It may come as a shock, but Apple has previously responded to malware threats the help of ZDNet pundits who purport to cover Windows. In the two years since Snow Leopard's release, the company's updated the for two threats without having to use the the Bottphone or the Bottsignal because, get it, it sounds like "bat."

But isn't Bott actually missing some of the point? A large part of the complaint was that Apple wasn't letting AppleCare reps help users remove Mac Defender. There's no sign the company's changed that policy. Apple is still seemingly just directing people to the Apple knowledge base, which already had instructions for how to remove Mac Defender.

Bott, who's been on 24-hour Mac Defender watch, didn't post about the announcement that a fix would be coming until . And, when he did, he initially left out the fact that the new variant only works if you have "Open 'safe' files after downloading" selected in Safari. But the horny one's sure he's not just trying to make this sound as bad as possible or anything.

Of course, the new variant worse and it's always been nuts that Safari's default is to open "safe" files. Despite the convenience, that never should have been the case. "Let anyone from the Internet run an application on my Mac? Sure! Why not! I love the Internet! OH, MY GOD, WHAT IS "