A lot of noise ran around the blogs this week when Apple's web site appeared to "recommend" using antivirus software on Macs. But, after all the hub-bub was done, Apple removed the message stating that it was outdated and inaccurate. Mac OS X comes with security "out of the box."
Regardless, until there is an active, live, for-real virus in the wild that specifically attacks Mac OS X - and I'm not talking about a Trojan, that is entirely different and easy for a smart end-user to avoid - there is no reason to buy a virus scanning tool and slow down my Mac with it. And when the day comes - if it ever comes - I'll use a freeware version, probably ClamXav. The security via obscurity myth by any logic does not fly. If it were true there would have to be some viruses - heck, even just one virus for the Mac by now. The fact remains that it is harder to develop a virus for Mac OS X, which was designed with security in mind from the start, than it is for legacy operating systems such as Windows that were not originally designed with networking and security in mind.
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