Are Mac's inherently safer?

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Leo, like so many IT morons, will never admit that the Macintosh is more secure and of much higher quality than Windows.

Look at the top of ask-leo.com -- Leo fixes Windows problems. The Mac has fewer problems. The more Macs out there, the less work for Leo.

The whole damn IT industry is such a scam. They recommend crud, knowing they will have plenty of work fixing the crud they themselves recommended.

For any of them to admit the Mac is better, at anything, is the same as admitting that they are incompetent.

It may be the truth, but don't expect truth from an IT moron.

It has never been the issue that Microsoft is the only one with security issues. The issue has been the sieve-like nature of MS OSs and apps, and the misguided notion that competing products must have "no defects" to be better than what MS is offering. That notion is a logical fallacy, referred to as the Requirement for Perfection. In other words, it is not the case that Product X must be perfect in order to be "better than" Product W.

Gotta love logic (and the choice of letters...)
I prefer Mac OS X, yes it's true, but I am not a fanatic. I maintain a Windows network as part of my teaching job (I even got the school to buy a Mac lab this year to replace a Windows lab).

Windows' security issues speak for themselves. Yesterday a very serious issue arose for Windows XP and 2000 - see eWeek's article at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1891749,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Interesting to note is that this is a Javascript problem, but it does not affect Javascript in Linux, Mac OS X, or even earlier versions of Windows! They all use Javascript, too!

MS has gotten sloppy. They deserve to lose some market share, then they will strive to improve, and then we all win with better products.

Hi Leo,

Your answers were not very satisfying to me as a long time Mac user. I will give you my answers to the questions that your reader asked:

Is it true that Macintosh is very safe in that viruses cannot get through?

The question is not absolutely true as stated, but because of the design of the Mac OS X operating system, it is true that a virus is much less likely to propagate and spread than on a Windows system. In addition, for the 5 years that Mac OS X has been in use, there has not yet been one virus reported.

And what about emails?

You should not click on unknown links or attachments in any email for any operating system, but for OS X, the default Mail program does not automatically run attached files, so there have not been any exploits by email.

Can others sniff and get info using mac?

"Others" can sniff network transmissions for any operating system, so you should always use a secure browser page when transmitting personal information on the web. "Others" can also use "rootkits" and "keyboard loggers" to try to obtain information from your computer. These programs can be contained in a "trojan" to compromise your computer. They exist for all operating systems, so you need to be smart about obtaining software from trusted sources. For OS X, an administrator password is always required to install new software (not true with Windows), so the Mac is safer in that respect.

The security issues is not only about exploitation of sofware bug. The issue depand also on architecture of the OS and the hardware.

Exemple: It is much more difficult to do a buffer overflow on a PowerPc vs on x86, because the return instruction in the PowerPc chip are in the register not on the stack.

"MacOS 9.x had tons of viruses"

I wouldn't call 2, plus their variations tons. The last OS 9 virus (the AutoStart worm) appeared in December 1998, well before the introduction of OS X. SevenDust was the other OS 9 virus.

This is so simple. If you are a hacker, and you want the ultimate respect in hacker circles, you'd write a virus for OS X. Why? Because noone else has done it. Talk about bragging rights!!! The fact that OS X has no viruses written for it says a lot. Leo has his head in the sand.

How can someone admit to a a lack of knowledge and experience, profess to a bias, and then pretend to deliver a meaningful opinion? Safety-through-obscurity is a demonstrated falsehood. Pathetic.

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_macs_are_inherently_safer_and_more_secure_than_microsoft_windows/

So let me get this straight, because both the OS X and Windows are software, they are inherently equally vulnerable to attack?

By that logic, Windows XP with all the latest service packs and security updates is no more secure than the first version of XP that came out years ago. They're still both software, and all software has bugs, right? That's cleary idotic.

Obviously the quality of software and increased attention to security issues can make a dramatic difference --even in versions of the same OS. Why is it not possible that Apple did a better job with OS X from the start?

By the way, I'm not discounting the likelyhood that hackers are more prone to attack a Microsoft OS. That's probably also true. Microsoft is hated with good reason. Even if years from now, Apple were eventually to match Microsoft's market share (by consistently shipping excellent products, and not though underhanded tactics like MS), I doubt they would ever suffer the same degree of virus-laden wrath reserved for Microsoft.

Instead of asking which OS is theoretically more secure, People should ask which OS actually has been, and is most likely to continue to be, the least troublesome for the forseeable future.

The answer seems clear to me and the ever-growing mass of switchers.

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