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[John Coloccia]

The vast majority of Window's current problems stem from IE, which is a basket case of security holes, and people simply clicking on executable files in their e-mail. Window's architecture is more susceptible to attack as well. Unix-like operating systems are far more secure in that it's much harder for a virus to do any real damage, and since there's no IE, most of the common holes are sealed up from day one.

The best thing anyone can do is use IE exactly once....to download Firefox. Then never touch IE again for anything...ever. 90% of your problems will disappear overnight.

Still, Macs are more secure by design, and combined with a lack of Mac viruses anyway, there are very few Mac threats to worry about.

[Brian Elfert]

The way I understand it a lot of programmers hate Microsoft (Bill Gates) because of the way they do business and develop viruses/malware aimed at infiltrating Windows based OP systems and software. Not nearly as much stuff is aimed at the MAC, making it easier to prevent infiltration.

The key is market share. There are many more Windows PCs than Mac systems so the bad guys write their stuff for Windows as they can hit a lot more PCs that way.

[Dan Hintz]

Window's architecture is more susceptible to attack as well. Unix-like operating systems are far more secure in that it's much harder for a virus to do any real damage, and since there's no IE, most of the common holes are sealed up from day one.

It's not harder to do damage on a *NIX system compared to Microsoft and Apple, it's just that *NIX code is continually looked at by significantly more people than Apple or Microsoft code, so finding a hole to do damage through is harder. Of course, not having a hole-ridden application (IE) sitting on top of the OS helps significantly.

The best thing anyone can do is use IE exactly once....to download Firefox. Then never touch IE again for anything...ever. 90% of your problems will disappear overnight.

Agreed, 100%. Paying attention to where you surf and the links you click on will get you another 8-9%.

Still, Macs are more secure by design, and combined with a lack of Mac viruses anyway, there are very few Mac threats to worry about.

Mmmmmm, okay. It's a *NIX system, so you get the benefits of that... but it's a closed microcosm of *NIX, so it opens things up a bit more towards the Microsoft spectrum. Overall, generally better than MS, but not the panacea people think (want?) it to be.

[Scott Shepherd]

There's a reason that most of the mainframes in the world that run banks, military, telecommunications, travel, etc aren't running MS OS's.

I started with a Vic-20. So go from a Vic-20 to today, where I have 5 PC's running Win 95, XP, and Windows 7, I'd say I've spent my fair share of time on computers over the last 35 years. That also includes running Sun360 Workstations running Unix, interfacing with IBM mainframes, and a number of other interesting projects.

Several years ago I decided to take a plunge and get a used Mac. It was my first one. All I heard at the time was how it was "only a matter of time" before they were hit with all the nasty stuff. That was 3 years ago, still nothing. What's that mean? It means 3 years of my life clicking anything I want, downloading most anything out there, not having to update any McAfee, Norton, or anything else. I come to work (and go home) and do what I want on the computer, use it all day long and never once give a split second of thought about anything regarding security.

While it's easy to theorize about what's possible one day if someone ever puts some really nasty stuff out there for Mac's, that day isn't here, and if I can get 4-5 years of never once having to deal with another virus or malware in my day, then I think it was worth it to me. Malware and virus' can be some nasty nasty things that can take many hours to get rid of. Not fun, joyful hours spent on things you want, irritating, frustrating hours spent trying to untangle a spider web of a mess.

You can say what you want about Mac's, but in my 35 years of computing, they have proven themselves to be the easiest, most hassle free systems I've ever used in 35 years.

Are they perfect? Not by any means. None are, but are they safer? Without question.

[Duane Meadows]

Oh Mac malware is out there...

https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+...m=122&ie=UTF-8

Problem is Mac uses think they safe, often have no idea they are infected.

Also one of the biggest threats today is so called "social engineering" threats. Basically, if you ask enough people for, oh say, their banking info, some will give it to you! That kind of stuff is operating system agnostic!

I have run Windows 7 since it came out and have not had a virus/malware issue with it. Not running as admin goes a long way to preventing a lot of stuff. Unfortunately Windows makes it too easy to do just that.

The biggest thing , as Dan said is market share. With less than 10% market share Mac OS/X just isn't that big of a target. Linux is even smaller.

