Comment Re:Let's take a look at the arguments. (Score 1) 249
"It's because there aren't many OS X machines. Bogus. 4% might be a small percentage, but there are tens of millions of Macs out there. Not only that, Apple users tend to be smug and Apple itself puts out a constant vibe of superiority, plus a very visible chain of elitist boutique retail stores. Is there not a hacker on Earth motivated to take down those arrogant Mac users?
On top of that, with millions of OS X machines out there, the number of self-propagating viruses in the wild should be greater than zero. But the number is actually zero. Surely something more than "security through obscurity" is at work here.
I keep seeing the same back-and-forth here on Slashdot about whether the numbers of users make a target more enticing to malicious hackers. What I'd like to know is whether anyone has analyzed the situation using the same approach that an epidemiologist would apply to a biological epidemic. Isn't it true that one can, to a certain extent, abstract away from the virulence of the attacker and the vulnerability of the target and instead talk about the impact of population size and density on the rate and extent of spread?
Maybe Mac users are too sparsely distributed for hackers to make a big bang. I'm not suggesting that the quality of the OS has nothing to do with it, but I think if I wanted to spread a real virus, I would target densely-populated cities and not the countryside.
I guess you could sum up my question this way: does the density and not just the numbers of users matter to malicious hackers?
