With the release of Snow Leopard, the extents of the security enhancements to Mac OS X are now public. It appears from the reviews of several experts that the release currently only detects two families of malware, and only if the malware was downloaded through Mail.App, Safari or iChat. Many people seem to have been put off by this, and even making it a factor in their upgrade decision.

A week ago, we did not even know this feature existed, and now we know that the ability to scan files (albeit limited sources and limited malware families) exists in the OS distribution itself with no 3rd-party add-on. It is very likely that if Apple went through the trouble of adding a scanning engine, it will not be so limited forever and will see expansion in near-future OS updates.

Articles on Snow Leopard security component "XProtect":

• Apple Snow Leopard malware defense 'very basic,'
• Snow Leopard malware protection system: What does XProtect do?
• Intego VirusBarrier X5 Compared to Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Anti-Malware Function
• Apple’s Take on Malware
• Snow Leopard Antimalware Feature Gaining Publicity
• Snow Leopard to warn Apple users of malware - reports