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Originally Posted by Squawks
Yup, that's no joke. Probably the biggest fallacy of Windows.
Then again, I bet if the MacOS was the major OS, hackers would just shift from Windows to the more popular (and more prey) OS and develop viruses for the MacOS.
It's not that the MacOS is bulletproof (nothing is). It's just that hackers don't want to waste their time making viruses that'll only affect Mac users and that only constitutes a fraction of today's computer users.
EDIT: I continue to believe that Apple hires offhand hackers to develop viruses, worms, and trojans against the Windows OS just to slim down Microsoft's monopolizing powers.
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LOL at last comment
I agree that Mac is not a platform of focus, so the weaknesses don't tend to be targeted. But to be fair, there are other technical reasons for OS X's good record:
1. Users do not run by default in administrator mode like Windows does, therefore making it less likely for a vulnerability to become a problem.
2. Because of this, software can't modify the system or install applications unless the user specifically gives permission by entering the Administration password into a dialogue box that pops up whenever software tries to do this.
3. Unix is an old operating system (1975 I think was the year of the first version, but this is stretching my memory a bit too far). This is a double edged sword because there is some code written back then when the IT world was a safer, more stable place, but is also advantageous because time has seasoned and hardened Unix.
4. Related to this, Unix is a proper enterprise OS, also used in defence, so hardening a Unix machine is well understood and can be done because many of the required features have been built in over time as commercial and government concerns have demanded them. Thus, Apple's Mac OS X install is pretty much nailed down from the start.