So David Morgenstern over at eWeek has an opinion piece claiming that “PC users should forget their outrage and come to understand that life isn’t fair. The Mac platform is more secure than Windows and will continue to be so.”
Just for fun, I’m not going to try to debate that. It’s absolutely true (as he points out) that practically all of the “in the wild” viruses, trojans, and other malware target Windows. Of course, it’s also true that practically all of the software in the world targets Windows. Yeah, there’s plenty of Mac software, and plenty of Linux software too … but numbers-wise …. Yah, anyway. I said I wasn’t going to debate that … instead, I’m just going to poke fun at his ridiculous arguments.
Still, no matter how much you might consider this comparison an unfair shot, it is real. The Mac is a better platform when it comes to security and malware attacks.
I’ve used Macs since 1984, and I’ve been infected by some malware twice. Two times.
Now, I’m sure many of you can echo what I’m about to say, but with longer dates. I got my first PC in high school, sometime around 1990. Since then, I’ve been running DOS and Windows. The closest I’ve ever come to being infected was when I put other people’s infected floppies in my PC to run a virus cleaner on them … or maybe when I had a look at the source code for the Melissa and “I love you” javascript bugs… I’ve literally never been infected. Sorry David. That’s not an argument about macs vs. PCs, it just shows you’re not very careful.
By my reckoning of the installed bases for each platform, there should be many more exploits for the Mac. Depending on how you calculate the number—2, 3, 5 or whatever percent—shouldn’t there be that corresponding percentage of viruses on the Mac in these lists?
... Scripting News listed the site’s readers by browser. Firefox was the largest (49.76 percent), and Internet Explorer came in second (23.43 percent). However, Mac-only browsers Safari and Camino were next in line (21.31 and a guesstimate of 2 percent, respectively).
Well, I didn’t want to debate exact numbers … but now you’ve got me riled up. It’s preposterous to even mention the visitor logs of a single website when discussing computer market share …
It’s certainly true that there’s been growth in Apples market — they set all-time records for sales of Macs in 2006. In fact, they almost tied Gateway for third place in the third quarter … which means they got almost 6% of PC sales in the US. Of course, that was at the tail end of the year we all spent waiting for Vista. This year they were in 5th place with 5% in the first quarter … at least, in the USA.
Worldwide, however, Apple’s sales suck: last quarter their relatively expensive PCs dropped them right out of the top ten computer makers worldwide for the first time ever and their share of the global market is down from 2003 … to only 1.7%.
The core argument is completely flawed anyway. X% of computers are macs, therefore x% of viruses should be written for it? Why on earth would you say that? Last time I checked, the primary motivation for virus writers is either fame or profit. You don’t get either by spending time learning how to crack and infect 2% (or even 10%) of the computers in the world. You focus on the big targets because you can only infect a small percentage of the computers that are theoretically susceptible to your attack anyway.
Malware writers want to affects 100% of Fortune 500 companies, to turn 200,000 PCs into zombies every day, or to infects — read this slowly — more computers in one weekend — in China — than Apple sold in that entire record-setting quarter.
You get fame by writing a virus that sends 40 million infected emails to AOL in one day, causes $36 Billion in damages, and gets a $250 million bounty put on your head. And no, you don’t get those kinds of numbers by picking on a platform with less than 2% saturation worldwide.
David, you want to know why the Mac OS is more secure than Windows? It’s not because nobody who owns a mac could possibly want to hurt one (although there is something to be said for pricing poor third-world virus writers out of the market) ... it’s because virus writers really just can’t make money (or fame) attacking such a small fraction of the world’s computers. As long as Apple only gains ground in the US … there’s probably no need to worry about anyone other than security researchers noticing the holes .