Apple: A victim of it's own success

Mac OS X is at 8.9% of all PCs, the highest ever. [Link]

Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, posted its biggest gain in the same two-year period, growing by 0.66 percentage point to end the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.

Popularity brings it's own problems. Apple suggests users install anti-virus software. [Link]

After years of boasting about the Mac's near invincibility, Apple is now advising its customers to install security software on their computers.

Apple - which has continually played on Windows' vulnerability to viruses in its advertising campaigns - issued the advice in a low-key message on its support forums.

"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult," the the support message reads.

It goes on to recommend a handful of products to Mac owners, including Intego VirusBarrier X5, Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh and McAfee VirusScan for Mac.

Apple has continually played down the threat of viruses on the Mac platform. One of the first adverts in its "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" campaign focused entirely on viruses. "Last year there were 114,000 known viruses for PCs," the PC character said in the advert. "PCs, not Macs," the Mac character replied.