We took a lot of flack over a post back in January that questioned the security of Apple’s Mac OS X. TechConsumers left various comments ranging from “For some reason unknown to me, no one can ever show me a situation where a user opens a e-mail and their Mac turns into a robot sending out hundreds of e-mails” to “Mac OS X *is* inherently safer. You have to be a major league Windows zombie not to know and accept that.”

Well, CanSecWest‘s PWN 2 OWN contest has just shown that Mac OS X isn’t “inherently safer” and that clearly it is possible for a user to open an e-mail on a Mac and have it join a spam botnet.

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Soapbox is a new regular feature where I sound off on various tech topics/products that I’m interested in (or hate). This is just my $.02, so consider yourself warned. Apple gets another beat down this week…

AppleTV is first up on the chopping block. Personally I love how Steve Jobs said at Macworld 2008 that AppleTV 1.0 was more about sharing music and pictures. If that was really the case then why was it called AppleTV? It is funny that a device with TV in the name has hardly any TV content. Especially since the departure of NBC from iTunes. AppleTV “Take Two” is about movies; it won’t be until AppleTV “Third Time’s the Charm” that you’ll get the TV part. Yet another reason why people should hold off on the AppleTV. Read more