Chris

Now, that's a tad unfair Maggy. 'Apple' is an individual company, 'windows machines' is a nebulous category that takes in any number of other individual companies.

Apple is one of the biggest computer manufacturers in the world. It has long been in the top five, measured by units shipped. Earlier this year, only HP, Dell, Tosh and Acer were selling more units than Apple. That means that all the other PC-manufacturing companies were, individually, selling fewer units.

There are all sorts of reasons why Windows machines collectively outsell Mac OSX machines. Hardware cost is only one of them. Historically, Apple decided not to copy IBM and licence its architecture. Considering that it remains a vast and profitable company without having had to commoditize and therefore lose control over one of its key products, I'd say in the long term they probably made the right decision.

Apple sets a price for its products that reflects the design, build and brand image that it wants to project. It has created an incredibly cool image for itself - this in turn helps it to sell its cheaper products, i.e. iPod and iPhone, to a mass market, as the masses believe they are getting a slice of that coolness.

Now we've got all that out of the way ... to suggest that the only reason they 'don't have a problem' is that relatively few people have them, is just another re-statement of the old 'security from obscurity' argument. One which is often asserted but rarely demonstrated.

---------- Post added at 18:16 ---------- Previous post was at 18:14 ----------

Well, I don't consider myself to be acting foolishly. 10 years and counting.

When real and credible stories start to hit the press about malware danger for Mac users, I'll reconsider. Until then, I think I'll save my time, money and processing resources.