Your reply shows your complete and total ignorance on this topic. Microsoft supported XP for more than 12 years, and is still supporting Windows 7.
Apple puts relatively more resources on new products, and has less support for old stuff (and zero support for non Apple hardware). This business model works well for them because they have a nice base of users that will happily fork over their money for the latest and greatest. Microsoft, on the other hand, sells products into corporations whose IT departments upgrade slowly and who demand long term support.
I have used both Windows and Mac products. Never had a virus on either. From a security perspective, it is just not accurate to claim Apple is more secure than a recent MS OS without security features like UAC disabled. In fact, Apple loses the hack competitions pretty much every year. Apple users benefit indirectly from Apple’s relatively low market share because the malware authors target the platform with the most users (Windows) but as that market share climbs, don’t expect it to last. Apple has finally, though, started taking security more seriously, so hopefully things will improve.
Regarding life of your Mac Air, 4 years is not an unusually long life. I had a Macbook Pro that lasted about that long, although over that lifespan it had 2 MB replacements (at Apple’s expense), 1 hard drive replacement, and an internal video cable replacement. My Asus Zenbook, very similar to mac air, is going on 3 years, but has had its MB and an SSD replaced already. My wife typically gets a new laptop every 4 or 5 years, but she doesn’t travel with it so it gets a fraction of the abuse that mine do.
I could start in on the Windows 7 and 8 platforms that I've had to clean up from malware that have had UAC activated. . . But that a subject for DayGloRed' Windows thread. this is about Mac security.
First, the "security by obscurity" canard has been disproved so many times it gotten boring, but there's always someone who hasn't gotten the memo, like you. There are close to 100 million OS X macs in the wild with most of them, 99%, running completely without third-party anti-virus software in the possession of people who statistics show have a higher disposable income than do Windows PC users. These Macs are, in a phrase, sitting-ducks; yet you claim that target is too small to interest criminals. the same criminal that a few years ago wrote the Witty Worm virus to infect the 20,000 known Window PCs left unpatched six months after Black Ice closed the door on the vulnerability Witty exploited. . . and thirty minutes after the Witty Worm was released into the Wild, every single vulnerable computer was infected! So much for you "security by obscurity" myth. That is NOT the reason Macs don't get infected.
As for you claim of Apple products fell first at hacker contests WAS true but not due to ease of cracking. It once was the prize for cracking at these contests was the computer you hacked. The hackers all targeted the Macs. . . And their exploits were not spur of the moment cracks but exploits that took months of research and coding to prepare, sometimes by a team of programmers such as Charlie Miller's team of ex-NSA specialist who won four years in a row, but only seconds to execute. When asked why he went after Apple, Miller said because he wanted to win the MacBook Pro.
Now, they've added cash bounties as prizes and the hackers go for the biggest prize purse which can range up six figures. . . and they are targeting Google Chrome, Microsoft, Java, and perhaps Apple Macs as an afterthought. . . every exploit at this year's contest was on a Windows platform! Sorry, but that's the way it is.
My 12 year oldmac book pro still runs like a champ too
That’s right good old Seattle pulled Windows 7 from the shelves when it released 8.0.They had NO desire to let the market decide. You act as if Microsoft spends countless dollars and hours supporting old systems.....It doesn’t.