Apple Weak on Security?

In an article from the Read Write Web site entitled "Why Security Could be Apple's Greatest Threat", author Antone Gonsalves writes about how despite all of its claims, the Mac OS is really not as secure as Windows.

I think that it's probably to do with the fact that for so long Windows has been the predominate operating system, and most hackers just didn't bother with Mac. This has forced Microsoft to continually upgrade its defense and security systems, while the Apple folks really haven't had to worry about it. People just weren't attacking Macs like they were Windows systems.

I recently made the stupid mistake of opening an attachment in an unknown e-mail, and downloading a nasty little program that essentially hid all of my data. This was on my Dell desktop at school. The IT guy was able to help me find all of my data, which was completely unchanged. But it did bring home to me the need for care and to pay closer attention to computer security.

As a long-time Mac user for my home computers, I have been going along in the blissful thought that my  Apples were immune to this kind of viral infection. But as Gonsalves points out in his article, the lack of attacks on Macs has lulled Apple into a false sense of "security", and now that they are being targeted, we are finding big gaps in their security measures. This sense of security was shattered last April with the Flashback Trojan that infected hundreds of thousands of Macs.

So other Mac users like me who thought we were immune: Beware! Our time of being virus-free is seemingly coming to an end.