Are there any viruses on the Mac? That was the billion dollar question that I asked Symantec's Mac product manager Mike Romo (pictured) during an interview at MacWorld. And his answer:

"There hasn't been any viruses really. There has been a couple Trojan horses but Trojan horses been around on the Mac forever. We'll protect against them but we're not going to make a big deal about it. Apple provides such a great infrastructure out of the box that it has been historically not a lot of threats", admits Romo contradicting anything he and others from the "security"/antivirus companies have said in the past months/years!

So, here you go... if you're using a Mac or the closed "un-hacked" iPhone, you don't need to bother with an antivirus software. However, according to Romo, a Mac antivirus software is still useful if you're exchanging emails/data with Windows users or if you're running Windows on your Mac :-)
The antivirus will prevent you from inadvertently pass on viruses that will then affect those Windows users. The other point he makes is that the latest Symantec antivirus product is now more about protecting from MacOS and Internet browser vulnerabilities rather than from viruses [sic!]. Romo contends that Symantec will protect you right away from vulnerabilities exploit instead of waiting for Apple and other ISVs (independent software developers) to patch their product and be vulnerable from attacks.
Mike Romo's interviews after the jump.

No viruses/spyware on Mac/iPhone!


Inside of Symantec's Mac business unit... preparing more product launches this year