No OS is bullet proof, if you keep your head in the sand, thinking your safe... well good luck with that. You may even already be wrong and not know it!

By the way, posted from Linux!

[Scott Shepherd]

Oh Mac malware is out there...

https://www.google.com/search?q=mac+...m=122&ie=UTF-8

Problem is Mac uses think they safe, often have no idea they are infected.

Also one of the biggest threats today is so called "social engineering" threats. Basically, if you ask enough people for, oh say, their banking info, some will give it to you! That kind of stuff is operating system agnostic!

I have run Windows 7 since it came out and have not had a virus/malware issue with it. Not running as admin goes a long way to preventing a lot of stuff. Unfortunately Windows makes it too easy to do just that.

The biggest thing , as Dan said is market share. With less than 10% market share Mac OS/X just isn't that big of a target. Linux is even smaller.

No OS is bullet proof, if you keep your head in the sand, thinking your safe... well good luck with that. You may even already be wrong and not know it!

By the way, posted from Linux!

I didn't say it didn't exist. I said in my every day travels, it's not a concern for me. As long as you keep your OS up to date, it's a VERY VERY small threat. I stand by my statement, 3 years or so of clicking on what I want, no virus scanner to keep current, no subscriptions to manage. Just sit down, use it, and move on. But, had I listened to all those that said how bad things would get on the Mac "soon", I wouldn't have had 3 years of event free computing.

[Michael Weber]

Should have mentioned in my original post that I'm using Chrome on a Windows 8 computer (another reason to hate it). I'm pretty careful about downloads Problems seemed to be solved for the time being anyway. I used to joke with my co-workers that I missed DOS because you knew what was on your computer, how it got there and what it was supposed to do. Really appreciate all the help. Mike

[Dan Hintz]

There's a reason that most of the mainframes in the world that run banks, military, telecommunications, travel, etc aren't running MS OS's.

Probably not the reasons most think...

Telecomm equipment usually runs on uncommon processors... MIPS processors take the lion's share. Open your average wireless router and chances are it's a MIPS. This means *NIX as Windows was never meant for MIPS chips.

Banks are still running COBOL and PASCAL in some places, simply because the transition over to a new language on a standard OS would be too costly in the short run (and for a field that measures returns in quarterly earnings, a project that lasts multiple years before it can even be tried out isn't going to happen).

Military is all over the place, from Windows to *NIX. More than once a military vessel has been towed into port due to a Windows Blue Screen of Death, and *NIX builds are often decades old. Trust me when I say most military systems are not thinking "We can't run that OS because it's vulnerable to viruses"... that thinking is WAY down on their list.

[Scott Shepherd]

Telecomm equipment usually runs on uncommon processors... MIPS processors take the lion's share. Open your average wireless router and chances are it's a MIPS. This means *NIX as Windows was never meant for MIPS chips.

Banks are still running COBOL and PASCAL in some places, simply because the transition over to a new language on a standard OS would be too costly in the short run (and for a field that measures returns in quarterly earnings, a project that lasts multiple years before it can even be tried out isn't going to happen).

Military is all over the place, from Windows to *NIX. More than once a military vessel has been towed into port due to a Windows Blue Screen of Death, and *NIX builds are often decades old. Trust me when I say most military systems are not thinking "We can't run that OS because it's vulnerable to viruses"... that thinking is WAY down on their list.

The telecommunications might have changed, but my professor was straight out of Bell Labs that was teaching the Unix classes I took years ago. At that time Unix was the only thing running anything. If it was a mainframe, it was running Unix. At the time he told us that one could certainly hack into Unix systems, but the problem was the people that were smart enough to do it were smart enough to make so much money working in Unix, that it wouldn't be in their best interest to hack them.

At the time Unix was superior to most everything and stayed that way for a decade or more. I have no idea what W7 or W8 is now. I know they were a horrible mess from the beginning. I would imagine quite a lot has changed and evolved, but I'm still content not having to worry about much of anything on a daily basis.

