Am I out of date? For over a decade I never worried about any virus on MacOS/iOS. But https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/11di44n/do_i_need_antivirus_for_a_macbook/ is kicking it around like you need such a thing.
And while I tend to be precise, folk today call everything a virus even if it's a trojan, malware or a browser hijack.
I have always been of the opinion that no modern PC operating system that has Internet access is impenetrable. Years ago, nearly all of the talk of virus protection and that sort revolved around Microsoft Windows because Windows users represented the majority of computer users (and therefore more viruses were simply written for Windows) as well as the majority of non-technical users (more likely to fall victim to phishing attacks, etc.).
Nowadays, at least in my circles, most of the people I know use a mac, myself included, so it's no longer the case that macOS represented such a small percentage of the population that so few viruses were written for it. Additionally, it's no longer the case that all the vast majority of computer novices use Windows. Again, this was true many years ago, but Apple has really become quite mainstream over the past decade or so. (IMHO, it was the iPod/iPhone that put them on the map.)
The OSes I use all required an "assist" for the trojan or such to run or be installed. I've yet to hear of any recent virus/otherbadthing that required us to install an antivirus suite on Apple machines.
Or am I out of date and the sky is falling?
It depends what you mean by "assist". You could download and install software you don't realize is infected. You could fall victim to a convincing phishing attack. A browser extension you thought was benign could wind up doing malicious things.
For Apple and especially iOS you are in a walled garden. I haven't encountered anyone that did a Jailbreak in over a decade.
Similar for Apple OS. Most if not all Apple users stick to the Apple store.
Has something changed that you can get a "virus" from Apple's app stores?
A walled garden doesn't mean that there isn't a door.
Yes, apps in Apple's app store could potentially have built-in malware. Chrome or Firefox browser extensions could do nefarious things as well.
No platform is perfect, and the reviewers whose job it is to ensure that nothing nefarious lands in the app store are just as human and just as fallible as DaniWeb's moderators ensuring that nothing nefarious ever ends up on DaniWeb.
Most if not all Apple users stick to the Apple store.
That is not my experience at all. I have never installed an app onto my mac from the Apple Store.
The majority of the Apple users I know don't write code so they can stay in the garden.
I don't think it has anything to do with writing code or not. When I wanted to install Microsoft Office, I downloaded the installer app from the Microsoft website. When I wanted to install Chrome, I went to the Google Chrome website. If I'm looking for a particular <insert tool here>, then I'll do a Google search for a list of sites that offer/sell such tools, visit their website, and download. For example, that's how I found PHPStorm, the IDE that I use.
I was just thinking, and other software that I go directly to the website to download are things like Zoom, GoToMeeting, TeamViewer, Skype, etc. As mentioned, I can't think of a single time I have ever used the App Store on my mac.
I didn't use anti-virus software on my Windows machine (other than what was built into Windows 10) and I don't use it on my Mac (my primary machine nowadays) either. I was simply pointing out that I don't use the App Store at all, and I suspect that is the case for most people. For example, if someone is told they need to install Zoom, the most intuitive thing to do is to either type in zoom.com and download it, or to do a Google search for zoom and then click on one of the first results. The problem is that one of the search results might be a malicious site with an infected version of Zoom, and an unsuspecting user might not realize. This is especially the case since Zoom's URL is the non-standard TLD zoom.us, so to some people, the real one looks suspicious to begin with.
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