Mac holds just under 5% of the personal computer market share.
Microsoft holds between 90-92%
Of course these stats are varied depending upon the group that is collecting the data, however if you do research on this often, you will see that the trends here are fairly stable and the numbers are within 1-2%
So, is OS X less secure than Windows Vista or XP?
I think if a software has a single software vulnerability it is at risk. So if the argument is that Vista has 5,000 and OS X has 6,000 security holes, does it matter?
There are two very large factors that have nothing to do with the number of flaws.
* How many people have the same problem?
* What is done to a machine that has a known security flaw?
If only 5% of the world is running Macs, it is redundant to say, there are less Mac users. This information seems to elude many people though. It is an odd situation. Back to the point, if a Mac security hole exists, there are less people trying to exploit it based on the number of people who own Macs.
If only 5% of the world is running Macs, why would a talented computer programmer design a software package to steal or destroy on such a small scale? Windows offers a much larger population, why waste time on the 5% when you can go after 90%? If the hack works, the rewards would be much bigger.
Lastly, security flaws exist in software because it would probably take a lifetime to remove all the bugs in an operating system. The millions of lines of code are just to much to weed through for it to be perfect, especially when there are so many different programmers working together to make it work.
The important thing is that the OS makers continue to patch their products as quickly as they can prior to hackers abusing the vulnerability.
On a completely separate note. Both Windows & OS X break at about the same fail rate. So picking one over the other because one seems more resistant to problems is just naive thinking. It makes sense that if 90+% of the world has PC's and 5% has Macs there would be 18 Windows problems for every 1 Mac problem. In my experience as a computer technician for over 9 years, I have found this to be true.
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