[paul cottingham]

Macs and unix are not less vulnerable due to a lack of market share, most (at least 50%, I think is is closer to 70%) web and email servers run unix, so they are everywhere. Macs and unix are safer because they have a much more secure and robust security model than windows do. Windows security is a mess. It comes from the compromises necessary from adding security as an afterthought, rather than building it in from the beginning.
Most processes run as a hugely privileged user in windows, making them very vulnerable. In fact, many windows apps wont run properly unless they are run as a privileged user. Unix admins who know their business wont do that. Believe me, we ran a unix mail server in a rack at an ISP and it got hammered. But no one ever got into it. The windows based servers in the same place? Got compromised all the time.

[John Coloccia]

It's not harder to do damage on a *NIX system compared to Microsoft and Apple, it's just that *NIX code is continually looked at by significantly more people than Apple or Microsoft code, so finding a hole to do damage through is harder. Of course, not having a hole-ridden application (IE) sitting on top of the OS helps significantly.

Oh sure, it's much harder thanks to the Unix micro-kernel model. The core "problem" with Windows (though I'll argue that it allows for a VERY nice programming environment...maybe the best) is that every time you want to do the most mundane of tasks....I don't know, make a button for instance....you will eventually tickle large portions of the operating system. Unix is much different in this regard. The Unix kernel is very basic and compact and as such it is far simpler to create a Unix free of exploitable bugs. There can still be exploits due to poor system management or necessity, but when you combine a very solid kernel with the usual practice of NOT running day to day activities as root, it makes for a more difficult system to attack.

In Windows, on the other hand, just about everyone has administrator privileges by default so Trojans can basically just run amok. Then you add garbage software, like Internet Explorer, that has a bazillion security problems, and making calls into other libraries that have potentially exploitable bugs, and the more ambitious programmer that writes more traditional forms of viruses also has a way in. So for example, it would be difficult to do something directly to get into bits of memory that you're not supposed to get into, but it's possible to find ways to get the API to do things in a way that will then cause things in the kernel to run wild. I think it's gotten much better in this regard, but there is just too much code kicking around to ever really lock it down. It's much much easier to create a Unix style operating system that has a minimal amount of these kinds of exploits.

[paul cottingham]

Oh sure, it's much harder thanks to the Unix micro-kernel model. The core "problem" with Windows (though I'll argue that it allows for a VERY nice programming environment...maybe the best) is that every time you want to do the most mundane of tasks....I don't know, make a button for instance....you will eventually tickle large portions of the operating system. Unix is much different in this regard. The Unix kernel is very basic and compact and as such it is far simpler to create a Unix free of exploitable bugs. There can still be exploits due to poor system management or necessity, but when you combine a very solid kernel with the usual practice of NOT running day to day activities as root, it makes for a more difficult system to attack.

In Windows, on the other hand, just about everyone has administrator privileges by default so Trojans can basically just run amok. Then you add garbage software, like Internet Explorer, that has a bazillion security problems, and making calls into other libraries that have potentially exploitable bugs, and the more ambitious programmer that writes more traditional forms of viruses also has a way in. So for example, it would be difficult to do something directly to get into bits of memory that you're not supposed to get into, but it's possible to find ways to get the API to do things in a way that will then cause things in the kernel to run wild. I think it's gotten much better in this regard, but there is just too much code kicking around to ever really lock it down. It's much much easier to create a Unix style operating system that has a minimal amount of these kinds of exploits.

John, thank you. You put it in words much better than I ever could. There is no comparison in the security models of the two operating systems. (I use the word security with regard to windows very loosely indeed.)

[Brian Elfert]

I continue to use Windows largely because I use a lot of programs that simply don't exist for the Mac. I also don't like the high cost of Mac PCs versus Windows PCs. I like to have a laptop with a real dock. Apple doesn't make such a thing. There are third party docks, but my employer has had bad luck with them. My Windows PC at home simply runs and runs. I very rarely have issues with it, but I am also a Windows and Unix administrator as my job so I tend to be a little more careful.

The Windows desktop OS needs a top to bottom rewrite to make it more secure, but Microsoft will never do it because of backwards compatibility. People still run Windows 95 programs on Windows 7. Apple was able to transition to a new OS, but their market share at the time was pretty small and there was still plenty of people complaining.