He doesn't know what he is talking about. OS X is one of the three certified UNIX™ brands. It is not Linux, which are reverse-engineered copies of UNIX.
Any system has vulnerabilities... but it is whether those vulnerabilities are exploitable in the wild that is more important. OS X, so far has ZERO virus, ZERO spyware, and only about 15 or so trojan horse programs to worry about. That's after 8 years of OS X being exposed in the wild... and that's including approximately 35,000,000 OS X users, 99% of whom run totally naked of any anti-malware protection at all. What should be, if running Windows, sitting ducks. Easy pickings.
You do see some "proof-of-concept" offerings that are touted as the "first OS X virus" but none of them have worked. The problem for the Virus writers is that it is extremely difficult to create a self-replicating, self-tgransmitting, self-propagating virus for OS X... and if you have scaled that height then you have to find a viable vector to spread your virus.
By the way, Linux systems are pretty safe from Viruses as well... especially compared to Windows.
Thanks for the ammo!
My friend’s response was, “Linux IS Unix” He then went on to describe Linux as simply a “variant of Unix”.
He also referred me to a website: http://www.securemac.com/
Who’s website is SecureMac? Is it simply someone trying to sell anti-virus software to Mac users?
My apologies in advance for what must seem like dumb questions to you all.