All things being equal, if the Mac has 5% market share, there should be 1200 viruses for the Mac. Let’s say that there are 114,000 viruses for Windows which run on 95% of the computers in the world. That sounds OK at first, but let’s do some very (very) rough math. Macs haven’t been a target up until now because they fly under the radar there’s more fame for a virus “author” if he writes for a larger market. You’ll read that a lot whenever you get into this debate. Seems that people do care about 5% market share after all. While 114,000 actual viruses is not particularly newsworthy for Windows, a couple of potential exploits on OS X makes headline news. There’s been a great deal of media interest over the recent security issues exposed in OS X but rather than examine these here, have a read over at Daring Fireball where John Gruber has a good look at the FUD surrounding these reports and reporters. It’s a convincing argument to state that there were “ 114,000 known viruses for PCs” by the end of 2005 and NONE for the mac especially if you’re a PC user sick of fighting what must feel like a losing battle. It’s no secret that Windows has been ravished by malware, spyware security holes and viruses. That’s not a bad approach to selling more Macs if you ask me. It was interesting to see that the “first” of the new ads released by Apple was touting how resilient the Mac is to viruses.
