New Apple OS delivers only rudimentary protection

Snow Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s OS X operating system, gives users limited protection against only a handful of Mac-targeted Trojan horses but should not be considered a substitute for traditional antivirus protection.

“It’s an acknowledgment by Apple that there are some Trojans in the wild that affect Mac users,” said Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser at Sophos, an antivirus company. “It’s very, very basic.”

Apple has taken pains to insist that Snow Leopard's anti-malware functionality is not a substitute for a full antivirus product and was never meant to be. “It is not a security release,” Wisniewski said of the new OS. “It is focused on functionality.”