The real question is, why does this please a few PC users so greatly? They are ecstatic about someone else’s misfortune? That seems a little sick to me.
Windows/PC users have been taking it on the chin and in the gut for a decade.
* Bad enough, that there were legions of virus writers, Trojan writers, script kiddies, and whatnot, taking scurrilous advantage of the vulnerabilities rampant in Windows in the early part of the decade.
* Worse, that when Microsoft started to try to address security with WinXP Service Pack 2 (SP2), they had to BREAK thousands of functional applications to do it.
* Even worse, when Vista finally shipped, with enhanced security, the new UAC was a "Mother-May-I" approach that annoyed the bejesus out of the users yet again.
* And all the while, Windows users had to deal with the annoyance of bloated, performance-robbing anti-virus programs.
(I know these things all too well myself, because I've been a Windows user continuously since the late 1980's.)
BUT the icing on the cake was that all this time, Apple users were running their OS-X Macs with no anti-virus software, essentially threat-free, and enjoying the fact that OS-X was virtually impossible to attack successfully. The virus writers mostly ignored the Mac because OS-X was too difficult to break into. Meanwhile the Mac users (and Apple) were constantly thumbing their noses at the beleaguered Windows users with ads like the Apple "Mac vs. PC" series.
But by the end of the decade, Windows has gotten pretty secure and stable, nearly as much so as Mac OS-X. And as a result, the virus writers started turning their attention to the Mac. It was still too hard to attack the operating system, but "social engineering" attacks on the USER were pretty refined, and finally ONE got slick enough that it became an actual threat to the Mac platform.
The PC users have been waiting a decade for this moment. Even though the new malware isn't a true virus, and is fairly easy to block, it was the first significant threat that Apple had to respond to with quick-turn security patches. So it's sorta historic in that respect.
All that pent-up anger and frustration is coming out. You should see the PC tech press -- they're like sailors who have made shore for the first time in years, and they're drunk with the glory of being able to use "Apple", "Mac", and "Malware" in the same headline.
You can't blame Windows users for feeling ecstatic. Of course, those who are being obnoxious about it are a pain, but some of that is to be expected. The joy of their schadenfreude will fade in time, but I expect it will take months at least.