For years and years I was told by my grandmother that she never had to lock her front door in her small town, because she trusted that nobody would break in. However, she'd never do that in a big city like New York.
Macs are safe because they're such a tiny amount of the computer universe that it isn't worth a hacker's effort to even troll IP addresses to find one.
Is the fact that your computer is so small of the market share that hackers don't care about it really a selling point?
No, no, and no. Macs are inherently safer because almost all apps will happily run in a Limited User Account, even that stinking QuickBooks.
WinXP is a remarkably stable OS, even more stable and corruption resistant than OS X Tiger, IF AND ONLY IF, it's run in a limited account. And there's the kicker, Intuit demands QuickBooks 2006 run as Administrator or Power User. Even Microsoft says don't waste your time with Power User.
And the average user runs as Admin because who knows how to beat QB into a user account? Well, almost no one. The instructions are in the Intuit database, if you've got a normal networked machine with workgroup joining, just modify the hive keys and skip the directory perm mods. I fergit the KB #, but search it for LUA sometime in mid December 2005. It woiks.
By the way, I know people who run Tiger as admin (they never created user accounts), and their computers are infested with the most amazing stuff. People, use the limited accounts. It's almost impossible to get into the OS files.
Here's where MS shares the blame. The "Certified for XP" means it'll run properly in the limited account, and nothing else. Even though Intuit products, QB and LaCert, must run as admin and open dozens of ports, MS still let them use this trademark. MS screwed up royally.
Ridiculous. Imagine the notoriety that the first hacker to crack the Mac would receive amongst his peers. That's incentive.
There is a lot of protection built into the Mac OS. Not ironclad protection, but way more than a Windoze box.
The small market share of Macs is one reason for the lack of viruses, but not the only one.
Is the fact that your computer is so small of the market share that hackers don't care about it really a selling point?
Well, it's just the flip side of "you should use Windows because it has more software". Neither speaks to the actual quality of the platform.