TBH, one can reliably run any machine w/o an antivirus and have a reasonable expectation of not getting infected, so long as you follow some basic rules (mind you'd I'd never say the same about enterprises, but individually, a clued-in person can do it).
That said, I use all three OSes, and feel no smugness about it. Malware is malware, and those friends and relatives whom I have not yet convinced to go Mac or Linux are still going to demand/cajole/beg me to do something about it the next time they get infected.
That said, I'm gonna get up some popcorn to see just how this gets spun by the Microsoft fanboy crowd. I can comfortably predict that the responses will be one of the following:
* "All OSes get infected!" (though there will be a complete lack of cites showing similar amounts or proportional infections).
* "pwn2own!" (in spite of the fact that out here in the real world, you still can't seem to find any OSX infections that don't require an absolute --and hormone-soused-- idiot at the keyboard with his or her admin password handy).
* "marketshare!" (in spite of the fact that MacOS 9 and before were positively virus-ridden, yet had far smaller marketshares... then there's the whole IIS vs. Apache marketshare thing, then the fact that Macs as a whole are an environment that is practically homogeneous, practically without any A/V, are usually always on, owned by folks who have more disposable wealth and are thus more attractive targets, etc).
* some attempt at citing vulnerability counts, while disregarding severities, disregarding apps vs. kernel vulns, lumping in binaries on Linux or Macs while ignoring app vulns on Windows, etc.
* some form of ad hominem against either the author, myself, or any other non-fanboy who posts down here
* a furious clicking of the "report as spam" link on posts by anyone who presents uncomfortable truths.
...did I miss any? <img border="0" src="http://www.cnet.com/i/mb/emoticons/happy.gif" alt="happy">
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
