Mac has malware problem and that is unacceptable, says Apple's software chief

Apple's macOS lets you download software from the internet and the company thinks that amounts to a level of malware.

Apple and Epic Games are fighting the antitrust case the latter filed over the Fortnite debacle. The latest person to appear in court in favour of Apple is the company’s software chief, Craig Federighi. Federighi is an important executive in the company’s hierarchy, sitting just below CEO Tim Cook, and he is responsible for Apple’s revered yet controversial iPhone software, the iOS. He is also responsible for other operating systems in Apple’s ecosystem, including macOS. While defending iOS against the claims by Epic Games only to prove iOS is better being closed as it helps ward off threats, Federighi revealed something startling about macOS. Federighi said that there is a level of malware on the Mac that Apple does not find acceptable. Apple’s software chief straightaway criticised the open nature of Mac -- even though that is significantly less effective for developers and consumers than the way Microsoft’s Windows 10 is. He has a solid point though. Federighi was trying to prove that iOS is much more secure being walled-off, and that includes no admission of an alternate app marketplace, unlike macOS, which can have different app stores. And because Apple wants iOS to stay that way, it cannot allow third-party app stores or payments systems for the iPhone -- something that Epic Games has criticised in the lawsuit. To quote Federighi verbatim, “iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection. The Mac is not meeting that bar today. And that’s despite the fact that Mac users inherently download less software and are subject to a way less economically motivated attacker base. If you took Mac security techniques and applied them to the iOS ecosystem, with all those devices, all that value, it would get run over to a degree dramatically worse than is already happening on the Mac. And as I say, today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don’t find acceptable and is much worse than iOS. Put that same situation in place for iOS and it would be a very bad situation for our customers.”