Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

No operating system is invulnerable. I don’t care what any user of any platform implies or says outright, I’m an IT professional stating what should be an obvious fact. I’m confident that the silent majority of Mac users agree with this premise, regardless of how they may be falsely perceived as inappropriately smug about their immunity from such troubles. The proverbial squeaky wheel minority who don’t comprehend the vulnerability of their computers get the resentful grease of the constantly afflicted, and anyone who participates in that pointless game demonstrates their willful stupidity by definition.

Now that I have that out of the way, I’d like to address the statement released by Symantec yesterday stating that as OS X grows in popularity, it will become a greater target for malware.

Apparently the idea of knocking smug, self-righteous Mac users down a couple of pegs by trashing their “invulnerable” operating system doesn’t already make OS X a trophy. No, it’s all about numbers, and 20+ million active Macs connected to the Internet, combined with the sanctimonious attitude of Mac users, isn’t critical mass-enough to make the platform a target. No, only market share numbers matter, and the lowly Mac’s single-digit share (Is it 2%? Or 3%? Maybe it was 5%? I’ve heard as high as 7%. It depends on what day of the week this is, I suppose, and the phase of the moon.) is not enough to make it a target.

It’s all about the market share numbers, and as Apple’s grows, the seller of the cure assures us that the disease will spread. I would expect them to say nothing less, but some very simple math, based on Symantec’s premise, shows otherwise.

Currently, Symantec’s anti-virus products detect 69,183 infections. Since a platform’s propensity for infection is directly related to its market share, let’s assume 3% of those viruses, or 2,076, should currently infect OS X. In reality, the number is zero.

The entire premise of Symantec’s false alarm doesn’t hold up to simple math. When the number of viruses is directly related to platform market share, I’ll let you know. Until then, there’s nothing to see here… move along.