A rumor is spreading quite rapidly that Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, will have a built-in level of antivirus protection…. As shown here:

But will it? I think at this point, I can safely say that I have not yet seen any sign of this protection in the Beta’s that I have used…. But would this be a feature that Apple might restrict to just internal testing? Quite Possibly…

I would have to say that I would give this rumor a 45% chance of being the truth. Why? Because Apple would be smart to start adding these features pro-actively…

If so, I would hope to see that within the next version of the OS, that external hooks were added to allow third party companies to extend the capacity of the Antivirus protection… This way, we could add plug-ins to extend the features, and give us as much (or little) protection as we wish…

On the con side, this doesn’t “feel” right. Apple would be adding a feature that isn’t desperately need at this point, when they could be finishing up QuickTime X, or other features…

Yet, on the other other side, maybe this Antivirus system was designed for the iPhone, and ported to the Mac OS….Hmmm…