A long time ago … 
Many many years ( centuries ) ago , avast told us a new version would be soon available for linux workstation !!!
Was it a dream or reality ???
A long time ago .....Many many years ( centuries ) ago , avast told us a new version would be soon available for linux workstation !!!
Was it a dream or reality ?
Same goes for the Mac version!
now, we’re trying to make the core-engine faster. the amount of detection doubles (!) every year, and the detection algorithms must be well prepared for this “law”. The speed of computers stagnated a bit recently, but the amount of new malware not…
regards,
pc
I understand about keeping protection for malware, but a new program base can be published and then updated. Also, any ideas if Avast will be like “MacScan”.
My license expires in March of 09. I will definitely be moving on to a developer that really wants to support the Mac platform. The only reason I became an early adopter was because I have always been throughly impressed with their PC support. That isn’t the case for the Mac. Even the free PC app gets more updates than the PAID Mac version. How very sad
Hallo,
man, of course we want to support Mac Platform, but also try to understand this:
-
on PC world, there was no quadruple CPU switch as on Mac. it’s simply 386 for ages, and still is. No big endianity, no align sensitivity,
standard ABI, mature C++ support, rich system resources, mature development tools and so on. what was written in the past, still works (usually). -
Avast was developed exclusively for the x86 architecture (and is tied to x86 like hell), so the number of fixes/modifications to get it work correctly
on different CPUS (note - the virus database is the same as for Win, so the updates come as often as for Windows, have you noticed?) is about ~4000 particular changes/workarounds, and the number still increases as new pieces of code come in. One of them missing or poked away → non-deterministic behavior, malformed unpack, missing detection, sigfault, sigbus, crash. I try hard to have the engine 100% binary compatible and 100% correct for both PowerPC/x86 machines (or do you want that “Daemon died” somewhere during disc scan?), but this involves many hours between long-term tests, gdb, crashdumps, debug printouts and MacOS’s oddities.
Thus, when we’re able to issue stable and polished releases for Win (where those low-level problems don’t exist) let’s say 3 times per year, i think it’s still good to have new version for mac 99%-ready now, one year after the first release, with many improvements.
But sorry for this moaning, and back to gdb…
regards,
pc
I’m not a programmer, so I don’t understand all of the intricacies of porting an application from one platform to another. I’m sure its time consuming. My only concern is that if I support an application developer monetarily, I get a little frustrated with “tomorrow… next week… next month… two months from now”, for the next (first) maintenance fix. I’ve been a software consumer long enough to have seen similar scenarios play out and then nothing. The developer decides to drop the platform. The update issue was solely about the application, not the virusbase. I thought that was obvious, since it was the subject of the thread. I apologize to pupusse for hijacking the post.
well,
big portion of the functionality is in the 400.vps anyway (new detections, new definitions), thus, the antivirus has always “fresh” knowledge about viruses (and that’s the most important thing).
second piece (a bit less important, decompression, unpack, search routines) is in com.avast.MacAvast.MAD - which can be plugged in manually, one relacement was already made available, and if you want, one beta might be ready today (just yesterday, some really low-level roots of all evil http://i42.tinypic.com/1zy7k77.jpg were found inside my G5, all those unpredictable mysterious bugs are now, let’s hope, away).
the rest is just the GUI stuff - just the user-feeling cover, nothing more - but this is what users call “application” and what they need to have “updated”, as it seems…
regards,
pc