Vista and XP have fewer critical flaws than Mac OSX
By Jonathan Schlaffer
No, that title is not backwards, Windows Vista and XP combined had far fewer flaws than Mac OSX did in 2007. However, that is not necessarily a measure of how secure the operating system is.
George Ou of ZDnet wrote for 2007, Vista and XP combined experienced a total of 23 “highly critical” flaws with Mac OSX having a whopping 234 flaws. He said, “So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious.”
Macs may not necessarily have fewer flaws in numbers but certainly it does in how many exploits are out in the wild and likely to “infect” a Mac system.
Just because an exploit exists in an operating system does not mean that it will be taken advantage of. The risk of this happening on Mac OSX is slight, while the chances of the same happening on Windows is much much higher.
Both Apple and Microsoft have improved security on their flagship operating systems, Mac OSX Leopard (OSX 10.5) and Windows Vista, respectively.
Leopard users are probably just fine without running a third party firewall and security software, Windows XP and Vista users cannot say the same and must use protection at all times.
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December 19th, 2007
Ha ha. What a funny story. Can you tell me the one about the tooth fairy next?
December 20th, 2007
I would change the title of that story to “Vista and XP reports fewer critical flaws than Mac OS X”.
What Microsoft reports as “highly critical” might be much more critical than what Apple reports as “highly critical”. And maybe Microsoft is just bad at finding security flaws. Or maybe Microsoft groups reports together. That has to be clarified in the title.
I’ve heard of hackers why try their skills on Mac OS X, and from what I’ve read, it’s pretty difficult, unlike with Windows. Seems like Windows has more loopholes out there that Microsoft doesn’t report or fix.
Microsoft said the same thing about Mozilla Firefox. Just because Firefox has been more on-the-ball about security than IE means that IE is more secure? It seems that Internet Explorer is often used to hack into a system, and Firefox isn’t ever (or at least, very rarely). Like the HP 530 laptop, along with many other HP laptops, have a security flaw which lets hackers use IE to put malware on the computer, even if you’re not using IE then. People who have Firefox? No extra problems there. Even though 16 percent of people are using Firefox? The numbers show IE is less secure than Firefox, don’t listen to Microsoft’s numbers they throw out.
One final note, the number of times I have to update Mac OS X is way less often than for my Windows XP computer. Not to say that I go long times with security flaws, it’s every couple weeks. And the method on Mac OS X is far less intrusive than on Windows XP. On XP, a bubble shows up along with a nagging icon which makes me think the computer’s in big danger. On Mac, a window opens up once with info about the updates, and if I close it then, there is no nag.
December 28th, 2007
Im not so sure of that^
apple is well known for not telling users about every issue their systems have
December 28th, 2007
I would have to agree with this article. Though I personally prefer Leopard to Vista I am running both of them (Vista Ultimate) on my Macbook Pro and have had a chance to review both of them. Leopard has been very unstable and buggy running on my latest generation Mac. Though it still runs quickly and efficiently it crashes very often and frequently loses connection with my home router often times requiring a restart. The built in firewall refuses to remember programs I have added to the always allow list and constantly prompts me (many times) to let the program connect to the internet. Mail crashes 9 times out of 10 when there’s new mail waiting during startup (which is usually). By contrast Vista has been rock stable only blue screening 3 times since I installed it in July. Tiger crashed the first day I had my computer and Leopard crashed more times last week then Vista has since I installed it. Vista has its flaws as well but with smart computing a good firewall many of the fears can be mitigated I ran XP for 6 years and never had to worry about hackers or viruses and Vista is even more secure then before. Apple really dropped the ball with Leopard I’ve come to expect more from them but in terms of Leopard, Time Machine and the new iChat just aren’t worth the price of admission mainly shoddy reliability and poor program support.
December 28th, 2007
What on earth are you doing to crash Leopard so much? If you’re poking the leopard with a stick, it might not respond well…I also dual-booted Vista with Leopard, and I had this overwhelming urge to vomit unceasingly when I loaded up the Vista partition…gadgets…*vomits*.
December 29th, 2007
I’ve stopped poking my Leopard with a stick and have moved on to this nasty habit, when my internet connection drops out, of forcefully clicking on the airport icon thus causing Leopard to SLOWLY draw the crash screen requesting my mashing down on the power button. As for vomiting when booting Vista I try not to condemn an entire operating system simply because I don’t like a certain feature (iPhoto anyone) that I can easily disable. Leopard also gets very grouching when waking up from a long night of sleeping also prompting a restart or if I’m lucking only closing the lid on my laptop allowing it to g back into sleep mode so I can try again.
January 2nd, 2008
These types of stories make me chuckle, the whole world hates M$ for it’s success and loves apple for its arrogance.
The simple fact is, both the products have flaws in them the better company is the one that fixes those flaws the quickest. There will always be flaws in man made things.
I would imagine M$ being a big target for hackers and script kiddies because most of the world uses it.
Anyway Vista rox my Dell xps loves it, it loads apps amazingly quick.