John Gruber asks this question in his piece (referred to in the preceding post), Broken Windows.
... What’s remarkable is this: Crapware is a problem of epidemic proportions on Windows, but it is almost completely non-existent on the Mac. ... It’s not like Mac OS X is impervious to crapware. ... One difference between Mac OS X and Windows, however, is that Mac OS X doesn’t offer nearly as many places for nefarious software to hide. A major aspect to the scourge of crapware is that it’s extraordinarily difficult to find and remove it. This isn’t just about “typical” users; even expert Windows users get hit by crapware and can’t figure out how to get rid of it. ...There are all sorts of ways that Windows executes software that don’t have equivalents on Mac OS X. Services get installed in the Windows Registry, and the Registry is an opaque labyrinth. This just isn’t a problem on the Mac. Even if you ended up with piece of crapware installed, there simply aren’t that many places where it could hide. Assuming the crapware needs to launch itself automatically, it’s either going to be installed in one of the various /Library sub-folders, or it has to be listed in your user account’s Startup Items in the Accounts panel of System Preferences.
... the Mac community has zero tolerance for vulnerabilities. Not just zero tolerance for security exploits, but zero tolerance for vulnerabilities. In fact, there is zero tolerance in the Mac community for crapware of any kind. If some “freeware” software for the Mac surreptitiously installed some sort of adware/spyware/crapware, there’d be reports all over the Mac web within days. Uninstallation instructions would be posted (and thus made available to all via Google), and the developer who shipped the app would be excoriated.
My answer to question posed earlier — why are Windows users besieged with security exploits, while Mac users suffer none? — is that Windows is like a bad neighborhood, strewn with litter, mysterious odors, panhandlers, and untold dozens of petty annoyances. Many Windows users are simply resigned to the fact that their computers contain software that is not under their control. And if they’ll tolerate an annoying application that badgers them with pop-up ads, well, why not a spyware virus that logs every key you type, then sends them back to the creator? (That’s a real virus, by the way, Korgo, which hit Windows at the end of May and is spreading quickly.) The Mac is like a good neighborhood, where the streets are clean and the crime rate low. You don’t need bars on your windows in a good neighborhood; you don’t need anti-virus software on the Mac.
... let’s address that other popular canard of Windows apologia — that on the whole, Windows XP is just as good, if not better, than Mac OS X. OK, fine. XP is as good as OS X; Windows Movie Maker is as good as iMovie; Photoshop Album is better than iPhoto; etc.
But is it fair to judge Mac-v.-Windows under factory-fresh conditions? Wouldn’t an accurate comparison be better made a few months down the road — after a nice sampling of the hundreds of new Windows viruses discovered each week get a chance to find a home on the Windows box? In the hands of a typical user, a six-month-old Mac is almost certainly in similar working condition as when it left the store; a six-month-old Windows PC, on the other hand, is likely to be infested with multiple instances of crapware. And if it’s not, it’s likely because the poor sap who bought it just got done reinstalling from scratch. You can argue about why this is so, but you don’t need to. You can’t argue with the facts. Anti-virus software vendor Sophos reported yesterday that it found 959 new viruses, last month alone. How many of those do you think were for Mac OS X? Any at all?
