Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Apple

The people my wife's work with are just weird. She works for a small university, and most of the computers on the campus are PCs. In fact, the university’s IT department encourages students to use only Windows based computers.

The only department on the campus to use non-Windows based machines is my wife's department where, until this week, she was forced to slave away on a Dell running Windows 2000 — Ouch!

After much begging, pleading and things I probably don’t want to know about, she finally got a Mac. It’s an older Mac running on only 400 Mhz, but it’s running Panther OS X so it’s still a giant step up. She can now do things like run two programs at one time and look up information on the Internet.

I am convinced that the IT department at the school where she works either sold their soles to Microsoft or are getting a kickback directly from Bill Gates, because the first thing they did was to pull all the Apple icons off the dock and put all Microsoft programs in their place. I kid you not. She has Microsoft Word for Mac, Power Point, Excel and Entourage, but Mac Mail, iCal, iTunes, the address book and Safari were all gone.

The funny thing is that they left the link to Apple.com.

So, I set her up on Safari and got rid of most of the Microsoft products and left for work humming a little tune believing I had left my wife with a much better running computer. Well, the IT guys had different ideas. They freaked when they saw what I had her using and started telling her all kinds of horror stories. Really, thinks like using iCal isn't safe and Safari has all sorts of “security risks!”

No, I’m not kidding! She was running Windows 2000 on a Dell without any virus protection software and that was okay, but now that she’s using OS X everybody’s concerned about security. These IT guys even have some of my wife's coworkers, who have been using Macs for a while now, scared, too.

I admit there has been a flaw discovered recently with iChat that allows worms to attack the people you are chatting with, but it only affects them if they are using a Windows PC. I say that’s their problem.

I’ve been using both PCs and Macs for years, and I still have a Windows machine at home — at least until I get the Apple Intel Core Duo processor 17-inch iMac so don’t forget to click on some advertisers links — but come on. Microsoft security is a lot like Paris Hilton. Fun to watch and just as easy to open. While Macs are still largely virus free. But, these tech guys my wife works with seem determined to scare her about the Mac. It's like they're terrified the big, bad Apple is going to take over.