Why Mac Anti-Malware Software Is Typically Cheap Or Free

Mac360’s Wil Gomez has posted an amusing anecdote about a neighbor of his who abandoned the Mac for Windows two decades ago, but recently returned to the fold as a MacBook Air owner, and sought Gomez’s counsel about which apps he should install. Gomez cited a list of utilities and tools that help to improve the Mac experience. His neighbor cut him off, clarifying that he was primarily interested in what antivirus tools he would need, and was informed that in Gomez’s opinion — none.

Not totally convinced, the neighbor finally settled on installing ClamXav because it was free and available on the Mac App Store, which Gomez inferred gave him a sense of comfort, accomplishment, and mild bewilderment after perusing the antivirus apps on the Mac App Store, and asking “Why are most of them free or dirt cheap?”

Gomez replied: “Because they don’t have anything to do,” noting that in a Mac context, fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) are the prime motivators to obtain, install, and use malware apps, which ís more of a user problem than an actual, real world problem with malware on the Mac, observing that with nearly 99 percent of the world’s mobile malware on Android OS, and virtually nothing on iOS, Apple seems to have the malware problem under control.