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"I also think that Apple’s claim of not needing anti-virus/spam ware are numbered. With Apple’s recent report of market share Google dropping Windows are enemies will discover ways to hack Apple software."

Time will tell. I personally expect the worst risks will come, as they do with any OS, from idiot users who click on risky links, open infected email attachments, unthinkingly authorize installation of stuff they find on the Internet, etc. Already the only piece of malware to hit the Mac in recent memory came last year when folks downloaded "free" versions of some desirable commercial program from warez sites, only to find they'd installed a malware-infested version. In the cell phone market, the App Store review process has kept the tens of millions of iPhones malware-free, whereas the comparatively un-policed Android Market already suffered a scary piece of "demonstration" malware when users merrily downloaded what seemed to be a useful weather app but which turned out to be a trojan horse. Result: in a flash, more than eight thousand Android phones had set themselves up in a botnet. And, friends, there are truly scary security implications when you're talking tens of millions of powerful, location-aware, always-connected devices whose users don't think of them as computers.

But I'd doubt that we'll see a day anytime soon when you'll read anything regarding the Mac like "There is a 50 percent chance your unprotected Windows PC will be compromised within 12 minutes of going online". That is the sort of insecurity that just isn't going to happen with a properly-configured _nix-based system. (Although, a warning: many of the inexpensive Linux-based netbooks that were all the rage a couple years ago, such as the Eee, ran their single users as root. Bad, bad idea. And to my great annoyance, most Macs are set up with their users running day-to-day as an administrator. Better to set up a non-privileged user account and live your daily life in it.)

The fundamental rule of computer security is that a machine is only as secure as the wetware sitting at the keyboard. OS X is no different.

This underlies why Steve Jobs is so adamant about the review process for apps for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. To get into the App Store, which is the only place an unhacked i-device can get software from, a developer must submit his code for review. Sure, Apple thereupon rejects porn and other nasty stuff. In an email debate with a blogger a couple weeks ago, Jobs sent the blogosphere (and certain worthies here at FR) into orbit by saying "no porn." But what few seem to have noticed was that he also said something of the lines of "...and no insecure apps that will steal your data."

Apple's walled-garden approach, in which installable software can only come from authorized sources, might just be the future of computing. That makes a lot of folks angry. They should reserve their anger for the hackers who made it necessary.