Wrapping up his D9 interview, Google’s Eric Schmidt had one last piece of advice for anyone worried about online security:
- Use Google’s Chrome Browser
- Use two factor authentication in Gmail
- Get a Mac.
Macs aren’t susceptible to all the Windows PC viruses out there, Schmidt said. Schmidt said he was speaking as a proud former member of Apple’s board.
No one on stage ruined mentioned the Mac Defender Trojan or the new security system Apple just added to the heart of OS X.
But we agree with Schmidt. Get a Mac.
Anything else he should have mentioned?
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
26 responses to “Eric Schmidt: If You’re Worried About Security, Use Chrome And a Mac”
“jsut”?
Agree! For security and better user experiences, pls go for Mac instead of PC windows
Idiots are safer on a mac. Its always been like that.
Well, there is a time coming where you can’t have idiots at the computer, they are the main source of infection
Have been using windows and IE,Avant browser with many years ,rarely hit by virus.
Chrome is so lag when im opening a new webpage and the scrolling is slooooooooow
For heaven’s sake! Mac Defender is NOT a virus.
It depends on a user being fooled into actually installing it, without which it can do NOTHING. It’s a social issue, as distinct from the hundreds of thousands of threats on Windows which operate entirely without any user intervention.
The REAL culprit in all this recent spat about the Mac Defender issue is the degree to which Google’s SEO process has been poisoned by fake links which the user has to click on before he is offered the opportunity to download Mac Defender. How is that that these fake links get onto Google’s first link page????
Yep, and non-idiots, too.
I agree with the Mac part but I won’t use a browser that integrates a component as buggy and full of security holes as Flash.
Which is why it’s clearly called the “Mac Defender Trojan.” I refuse to acknowledge this as malware; I use the term idiotware, because you need an idiot to run it. And I think the OS X “security system” is a big step above AV apps, because it’s the first built-in code to try and protect a computer from (idiot) users!
Since Schmidt’s got this much faith in Apple’s coding, I’ll stick with Safari.
rarely = more than never
Ironic that he didn’t recommend Chrome OS instead of Mac$