I know when you're arguing back and forth with your friends you can go ahead and make up whatever you want.
IA: People who make up 'facts'
But when you're taking the time to write up such a long post it's good to not spew unsubstantiated "evidence" that shows a lack of intelligence and backing rather than proving your point as being true.
Again, a LOT of people use Mac. Hundreds of thousands. It would make plenty of sense to make a virus that would affect so many people. It would make TONS of sense. Because almost every single Mac-User goes without ANY protection, because they don't need it. If you built a virus for Mac, it would affect more people than a virus for Windows!
Why target a smaller market which does actually have some better security practices in place - many of which have been recognized and put into use by Microsoft - when you can target a larger market? Not to mention the fact that regardless of the current state of the OS, many many people still use Windows 98, ME, etc, and do not update them to counter the vulnerabilities found. MacOS users tend to be more concientious and also more....gadget happy....tending to opt to upgrade to the latest and greatest often.
Almost every Windows user has a virus, but everyone also has anti-virus software. Some slip through it, because there are so many, but being one of those is unlikely. If you really wanted to affect a lot of people, and it were possible, you'd build a virus for Mac, because no Mac user worries about viruses.
Almost every windows user has a virus? Where does this come from? I don't believe that, prove it.
But the simple fact remains: it's nearly impossible to build a virus for mac, and actually impossible to build one that survives very long.
Again, proof? It's only more difficult because the masses have been studying the Windows architecture for well over 10 years now, the innards are known quite well, and documentation is easily locatable for assistance in building a successful virus. MacOS doesn't have this, thus it is more difficult because you cannot build on others' knowledge, you have to learn it all yourself which would take an awful lot more time and caring than most virus writers are going to put in to it.
And, impossible? Nothing is impossible, my friend. How do you come to that conclusion that it's impossible? Because your MacOS comes out with a new .x version every 6 months costing you over $100 to upgrade versus the Windows security updates which are released as soon as they are available, regardless of whether or not sometimes they take a while to make it through the process? It's not impossible.
Yes, but more viruses have been created since OS X came out, pretty much bringing Mac back into the game. I would guess that more viruses have been made in the last year than ever before. And PLENTY of malware gets written from scratch.
Where does this come from? Do you have any justification that says more viruses have been made since OSX? I seem to remember you saying something along the lines of only one Mac virus ever being discovered....
Also, when XP came out it was entirely new architecture, so everyone had to rewrite everything anyway, for the most part.
No it wasn't. XP was based on Windows NT 5, more popularly known as Windows 2000. Also, as has been a big thing for both Microsoft and Apple, it's very much backwards compatible to 98 and before. A virus that hits 98 can hit XP as well. It's not an entirely new architecture.
If Apple ever went above 50% market share for their OS, the next 42% would take a year at most. Windows just wouldn't be able to put up a fight, because people would start to realize how very, very secure Apple's OS was, at least compared to Windows.
So in a way, you're right, you wouldn't hear about Windows being the least secure, because you wouldn't hear about Windows at all.
I do admit Mac would have a few viruses, nothing is completely secure, but it would be a hell of a lot better off than Windows is now. That's for sure.
And your example only proves my point. Firefox is still about 25 times more secure than Internet Explorer.
How do you figure? Many, and I do mean many, computer users are not the type that are going to up and change from something they've used for years to a whole new system that's foreign for them. Along those lines as well, a large number of users are not going to just up and dump all their old applications in favor of switching to Mac. This, of course, forgetting that there are many people who are unwilling to pay the infamous "Mac Tax", or people that would rather build their own PC than buy a prebuilt, or many other large groups of computer users that would not switch anywhere near as quickly as you suggest.
If Mac had 50% market share or better, the whole scene would be very different, and though I'll fully admit that Mac has had some very secure operations in place that help keep it more secure than Windows was (which isn't always the OS's fault, it's the moron who decided everyone should be an Administrator's fault); ways in will be found if there are more people looking.
And, Firefox 25 times more secure? According to...what? What measurement is 25 times better in Firefox than IE?
