Apple Anti-virus

Dear Cupertino,

With the increased marketshare comes increased risk, and even though nothing is proven to be "in the wild" yet, it doesn't mean it won't be someday soon. You guessed it: I want integrated, or at least Apple-supplied Anti-Virus either with the OS, or via AppleCare. (Really, everyone should be buying AppleCare anyway, so I see this as a natural fit.)

I think this would be great for a few reasons, but principal among would be that viruses exploit issues with OS, which, in my opinion, makes it the OS vendor's problem. If Apple released integrated anti-virus (and especially if they did it really well) it would send a message to other OS vendors that there is a responsible way to handle the weaknesses of their own products. It would also say to their customers, "We know, a lot of you bought Macs because you didn't want to worry about Viruses, and we're going to keep it that way."

Now, I know that people are going to complain that it'll be undercutting the newly burgeoning Mac Security industry, but here's how I see it:
Every time I use a windows PC I am disgusted by how completely their security software dominates the user experience, constantly asking if something is allowed to do something else, throwing up little alerts and flags, telling them they're at risk, or interrupting what you're doing to do scans, download updates, or tell you that your anti-virus subscription is running out. It's poorly integrated, clumsy, and I would estimate that a HUGE number of users don't even read the warnings, instead simply clicking whatever makes the message go away.

So why would Apple, a company who obviously spends a ton of time and money designing and improving the user experience, encourage some other company, to whom "user experience design" probably extends no further than making cute icons for their buttons, fuck it all up?

If anyone can do it right, it's Apple. They're already indexing our files on a regular basis with Spotlight, and cataloging changes with Time Machine, so it would seem simple to compare those files to a list of known threats, eliminate the offenders, and simultaneously remove them from Time Machine backups and restore any files and settings that got screwed up by the offender.

That's my wish: Dear Cupertino, please give us Apple Anti-Virus and shut those whiny Windows-Users up for good.

Thanks!

Jon Sandruck