Apple's always been more than happy to boast about the lower amount of malicious files aimed at its OS X operating system, when compared to its main rival, Windows; as everybody knows, nothing is 100% secure, and there will always be people out there with the intent of harming your computer, and with the upcoming release of Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), this is certainly not going to change. However, it seems Apple may be trying to keep one step ahead, according to a blog post from Intego, by building a form of system protection directly into the upcoming release.
The common way of installing applications on OS X is to have an installer package, which, whilst handy for getting everything where it needs to be, can be rather dangerous as it doesn't usually show you exactly what is being installed. Although you can download free, third-party plug-ins to help quell the problem, it's more than easy enough to end up with harmful files on your computer even after following the usual routine, so this discovery is quite a good one. What Intego has found is that Apple has now included a form of malware-prevention in the package installer service; instead of simply asking if the user wants to install the package, Snow Leopard will scan it quickly, and then display a message if any harmful files are found.
According to ZDNet, it hasn't been stated as to how Apple is handling the file detection, but it appears that they may have partied up with a commercial anti-virus vendor to provide the solution. We've included a screenshot below from Intego's blog, to show what the user will see if anything crops up.
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