Symantec has announced what may be the first virus written to target Mac OS X.

Called OSX.Leap.A, the worm-like virus spreads itself as an iChat file attachment.

But is it a real worm or just a clever script, a genuine threat or a false alarm like others in the past?

Leander Kahney on Cult of Mac considers the options , offering the conclusion that “it may be mostly harmless now, but will likely lead to much nastier versions in the future.”Symantec, ichat, worm, virus, mac osx, OSX.leap.A, false alarm, Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is the managing editor of Wired News . He writes the Cult of Mac blog , and is author of two books about Mac and iPod culture: Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod .

HW: What kind of Mac do you use?

LK: At work I use a dual-processor Power Mac G5 (2Ghz, I think) with a couple of old CRT monitors. It’s got 2Gbytes of RAM and is nice and fast. At home, I have an original 1.6 Ghz Power Mac G5. I thought it was fast — three years ago.

I also have a G4 PowerBook (aluminum 1.25GHz) and a G4 iBook, which my wife and kids use. (There’s also several stashed away we no longer use — a G3 PowerBook, an eMac, a couple of bondi-blue iMacs, two classic compact Macs, etc). At home I’m glued to the PowerBook. I can no longer watch TV without also surfing the Web or doing email; and almost all my reading these days is electronic.

HW: How long have you been using Mail.app? What other clients have you used (and why did you stop)?

LK: I use Mail.app at home and have done since it was released. I was also a devoted user of Mail.app at work, until about six months ago when I returned from a week-long break and had about 35,000 email messages waiting for me, most of it spam. Mail.app choked on the load, and so did MS Entourage, Mailsmith and others I tried. Only Mozilla’s Thunderbird could cope, so I switched.

I haven’t been really happy with it though until I discovered a Mail.app theme called Crossover . Now it’s just like using Mail.app, except there’s no built-in spell checker or .Mac syncing.

HW: What plugins and extensions do you use to make your email experience better?

(more…)