But this proves my point, MS architecture is fatally flawed and IT IS THE BUSINESS CULTURE OF MS WHICH WILL NEVER CHANGE THIS.
As you mention above, the non-unix Mac OS had numerous exploits (and I have been a victim of this myself). But Apple was willing to admit that their proprietary OS was poorly designed, and was willing to replace it with a superior architecture primarly developed by others outside of Apple because it is the "best of breed" technology.
>
> for other product populations with numbers well under a
million.
>
You have to factor all Un*x (real and cloned) into the user base since they all have the same basic design. And as for the Safari exploit, as I mentioned earlier, it only hijacks a single, user's account, while the vast majority of Windows exploits result in complete control of the system.
And mine, too, that the lack of effective self-replicating malware in the wild for OS X is NOT because of the low marketshare.
OS 9 had such a poor security architecture that developer tools for it specialized in catching potential memory writes outside of the program's address space. As you know, that's a common method of exploiting a system, and it was easy to do just by accident.
Personally, I'd love to see a full-blown OS based on a true microkernel like Minix or seL4. The latter has even been subjected to a formal proof of its function. That's enough to get EAL7 certified, something no other operating system has achieved.
Which version of windows are you referring to?