> Mac OS 7/8 etc had even lower market share than today's Macs have, and it had tons of viruses

That's not a valid comparison. When Mac OS 7/8 was mainstream, it was common to get software via a floppy disk that had already been in 10 other machines or from a fly-by-night BBS. Nowadays software distribution is far less peer-to-peer, and it's much more difficult for simple viruses to move from machine to machine.

> market share

If it's not market share, then what is it? The vast majority of malware attacks happen via social engineering, not zero day vulnerabilities, and the only requirements for that are a gullible user and a computer capable of running unsigned software.

Edit: Since I don't have access to a disposable Mac, just out of curiosity, what happens if you torrent something like "photoshop for mac full edition (cracked)" and try to install it? On a PC, assuming you make it through the hurricane of warnings Windows tries to throw in your way, this will almost certainly result in malware getting installed on your computer. What mechanism prevents this on a Mac?

>That's not a valid comparison. When Mac OS 7/8 was mainstream, it was common to get software via a floppy disk that had already been in 10 other machines or from a fly-by-night BBS. Nowadays software distribution is far less peer-to-peer, and it's much more difficult for simple viruses to move from machine to machine.

That doesn't make sense. The software that back in the day would be in a disk that had "already been in 10 other machines", can now come from a website that serves millions of machines with the same malware infected programs.

> That's not a valid comparison.

> simple viruses

Read these words again. Regardless of whether there were tons of viruses on MacOS back in 1997, there's no way it's valid to hold up your thumb, squint, and say the current situation is better or worse. The malware on MacOS 8 was almost exclusively viruses made by hobbyists which self-propagated through channels that no longer exist. There were no command and control servers, strong encryption, muti-stage deployments over the web, etc. Modern malware is organized crime that relies primarily on people scamming other people, and requires a ton of back-end infrastructure and support.

In other words, it's harder and success depends on a whole different set of factors.

The person I was replying to was basically asserting that Apple fixed the virus problem that existed before OSX, and as a result malware cartels in 2017 aren't able to attack OSX. Would you believe it if they were saying polio vaccination campaigns in the 50's put a dent in drive-by shootings in the 90's?

Over the history of Malware I suspect the largest vector was simply machines connected to the internet. Going back to the OS 7/8 days is kind of irrelevant because worldwide computer adoption was so low. So, for the average person what they are going to remember is the unpatched exploits / zero day attacks simply because they affected vastly more people.

Your Mac should be "OK" as long as you don't log in as an admin account when the dodgy app asks.