Mac OS X

No OS is immune to threats. But in practice OS X has a very good track record compared to other OS.

There are no viruses for OS X in the wild, which means that while concepts of viruses may exist they never went viral affecting Macs.

I have been the admin for two design studios with dozens of Macs in the last 10 years and we never ever had to install any virus protection and we never had any issues with viruses.

The main advantage of OS X is that it asks the user for confirmation before anything is installed on the system. So a virus can't install itself as on other OS.

The only theoretical way to install a virus on OS X is to trick a user into installing an application that they think it's something else. In other words you can write a real trojan that poses as a Word processor and in-fact it's an application that deletes your Hard Drive. But if you only install apps from known and trusted sources this will unlikely to happen to you.

Why is OS X safer? There are many reasons, some of them are:
• Relies on Unix, which has been refined for security for more than 20 years
• It's better designed and supported than other OS
• It's less popular than Windows, so there is a smaller benefit for crackers to find an exploit (Most exploits are designed to make your computer a zombie to be used for DDOS attacks. There are only 5% or less Macs out there, so OS X isn't the right platform to use for DDOS networks.)

Yes, you should recommend your clients using OS X. It's the safest, most feature full and supported OS out there.

In comparison, while the different flavors of Windows are significantly more popular there are literally hundreds of thousands of viruses exist for Windows. Most of them are harmless if you have proper updates and virus protection, but the threat is significant especially for a newbie. Chances are if you're a Windows user at one point in time you will be affected by some malicious code.

I suggest Linux if you don't need Adobe. Linux also relies on Unix, same as OS X. So all mentioned for OS X by Ivan is valid for Linux as well. And one more thing is that Linux is free and open source.

"I suggest Linux if you don't need Adobe"

- really? did you just say that in a graphic design forum? thats like telling an old lady to drive a dragster to church

Her question is not about graphic design but about operating system

jozefk - good point. but i just assumed from the arena, that graphic design was just an implied constant.

i just thought it was funny. wasnt trying to wind you up ; )

There have been, as far as I know, two Trojan horses for OS X so far, both based on the same "exploit". (Viruses and Trojans are different things.) The reason I put "exploit" in quotation marks is because they exploited a weakness in the user, not the OS, to gain access to the computer. No OS can ever be safe from that. Unless perhaps they eventually become as intelligent as us. And then we still won't have to worry about that problem, because Skynet will have killed us off. :)

Because of the way Mac OS X's security model is designed, any changes to system files or folders require the user themselves to enter an administrator's password, even when logged in as an administrator. (Microsoft tried to imitate this in Vista, although they overdid it and people either mindlessly clicked "Allow" all the time or disabled the feature altogether.) These Trojans piggybacked as part of installer packages for pirated copies of iWork and (I think) Photoshop. Since many applications (at least, the ones that require installer packages instead of the regular drag-and-drop bundles) often need to put files in system-protected folders, such as /Library, it's not at all unusual to have to type in one's password when installing software with this method. In other words, any malware for OS X has to trick the user into literally giving it permission to be installed or do anything bad. Also, as an offshoot of this, it can't damage system files without the user granting them access, so any havoc it wreaks is pretty much limited to that user's user folder. (Personally, I think it'd be nicer if it could trash the OS if it wanted — I can just reinstall, after all — but not be able to touch my personal files...but oh well.)

There have been the odd few proof-of-concept viruses, but none seem to've been able to infect their way out of a paper bag. Again, the security model is different than that of Windows, which was initially designed without it apparently even occurring to Microsoft that a computer might join a network and be exposed to the doings of other users. Interestingly enough, if I'm not mistaken, there actually were some viruses for the "Classic" Mac operating systems (i.e. version 9 and earlier), and the Macs of that time had only a fraction of the market share that OS X now enjoys with a decade-long virus-free streak. The fact that even 1999's Mac OS 9 was piled on top of the original code base dating back to 1984's System 1 probably didn't do it any favours. (To interject a fanboy comment, Apple seems to be years ahead of Microsoft even in their failures!) While the platform's still-small share has undoubtedly helped keep it safe, it's clearly not the only factor.