OS. (I mean REALLY different. The old Mac OS has more in common with Windows than it does with Mac OS X.)
Some readers have written to complain that many of the sounds and videos they encounter on the Web are in Windows Media format, which is, of course, created by Microsoft. They want to know what they can do to get those Web sites to offer the same material in a Mac format.
But there is no such thing as a "Windows" format or a "Mac" format. Windows Media files can be played on any OS X Mac, and what some people assume are "Mac" format files such as QuickTime audio and video can be played on any Windows PC. All that's needed is the proper software. Get the OS X Windows Media player here: www.apple.com/switch/questions/applications/windowsmedia.html. The same page has as link for the Windows QuickTime player.
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