Words have meaning... and therefore I am NOT quibbling with semantics. An exploit (make full use of and derive benefits from) is a vulnerability (a weakness in a computer system which may allow an attacker to violate the integrity of that system) that has been actually used to cause malicious damage or gain access to data or computer usage without permission. There are also varying degrees of risk and danger associated with any vulnerability. Triage is necessary. A vulnerability may never be exploitable.
OS X may have vulnerabilities but most often they are listed as "may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution." Arbitrary code is NOT code that has been placed on the computer by the maleware author... it is code that already exists, placed there by Apple. Arbitrary means just that... "a random selection". The vulnerability may cause the execution pointer to be transferred to a random location in memory and have whatever is located there execute... if it is a proper entry point to the code. Unless the hacker cracking into the vulnerability knows the exact current location of the code he wants to execute (OS X randomizes code loaded into RAM) it is highly unlikely that he can do any damage.
Windows Vista has plenty of "vulnerabilities" as does every other application or OS. Should they also be held until "there are no vulnerabilities." Windows XP has approximately 16,000 known flaws and vulnerabilities... but most of these are innocuous. Had Microsoft adhered to your standard, most people would still be using Windows 98 (with over 24,000 known, documented flaws).
Many vulnerabilities cannot be found in the laboratory... or even in the most diligent Beta testing. Discovery of those vulnerabilities can only come about by usage in the field by many people using many differing applications.
I’m certain Microsoft has multiple exploits and like you mentioned thousands of vulnerabilities. Yes I do find it irresponsible for this to occur for even Vista was in beta for over a year. Totally unacceptable.
I was just pointing out like the half baked article did that Apple OSX is not immune to exploits or vulnerabilities as much as Mac users want to pretend.