One thing you don’t seem to have considered: FR is an Internet Web Site. A defining characteristic of such being that you gotta have an Internet connection and a computer (and an iPhone or an iPad is a computer) in order to communicate with it. Right there, you have a commonality of interest. Among all FReepers.I switched from a Wintel to a Mac not too long after the advent of OS X. Knowing that OS X was unix based (and now is officially Unix™). And knowing that Unix was an industrial-strength multiuser, multitasking OS. Whereas DOS and Windows, being single-user and initially designed on the assumption that the owner had complete control of what went in his machine, was not industrial grade. The Internet became the killer app, and that was the death knell to the conceit that the user was in complete control of what went into his machine. Thus, viruses. And phishing attacks.
I personally fell for a phishing attack once, and the experience convinced me that I needed security against viruses. And yet AV software was a royal pain. And not convincingly secure, so I would always be vulnerable to a phishing attack if it claimed that I had a virus. Always, unless I got an industrial strength OS. Enter OS X. Is it impossible that my faith in OS X will lead me astray? Definitely possible. But it is the least naive assumption I know how to make. So I live with it. Swordmaker gets into the weeds with the arcana of this stuff, and his postings here on Apple strike me as a public service.
bump