Life Is Rich

While I certainly would never state that Mac OS X can not be infected by a virus – it absolutely could – it’s also fallacious to think that the only reason it doesn’t is due to it’s lesser penetration in the market versus its more popular (in volume sales) counterpart, Windows. The fact of the matter is that Mac OS X is a more secure and hardened OS. The very underpinnings of the system are built upon a solid foundation of BSD Unix.

This article in Fortune comes to nearly the same conclusion as well. Of course, one of the more interesting and likely valid points brought up by the author bares some concern – viruses are dead. The new hawtness in depraved and mischievous computer vectors are Trojans and spyware, which rely more on the fallibility of the human user than the failings of the operating system itself. Software can assist the user in making smart decisions, but stepping too far into this realm ends up creating a stifling user experience (i.e. warning boxes everywhere, confirmation dialogs that don’t really protect anything, or systems so restricted that they lose most of their usefulness). In the end, after having a secure and robust OS, the next most important step is a knowledgeable and wary user.