Not unlike their tragic bedfellows Intuit, Symantec has long fallen by the wayside when it comes to supporting the Mac OS X. I don't know; maybe the economics just don't make sense for them, or maybe it's a cultural thing. No press release is going to tell us what the real story is, but while every other major developer either had Snow Leopard compatibility out of the gate, or they quickly updated their programs to be compatible, Norton Antivirus was -- and is -- the only major program I had to completely uninstall from my machine after installing Snow Leopard.

My wife still runs Leopard on her MacBook. She is a publicist, so receives and sends hundreds of cross-platform files and emails every day, and Norton Antivirus on her machine picks up nasty virii almost daily and successfully repairs or quarantines those files. While almost all of them are Win files, I'm sure her clients appreciate that she is not 'spreading the love' by transmitting infected documents to their Windows machines. She also runs MacScan which detected a nasty piece of malware (a DNS re-router) at her System level, and got rid of it. Norton missed that one.

I know there are other options like Intego and Clam, but I've tried both and in the case of the former I just don't like Intego's vibe... too much eye-candy, not enough substance and seemingly punishing subscription routines. Clam can be cool (I haven't used it lately) but it has that quasi-experimental open-source quality about it that I am loathe to risk. And McAfee? I've forgotten if they ever even offered a Mac compatible anti-virus program... I suppose they did once. Lastly, there's Sophos, but not for the faint of heart, and better handled by an IT Administrator as part of a large-scale corporate deployment from what I can tell.

So, for now, I run MacScan once a week to look for trojans and tracking cookies. I have my server side anti-spam index set very low so that I can see what is getting trapped before it gets on my machine, thus avoiding the usual bogus attachment infections.

I have a fond memory of Norton (Symantec) since the early days of Norton Utilities, but am saddened that it's now just a licensed brand name that stands for very little in the Mac community (poor Peter is off collecting art and having a great time somewhere!).