Are Mac's inherently safer?

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Leo is just plain wrong on this one. Mac's have about 10% of the market. Why aren't 10% of the viruses infecting the Mac? Because OS X is built on Unix. Just like Linux and Solaris. Have there been any viruses for these platforms? None at all. Think about that for a minute. 0 viruses. How many for Windows? 100,000?

How about spyware? None. On Unix systems, the only user that can install software is the root user or someone designated with root privileges for that task. But it still will ask for a password to install the software. So in theory, spyware could exist, but it would require the user to knowingly install it.

The fact is Windows was designed as a personal operating system. They have added networking capabilities to it over the years but its just a kludge of code. Whereas Unix systems were designed from the ground up to be multi-user and networked. Do youself a favor people and get a Mac or if you insist on keeping your PC, put Linux on it and get rid of that mess called Windows.

Wow. Your arguments are so wrong on so many levels I don't know where to begin. Let me attack just two points because I don't have all day to discuss an issue that has been beaten to death a million times.

1) Your position number one is just wrong. Period. Repeat after me: There are no known viruses for Mac OS X that have successfully replicated in the wild. Theoretical vulnerabilities? Yes. Proof-of-concept exercises? Yes. Self-spreading viruses and auto-installing malware that brings a Macintosh to a crawl like Windows users have suffered the last five years? No. Here's just one page of many to get you started:
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2005/09/mac-os-x-viruses-put-up-or-shut-up.html
You're saying "Neither is perfect, therefore they're equally bad" and that's absolute bullshit, period. It's like you're saying "You can die in a plane crash the same as you can in a car crash, therefore they're both equally dangerous" while ignoring the COUNTLESS statistics that show air travel to be much safer by any measure than auto travel.

2) Ah, the old market share argument. Before people realized JUST HOW EASY it is to exploit broadband-connected Windows PCs, the main target of hackers was webservers--open-to-the-internet powerful boxes on fast connections. Who had the most market share? Apache, by quite a margin. Who had the most exploits? IIS, by a large margin.

Let me say this once for the cheap seats: OS X is based on UNIX, which has been developed for over three decades and was designed from the ground up to exist in a multi-user networked environment. It assumes the network is dangerous. It is usable by users with limited access. Windows, on the other hand, only got networking recently. It assumed you were on a safe corporate network. And Microsoft's own products, like Office, don't run well under limited-privilege accounts.

"So if the Mac is safer... why is Windows so popular?"

Because safety doesn't sell computers. (Not much, anyway.) There are a million other factors that influence sales, as you pointed out--chief among them price and software availability. Why does the Ford Focus outsell any model from Volvo or Mercedes?

Your market share argument doesn't hold. See the following article (written by a security pro) for an explanation. It focuses on Linux but the conclusions apply to Mac OS X as well.

Linux vs. Windows Viruses - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/06/linux_vs_windows_viruses/

Isn't the reason for windows 96 per cent due to Gates pulling a fast one on IBM. If OS 2 could have been developed to run easily on IBM's first personal pc we may never have heard of windows.

Something you may find interesting:

Market Share vs. Install Base: Where the misinformation begins

Installed base (a.k.a. user share) and market share are completely different numbers. Installed base is the total number of computers currently in use. As a software developer, installed base and user share provides the number of potential buyers, NOT MARKET SHARE. Yet editorial tech writers and news reporter use Market Share and User Share interchangeably. This is poor journalism and incredibly misleading.

The definitive guide to this was the "Mad as Hell; Switching to Mac" series of blogs by Computer Security Expert Winn Schwartau. He gave the Mac platform a one-month trial and evaluates all the angles on his blog at http://securityawareness.blogspot.com/2005/09/mad-as-hell-switching-to-mac-1-16.html

One month conclusion? "GRADE: ‘A-’: For managing to create a much safer and more secure computing environment that is more productive than any WinTel solution I have seen since DOS 5.0. (DOSTEL)."

and, 3 months later, in his 17th installment and conclusion to the series he writes: "My first goal was to determine if the Mac switch was worth it, and yet, it was unquestionably one of the smartest things I have ever done, albeit late. My tech-stress level is way down. Things just work they way they should. My productivity is way the hell up! I don’t have to waste time trouble shooting."

Leo, you really need to at least borrow a Mac to try before you try to answer the question posed...

The Macintosh is no safer than Windows. All operating systems are exactly the same - even if one is better by design. Design doesn't matter. Superior engineering in an OS makes no difference. An operating system that is intentionally designed to be more secure is no better that one which isn't. Windows is no safer than DOS. Solaris is no safer than Windows. Vista is no safer than Windows 95. They're all the same. Don't be misled by the fact that Mac OS X users have never reported a worm, virus or spyware. It doesn't matter because 16 million users isn't worth it to the hackers. They're only attacking Windows because it is so big, not because it is trivially easy to do so. Turn off your brains and ignore the people who say that OS design makes a difference in security, because it doesn't. This is based on my superior understanding of the issue, even though I don't own a Mac or know the first thing about the security implications of software design.

Baloney.

MacOS 9.x had tons of viruses, and they had also had a small market share.

MacOSX is more secure.

Because hackers are in it for the rep, busting MacOSX would be much more presigious than just another PC hack.

I mean, how hard can it be? A 10 year old can write a PC virus.

Fustian,

You beat me to it! His argument falls down under scrutiny, simply because of the sad state that was OS9. OS9 had an even smaller market share than X :-)

He admits to not knowing much about a Mac, and ignores the obvious advantages of an operating system designed from the ground up for multiple users - and tries to explain it away with some FUD about bugs.

This guys a shameless hack that was looking for nothing but web hits.

Its time we "asked leo" to shutup and do some research before opening his mouth again.

It's interesting to note that most of the viruses for OS 9 and below (which totalled fewer than 100) were Microsoft Word viruses - hmmm, I think I see a pattern...