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MacOS is the operating system bundled with all modern Apple computers (Macs). The latest version is MacOS X, usually just referred to as OS X. It has won popularity with users for its friendly interface and Unix-based Stability... not to mention the sexy computers it's packaged with.
Approximately half of the computers installed in the public labs are Apple computers, all of which have OS X installed.
In addition, a large minority of students own Apple computers. There is an official Mac Users Group on campus, CarlMUG.
The best protectoin against viruses on a Macintosh is to not run any program on it that you are not sure of it's origin and purpose. Macintosh computers are generally not affected by the plethora of viruses and other malicious threates that Windows based computers are vulnerable to. PC trojans and other malware, however, often spread themselves around as e-mail attachments. When an unsuspecting Windows user receives and then opens such an attachment, one of the first thing the trojan will do is scan that user's e-mail address book and start sending itself out to those no it. If you use a Mac and receive a strange attachment or start getting strange emails, even if it is addressed from a friend or collegue, do not download it. Luckily, opening those attachments on a Mac will hav elittle or no effect on your system, but now you will get serveral such emails daily and propogate the malicious program to other, vulnerable, Windows users. If you find that you are getting dozens of these messages a day you may want to look to see if the e-mails or attachments have hte same anme and set up a rule in your e-mail client program to flag or delete them as they arrive.
Turning on any of the sharing services (in System Preferences: Sharing) should not be done unless you know what you are doing and have a specific use in mind. This is especiallyt rue wiht Remote Login and Remote Apple Eevents, both of which could allow an unauthorized user to log into and execute files and services without your knowledge.
Download Virex to protect against against MS Office viruses. These viruses are generally document specific and only affect the behavior of Office applications, but Virex still should be run.
There are very few known operating system viruses that affect Macintosh computers, and most of those that do exist are designed by anti-virus software companies who specifically engineer the program to prove that such an expolit was possible. Such "proof of concept" viruses, are, of course, not released, they exist merely to show that such viruses are possible. Most viruses on the net are made to affect the operating system with the most users, and Macintoshes comprise a small share of the market.
Furthermore, a Mac virus would be very hard to engineer due to the Mac's architecture. Because Macintosh OS X is based on Unix, it is already by it's nature quite secure. Unix is a permissions based operating system, and most system level functions require "root" privileges. In other words, a virus would have to know your root password and be exectued by an administrative user in order to run. If a Mac virus is engineered, it could do little harm without the express installatoin, execution, and permission of the end user.
If you are having trouble ejecting a disk on a Mac, you can restart the computer while holding down the mouse button. This will eject all media in any drive attached to the computer. If a Zip disk gets stuck in any Mac (the Mac won’t recognize it and won’t spit it out), you can use the paper clip trick just like with regular floppy disk drives: straighten a paper clip and insert it in the hole on the top of the drive. This is rather tricky on the panelled G4 machines because you have to go through the paneling first.
I can’t save changes onto my HOME directory from any of the lab Macs. What’s the deal?
“Save As” a different name. MS Word for OSX seems to get cranky saving changes to an existing file on the network for some reason.
Where can anyone download SFTP Client for OS X?
Go to http://www.carleton.edu/campus/ITS/resnet/software/
See Carly Born's webpage at http://webapps.acs.carleton.edu/its/flt/languagespecific/accents/
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