avast! free antivirus 8.0 BETA (ready for Mavericks)

[mity]

I would like to announce the new avast! Free Antivirus 8.0 BETA, which brings support for Mac OS X 10.9 (a.k.a Mavericks). Please note this versions does not support OS X 10.5.x at all, and requires 10.6.8 or newer. If you use development preview of Mavericks you should use the 6th one.

Please keep in mind that, despite the amount of work we spent on it, it is still beta and there can be some rougher corners here or there. Most changes were under the cover so user does not notice much except completely new install (and uninstall) procedure.

I think we can assume that final OS X 10.9. will come quite soon, so the beta stage shall be probably quite short. So please test and report any bugs you encounter.

UPDATE: Beta2 with some fixes is available:
 - HTTPS scanning is by default off.
 - Retina-ready resources.
 - Some install/uninstall issues fixed.

NOTE: If you have the previous beta1 installed, uninstall it 1st, preferably with the uninstall utility from the beta2 DMG. There were some fixes in the uninstall process.

Download link: http://files.avast.com/files/beta/avast_free_antivirus_mac_setup-beta2.dmg

Thanks and enjoy.
Avast Mac team

[iphone900]

avast web rep not working

ERROR 7013

[jacopoalberto]

Please add support to the Retina Display graphics. It's really annoying to see grainy icons...

[GeoffBur]

It appears that the default setting for the web shield has been set to "Scan Secured Connections".  Considering that there are known issues with services such as Dropbox with this setting on, shouldn't the default be set to the off position?

[specimen9999]

It appears that the default setting for the web shield has been set to "Scan Secured Connections".  Considering that there are known issues with services such as Dropbox with this setting on, shouldn't the default be set to the off position?

I think it should be off for various reasons, it conflicts with running virtual machines, for instance. To explain the problem with virtual machines better, the fact is that it also proxies the VM internet connections, it would require the installation of avast certs inside the VMs to work, too troublesome, and the VM might have it's own security solution.

They should only turn it on by default when they can exclude per process.

[mity]

Just few notes to let you know we are not sleeping :-)
 - Support for retina is work in progress.
 - The HTTPS scanning shall be OFF by default.
 - The problem with WebRep was caused by some issues in per-user install scripts we are working on.

Thanks for the feedback.

[mity]

Beta2 is now available. (Updated the 1st post.)