Miguel Wood's Promulgations

One of the constant arguments I hear from some clients, friends, and family is how the Mac OS is much more secure or less vulnerable than the Windows OS (XP or Vista).  I grow tired of hearing that argument, especially when it is blatantly false.

Today, on ZDNet.com, I found a great post on the comparison of Micrsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X security vulnerabilities.  The post presented statistics of critical vulnerabilities over the course of 2007 between the two platforms.  Even with combining the stats from Windows XP and Vista versus Mac OS X (versions 10.4 and 10.5), the number of exposed vulnerabilities per month was astonishing.  Mac OS X had over 5.5 times more average vulnerabilities per month than both Windows XP and Windows Vista combined.

As in enterprise software implementation and development, I follow the mantra of the best tool for the job.  And, yes, the Mac does have some tools, albeit a significant number less, that are better than Windows-based tools, primarily in the graphic arts/multimedia area.  However, because I'm not a visually creative person, I find the graphic art/multimedia tools available to me on Windows to be much more than sufficient.  Especially considering the arguably much more powerful developer tools available to me.  Also, there are MANY more cases of Windows software that is not available for the Mac than the other way around.

I don't expect this argument to sway anyone to buy a Windows Vista system over a Mac, but I do hope it stops people from telling me the Mac OS is much more secure and less vulnerable than Microsoft Windows.