I mean, this is front page for several hours now and it's embarrassingly low quality. The only reason it triggered a conversation is because it's highly inconsistent.
My point is that both are very vulnerable, precautions are what keeps you safe.
Did they really have viruses (of which for OS X there are very few and far between, to the point of lore) or trojans?
Anyone remember when you could click Cancel in the login screen and get access to the desktop? Good times. :)
If you're getting infected all the time using Windows, you're doing something stupid. The operating system provides the vulnerabilities, but you might want to reassess how you're using your software.
Or, you know, just switch to an OS where you don't.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/16/06/01/researchers.show.that...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-soft...
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...
However (1) this isn't realistic since so many issues are found with bloatware installed by vendors which you don't get on a Mac and (2) the severity of the recent mass release of zero-days by Wikileaks has really skewed the landscape.
Microsoft needs to do more to reign in vendors because if a brand new Samsung laptop takes 7 restarts just to update then something is off with the ecosystem.
If you're behind a firewall and you practice safe computing (adblockers, NoScript, click-to-play Flash and Java or just don't use them at all, don't visit sketchy sites, don't open email from unknown sources, etc.) you can remain just as safe on an older Mac as you can on Windows. Even a 2010 era Mac can still run Sierra and therefore get all the current security updates, just as Windows 10 does.
> Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222
The list you shared contains updates for much more than just macOS Sierra, there's Apple TV, iTunes for Windows 7, Apple Watch OS, and so on. Microsoft's list contains 876 entries[1], of which approximately 250 apply to Windows 10 x64 alone, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
[1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletins.aspx
If you are targeted by an individual/funded organization, it doesn't matter which OS you use, because there just needs to be one vuln and you are own'ed.
Therefore, it makes sense to use an OS that has a smaller marketshare. That keeps you safer than anything else.
But in real world, Windows are good enough for a lot of stuff and specifically gaming and office. If kept up2date will be secure enough.
I think talking about security superficially is not really valuable.
> if not more
You could say they're similarly vulnerable, but such emphatic phrasing just makes it sound you (and the GP) are on an agenda.
But the author also says he runs 10.9 in another partition, and claims to want to run 10.2, although looking closer that appears to be a typo.
Malware? No, not really. Windows spyware only really started ramping up in the early 2000s, by which point classic Mac OS was already on the way out. I'm not aware of any significant malware for the platform.
Geez, that's counterintuitive.
This lifecycle depended on having some way for those infected executables to get run by uninfected users. That was where personal software trading came into the picture.
Anyways, as more users started downloading software instead of trading it, that cycle broke. The big shareware sites like Info-Mac would only accepted software from authors, not from users, and would run virus scans on anything they published anyways.
http://www.norstad.org/disinfectant-retire.txt
Of course hilariously enough he retired Disinfectant after the onslaught of Microsoft macro viruses/malware.
Well, those security fixes don't matter much. There are as many, if not more, for windows for one.
But even more so, what matters is actual number of exploits in the wild. Sure, any OS can be exploited. But in reality, not all are, and Macs have traditionally had far less malware/virus issues (close to zero). Time and again, "OS X viruses" are shown to be just trojan (which you can never get by just practicing software download hygiene). And even at worse, they affect something in the low single digits (or less).
It's not a case of market share either. When Windows had 98% of the market, and Mac OS (pre-OS X) was dwindling to 1-2%, it still had more viruses that it has today with 5-10% of the US market.
The author writes
"I don’t consider Windows good enough. Historically there have been to many ways to compromise a Windows-based computer, and new techniques keep showing up with alarming regularity."
And then later
"I am writing this on my newest computer, a Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook running OS X 10.11 El Capitan"
If you're going to knock Windows on a lack of security, at the very least do as much as you can do to protect yourself on a Mac. Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222