"Duh, that was 10K, not 10Q. 10Q has it at 1.3 million that quarter, 10K has the yearly number. Still, way bigger than 12,000."
Sure there are more than 12,000 but them selling that many per quarter doesnt mean there are 25 million in use.
Apples represent a tiny fraction of the PCs sold throughout the world. Yes they have a good product but they don't have the market share. People have written code to attack apples so we know it can be done. MS has the market and is more profitable.
Macs generally have a lifespan longer than PCs. As was said, the last number we know is 19 million on OS X, and over six million have been sold since then. That makes the 25 million number easy, although it could be a bit less as people are replacing their PPC OS X boxes with the Intel Macs. You forget that Apple is winning a lot of converts though. At one point their iMac was the best selling PC in the industry, and now their laptops have a 12% marketshare (ahead of Acer, Toshiba and Lenovo, behind only Dell and HP).
Apples represent a tiny fraction of the PCs sold throughout the world.
A tiny fraction of a really big number results in a big number.
People have written code to attack apples so we know it can be done.
Exploits exist in every OS. The problem is in getting the exploits successful in the wild. That was easy for the old MacOS, which was technologically inferior to even Windows 98. Not so easy for the BSD-based OS X.
Also look for viruses for BSD flavors in the wild, extremely rare. The ones I know of are very old, as in pre-OS X.
Do the Math. One Million Macs per quarter cumulative for six years (24 quarters) plus all the candy G3 iMacs and Mac G3s and G4s that were converted to OS X? That could easily reach 25 million OS X Macs. I think with attrition, though, the number is probably closer to 22 million.
People have written code to attack apples so we know it can be done.
Of course people have written code to attack Apples... but then could they get it to spread; did they find a vector other than psychological persuasion (Trojan Horse)? Not so far.