And by "figures" I'm assuming you mean the 8% figure? If so then it appears that the last time you updated your "research" was back in 2008
Today Apple has acquired the third spot at
12.9% and growing at
a much faster rate than any other computer company.
This is what the experts (
including the CEO of HP) says about Apples growth in 2012
But this isn't about market share, it's about viruses and why one platform gets them when another does not. See below.
And assumptions is all that they are. Market share has NOTHING to do with who gets viruses. That way of thinking is just FUD! The topic of viruses is complex and goes back many years. My apologies in advance but in order to understand the facts this will take a little reading. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible though
Long gone are the days when size of a operating system platform had anything to do with getting, or not getting, a virus. But lets not put the cart before the horse, a little review of virus history is needed first. Heres a brief examination of the history of computer viruses over the past 30 years;
Back in the 1980s & early 1990s there was a thriving virus scene for DOS. The market share for DOS back then was very small compared to the windows market share, and yet there were plenty of viruses for DOS around, even though there werent as many people using DOS as people using windows. Why? It certainly had NOTHING to do with the market share size of the DOS community. Thats because
market share has nothing to do with who gets a virus.
Comparatively, the DOS market share was very much the same as the Mac OS X market share, the only main exception was that DOS and windows were both made by Microsoft. Yet DOS still received its fair share of viruses even though it had a much smaller market share. This is a perfect example that proves that market share has no effect what-so-ever on which platform receives viruses, but there are MANY other examples of why the market share myth simply doesnt hold water. Lets look deeper into some of those other examples that disprove this
urban myth now shall we.
Mac Systems had roughly 1/10th of the PC market in the 1980s - which means a fraction of the number of installed Macs of today, and a vanishingly small number compared to the Windows computers of today - yet viruses still came out for Mac Systems back then. If the market share myth were true, then Macs would never have had viruses written for them, but we know that back in the 1980s this wasnt true. At the time, even though Macs had a much smaller market share they still had a virus problem. Viruses, or so it seemed, were a part of every operating system. So then why did Macs get viruses back then, and today they no longer do? Well for one thing Macs back then used an operating system called OS8 and OS9 (
also known as Classic). Today Macs use OS X (
Tiger, Leopard, Lion)
which is much beefier security wise, but more on this later.
Returning to today
ask yourself, how many people do you know that use AmigaDOS today? Probably no one. Yet it's still alive and well thank you very much (
version 4.1 just released). The AmigaDOS market share is therefore
extremely small,
almost non-existent, yet virus writers are
still writing the occasional virus for AmigaDOS! Why? It certainly has NOTHING to do with the small market share size of the AmigaDOS community. According to the
market share myth no one would EVER write a virus for AmigaDOS when they could get more
bang for the buck writing one for windows, right? Yet we know in real life this simply isnt the case, that people still do write viruses for AmigaDOS. However, on the same hand they still
dont write viruses for Macs OS X today. Why is that? Heres a legitimate clue, a lot has to do with the foundation of both operating systems, which well delve into a little deeper in a bit.
What were seeing here is a history of operating systems that have a very small market share, smaller than Macs even, and yet there are people still writing viruses for these small operating systems, but not one virus is around for Mac OS X.
Hmmm... lets see now, we have far more Mac OS X computers being used today than there were Mac Systems in 1980s, there WERE Mac Systems viruses in 1980s, yet still no viruses are found for OS X today.
Obviously the market share myth isnt all its cracked up to be!
So then why are there so many viruses for windows, and yet none for Macs?
What we have seen above is that virus writers write viruses that exploit ANY vulnerability that they can find, regardless of the popularity or market share size of the platform! Most viruses are no longer written by 13 year olds trying to boost their ego like some people believe. Today writing viruses is BIG money, especially in countries like Russia. For example; the Russian
Zlob gang has written many viruses for the wild.
Heres a quick example, the whizzer worm is a complex and sophisticated virus designed to infect a computer by exploiting an obscure flaw in one particular version - of one particular companys software firewall program called Black Ice.
The total number of people in the whole entire world who used this version of this program was ONLY around 50,000. Yet the virus writers still took the time, found
and exploited that flaw. Why? Well, it had NOTHING to do with market share, and everything to do with the fact that
they could exploit that flaw!
I think we can both agree that 50,000 users is a far smaller number (
and therefore a smaller market share) than the number of people who buy a Mac each and every day. The point is that virus writers write WHERE EVER they can find and exploit a vulnerability. They do not care about the market share of a platform. They ONLY care about the
vulnerabilities that they know they can easily profit from
and exploit.
Now lets look at the market share myth from the other side of the coin, lets say that you know how to write viruses. As low a profession as it might be, well say that you are really good at writing viruses. You also know that modern day Macs are known to be bullet proof. Which would you do, write the 500,000th Windows virus and join the ranks of script kiddies, or do you write the worlds first OS X virus? Think about that for a minute, dont you think that it might tempt you to be the very FIRST person to write the first real Mac OS X virus? Your name would go down in Cyber history if you could do that, right? But still you dont see ANY viruses around for modern day Macs do you
why? For a clue to the answer it might be time to consider what is known as Occams razor which states:
All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. The simplest solution for the lack of Mac viruses is that these hackers today are VERY capable of writing powerful, disruptive viruses, but they simply can not find a way to penetrate the OS X architecture, or they would - if for no other reason then just to become worldly famous for being the first person to successfully do so - yet still no Mac viruses exist. It all goes back to the OSs foundation which we talked about earlier, and OS X was designed on top of BSD, an already EXTREMELY secure variant of Unix. Windows however
was not.
Architectural elements between the different OSs are key to the virus discussion. As mentioned before, MacOS was designed on top of BSD, an already extremely secure variant of Unix. On the other hand the Windows architecture historically has never been secure (
ever) and design decisions made many, many years ago make it almost impossible to secure it now.
Rule Number One: an operating system can only be as secure as its
framework allows it to be.
No matter how many Macs are in the wild you won't see any viruses written for them, and I seriously doubt you'll see any for Android either. However Windows has had more than one million different viruses, trojans, worms, and other malware reported as of 2009, and that number increases daily. According to CNN, the number of windows viruses has risen to over 400%
Oh bother.
