Survey shows security-conscious people prefer Apple’s Mac OS X

“At security conferences and events, I have noticed that the distribution of operating systems seems to differ somewhat from what I read in the papers. As my last post showed, the Internet Identity Workshop skewed decidedly in the Mac direction. I thought it would be fun to put together a quick poll asking the members of the securitymetrics.org mailing what operating systems they used,” Andrew Jaquith reports for securitymetrics.org.

“The goal of this little survey was to try and figure out if self-selected, security conscious people had a preference for operating systems or e-mail clients that differed markedly from the mainstream,” Jaquith reports.

Jaquith reports, “In total, I identified 170 people who have contributed to this mailing list or sent submissions to Metricon 1.0 and 2.0. Of those, 27 provided OS/email information to me directly; I relied on header analysis for the remaining 143.”

Securitymetrics.org’s survey respondents “work” OS:
Microsoft Windows – 56%
Apple Mac OS X – 26%
Linux – 19%

Securitymetrics.org’s survey respondents “home” OS:
Apple Mac OS X – 46%
Microsoft Windows – 29%
Linux – 25%

Jaquith reports, “I’ve concluded that for members of this list (“security conscious people”), we can conclude that when they have a choice, our members slightly prefer Macs. Amazingly enough, this suggests that Windows is a minority operating system, at least on this list.”

Full article, with results of email clients used, here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “fenman” for the heads up.]

MacDailyNews Take: Preliminary results? Sure. Small sample? Of course. Meaningless numbers? Not on your life.

We now return you to the world of newspapers and tech “reporters” who regurgitate the “95% uses WIndows” line ad infinitum — that’s the world Microsoft highly favors in order to keep as many sheep as possible on the farm — but first a note to web designers and software makers: cash registers and dumb terminals don’t shop. Mac users on average have more disposable income and are more likely to use it (for quality products) than those who buy cheap Dells based mainly on sticker price. A greater percentage of people – living, breathing, shopping people – use Macs than most people think. And, anecdotally, at least, the “tech influencers” are moving from Windows to Mac. Think of them as shepherds.

As “fenman” wrote when relaying us this link, “The results are quite fascinating and suggest that more comprehensive research could really upset the perceived status quo from Redmond.” We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?