Pogue writes, “But now Apple has changed its tune. Its new TV ads mention the Mac’s viruslessness, and a new marketing e-mail puts it very bluntly indeed: ‘PCs got 114,000 viruses last year. Macs got zero. Get a Mac.'”
“Several readers have written to express their concern that this new marketing tactic is just an invitation to hackers, and that soon the Mac will be just as overrun with viruses and spyware as Windows is,” Pogue writes. “I kind of doubt it, and I’ll tell you why.”
Pogue writes, “Now, I’m sure you’ve heard the old saw, ‘The only reason the Mac has no viruses is that its market share is so small; hackers don’t even bother.’ But since I’m on a myth-busting roll lately, let me bust another one: That’s bunk.”
“If the Mac’s market share is five percent, then shouldn’t it have five percent of the viruses? It ought to have seen 5,700 viruses last year, not zero. Clearly, there’s something else at work here, and I’ll tell you what it is: Mac OS X is simply harder to hack,” Pogue writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s nice to see reality reinforced (by someone other than ourselves) every once in a while. Interestingly, Pogue himself fell for the myth back in 2003, but recanted soon after. Our standard “Security Via Obscurity” myth-busting response – featuring David Pogue himself – follows:
Security via Obscurity” is a myth. Mac OS X has zero (0) viruses. For over five years and counting. No Mac OS X users affected outside of a lab with old, non-updated Mac OS versions that they intentionally infected.
The idea that Windows’ morass of security woes exists because more people use Windows and that Macs have no security problems because less people use Macs, is simply not true. Mac OS X is not more secure than Windows because less people use OS X, making it less of a target. By design, Mac OS X is simply more secure than Windows. Period. For reference and reasons why Mac OS X is more secure than Windows, read The New York Times’ David Pogue’s mea culpa on the subject of the “Mac Security Via Obscurity” myth here.
Macs account for roughly 10% of the world’s personal computer users — (some say as much as 16%) — so the first half of the myth doesn’t even stand up to scrutiny. Macs aren’t “obscure” at all. Therefore, the Apple Mac platform’s ironclad security simply cannot logically be attributed to obscurity.
There are zero-percent (0%) of viruses for the Mac OS X platform that should, logically, have some 10-16% of the world’s viruses if platforms’ install bases dictate the numbers of viruses. The fact that Mac OS X has zero (0) viruses totally discounts “security via obscurity.” There should be at least some Mac OS X viruses. There are none. The reason for this fact is not attributable solely to “obscurity,” it’s attributable to superior security design.
Still not convinced? Try this one on for size: according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs at WWDC 2006, there are “19 million Mac OS X users” in the world and there are still zero (0) viruses. According to CNET, the Windows Vista Beta was released “to about 10,000 testers” at the time the first Windows Vista virus arrived. So much for the security via obscurity myth.
[UPDATE: 8/26, 10:29am EDT: Fixed beginning of take to read “once in a while.” Thanks, “Jerkstore.”]
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