The app uses Growl notification, so it helps if you have Growl pre-installed.
To install the downloaded beta app, you simply drag the application icon to the Applications folder and double-click to launch. The company previously had a download for Mac, but as noted in the user forums on the Avast site, 'The current popularity of Apple products also makes them more interesting for the bad guys so we thought it would be good to prepare for the battle sooner rather than later.' The result is a product that is much more on par with the Windows product. The company has just released a beta of avast! Free Antivirus for Mac for download and testing, and like the Windows version of the software, it looks pretty good. Avast has been a longtime supplier of a free (for non-commercial use) antivirus package for Windows that is unobtrusive and fast, so it was with a great deal of interest that I read a PR blast from the company this morning. Apple released Security Update 2011-003 yesterday with protection from the MacDefender malware and its variants, but some of our readers might want to do more to protect their Macs from malware.
